Today MQA Audio

Listening to Tidal Masters into my Dragonfly from my iMAC into my Senn 650s and Roberta Flack as well as Booker T and the MGs  are certainly sounding rather appealing- i wouldn't say hidef - but sounds more like a local Redbook rip or playback - but seemingly better than the standard FLAC offering from Tidal.

andarkian posted:

Interestingly, I have no idea of the merits or demerits of MQA coding and decoding but Tidal seem to be going for it big time.

it could be argued that Tidal has to do something to stay relevant and in business.

jon honeyball posted:

andarkian posted:

Interestingly, I have no idea of the merits or demerits of MQA coding and decoding but Tidal seem to be going for it big time.

it could be argued that Tidal has to do something to stay relevant and in business.. 

Not sure where exactly you coming from, Jon. Just as year on year the car manufacturers have to embrace newer technology to stay in the game, I guess Tidal have looked and assessed MQA and perceive that it may give them a competitive edge over Qobuz, Spotify and Apple, in descending order of output quality. I personally feel that there has been resistance, fear and perhaps technology challenges to delivering high definition streaming by the whole music industry, but someone had to blink and rise to the challenge. Tidal seem to have done this.

Anyway, I am happy to defer to those of you who have had a broader experience of music systems to assess properly what MQA does or does not deliver. However, let me just say that if the original master or recording is poor, it does look like MQA will not reverse engineer a solution, just add to the disappointment and frustration when you know something could have been delivered so much better. Led Zeppelin I is fantastic, Yes 90125 less so which, considering their lyrics are tripe, but their music is excellent is frustrating. 

I agree - i think it is about differentiating - Tidal's MQA implementation certainly sounds different from their regular FLAC streams

S

Ok, I admit I am starting to like it.. I have set my MBP on wireless and on battery to feed my Hugo via exclusive mode USB into my 252/250-> ATCs and the Tidal Masters are sounding very good indeed... the noticeable thing is that the tracks time so well..and have a nice separation to the parts of the mix.. certainly very foot tapping...

One thing I have noticed is decoded masters vary between 88/24 and 96/24

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Ok, I admit I am starting to like it.. I have set my MBP on wireless and on battery to feed my Hugo via exclusive mode USB into my 252/250-> ATCs and the Tidal Masters are sounding very good indeed... the noticeable thing is that the tracks time so well..and have a nice separation to the parts of the mix.. certainly very foot tapping...

One thing I have noticed is decoded masters vary between 88/24 and 96/24

Yay! Glad you are starting to like it Simon 

Key question is would naim extend the present support to tidal to decode also mqa direct. I honestly don't know why it is not automatic !!! Especially for latest architecture

streaming hi res above cd quality is very very appealing. 

Enough evidence that mqa is making a difference.

like someone rightly said here, it could easily be decoded by an iPhone or equivalent. I will not be surprised if Apple gets tidal at some stage...unless they working on their own equivalent 

Well said Simon-in-Suffolk (and others).  I don't know what's in the MQA secret sauce but it sure does sound nice.  As a differentiator between other streaming services MQA is an early winner.  Listening to any MQA track from Tidal and comparing them to anything else out there from the other Streaming services(including Tidal HiFi) its extremely easy to differentiate.  It does make me think if it could be even better with a MQA certified DAC then my next DAC purchase I'd seriously want the option of MQA.  

The question is, how does it compare with a downloaded hi res PCM (or DSD) file of the same master? It shouldn't sound better, or if it does that must be some sound shaping changing something, but does it sound as good?

[@mention:41551091830475636]   I don't have too many HiRes tracks to be honest,  but "Buena Vista Social Club" and Joni Mitchell —sounds better to me than my HDTracks 24/192 version. Might be a different mix, admittedly, but I don't really care. Like you, I just want it to sound good.

marcusman posted:

Might be a different mix, admittedly, but I don't really care. Like you, I just want it to sound good.

This is where the train goes off the rails.  (1) Different mixes can/often do sound different due to the fact that they are different mixes.  (2) "Sound(s) good" has to be shown on our ultimate hardware.

I cannot extrapolate from "sounds better in my car, or on an iPhone/Macbook/Dragonfly dac" to --will sound better on an NDS or 272 or NDX etc etc --. But apparently I'm in the minority on this??  Maybe I'm not thinking of it the right way.

[@mention:6776267697733081]  I understand where you are coming from.  As it stands right now with the equipment I have and not overthinking it, I'm really liking what Tidal/MQA has done so far.

As I have no interest in online streaming it is all a bit academic at the moment - it'll be interesting to see if it filters through to become a normal format for supply - which is what prompts my question comparing MQA with PCM or DSD hi res files.

marcusman posted:

[@mention:6776267697733081]  I understand where you are coming from.  As it stands right now with the equipment I have and not overthinking it, I'm really liking what Tidal/MQA has done so far.

I have no axe to grind either way, and am happy with a 'wait and see' approach as it's all academic for me at this point with no Tidal subscription and nothing but Naim hardware for music replay at the moment.

I know at least one Meridian owner who's high on it, but there is a significant brand loyalty thing going on there, just as there is with me and Naim

Came home to find the wife had iTunes on and was playing the Beatles here Comes The Sun on the Muso. Put on Yes 90125 Owner Of A Lonely Heart MQA and in my opinion The Beatles reproduction was better. Production dear boy, production!

Sorry, just listened at a distance and the amount of detail coming through is very good. The Muso appears to need a little bit of distance to disentangle the detail. Close up the bass can overwhelm everything.

Innocent Bystander posted:

As I have no interest in online streaming it is all a bit academic at the moment - it'll be interesting to see if it filters through to become a normal format for supply - which is what prompts my question comparing MQA with PCM or DSD hi res files.

Strangely, I have the complete opposite position. I was debating tidal vs Spotify and this mqa business is very exciting for streaming.

it also holds the promise of being able one day to listen to hi res on my iPhone or equivalent. But this is secondary to streaming in descent quality. When I like something, i will go and buy a cd or the best possible file...

hence why, I wish naim will support mqa natively at some stage to extract the juice via tidal obviously...

To be honest I wouldn't say MQA is above good CD quality replay yet, certainly with a soft decoder, even though it expands to a higher bit rate than CD... but for a download stream it's the closest I have heard yet and that is quite a step forward...

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

To be honest I wouldn't say MQA is above good CD quality replay yet, certainly with a soft decoder, even though it expands to a higher bit rate than CD... but for a download stream it's the closest I have heard yet and that is quite a step forward...

Thanks for useful feedback 

that's why, and in the absence of any proper streaming alternative, you can imagine why I am praying for naim to end up decoding mqa natively to go full hi res.  Not interested by adding another dac for now. 

Crabby posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

As I have no interest in online streaming it is all a bit academic at the moment - it'll be interesting to see if it filters through to become a normal format for supply - which is what prompts my question comparing MQA with PCM or DSD hi res files.

it also holds the promise of being able one day to listen to hi res on my iPhone or equivalent. But this is secondary to streaming in descent quality. When I like something, i will go and buy a cd or the best possible file...

for the little new music I seek I'm quite happy to listen to typically mp3 as a sampler to decide if I like it. And living somewhere where cheap phone data is not available I wouuldn't stream on my phone.

I'm not really sure what my test setup is doing, but comparing Coldplay ("Ink" from "Ghost Stories") on Tidal Masters from the macOS app on Mac mini into Qute v1 via Toslink sounds good but not as good as locally streaming from my NAS. Enough so my partner instantly said "not as good, not as rich". But not bad or anything...I found a bit of high frequency overlay / glare in the comparison, but who know what that is from. Not as noticeable when not trying to A/B that's for sure. 

It was an easy thing to rework inputs and download and launch the Tidal desktop app, which I'm now happily using and scanning the Masters What's New / Albums offerings. (Rumours at the moment, sounding good, horrible mix of Otis Redding earlier). Next will be to go over to headless control via iPad and VNC...

For my part, I've been really liking Tidal all along, but am "in between systems" at the moment as my SU is off on offer hoping to pave my finances for a Nova...so not the fairest test since unable to compare Tidal built in (v1 Qute not capable) vs from Toslink, never mind Masters vs Redbooks. Seems not unusual, though, as only folks with external USB DACs can do one-for-one on otherwise identical chains at the moment.

I am still strongly in the "good for Tidal, good for Tidal subscribers" camp, and an pleased that they've taken this first giant step, after pushing past Spotify with CD quality to begin with. No Qobuz    or other such services here. Would love to see higher quality anything gain greater mainstream traction. 

There is lots of room for improvement in curation in Tidal still, but this is cool, a free upgrade, and a great way to pass some fun hours in a cold Sunday afternoon. 

Regards alan

ps - would be good to get confirmation on streaming and computational process chain and what happens with software MQA deciding to be output on a standard optical out. I can't see how to get the Qute to give info on the incoming stream, so no clues there. 

Alan - you are right - it is not as rich - its ever so slightly too high end in balance ...I was perusing some documentation today on MQA and some analysis of the patents - and apparently it is understood that the higher frequencies that are reconstructed have to be boosted as they become attenuated somewhat when 'folded' with the encoding decimation .. therefore this 'boost' is a subjective enhancement - and you can perhaps see in the limit you might want user control on this so as to tweak and optimise - I guess this all gets a bit nerdy and tweaky which will put off those that is perhaps aimed at.. we might see an improvement here with later software MQA filters - and it might be set currently to provide a wow factor enhancement  or what we sometimes call a 'hifi' sound.

BTW the software decoder outputs strips that seem so far appear to have been 88.2 and 96 kHz sample rate transport streams - you can feed these into a regular hidef capable DAC. Just make sure the Tidal player is NOT set to MQA bypass - for that you need to have a MQA capable DAC that you would feed by the Tidal app

Thanks Simon - both for listening notes from your system and thoughts on possible why's. I was thinking on your earlier comment that the folded-in higher frequency data would manifest as lower level noise (in "discarded" bits if not decided with an MQA dac?) because it sounded like a haze or glare...but I don't see how that could be, if there is an MQA software decoder in the Tidal app, presumably packing a regular PCM bitstream over Toslink in this case with my Mac mini -- sort of a "DDC" virtual stage, I'm imagining here). Meandering now but having fun with many known discs in a smaller collection to pick from on Tidal. Phil Collins now, Emerson Lake and Palmer next. Ah, days of my youth...

Regards alan

Good job to Tidal. I just got back onto subscribing it and has been listening to it (more the MQA) a lot through my PC - > Hugo - Headphone.

Now to look for a netbook to do some Hugo listening on my SN2!

Not sure if this trick has been posted so instead of reading through the thread I'll just post it. A work around to get MQA files via Naim streamer or any other streamer is add MQA files via desktop to favorites then you should be able to use Naim app to play. Hope that makes sense.