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

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.

They can't sell it, new engineers would spill the beans. They already sent the money to Switzerland.

Are you alleging illegal behavior?

... it is good news that mqa is shutting down. 

MQA Ltd. continues in operation, just as a US company would operate under Chapter 11. It's not especially uncommon. Qobuz, Kodak and American Airlines each went bankrupt. They're all still around.

The injured\damaged party is anyone who is or has been paying for the plan you quoted.

What injury did they suffer? Many people seem very happy with MQA. Were they also injured?

"Are you alleging illegal behavior?"

Is anybody getting what's advertised?

"MQA Ltd. continues in operation, just as a US company would operate under Chapter 11. It's not especially uncommon. Qobuz, Kodak and American Airlines each went bankrupt. They're all still around."

That's very bad news.  Weill, if they don't shut down, Tidal could get some money back from them for having to give us ours back.

If you buy an engagement ring, and a dealer says it's cubic zirconium, indistinguishable from diamonds, and still costs double the regular price of what that would be if it were a diamond, she might still be happy with it, too.  Would you suffer inury if you found out cubic zirconiums were not the same as diamonds, and were actually cheaper too?

 

So, I am still trying to understand, - MQA sold something to Tidal, that sold it to many of us, and nobody can prove it is exactly what they say it is?

That doesn’t sound so different from most of the audio tweaks we buy.

so a small hifi vendor with lots of ’alliances’ goes into receivership

so what? it still operates, the owners have their equity diluted or wiped out, debtors take a partial hit on their receivables, negotiate

some bigger fish in the pond (perhaps tidal itself, which is owned by private equity interests) will buy the ongoing concern or whatever assets, tangible or intangible, at a haircut, leave the mqa stuff in place as a selling point for the streaming service, or perhaps phase it out over time

life goes on