Vinyl and streaming or just quality digital files all have something to offer us audiophiles. Quality sound, ease of playing, etc. I go either way (No pun intended). Sometimes I’ll just load up a bunch of music in JRiver and kick back to listen and other times I’ll do some series listening to vinyl. Each sounds different but have something to offer. I do prefer vinyl if it’s a good recording and good vinyl but other times a good digital recording completely mesmerizes me.
Now back to what this thread is about, MQA. When it first came out and I read the technical papers on it and I thought, this sounds like a scam to lock in a copyright patent for the company. Doing something like Sony has always has tried. When the audio company I was working for incorporated MQA into our DAC/streamers I was able to do a lot of serious listening through the years to it. I’ve never really cared for it. It definitely changed the sound and I felt it lost something, but that’s me. The important thing here is that here is a company that tried to sell everyone a bill of goods that would lock in a ton of music with their proprietary patented encode/decode product. Now it’s flopping, so they sell it off to recoup as much as they can.
I still stick with it being just another scam from a “Sony” type plan. And it failed!
Tidal removing all MQA
As the title states Tidal will be removing all MQA and replacing titles with FLAC instead. Per an email I just received:
On July 24, 2024, we’re replacing the music in TIDAL’s MQA catalog with FLAC versions.
- ...
- 26 posts total
Friendly reminder facts for @amvroofing and others
1. The native sample and bit rate of the mastering session is the best quality that any product could ever be 2. MQA is sonically distorted and lossy. Might be subjectively preferable distortion or might not, but it’s definitely distorted.
3. MQA is not master quality. (See 1.) MQA is not authenticated. It’s almost always bulk processed |
- 26 posts total