Per stream
Tidal $0.00927
Napster/Rhapsody $0.01110
Qobuz $0.04390
Which service (if any) will be the Most … Appreciated by the artists ?
Dirk
1 Like
And in the next breath claims are made the MQA will rule the world denying us all choice. You can’t have it both ways. So if you don’t like MQA, don’t play it.
1 Like
Best advice in years
Dirk
What, listening to what MQA have to say for themselves is a bad thing now Chris ? 
Because if you’re calling them liars, they (and @Jim_Austin) would like to have a word with you… After all, “Spencer Chrislu’s remarks surely imply that if MQA succeeds, the “crown jewels”—open, high-rate PCM files—will be withdrawn from the market. Buy those 24/192 downloads while you can.”
1 Like
MQA is a business that is happy offering choice. They are not only environmentally friendly they are looking out for all audiophiles by not wanting market control. They prefer to lose money hand over fist.
[sarcasm off]
What! They’re not appealing to the pervasive apprehension that audiophiles are missing out on something?
1 Like
MQA’s future (if it indeed has one?) is in streaming, and not in downloads, IMO.
You should always be able to buy the 24/192 etc downloads, but not necessarily stream them.
I can see a future where streaming platforms possibly move towards MQA for streaming, and the 24-bit files are available for purchase/download.
But I think we would be a few years from that.
MQA’s Director of Content Services is flat-out telling you that if they have their way, you are wrong.
1 Like
Best advice in the whole forum. 
All these fervent arguments regarding sonic events happening well beyond the range of human hearing have a distinctly ‘scholastic’ flavour to them. 
My experience with MQA has been uneven at best; sometimes it sounds better than comparable Hi-res files, sometimes it doesn’t.
The only thing I’ve noticed that consistently improves my listening experience is 24-bit mastering and, generally, files issued at that rate. But I could be mistaken.
I’m just going to enjoy my music.
1 Like
Don’t forget Qobuz is streaming unadulterated lossless FLAC up to 24/192k. Amazon has also announced their own Hi-Res streaming which doesn’t use MQA.
The only streaming provider is still using MQA is none other than Tidal. Since 2016 Tidal has never announced the amount of subscribers it has when compared to Apple and Spotify. This is NOT a good sign! It is just sitting on a cash cow that will soon run out unless Tidal can pull in more subscribers. Other streaming providers like Deezer has announced MQA support in the past but it didn’t materialised in the end. The others just adopt a ‘wait and see’ kind of thing. Announcement is one thing, implement the required streaming is a big gamble.
In a whole, Apple and Spotify will continue to dominate the world with their streaming for the masses. The music labels love them, they are the great source of $$$😄
1 Like
No they haven’t. It’s a “report” in the press, not an announcement by Amazon.
And if MQA becomes dominant in streaming, you can bet only MQA will be available also for hi res download when the MQA file exists. Possibly only MQA for CD download rates, too. The labels dictate what is allowed to stream, and if they can dictate MQA only, they will. So far MQA isn’t really a success, so they can’t.
1 Like
Deleted and moved.
Bob - and even more disappointingly, Peter Craven, who should know better, had two simple options.They could have:
- Mathematically shown that their new system could precisely reconstruct the input signal (as Shannon and Nyquist did). They failed to even attempt this. For obvious reasons. But if they had, we could all then have acknowledged a breakthrough in information theory.
- They could have acknowledged that the signal was not fully reconstructed and asserted that this fact wasn’t important as the differences were not perceptible. This is what they have attempted to do. However, to make this believable, they would need to have carried out extensive double blind tests and shown a statistically significant result demonstrating that inaudibility. They failed to do this, trying to palm AES readers off with a pathetic "This approach to re-coding results in superior sound and
significantly lower data-rate when compared to
unstructured encoding and playback, and has been
enthusiastically supported in listening trials with a
number of recording and mastering engineers, artists and
producers. "
They’ve had enough time. Time for us to vote against MQA with our wallets. It is nothing more than a lossy compression scheme - but dressed up as “Hi-Res” for the AudioFools.
5 Likes
Well, you won’t like this then…but it’s relevant
1 Like
Chris,
Not sure what it is that I wouldn’t like. As far as I can see, just the MQA marketing machine at work again. Until I see peer-reviewed papers either proving inaudibility or exact waveform reconstruction, my view of this is the same as my view of any other unproven marketing claim. And I used to be a Marketing Manager 
5 Likes
Smoke and mirrors is how stuart has been trying to shill mqa to audiophiles. I just see the blog as a last-ditch effort to what amounts to a dead digital format.
Dead? I looked around AXPONA. Qobuz was everywhere. Many rooms had placards proclaiming that they were streaming Qobuz. They also had a table in the Marketplace, and David Solomon was performing flash DJ sessions in a handful of rooms to demonstrate and talk about Qobuz.
Tidal’s “appearance” amounted to a banner on the mezzanine. Only a couple of rooms showed mqa placards, and most likely just to show that their product had the capability. It wasn’t even mentioned by anyone I spoke with. Unlike past years, its presence was slim at best, and there was no more buzz about it.
That’s the thing. To this day, neither mqa nor stuart have offered a back-to-back comparison test of the exact same master, run through mqa processing. The smoke and mirrors, and his implied refusal to give such a comparison, gives us a wrong impression.
Precisely! Think of how many tracks are on Tidal right now. Do you think the labels would put a cent towards having these albums remastered (and, umm, “authenticated,” the “a” in mqa) yet again just for one streaming service on an unproven audio format that few care about? I highly doubt it. I would guess mqa is simply a process that could be run through an encoder, applied with a few mouse clicks in a digital workstation–all it seems to be is a lossy encoder that adds some mild DSP to cure what stuart feels is “blurring” in the digital domain.
And the mqa discs. Can anyone say “HDCD 2.0?”
I notice many of them have backed off. JA at Stereophile (just one example) was ramming it down his readers’ throats, and pretty much condescending to those commenting on his articles posted online. I even publicly called him out for gaslighting about mqa. I doubt it did any good, but not too long after, the propaganda stopped. I wondered what the motivation was to push something like mqa that had no clear benefit. And as I said, even at the last audio show I attended, it was maybe a blip on the radar at best, mentioned for compatibility’s sake mainly.
3 Likes
Thanks for the heads-up, looks like a fascinating series of articles.
These have been available from almost day one.