Uh oh here goes!
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We should have the options to use or not use MQA/DSP/equalization/tone controls, etc. or flat.
Choices right?
We do have options @racingdriver. All the MQA albums I’ve come across on Tidal also have a 16/44.1 FLAC version alongside them that you can choose to play instead.
I haven’t found an MQA album yet that doesn’t also exist in uncompressed 16/44.1 or 16/48.
Not every album. I do recall coming across at least one album on Tidal that – according to Versions – was single inventory MQA. Probably a recent release that was mastered to MQA, not remastered for MQA.
AJ
Hmm… I stand corrected… Don’t suppose you can recall what it was?
I wish that I did remember.
Try exploring recent releases
AJ
Yeah… you’re right… there’s a couple of examples on the first page of the ‘Masters’ Tab. Well whaddya know!!
Are they all MQA ORFS 44.1/48 kHz? That would be my expectation.
AJ
Thanks for all the great info, and I just checked qobuz HiRes word size and rates:
24bit x 192kbps
Hopefully, both Tidal and qobuz will be available and integrated with roon in the future.
@WiWavelength No… not all… there’s a couple of 96kHz amongst the ones I found.
Example… Evo Sessions by Chlara.
As some of us have warned, that could mean the MQA mastering becomes the one and only master in perpetuity for that album. The folded MQA version gets submitted to iTunes, for example, for lossy encoding. Long after MQA has been assigned to dustbin of technology, that MQA encoding – forever cooked into the master tape – could live on in all lossless and lossy digital distribution.
AJ
Wow. MQA living in perpetuity. That is a real drag. MQA is the MP3 of the 21st century.
I think it was. Radka Toneff, Fairytales. The most recent CD edition was a MQA CD so in Roon your choices were 16 or 24 bit MQA encoded FLAC. But the title has been around for 30 odd years so there are a lot of other versions out there though perhaps not on streaming platforms.
From what I understand … the studio’s recording archive would always be the multi-track PCM (or DSD) … from that a MQA “master” is made … thus mitigating MQA in that if/when the MQA coding process improves overtime the new MQA “master” can be made … and also it will always be possible to produce a non-MQA “master” … should the studio be willing and enough demand etc.
Never not miss the opportunity for another shameless cash-in.
Nick Mason’s garage is testament to that.
The 2015 remastering (and only true remastering) of Fairytales was done with heart and dedication, a lot of the original musicias participated to get the right sound. Nice to see Arild Andersen et al at the soundboard:
I’m also a classical fan and find that Tidal has a huge catalogue that is updated every week. I get updates of new classical releases from Presto Classical in the UK and I use this to search for them on Tidal. They usually are there but they are not always easy to find. Sometimes - but very rarely - they appear under the album title, other times they are under the main artist; such as the orchestra. If you persevere you can find even the most esoteric contemporary music.
Qobuz is better for classical & jazz but as it isn’t possible to use it with Roon then I make do. Also There are classical music labels that don’t allow their content to be streamed by Tidal or Qobuz. The ones I know of are: Chandos, Hyperion, Linn and most new releases on the BIS label. All are classical music labels and have their own download sites where you can purchase the music from them directly. BIS is the best value as they charge by the second so you can usually pick up separate tracks much cheaper than other classical music sites.
Alex
Thanks for sharing. I have a propensity for classical and jazz. Based on your feedback, my tastes in music, and research elsewhere, for streaming services everyone recommends qobuz over Tidal. Unfortunately roon is not integrated with qobuz . . . at this time. 
My primary needs are audio first with 24 X 192 wherever available. Visualization and control by roon are secondary. It would be great to have roon onboard sometime in the future. Time will tell.
Re: Linn
Linn at this time is not a fan of roon for many of the reasons that we are discussing. Quite understandably Linn is focused on the quality of reproduction and no compression because any massaging of the sound adds artifacts regardless of claims by the progenitors. With Linn if one thinks “straight wire” then that speaks (or plays 
) volumes.
Incidentally storage is cheap and professionally for the team that I manage, we have a glut at a PB level. Yes PBs unused and wasted. It is quite common worldwide. Hopefully AWS is changing storage philosophy with S3 bickets. With current technology there’s no need for ANY type of compression FLAC or otherwise, not even for bandwidth.
I am confident that we will all get there eventually, simply not at this time.
Adding my two cents to the conversation, as a huge fan of classical music, measurable in a LP collection in the high thousands.
Must agree that Tidal has 90% of the releases one would want to have, they are difficult to find at times, as Tidal in general couldn’t care less about classical. That said, they have output deals with most labels, so they onboard their releases no matter what. The way they update the genre is ridiculous, they must have added hundreds of albums since the "classical’ genre has been updated, but nonetheless they mostly are there. As others in this thread, I learn about albums elsewhere (mostly through emails I get from all sources), and then go to Tidal. Rarely I don’t find what I am looking for. I have no idea how much better Qobuz will be, regardless of integration with Roon, as they all get most of their content from the same labels.
I disagree that the predominant reason why we spend money on Roon is the integration with Tidal. What I like about Roon is the depth of the information I receive on albums and artists (not always, but a HUGE LOT better than - say - Primephonic, who couldn’t care less about giving me any info on anything at all, really).
I also disagree on the benefits of MQA, which I think is great, but this is not about MQA, so I won’t go further. It is entirely possible that the MQA debate deals with differences in equipment uber alles.
Ultimately with Tidal we get high-def music for the stuff that matters. Never once I looked for something, didn’t find it, and reached the conclusion that I couldn’t live without the files I couldn’t find. The pleasure of hearing Seiji Ozawa’s ninth, or his gala concert, in high def, for “free” (once you ignore the monthly fee, that is), and not have to buy the album (as I would have a decade ago) or listen to the crappy sound of Stropify is enough for me to be very happy with what God gave me in the XXI Century… Everything else is splitting hair in two.
Finally, I find it funny that we are complaining about Qobuz’ lack of integration with Roon, when in the States we can’t even access Qobuz yet Surely an issue for our friends abroad, I understand.
Over and out. Thanks for reading.
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