Tidal class-action


MQA declared bankruptcy.  I smell the fear of a class action lawsuit against Tidal.  We could do that.  Tidal has 8 million subscribers, we don't know how many or how long they all were paying double by subscribing to the 'nobody can prove Tidal has any tracks higher than 44.1khz' plan.  They probably have lots of people on phones who haven't even heard of MQA who trust them and wanted the one that sounds better.  They're right not to have to listen to any talk about MQA if they want the plan that sounds better.

MQA means you can't prove the file is an original copy or not. That Beethoven track you like it says is 192 could actually be Dua Lipa at 11khz.

The bankruptcy move was probably to protect themselves from Tidal, who is the receiver of people's funds.

 

audioisnobiggie

PS - I'm not sure what basis Tidal has for suing MQA.  I'm not a fan of MQA at all but I also can't see what the beef is with Tidal.

Tidal's defense against having to give everyone their money back for all this time, would be that they didn't understand that MQA was fooling them, and sure won't want to give all that money back to customers for not even having to spend more on streaming.  They would have to try to get whatever money they gave MQA back in their own separate Tidal v MQA lawsuit.  That's probably what MQA sees coming.

You're right not to be a fan of MQA, though.  You can't prove they have any files over 44.1khz.  You could think you're playing your new favorite Beethoven track at 192 like it says, and think it sounds great, but it's actually Dua Lipa at 11khz.

I don't see any basis for a suit against MQA. It looks like the company is going through what in the US would be Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is really not that big of a deal. As long as MQA has a revenue stream, it's likely some entity will buy it. It won't matter to me if I'm wrong because I have no plans for MQA in my system.

I never liked MQA.

Regardless, please help me understand.  Tidal offers levels of their subscription service.  Their HiFi Plus plan at $19.99 includes:

  • Innovative Audio Formats
  • Up to 9216 kbps
  • Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and HiFi

I don't see that they promise every file to be processed using the MQA  format.  I am trying to understand who has been injured/damaged, assuming the people on the HiFi Plus plan (me included) received MQA processed files to listen to.  Are you suggesting that one or the other, MQA or Tidal, knowingly and fraudulently advertised MQA files that were not in fact MQA files?  Even if MQA goes into administration, isn't it possible Tidal can still offer MQA processed music files to it's HiFi Plus members?  Please help me understand who is the injured/damaged party and need for a class-action suit.

MQA will only ever prove to be false.  They can't sell it, new engineers would spill the beans.  They already sent the money to Switzerland.

Tidal doesn't tell you very much about MQA at all.  You find out later that everything is being streamed as MQA 44.1, your cpu handles 'unfolding' until 96khz, but you need their little chip to go up to 192.  And you won't get identical output to what your gear would be doing if Tidal had streamed the unaltered higher res.

You can't go too wrong if you avoid the scam plan you showed, that says it's better than basic 44.1, I don't know what they do to change the 44.1's to 44.1 mqa, but in that case any addition would only make them have to stream that bit more.

No, you don't see them say too much about mqa.  The technology's purpose is designed to give you higher res without the servers having to use more bandwidth than 44.1.  But it doesn't work, and they still just charge you double anyway.  Double burn for you.  Anybody on Tidal with that plan is burned, unless playing a 44.1 track, except it says it's mqa, so we don't even know if they have the original track.  There is no question that the original files would be fine.  It's MQA's job to be able to prove that their versions turn out identical, which is not going to be possible in the first place.  There is no reason for the consumer to worry about fraudulent mqa files, any difference to the original can only be worse.  This is why it is good news that mqa is shutting down.  They are trying to tell you that Master Quality Authenticated files sound better than higher res files.  Well, it could have a nice ring to it compared to the more grass-roots sounding 'higher res', but it doesn't work, it measures badly, they lied.  We don't want MQA.  MQA sounds like My Queer Ambitions.  The injured\damaged party is anyone who is or has been paying for the plan you quoted.  You got noise instead of the originals.