Tidal class-action

moto_man:

You paid for top tier, and they call it upfolding instead of oversampling. That’s why they chose the name that mqa stands for, it’s a decoy that sounds better than higher res.

fbgbill:

I like streaming as the option to discover more music. I can just pump a lot of funds into my digital playback, and not have to spend on a separate tuner also for foreign exposure, so my playback from all sources benefits. I get better sound than movie theatres from videos and games, too.

audioguy85:

I found that the Tidal player didn't sound as bad as the Amazon one did. Even better, Tidal plays in Audirvana, my favorite sounding player, so it's playback shoots to the top of streaming, though Qobuz works in there too, which isn't in my country until next month. I’m disappointed Tidal is faking it’s higher res with mqa.

For sure you will beat foreign sources with all of your other gear, but for auditioning new candidates, why not improve what you’re getting also?

@audioisnobiggie, I have briefly looked into the tech of MQA and found it surprising.  Here is an excerpt from the article on MQA in Wikipedia:

'MQA encoding is lossy;^[24][25] it hierarchically compresses the relatively little energy in the higher frequency bands into data streams that are embedded in the lower frequency bands using proprietary dithering techniques, allowing for an apparent reduction in sample rate and hence file size. After a series of such "origami" manipulations,^[26][27] a dithered and shaped version of the original audio, together with a touchup stream (the compressed difference between the original and modified streams), are distributed as a single 24-bit stream, with the most significant bits occupied by PCM audio compatible with non-MQA playback equipment. Depending on the implementation, as few as 13 bits may be reserved for PCM audio, with the lower-order bits rendered as noise by equipment without an MQA decoder"

This strikes me as mumbo jumbo.  Why would I want some weird lossy compression with a side stream of the compressed bits that is then recombined in one's system, when I can stream the same thing at 24/96K FLAC through Qobuz?  How can a weird "origami" process applied to a 16/44.1K file sound better than a lossless 24/96 stream?  To me it makes no sense at all.

As for all you class action naysayers, the harm is that I paid a higher price to have access to something that supposedly delivered high res files, but instead was delivering Redbook files that were artificially processed and then re-processed.  Not saying that that is what happened, because I don't yet fully understand the whole MQA tech, but it sure seems like false advertising to get people into the higher tier pricing.  The harm is the differential between that tier and the next one down . . .

It’s a relief hearing you disagree with everything even mqa says it’s doing, moto_man. You should be asking for an unaltered simple 24/96 stream, not lossless, if you don’t like people messing with your stuff.

MQA would probably tell Jay-z that he could do something so that it wasn’t the same as oversampling, so that they could have their stories straight. If Jay-z isn’t in on it, his whole company sure got taken.

If Jay-z shoots the mqa creator, all the other guys like that will want to kill him because of it.

I enjoy Tidal. Personally, I have been pleased with MQA. I like Qobuz. Sometimes streams from Tidal sound better than Qobuz, sometimes Qobuz will sound better. Do I prefer vinyl- yes. I tell “most” (99%) guests, and they agree, if they had never heard my vinyl set up my digital would sound better than anything they’ve ever heard. Tidal does a better job for me creating mixes and suggesting new artists than Qobuz . Digital, no matter which platform (I use Spotify most frequently away from my system) is how I discover and sample music before I buy it on vinyl. 
 

I’ve never understood the vitriol that gets tossed around about MQA on this site. Seems like much ado about nothing. 

If you haven't yet discovered everything that was recorded on tape, wouldn't you still eventually rather discover the dac they play the music on for the conversion to vinyl that they all need now?