Tidal MQA

Hmm, I think Tidal need to sort the basics out first before looking at any frilly enhancements..

Simon

It sounds more interesting than a frilly enhancement though: studio master quality files taking up no more space than a CD quality file.

Possibly, but when you are struggling to stream regular CD FLAC lossless masters reliably I might suggest effort is better spent on sorting that before any other enhancements.. After all MQA is a lossy hidef format, very clever by all accounts, but lossy none the less..

I'm sorry that you're having problems, but I've been using Tidal for several hours a day and, except for one black day, have been impressed with the service.

It seems so. There is the option in the Tidal Mac app to stream at MQA but, when I tried to do it, I received a message saying that my subscription level wouldn't allow it. However, I can see no option on the Tidal website for an MQA subscription at present. I must say that £20 a month for CD quality is already pushing it, in my opinion. I'm not sure that I would be prepared to pay any more. No problem for those with unlimited resources, of course! Maybe that's why they called Deezer's CD quality service "Elite"...

I mostly don't have problems, I use a Sonos now as a Tidal transport buffer for my Naim, however yes there are reasonably regular  meltdowns.. One such meltdown occurred yesterday.. And I have been using Tidal for several months now. However many on this forum do have very regular stuttering issues, and if you look on the wire that you can see Tidal is far from robust, and this is what causing the issues in my experience with many Naim customers. My view is that Tidal should focus on making their underlying network/server performance more robust/consistent, otherwise you are requiring the client to be made more robust which may possibly affect SQ in terms of increased digital circuitry and memory..

To me this is more important than introducing a new hidef lossy format.

There's a third tier already. It's called the Ripoff Britain Tier. It costs £19.99 a month, and it's identical to the US Tier which costs $19.99, i.e. about £13. For that reason alone I'll be cancelling my sub after the free trial ends.

Graeme, this all sounds positive of course.

My comment was referring to the flow of data underneath the covers, and the quality of this at busy times can be poor in terms of bidirectional latency  and leads to stutters on the current Naim products. Other products have perhaps bigger buffers or grater buffer latency and so can be more resilient to inconsistent data throughput.

I see no reason why Tidal cant improve this and I personally prefer to see this improved before other feature enhancements - but clearly if you don't suffer any issues here on your Naim  then all I can say is good for you

Simon

Since I never Watch´television, I do not have access to the tv streaming services, but my understanding is that they Work all the time, but I hope I am wrong since we have these problem with audio streaming.

In the half year I used  WiMP with a Squeezebox I never had problems, but Things were different back then, no Worldwide  coverage.

Claus

With TV streaming I only had buffering problems when viewing HD. This was corrected by changing from wifi to ethernet. Since then I have had no problems. With HD music streaming services, particularly Qobuz and to a lesser degree Deezer, it didn't make any difference whether it was wifi or ethernet.

Strangely, when I was having buffering problems running Deezer Elite through Sonos, Sonos technical support told me to disconnect the ethernet connection to Sonos and just use wifi. That would supposedly yield better results! It didn't.

Why should MQA be exciting anyway?  It's pretty much the same as MP3.  

Yes, in that way that a 24-bit 192kHz PCM file squeezed into a 16-bit sized FLAC package is the same as mp3.

Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.  Yes, studio masters tend to be squished down to 16/44,1 for the benefit of those that still buy CDs,  However, you can stream lossless FLAC at 24/192 already, on a phone anyway (crazy idea), so why the need for MQA which is a lossy format?

Because the file size is smaller it will allow better-than-CD quality files to be streamed by the likes of Tidal, without buffering. Also, my ND5 XS will not stream 24/192 files from my NAS over wifi without buffering issues (the manual says as much) and has to be connected through ethernet in order to achieve this. If it would play the MQA files (which are in a FLAC wrapper) then this inconvenience may be overcome. However, if Tidal want any more than £25 per month for this, they can take a running jump.

Graeme, can you expand what you mean here please. What is this buffering you are referring to, and why would MQA help with the current TCP latency and throughput issues that Tidal are experiencing with certain clients?

Simon

I don't think it would help with current problems that some people are experiencing in any way. It will be another quality/pricing tier on the Tidal service, not an adjustment of services already available.

Ok, thanks

When I talk of "buffering" I really mean "buffering issues"; what I think you probably correctly call "latency" i.e. the throughput being insufficient to support the buffer. As I said before, I'm not a particularly technical person!

Anyone know how MQA works? Presumably you need to decode the hi-res bit of it out of the 16/44.1 FLAC wrapper. How is that done? Proprietary hardware? Decoding software in the player/renderer? 

This quote is from Bob Stuart one of the co-founders of Meridian, who when asked what MQA was replied:

MQA is a revolutionary new technology born from a simple desire: to bring the listener as close as possible to the original performance. MQA captures every subtle nuance of the original master, ‘folds’ it into a standard lossless stream or file and ‘unfolds’ it for the listener, recovering the original sound exactly. MQA brings together the three ideals of studio-quality sound, convenient distribution and end-to-end authenticity. "

There are a number of excellent (and lengthy) articles on the web outlining what the new technology is, what its benefits are and how it works.

You will not in the quote that he states it is a lossless format .. not lossy.

There's a nice early article from Dec 2014 by John Atkinson on the stereophile website that summarizes his experience at the New York launch presentation by Bob Stuart of Meridian. ("I've Heard the Future of Streaming: Meridian's MQA")  It has graphs showing how the MQA encoding works to map high bit-rate and high bit-depth information into a space that can be covered by 24 bit 48 kHz MQA sampling then (losslessly) compressed to a FLAC container that would stream at a data rate of about 3 Mbps (slightly more than compressed lossless CD quality already on offer). The comments are useful, as is the companion article from another reviewer (Jason Sernius) and the info on the links to the Meridian site.  

The the main things seem to be that the process goes back to original masters, builds an all-new digital file in the MQA format that meets or exceeds sound quality from existing 24 bit 192 kHz encoding while making it possible to stream at greatly reduced data rates. The decoding will be possible on existing hardware, with the caveat that the new codec must be implemented. As a bonus, it seems that non-updated codecs may be able to decode and play the files, but "as if" they were lossy MP3 files (seems to be related to the fact that all the extra info is packed below the noise floor for other processes, hence ignored upon MP3 decoding...but I may have that wrong).

Thus far, Meridian shows a list of partners (including Tidal and Roon) but nothing is available yet.Speculation is that the economic model will be to have licenced generation of content in the new format (MQA files from masters) and open source or free decoding (on devices like phones, streamers, etc., via hardware, software, or applications - but again this is not confirmed nor available afaik).  

Very cool, very neat. 

Regards alan

ps - I think that the Naim update to enable existing hardware to decode and play DSD files should give everone hear an optimistic view of a future where MQA could come to our homes once it's available to stream or download or purchase in some other way... Genius.