MQA now in administration

Mike in NY said:
I still hear quite well, thank you, but I do not appreciate MQA at all.

I've never done any such thing, I've got no graphs or specs by which I measure music, in fact I've not ever tried to measure music, and I've got no measurement gear nor any inclination to use measurement gear.


Certainly the appreciation of sound quality is at least somewhat subjective, I've never said otherwise.


Fantastic, I guess LPs are the ultimate barometer then! As set forth by whom?


Though in some cases a hearing aid can help, but I'm not in need of that, my hearing is tested every few years by my physician, and not because I've asked him to do it. He's an ENT and it's part of that medical specialist checkup.

Sir you make some ridiculous assumptions here, one being that I'm hard of hearing, and another being I only "measure music" as opposed to listen to it. Both assertions are patently false, however I'm not worried others might think you are on to something there, as you'd of course have absolutely no way of knowing one way or the other.

While I don't measure music, I do have a pretty good BS meter, and it measures off the charts with regard to the absolute nonsense lies as set forth by the MQA cadre from day one, all of which have been fully debunked long ago by now with no credible response from MQA whatsoever.

My real objection to MQA beyond just calling/out exposing their outright lies and straight up BS marketing-speak, is that their scheme as revealed in both interviews with MQA, and described in their patent application, fully admits they sought to control every aspect of the music distribution business and extract a tax in the form of licensing fees at each stop, thereby limiting consumer choice and raising prices. Additionally, the patent contains a DRM mechanism.

No I'm not in favor of a solution in search of a problem that raises costs for consumers, all based on complete and utter BS. I'm sorry you've had the wool so easily pulled over your eyes in all of this, you sound like an MQA fanboy with money invested in hardware that will now likely go quickly obsolete once MQA is gone. You can take some solace in the 300 or so albums that were already MQA encoded will likely be available on TIDAL for some time to come, but industry sources have already confirmed there will likely not be any more albums encoded in MQA ever again, that process has been stopped for now, and I for one hope it is never restarted.

TIDAL is also in poor financial health, with year-over-year top line revenue down almost 38% between 4Q21 and 4Q22, a rather precipitous drop from $55.7 million to $38 million. Even though their parent company Block has the resources, it doesn't look likely that TIDAL is in any position to be a white knight for MQA, more likely they drop it within about a year.

Cheers!
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I have never understood quite what problem MQA was trying to fix!
 
merifon said:
I think MQA was designed when internet bandwidth was not enough for hd streaming or for some HD use of audio CD.
Once those limits were overcome, definitively MQA lost sense.
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It was but the underlying issue of internet bandwidth disappeared ages ago
 
d6jg said:
It was but the underlying issue of internet bandwidth disappeared ages ago
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Thinking about it, perhaps it was born above all with the idea of imposing drms. It's actually silly, not to offer the files hires, exactly as they were produced and even more, to apply it to non-HD productions...
 
merifon said:
I think MQA was designed when internet bandwidth was not enough for hd streaming or for some HD use of audio CD.
Once those limits were overcome, definitively MQA lost sense.
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Internet bandwidth aside, I think it was invented by Meridian and Warner Brothers as a way to make money and lock users into proprietary hardware/ licensing, so yes DRM by the backdoor. Not everyone thought it was a great idea viz. https://www.linn.co.uk/uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music-heres-why
 
From a Tidal “ask me anything” session earlier today:

”So many questions about MQA and hi-resolution audio. I hope we don't spend all of our time on audio format details, but it's an AMA and you're asking.
TIDAL has cared about high quality and even experimental audio formats long before it was cool or common among music streamers. Why? Because artists take care when making their art and they want/hope to present their work in the best light (whatever they think that is exactly). We also live in a world that is mobile-dominated and mobile phones have constraints in memory, data plans, coverage maps - so there's always a consideration for the customer's need between more quality and more bandwidth/storage efficiency.

Breaking news for my reddit peeps: we will be introducing hi-res FLAC for our HiFi Plus subscribers soon. It's lossless and an open standard. It's a big file, but we'll give you controls to dial this up and down based on what's going on.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/TIdaL/comments/12hr68f/_/jfuo1ng
 
Brantome said:
From a Tidal “ask me anything” session earlier today:

”So many questions about MQA and hi-resolution audio. I hope we don't spend all of our time on audio format details, but it's an AMA and you're asking.
TIDAL has cared about high quality and even experimental audio formats long before it was cool or common among music streamers. Why? Because artists take care when making their art and they want/hope to present their work in the best light (whatever they think that is exactly). We also live in a world that is mobile-dominated and mobile phones have constraints in memory, data plans, coverage maps - so there's always a consideration for the customer's need between more quality and more bandwidth/storage efficiency.

Breaking news for my reddit peeps: we will be introducing hi-res FLAC for our HiFi Plus subscribers soon. It's lossless and an open standard. It's a big file, but we'll give you controls to dial this up and down based on what's going on.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/TIdaL/comments/12hr68f/_/jfuo1ng
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I don’t understand how’s this “breaking news “? I was a Tidal subscriber up until two months and at first I used the premium tier subscription, with Masters/ MQA and then I downgraded it to just HiFi (because it was Masters is pointless and too expensive) and it was all in FLAC, as advertised for the HiFi subscription. I since moved over to Qobuz.
 
AndreiMartinas said:
I don’t understand how’s this “breaking news “? I was a Tidal subscriber up until two months and at first I used the premium tier subscription, with Masters/ MQA and then I downgraded it to just HiFi (because it was Masters is pointless and too expensive) and it was all in FLAC, as advertised for the HiFi subscription. I since moved over to Qobuz.
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Isn’t the news that their hi res (I.e. greater than CD) will now also be flac and not folded MQA?
 
Brantome said:
Isn’t the news that their hi res (I.e. greater than CD) will now also be flac and not folded MQA?
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Ah, sorry, I thought the standard Hi-Fi plan was FLAC all along, that’s what I’ve been using. Can FLAC also be Hi Res? I’m getting confused 😄
 

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I read somewhere that wav file sounds better than flac despite both are loseless.
 
Smartplug said:
I read somewhere that wav file sounds better than flac despite both are loseless.
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Ah, yes, but was it a double blind, volume matched test. ;)
Some might say that the processing required to uncompress the flac introduces noise.
 
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Mr Ee said:
Ah, yes, but was it a double blind, volume matched test. ;)
Some might say that the proessing required to uncompress the flac introduces noise.
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I prefer 16/44 on any music I find 24/96 or 24/192 to be soft, maybe the music was just upsampled and why don’t sound good.
 
Smartplug said:
I prefer 16/44 on any music I find 24/96 or 24/192 to be soft, maybe the music was just upsampled and why don’t sound good.
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Files should be left at the original sample rate they were mastered. Regarding upsample, it's not the sampling rate nor bit depth itself, are eventual arbitrary post processing filters the real game changer.
 
Mrz7kN said:
Let's see if Tidal pitches in for investment / acquisiton...;-)
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So that is not going to happen as confirmed by Tidal CEO as part of the AMA session on Reddit (see attached)

With that - and Tidals latest announcement to offer lossless HiRes Flac - MQA will be history soon.
 

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