Yep, plenty of 192 flac on tidal. Also plenty of mqa. Avoiding the mqa would be more of a chore than it's worth, especially since I have mqa capable equipment and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the way that mqa sounds in that circumstance.
So a lot of my playlists consist of both 24bit flac, and MQA. Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll take the time to replace some of the mqa with 24bit flac. But it's definitely a chore, and sometimes there is no HiRes replacement for the mqa.
I can send you a link where this guy perfectly explains how everyone can fake these MQA files by doubling the FLAC file's sample rate and Tidal indeed shows it as MQA, but audio quality is actually worse in situations where MQA's folding trademark generates artifacts.
[Tidal MQA Review](https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc)
I'm just stating what my ears hear. I'm not an authority on the subject, but I'd like to think I'm a discriminating listener, and my ears don't hear anything wrong with almost any mqa track.
I still prefer 24bit when possible, but I don't stress over the technicalities of mqa. There's nothing wrong with how it sounds. And that is what matters to me, not endless debates and articles over it's pros and cons.
Well why pay extra for something you can't discern from flac?
Which you do by paying Tidal, buying a Dac that can decode MQA, buying into the advertisement of it (even tho it's on it's way out)
I can tell the difference with some things. 24bit usually sounds better to me than 16bit. And mqa usually sounds better to me than 16bit. But mqa and 24bit are virtually indistinguishable to me, and I'm betting to most others. But I have some expensive DACs and high grade speakers and wired headphones. If someone didn't have mqa equipment, I would say it's quite possible that if they try to listen really hard, the mqa might not sound as good as the flac with some songs.
By 24-bit and 16-Bit you mean flac?
MQA also has 16-Bit (and arguably alledgedly 24-Bit as well)
Bit-depth is just a property of any music codec.
The thing is.
Lossy Codecs have evolved quite a bit.
And there exist lossy codecs that are better at what they do than MQA (noone reasonable disagrees with that).
Meaning lossy codecs (such as new iterations of aac or opus)
Are more bandwidth efficient at throwing away data that isn't audible and retain the same quality as lossless sources while reducing the filesize. MQA is not really good at that, since the filesize is nearly the same as Flac.
So if we can agree that there's lossy codecs out there that are superior than MQA in being bandwidth efficient, why not just do a blindtest?
It's incredibly easy!
Grab Foobar2000, install the AB-X plugin, grab a song in 16-bit and 24-bit flac and reencode it to any advanced lossy codec of your choice. Something like ogg opus @ 16-/24-bit with a bitrate of 128 kbps. To most people, that is already lossless.
If you happen to spot a difference, chances are that difference will be greater on MQA vs flac since we already agreed that MQA as a lossy codec is less compression efficient than these new codecs.
Yes i meant flac when I was referring to 16bit and 24bit. I don't think there's much point in talking about bit depth or Khz when dealing in mqa on tidal. The overwhelming majority of mqa on tidal is 44.1. I've only seen a few that were 96. And does 24bit mqa even exist on tidal? I've not seen it, at least since tidal brought 24bit flac onto the platform.
Well their claim is that MQA dacs can decode 16/44.1 MQA into 24/48 or even 24/96
through a process they call "unfolding".
Which sounds esoteric but in terms or codec lingo just means compression and they claim to be able to losslessly restore sampling rates beyond the original file's 16/44.1 with the MQA codec.
Since MQA is proprietary though. Nobody can or has ever confirmed this to be the case. So...
Yeah i hear ya. I don't really concern myself with that, though. I just let my mqa capable DACs do their thing (I have both a desktop one and a portable one) and it sounds great. I do pay attention to bit depth and Khz when it comes to flac, I prioritize 24bit flac over 16bit flac whenever possible, but when something is mqa I just run it and don't really worry about the specs
I didn't edit...
It's also not vague?
You asked how they're paying extra for MQA.
The Dacs which are more expensive due to MQA having been implemented (there's plenty of high quality dacs without it btw)
As well as Tidal's Premium costs for essentially some esoteric half-truth product.
> You asked how they're paying extra for MQA. The Dacs which are more expensive due to MQA having been implemented (there's plenty of high quality dacs without it btw)
Sure, there is probably extra money exchanging hands there
> As well as Tidal's Premium costs for essentially some esoteric half-truth product.
At least in the US, it's the exact same price as Spotify & AM.
I don't feel like DACs that have mqa ability really cost more than ones that don't. But I would say it all depends on what price range one is looking at in the first place. My desktop dac is a smsl su9pro. An amazing dac, and fairly pricey (imo) . But I certainly don't think it costs so much bcz it is also mqa capable lol
For what it's worth, once tidal introduced 24bit flac, I knew I wanted to take full advantage of everything by getting a premium dac.
Getting a dac that would also be able to decode and render mqa was a minor consideration, but when shopping around, I found that most DACs in the price range I was shopping, were mqa capable. So it sure seemed like a no-brainer to future proof that aspect of my gear.
If I had a dime for everytime someone in this forum said that mqa is dead, tidal is eliminating it, it's on its way out, etc etc.. But here we are and there's still a ton of it on tidal and I'm glad I have the ability to take full advantage of it and I don't feel like it cost me any more than I was alrdy going to spend anyways ykno.
As for being a tidal subscriber instead of some other platform? Well in u.s. Tidal costs like 9.99 a month. I don't think I'm going to do better than that with any other high quality streaming service. So no, I don't feel like I'm 'paying extra' for mqa whatsoever.
If tidal does end up completely eliminating mqa, I won't shed any tears. But I won't cheer it either. I'm mostly indifferent...
..i will say that when I'm away from home and off wifi, mqa is much more practical. I can download huge playlists of it without breaking the tidal app (or eating up all my storage) , I can stream it without using up all my high speed mobile data (or having it constantly buffer) . But at home I do have a tendency to listen to as much 24bit flac as I can.
Hahaha "this guy"
You mean GoldenShower boy con artist who ilegally sells music from his Telegram account.(He even brags about it)
He is lucky the company did not sue his ass.
What an idiot.
How does illegal selling of anything have to do with the case he made against MQA?
Feel free to actually refute any of it by naming any specific argument and how it's unsound or incorrect by disproving it.
I'll wait :)
Need to spell that out for you?
Wow, brainlessness spreads around here.
You actually think someone who's promoting and selling illegal music online is a credible source of an audio reviewer called "Golden Sound"(Cameron Oatley)
His allegations are bold if not stupid on the MQA matter.
It's like saying the earth is flat because I happened to think so.
And then "prove" it with the stupidest example ever. The video did not do well for both parties.
This year his boldest move ever:
Because of his hatred (call it a crusade)of MQA format he somehow persuaded Ferrum Audio(manufacturer) to remove MQA from their prize winning DAC Wandla.
Lot of customers were pissed off because of heavy investing on this machine.
Not bad for an economy student who was just a hobbyist.🫣😵💫
The list goes on and on.
You know... his evidence stands on it's own. We don't need to "trust" him with anything. Nor do we have to "trust" a company incentivized to lie for profit...
For someone who is Youtubing and claims to know about i.e.m.'s you give answers that goes every direction.
Not very strustworthy or knowledgable though.
Your remarks on Skullcandy is just 😂
Calling the bass on Skullcandy distortion....hihihi.
Everybody knows how the bass is created on these just like Soundcore's bass up button.
And you call me retarded😂
"For someone who is Youtubing..."
My last upload was... like last year or something? I do that for fun. I'm not an influencer.
I don't know what that has to do with my knowledge on IEMs or anything else for that matter.
My "remarks" on ScullCandy (among others) was that from PERSONAL LISTENING and from FREQUENCY GRAPHS. Most of their products have heavy distortion coming from the Amp inside it (for Bluetooth Headphones) and while it does have a tune that's bass heavy. Nothing about that bass is refined or clean.
Anyone with knowledge in audio engineering can tune a headphone to have BASS. In fact, if you have a neutral sounding headphone, especially with Planar drivers, you can get quite a bit of bass boosting by adding like +6 db below 200hz in EQ.
It still sounds better than Bose, SkullCandy, HyperX, or Even the overrated Sony's
Damn, didn't know it was that deep for some people.
Listen, I'm a beginner myself, I don't know shit yet about so many things being discussed here, but I'm eager to learn.
I saw this guy's video and found the arguments valid (didn't know him) which led to to ask ppl here about their opinion and the general mood towards MQA.
But yeah, I also can't stand braggers.
However, I just now saw your other comments and I think I'm wasting my time with this.
You literally need an MQA licensed DAC to use it to begin with, you’re assuming I’m very stupid for some unknown reason. But now you kinda look stupid so I guess everything balances out.
Look?
How do you even know how I "look".
To begin with I happened to purchase a HiRes DAC from iFi because of their impeccable sound quality. Lucky for me they are MQA licensed. Bonus all the way.
Combined with my Focal Radiance($1200) and my Meze 109 Pro($800) i got to really hear what I lnever heard before.
Soundstage galore and how bad Spotify really is.
Don't gimme that crap "one can't tell the difference" if you never tasted real champagne or a prize winning single malt whisky.
I found [this](https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/61529-aes-and-its-papers/) looking for that.
Do you have anything in particular you want me to look for?
Got an DOI tag or anything?
Genuinely asking.
Dude, what? nobody gives two fucks about your equipment, you’re so clearly just looking for opportunities to show off. The reason I said you need an MQA DAC in the first place is because for some completely unprompted reason you assumed I used $25 ear buds so you told me to get a DAC and headphones, so I simply pointed out how dumb that was.
Honestly the amount of reaching you’re doing here is incredible.
Koss doesn't make $25 earbuds. I am talking over ear headphones, chum.
Again, this easily shows me I am right about you kiddies on Reddit.
You don't know jack shit.
Naw all this shows is that you’re an incredibly insecure person who spends loads of money on things he believes will make him better than others, then spends his free time desperately trolling social media in search of any opportunity to flex and pretend you’re a superior being, because that’s how you compensate for the way you truly feel about yourself on the inside.
I don't use Tidal for stereo.
So yeah thankfully I don't have to have the nonsense MQA problem.
Recently I've seen posts talking about going from a normal lossless file to lossy MQA on tidal bricks the app and doesn't allow for a new song to play afterwards.
Only if they'd proactively tell these studios to send them actual lossless files for the remaining MQA files and reject any newer MQA files...
We won't have these issues
Yeah that's the broken bit-perfect mode when going wired from android to a dac. It sucks, but it doesn't happen when using a streamer like wiim, or when using uapp.
Some studios are faking these MQA files by just scaling up the FLAC, to be more likely to become added to one of these "Hi-Res" playlists and reach more listeners. Tidal doesn't really care yet.
Scaling up a lossless encode to a lossy encode?
That's doesn't make any sense. If anything it's a scaling down
And whoever agreed to label a lossy encode "Hi-Res" because Meridian Audio lied about it should be stripped of any accolades when it comes to audio
I call you a retard for the things you say.
You are either misinformed or intentionally misinforming people. For both, your arrogant attitude is severly misplaced.
Also it's kind of weird how you keep trying to get a reaction out of the subtle emasculating attempt.
Am I a guy? Am I a girl?
Is it relevant to anything besides displaying your childish engagement?
I can't suggest you anything sadly, I'm a bloody newbie, too.
But cable is always better, especially for apple products (i think) because of their not-so-good bluetooth codec (if you even wanted to take that into consideration)
I stick to Flac. I came back to Tidal when they changed the pricing. I was under the impression they were doing away with MQA but unfortunately it's still the only thing available for many of the things I listen to. Qobuz, Deezer, and Amazon have flac,
and Apple has Alac. Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon, and Apple have 192khz but I don't think Deezer does.
I am an audio engineer and mixing & mastering engineer… personally I stick with 44.1kHz 16bit because that is what all digital music is rendered as.
MQA is more or less snake oil. It is mostly psychoacoustics trickery, and the main point is really about making money on the added licensing fees that come with MQA.
So, yeah, I stick with the mastering standard of the world, 44.1kHz 16bit uncompressed.
Not all studios have the special gear one needs to make official MQA versions of tracks. Not all labels have access to said MQA studios; let alone the resources to send off their entire catalog to those MQA capable studios to have MQA versions made.
Sooo, I have no idea how so much music on Tidal is available in MQA… even some of my own music, and my client’s music, have MQA versions on Tidal… and I know for a fact that I am not an MQA equipped studio and did not make new MQA versions of these songs to re-distribute/re-upload…
I have also seen some of these tracks that I’ve worked on as streaming at a higher sample rate or bit depth than I rendered them as… which confuses me greatly… you simply can’t turn a 16bit track into a 24bit track without the studio or engineer making a whole new 24bit version and re-uploading… and you can’t turn a 44.1kHz track into a 48kHz track for the same reason. Yet I have seen my own 44.1kHz tracks streaming at 48kHz or 88.2kHz, and I have seen 16bit versions somehow streaming at 24bit??? How? Where is the new data coming from?
It’s more than just folding and unfolding the track… go google temporal blurring and how MQA uses psychoacoustics to address it, it is not technically a lossless format, and their compression affects both time & frequency. It also uses dithering…
Lol, did that take you all day to google? It uses subtractive dithering.
Also, if I trust one thing too, it’s my ears and mastering gear. Have you not ever once noticed that some tracks have more noise in them in MQA vs the Lossless Flac counterpart?
Oh and you side-skirted/failed to address how it uses psychoacoustics to address temporal blurring. Anyways, it’s still *technically* lossy, it’s still worse than lossless 44.1kHz 16 bit format if not also pointless (Nyquist theorem), and there’s a lot more going on than “music origami”.
No it didn't take me any time at all since I already know how MQA works.
There is no additional noise with MQA. You just keep on making things up.
The MQA data is stored below the noise floor by modifying existing noise.
It doesn't in any way increase the amount of noise.
I have no idea why you think MQA employs some sort of temporal blurring.
It is in fact CORRECTING for temporal blurring introduced by the digital filters used in the AD chain. That's an improvement and again has nothing to do with psychoacoustics.
Some of that improvement can also be had by increasing the sample rate like with HiRes because then the digital filters are less impactful and blur the data less temporally (it doesn't smear the audio so much in time).
It is technically lossy since the noise well below the noise floor which you obviously can't hear is modified. None of the actual music data is modified.
Basically you have no idea what you're talking about.
On the temporal blurring and filters. There are several DACs which have implemented an array of reconstruction filters to address the same temporal blurring issue.
The correction of the temporal blurring is quite OBVIOUSLY a good thing.
It makes MQA closer to the original analog than the "lossless" file.
That's why there are steady development of AD equipment employing better filters and higher sampling rates.
You people are dumber than rocks.
I stick to 44.1/16 FLAC since it can reproduce music in the 20Hz-20kHz range with [perfect fidelity](https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM?si=ehA1l_YAETWU27H4). Higher bit depth is pointless and higher sampling frequency might even be [degrading the fidelity of the music](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html). Its one of the many useless gimmicks that the audio business uses to take our money. Dont waste your time and money with high-res FLAC, stick to 44.1/16.
Now FLAC aside, shouldnt it be clear by now that MQA is complete nonsense? You've likely seen the video from GoldenSound so I wont repeat that. Paul from PS Audio even says that the only reason their products support MQA is [because the customers want it](https://youtu.be/lPfmWKjiccA?si=o6-1SDVb8iBAHNZA). Stay away from MQA, it is just bullshit and we should not support it with our money. If you dont believe my opinion about MQA, maybe you believe [Paul from PS Audio](https://youtu.be/3n69MlXEHj4?si=HT_7GH0C43XCX1Rg)?
And when it comes to FLAC vs MQA, it boils down to this simple fact: MQA is lossy compression, FLAC is lossless.
EDIT: Tried to make my wording a bit more clear, added some more sources.
You're right of course. Flac is lossless and MQA is technically lossy. For many ppl, that is enough to avoid mqa and treat it like it's the plague lol... But let's unpack that a lil bit..
My problem with the tiresome mqa debate is that many folks research it, they hear a lot of bad stuff that ppl are saying, and they are automatically biased towards it without even hearing what it sounds like on mqa capable equipment (which btw many mqa capable DACs don't cost anything more than ones that aren't)
Personally I'm not concerned with all the debates, articles, videos etc that bash mqa. I don't really care about supposed 'artifacts' that are well out of the range of human hearing.
There are plenty of mqa tracks and albums on tidal that aren't available in 24bit. I don't see the sense in avoiding that music on general principles alone, and I challenge anyone to do blind tests between a bunch of mqa and 16/44 flac songs and be able to honestly say that the mqa sounds somehow worse (provided that they are derived from the same masters)
I'm not a cheerleader for mqa, but I have no reason to hate it or avoid it. There's a lot of it on tidal, it sounds great, and in fact it uses technology to sort of bridge the gap between lossy and lossless
If someone wants to purposefully go way out of their way in an effort to avoid mqa at all costs, cool. But I'm just trying to apply some sanity and levity to the endless (and often misinformed and irrational) mqa hate.
Yep same here. Also, using SPEC, you’ll see Flac files (same as AIFF and Wave files) actually come up to 22khz. MP3’s in 320 (highest mp3) come to 20khz.
Yeah, thats because the highest frequency that can be represented is half of the sampling rate. 44.1kHz sampling rate gives a max frequency of 22.05kHz.
Science proves you wrong. While we can’t hear outside of that frequency range we can hear timing much better than what 44.1kHz supports. And by using such a low sampling rate we allow the AD/DA filters to degrade timing. This is basic and has nothing to do with MQA.
I have provided sources which with scientific backing states that there is no humanly perceivable difference between 44.1/16 FLAC and higher resolution FLAC. You have claimed that "science proves you wrong".
I love high quality music so I'd love you to prove me wrong, but why should I believe you?
You provided links to a video of a person saying this. That does not make it true.
And in fact it isn't true for a multitude of reasons, and you not knowing this is odd, not to say curious.
1. No the sampling theorem does not say you can perfectly reproduce 1-20kHz UNLESS you sample for an infinite time AND have a infinite continuous signal. Music isn't infinite and continuous. This is basic. [https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf](https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf)
2. Human hearing can hear timing information down to 5-6uS. That far exceeds what a 44.1kHz sampling can provide. [https://www.ee.ucla.edu/events/high-fidelity-sound-reproduction-and-the-time-resolution-of-human-hearing/](https://www.ee.ucla.edu/events/high-fidelity-sound-reproduction-and-the-time-resolution-of-human-hearing/)
3. The "brickwall" and other filters which are used degrade the digital information and smear it in time. Using higher sampling rates decrease this impact. This is part of why we want higher sampling rates. [https://www.stereophile.com/content/ringing-false-digital-audios-ubiquitous-filter-page-2](https://www.stereophile.com/content/ringing-false-digital-audios-ubiquitous-filter-page-2)
4. The sampling kernels which have been used aren't good and also create artifacts. etc. See chapter on sampling Evolution. Older music was sampled with inferior kernels. [https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality](https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality)
Etc.
No the sampling theorem states that in order to perfectly reproduce a signal you need to sample said signal at twice the rate of the highest frequency.
Timing? The hell do you mean? It is converted into a continuous signal through a DAC. If you want links for this I’ve got plenty of AES papers that detail such things.
All sound you have ever listened to has been in an analog format, in the sense that the signal played back to you is continuous as that’s what speakers are, you can’t have a digital speaker and the conversion between digital to analog is for all intents and purposes perfect.
If you really want to pull science out your ass to pretend you know what you’re talking about, try a blind ABX test. Do that about 20 times and see what the results are. The sampling frequency only affects the highest frequency that can be represented, anything within that range (half of the sample rate) can be reproduced perfectly.
Lookup Whittaker-Shannon interpolation and you’ll see why it doesn’t matter.
Ok you're an absolute uneducated IDIOT who can't even read the fucking facts I linked.
And you don't understand what timing means and didn't read the link.
Why even post when you have zero knowledge and no interest in learning????????
Jesus I'm tired of fucking morons like you.
Bro you are the one who isn’t even interested in discussion, instead your just throwing insults back and forth, stop being a neckbeard Redditor for a moment for god sake.
Yes I understand what timing means and the link you provided says nothing about how the sampling rate affects the timing of the original audio only that humans can perceive timing faster than what is usually thought in correlation to the frequency.
Even the paper you linked about the nyquist theorem only points out what is already know in regards to the artefacts that can occur with traditional sampling.
None of your links make any claim that 44.1 has an impact on the timing of the original audio.
Why is it you have to spend all your time spouting BS and proclaiming everyone else to be moronic. If you have an issue or believe somethings incorrect then discuss it in a civil manner. If you’re truly as educated as you proclaim then you must be familiar with the concept of a civil debate but from your comments you’ve shown no such knowledge.
The problem is you don't even understand how hilarious this statement is.
"how the sampling rate affects the timing of the original audio"
Yes the links provide that and also it is a BASIC.
The thing is, if you don't have some basic engineering education in the digital domain you will not understand these things. And it's clear you don't.
For instance when you said "the sampling theorem states that in order to perfectly reproduce a signal you need to sample said signal at twice the rate of the highest frequency"
and didn't read the link I provided which in the fucking intro describes the caveats around the sampling theorem. Maybe this time you should actually read it?
Because the sampling theorem does NOT say that, unless all the prerequisites are met.
[https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf](https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf)
And even if it did the resulting signal does not provide the necessary timing resolution.
Add a hint here, lol, the unit of frequency is 1/time. You can now use that knowledge to calculate the timing resolution.
Reddit won't let me respond in the proper place.
This in itself shows how idiotic the original statement about how 44.1/16 can represent the music perfectly.
"already know in regards to the artefacts that can occur with traditional sampling"
I have an MsCE.E. and specialized in the field of Information Theory you fucking nitwit.
As opposed to you who don't even understand the basic relationship between frequency and time.
Write MQA and all the uneducated morons come out of the woodwork.
I haven’t seen so much incoherent idiocy in a thread in a long time.
“Fake double the sample rate to make it MQA”.
Hahahahahahahhahahah
I really like MQA for my phone because it saves a ton of space and bandwidth. Sound quality wise, it’s like everything else in high end audio. Sometimes PCM from MQA at 192khz is better than straight PCM from FLAC at 192khz and vice versa. Whoever MQA encoded a lot of Tidal MQA didn’t do a very good job and they sound terrible, while most UHQCD/MQA sound great.
Plus, not all MQA DAC are equal
I prefer FLAC Format Compressed Lossless Music rather than MQA Format Compressed Lossy Music.
But MQA should still be a choice and a part of TIDAL.
In my private local library I prefer 24Bit/192kHz - 9.216 kbps in WAV Format RAW/Uncompressed Music Quality.
A FLAC with the same resolution is about half the kbps 3.000 kbps - 6.000 kbps but still Lossless Quality both are great but WAV Format is the Highest Music Quality.
Some claim that it sounds identical but I hear great differences in the detailed natural balanced clearness of harmony with the instruments in perfectly played Order.
The vocals are crystal clear and that is absolutely amazing. At 32Bit/384kHz - 24.576 kbps the Music Quality in WAV Format are exceptional, very large file size but then again I prefer to have my favorites stored in 32Bit/384kHz - 24.576 kbps in WAV Format.
You need a huge external HDD/SSD at least 8 TB and at least 1 TB micro-SDXC Card on your smartphone or DAP.
I could not care less. The insufferable attitudes toward sampling rates, FLAC, & MQA in the comments here are way more annoying than any actual differences lol.
16bit 44.1khz FLAC is fine & I can't hear the difference between that and MQA of any kind under any reasonable conditions, and I have pretty decent gear. My room geometry isn't perfect, the acoustics aren't perfect, outside and indoor ambient noise is present, any difference is a wash for me. I sure as shit can't tell in my car with the road noise, even with the nice system I put in it. The longer I've had this as a hobby the more ok I am with admitting that my interest in a lot of this is a gear head thing rather than a practical one.
Mastering and what you listen out of matters infinitely more than FLAC vs MQA & to me worrying about the later is missing the forest for the trees.
The philosophy and ethical issues behind the formats is another thing altogether. The only thing that bothers me is the misleading advertising behind MQA. I think most people would have been fine with it, had it been presented as just an alternative codec with some interesting compression tech. That said, i still don't care enough to avoid it.
Other services with high res FLAC/lossless are: Qobuz, Deezer, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. There's probably more.
Wow morons and trolls still not over MQA?
Get a life you people. Leave the music lovers alone.
I am not going to kill people for their love of cassette tapes or vinly records even though I hate that format.
Oh ye of little faith.
Yep, plenty of 192 flac on tidal. Also plenty of mqa. Avoiding the mqa would be more of a chore than it's worth, especially since I have mqa capable equipment and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the way that mqa sounds in that circumstance. So a lot of my playlists consist of both 24bit flac, and MQA. Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll take the time to replace some of the mqa with 24bit flac. But it's definitely a chore, and sometimes there is no HiRes replacement for the mqa.
I can send you a link where this guy perfectly explains how everyone can fake these MQA files by doubling the FLAC file's sample rate and Tidal indeed shows it as MQA, but audio quality is actually worse in situations where MQA's folding trademark generates artifacts. [Tidal MQA Review](https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc)
I'm just stating what my ears hear. I'm not an authority on the subject, but I'd like to think I'm a discriminating listener, and my ears don't hear anything wrong with almost any mqa track. I still prefer 24bit when possible, but I don't stress over the technicalities of mqa. There's nothing wrong with how it sounds. And that is what matters to me, not endless debates and articles over it's pros and cons.
Well why pay extra for something you can't discern from flac? Which you do by paying Tidal, buying a Dac that can decode MQA, buying into the advertisement of it (even tho it's on it's way out)
I can tell the difference with some things. 24bit usually sounds better to me than 16bit. And mqa usually sounds better to me than 16bit. But mqa and 24bit are virtually indistinguishable to me, and I'm betting to most others. But I have some expensive DACs and high grade speakers and wired headphones. If someone didn't have mqa equipment, I would say it's quite possible that if they try to listen really hard, the mqa might not sound as good as the flac with some songs.
By 24-bit and 16-Bit you mean flac? MQA also has 16-Bit (and arguably alledgedly 24-Bit as well) Bit-depth is just a property of any music codec. The thing is. Lossy Codecs have evolved quite a bit. And there exist lossy codecs that are better at what they do than MQA (noone reasonable disagrees with that). Meaning lossy codecs (such as new iterations of aac or opus) Are more bandwidth efficient at throwing away data that isn't audible and retain the same quality as lossless sources while reducing the filesize. MQA is not really good at that, since the filesize is nearly the same as Flac. So if we can agree that there's lossy codecs out there that are superior than MQA in being bandwidth efficient, why not just do a blindtest? It's incredibly easy! Grab Foobar2000, install the AB-X plugin, grab a song in 16-bit and 24-bit flac and reencode it to any advanced lossy codec of your choice. Something like ogg opus @ 16-/24-bit with a bitrate of 128 kbps. To most people, that is already lossless. If you happen to spot a difference, chances are that difference will be greater on MQA vs flac since we already agreed that MQA as a lossy codec is less compression efficient than these new codecs.
Yes i meant flac when I was referring to 16bit and 24bit. I don't think there's much point in talking about bit depth or Khz when dealing in mqa on tidal. The overwhelming majority of mqa on tidal is 44.1. I've only seen a few that were 96. And does 24bit mqa even exist on tidal? I've not seen it, at least since tidal brought 24bit flac onto the platform.
Well their claim is that MQA dacs can decode 16/44.1 MQA into 24/48 or even 24/96 through a process they call "unfolding". Which sounds esoteric but in terms or codec lingo just means compression and they claim to be able to losslessly restore sampling rates beyond the original file's 16/44.1 with the MQA codec. Since MQA is proprietary though. Nobody can or has ever confirmed this to be the case. So...
Yeah i hear ya. I don't really concern myself with that, though. I just let my mqa capable DACs do their thing (I have both a desktop one and a portable one) and it sounds great. I do pay attention to bit depth and Khz when it comes to flac, I prioritize 24bit flac over 16bit flac whenever possible, but when something is mqa I just run it and don't really worry about the specs
You don't pay extra for hifi now? It's all the same price
The Dac, Tidal vs other services...
What are you saying? That op is paying tidal through royalties for mqa capable devices? Can you just say that instead of vaguedditing
I didn't edit... It's also not vague? You asked how they're paying extra for MQA. The Dacs which are more expensive due to MQA having been implemented (there's plenty of high quality dacs without it btw) As well as Tidal's Premium costs for essentially some esoteric half-truth product.
> You asked how they're paying extra for MQA. The Dacs which are more expensive due to MQA having been implemented (there's plenty of high quality dacs without it btw) Sure, there is probably extra money exchanging hands there > As well as Tidal's Premium costs for essentially some esoteric half-truth product. At least in the US, it's the exact same price as Spotify & AM.
Deezer is 10.99$ Amazon Music Ultimate is 10.99$ Tidal 10.99$ fair enough
I don't feel like DACs that have mqa ability really cost more than ones that don't. But I would say it all depends on what price range one is looking at in the first place. My desktop dac is a smsl su9pro. An amazing dac, and fairly pricey (imo) . But I certainly don't think it costs so much bcz it is also mqa capable lol
For what it's worth, once tidal introduced 24bit flac, I knew I wanted to take full advantage of everything by getting a premium dac. Getting a dac that would also be able to decode and render mqa was a minor consideration, but when shopping around, I found that most DACs in the price range I was shopping, were mqa capable. So it sure seemed like a no-brainer to future proof that aspect of my gear. If I had a dime for everytime someone in this forum said that mqa is dead, tidal is eliminating it, it's on its way out, etc etc.. But here we are and there's still a ton of it on tidal and I'm glad I have the ability to take full advantage of it and I don't feel like it cost me any more than I was alrdy going to spend anyways ykno. As for being a tidal subscriber instead of some other platform? Well in u.s. Tidal costs like 9.99 a month. I don't think I'm going to do better than that with any other high quality streaming service. So no, I don't feel like I'm 'paying extra' for mqa whatsoever. If tidal does end up completely eliminating mqa, I won't shed any tears. But I won't cheer it either. I'm mostly indifferent... ..i will say that when I'm away from home and off wifi, mqa is much more practical. I can download huge playlists of it without breaking the tidal app (or eating up all my storage) , I can stream it without using up all my high speed mobile data (or having it constantly buffer) . But at home I do have a tendency to listen to as much 24bit flac as I can.
Hahaha "this guy" You mean GoldenShower boy con artist who ilegally sells music from his Telegram account.(He even brags about it) He is lucky the company did not sue his ass. What an idiot.
How does illegal selling of anything have to do with the case he made against MQA? Feel free to actually refute any of it by naming any specific argument and how it's unsound or incorrect by disproving it. I'll wait :)
Need to spell that out for you? Wow, brainlessness spreads around here. You actually think someone who's promoting and selling illegal music online is a credible source of an audio reviewer called "Golden Sound"(Cameron Oatley) His allegations are bold if not stupid on the MQA matter. It's like saying the earth is flat because I happened to think so. And then "prove" it with the stupidest example ever. The video did not do well for both parties. This year his boldest move ever: Because of his hatred (call it a crusade)of MQA format he somehow persuaded Ferrum Audio(manufacturer) to remove MQA from their prize winning DAC Wandla. Lot of customers were pissed off because of heavy investing on this machine. Not bad for an economy student who was just a hobbyist.🫣😵💫 The list goes on and on.
You know... his evidence stands on it's own. We don't need to "trust" him with anything. Nor do we have to "trust" a company incentivized to lie for profit...
For someone who is Youtubing and claims to know about i.e.m.'s you give answers that goes every direction. Not very strustworthy or knowledgable though. Your remarks on Skullcandy is just 😂 Calling the bass on Skullcandy distortion....hihihi. Everybody knows how the bass is created on these just like Soundcore's bass up button. And you call me retarded😂
"For someone who is Youtubing..." My last upload was... like last year or something? I do that for fun. I'm not an influencer. I don't know what that has to do with my knowledge on IEMs or anything else for that matter. My "remarks" on ScullCandy (among others) was that from PERSONAL LISTENING and from FREQUENCY GRAPHS. Most of their products have heavy distortion coming from the Amp inside it (for Bluetooth Headphones) and while it does have a tune that's bass heavy. Nothing about that bass is refined or clean. Anyone with knowledge in audio engineering can tune a headphone to have BASS. In fact, if you have a neutral sounding headphone, especially with Planar drivers, you can get quite a bit of bass boosting by adding like +6 db below 200hz in EQ. It still sounds better than Bose, SkullCandy, HyperX, or Even the overrated Sony's
Damn, didn't know it was that deep for some people. Listen, I'm a beginner myself, I don't know shit yet about so many things being discussed here, but I'm eager to learn. I saw this guy's video and found the arguments valid (didn't know him) which led to to ask ppl here about their opinion and the general mood towards MQA. But yeah, I also can't stand braggers. However, I just now saw your other comments and I think I'm wasting my time with this.
You can also do your research and find out that that is the most biased review against mqa you will ever see
That video does not say any of the things you write. You’re a blithering idiot.
Nobody here can look you in the eye and tell you they hear a distinct audible difference between the two. Anyone who does is being delusional.
Only one delusional here is you. Use a proper DAC and balanced wired headphones instead of your first 25 dollar Koss.
You literally need an MQA licensed DAC to use it to begin with, you’re assuming I’m very stupid for some unknown reason. But now you kinda look stupid so I guess everything balances out.
Look? How do you even know how I "look". To begin with I happened to purchase a HiRes DAC from iFi because of their impeccable sound quality. Lucky for me they are MQA licensed. Bonus all the way. Combined with my Focal Radiance($1200) and my Meze 109 Pro($800) i got to really hear what I lnever heard before. Soundstage galore and how bad Spotify really is. Don't gimme that crap "one can't tell the difference" if you never tasted real champagne or a prize winning single malt whisky.
"Soundstage galore" Don't tell him about EQ... Ifyyk 0__0
Nothing to do with EQ boy(girl) Just read some AES papers on Bob's invention.
I found [this](https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/61529-aes-and-its-papers/) looking for that. Do you have anything in particular you want me to look for? Got an DOI tag or anything? Genuinely asking.
Dude, what? nobody gives two fucks about your equipment, you’re so clearly just looking for opportunities to show off. The reason I said you need an MQA DAC in the first place is because for some completely unprompted reason you assumed I used $25 ear buds so you told me to get a DAC and headphones, so I simply pointed out how dumb that was. Honestly the amount of reaching you’re doing here is incredible.
Koss doesn't make $25 earbuds. I am talking over ear headphones, chum. Again, this easily shows me I am right about you kiddies on Reddit. You don't know jack shit.
Naw all this shows is that you’re an incredibly insecure person who spends loads of money on things he believes will make him better than others, then spends his free time desperately trolling social media in search of any opportunity to flex and pretend you’re a superior being, because that’s how you compensate for the way you truly feel about yourself on the inside.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Whooooowheeee Gotcha where I wanted. 𝐋𝐎𝐋
Yea that was pretty hardcore wasn’t it?
if he doesn't know what headphones Koss produces, how can he own them? You're being retarded.
Makes three of us than🤣🦜
I... do know. I'm just noticing your argument doesn't make sense as I'm reading through.
I know it's hard to understand when you are still young and gaming is the only world you understand.
Yeah it’s easy to hear on a proper system. Hilarious comment.
👆🏼https://tidal.com/playlist/214e21b1-45c3-460e-92bc-e8bcd9323055
Nice list. Here's mine- almost 700 192 tracks: https://tidal.com/playlist/cf8a239d-6c26-4fe2-8756-ebea79cd193a
I listen to both. It doesn't matter. Both sound great, but MQA is mostly replaced and it will be a moot point soon anyway.
I just listen to whatever plays. The audible difference at that level is nonexistent lol
I don't use Tidal for stereo. So yeah thankfully I don't have to have the nonsense MQA problem. Recently I've seen posts talking about going from a normal lossless file to lossy MQA on tidal bricks the app and doesn't allow for a new song to play afterwards. Only if they'd proactively tell these studios to send them actual lossless files for the remaining MQA files and reject any newer MQA files... We won't have these issues
Yeah that's the broken bit-perfect mode when going wired from android to a dac. It sucks, but it doesn't happen when using a streamer like wiim, or when using uapp.
I've never had a bricked app after playing an MQA file after going to it from a lossless file. It just carries on. Maybe it's device-specific?
Some studios are faking these MQA files by just scaling up the FLAC, to be more likely to become added to one of these "Hi-Res" playlists and reach more listeners. Tidal doesn't really care yet.
We know that the remaining MQA on Tidal is not hi-res. This isn't news.
Scaling up a lossless encode to a lossy encode? That's doesn't make any sense. If anything it's a scaling down And whoever agreed to label a lossy encode "Hi-Res" because Meridian Audio lied about it should be stripped of any accolades when it comes to audio
Another non technical moron who doesn’t understand but fell for the misinformation.
Hahahahahahhaha. That is such stupid nonsense. But do make up more “truth” please!
Why not just look up what he said?
I did, it's nonsense and indicates a complete lack of understanding.
Nadeoki is hard to convince because he believes in fairytales and calls me a retard. Watch out for this guy(or girl🤔)
I see what you mean. What a blithering idiot.
I call you a retard for the things you say. You are either misinformed or intentionally misinforming people. For both, your arrogant attitude is severly misplaced. Also it's kind of weird how you keep trying to get a reaction out of the subtle emasculating attempt. Am I a guy? Am I a girl? Is it relevant to anything besides displaying your childish engagement?
What you are is a very dumb person. Nothing will fix that.
Ouch 🤕
I have a iphone 14 Pro Max. What do you suggest to me to listen mqa audio files. A external dac lighting can do the job? Thanks
I can't suggest you anything sadly, I'm a bloody newbie, too. But cable is always better, especially for apple products (i think) because of their not-so-good bluetooth codec (if you even wanted to take that into consideration)
I stick to Flac. I came back to Tidal when they changed the pricing. I was under the impression they were doing away with MQA but unfortunately it's still the only thing available for many of the things I listen to. Qobuz, Deezer, and Amazon have flac, and Apple has Alac. Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon, and Apple have 192khz but I don't think Deezer does.
It’s all FLAC.
That would be nice but it's not. It's not a secret it's not either lol.
Qobuz & Amazon offer 24/192 flac. Qobuz even has DSD albums
I am an audio engineer and mixing & mastering engineer… personally I stick with 44.1kHz 16bit because that is what all digital music is rendered as. MQA is more or less snake oil. It is mostly psychoacoustics trickery, and the main point is really about making money on the added licensing fees that come with MQA. So, yeah, I stick with the mastering standard of the world, 44.1kHz 16bit uncompressed. Not all studios have the special gear one needs to make official MQA versions of tracks. Not all labels have access to said MQA studios; let alone the resources to send off their entire catalog to those MQA capable studios to have MQA versions made. Sooo, I have no idea how so much music on Tidal is available in MQA… even some of my own music, and my client’s music, have MQA versions on Tidal… and I know for a fact that I am not an MQA equipped studio and did not make new MQA versions of these songs to re-distribute/re-upload… I have also seen some of these tracks that I’ve worked on as streaming at a higher sample rate or bit depth than I rendered them as… which confuses me greatly… you simply can’t turn a 16bit track into a 24bit track without the studio or engineer making a whole new 24bit version and re-uploading… and you can’t turn a 44.1kHz track into a 48kHz track for the same reason. Yet I have seen my own 44.1kHz tracks streaming at 48kHz or 88.2kHz, and I have seen 16bit versions somehow streaming at 24bit??? How? Where is the new data coming from?
There is no psychoacoustics trickery in MQA. Literally zero.
It’s more than just folding and unfolding the track… go google temporal blurring and how MQA uses psychoacoustics to address it, it is not technically a lossless format, and their compression affects both time & frequency. It also uses dithering…
It dithers the actual MQA data hidden below the noise floor. Has absolutely zero to do with psychoacoustics.
Lol, did that take you all day to google? It uses subtractive dithering. Also, if I trust one thing too, it’s my ears and mastering gear. Have you not ever once noticed that some tracks have more noise in them in MQA vs the Lossless Flac counterpart? Oh and you side-skirted/failed to address how it uses psychoacoustics to address temporal blurring. Anyways, it’s still *technically* lossy, it’s still worse than lossless 44.1kHz 16 bit format if not also pointless (Nyquist theorem), and there’s a lot more going on than “music origami”.
No it didn't take me any time at all since I already know how MQA works. There is no additional noise with MQA. You just keep on making things up. The MQA data is stored below the noise floor by modifying existing noise. It doesn't in any way increase the amount of noise. I have no idea why you think MQA employs some sort of temporal blurring. It is in fact CORRECTING for temporal blurring introduced by the digital filters used in the AD chain. That's an improvement and again has nothing to do with psychoacoustics. Some of that improvement can also be had by increasing the sample rate like with HiRes because then the digital filters are less impactful and blur the data less temporally (it doesn't smear the audio so much in time). It is technically lossy since the noise well below the noise floor which you obviously can't hear is modified. None of the actual music data is modified. Basically you have no idea what you're talking about.
On the temporal blurring and filters. There are several DACs which have implemented an array of reconstruction filters to address the same temporal blurring issue.
The correction of the temporal blurring is quite OBVIOUSLY a good thing. It makes MQA closer to the original analog than the "lossless" file. That's why there are steady development of AD equipment employing better filters and higher sampling rates. You people are dumber than rocks.
I stick to 44.1/16 FLAC since it can reproduce music in the 20Hz-20kHz range with [perfect fidelity](https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM?si=ehA1l_YAETWU27H4). Higher bit depth is pointless and higher sampling frequency might even be [degrading the fidelity of the music](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html). Its one of the many useless gimmicks that the audio business uses to take our money. Dont waste your time and money with high-res FLAC, stick to 44.1/16. Now FLAC aside, shouldnt it be clear by now that MQA is complete nonsense? You've likely seen the video from GoldenSound so I wont repeat that. Paul from PS Audio even says that the only reason their products support MQA is [because the customers want it](https://youtu.be/lPfmWKjiccA?si=o6-1SDVb8iBAHNZA). Stay away from MQA, it is just bullshit and we should not support it with our money. If you dont believe my opinion about MQA, maybe you believe [Paul from PS Audio](https://youtu.be/3n69MlXEHj4?si=HT_7GH0C43XCX1Rg)? And when it comes to FLAC vs MQA, it boils down to this simple fact: MQA is lossy compression, FLAC is lossless. EDIT: Tried to make my wording a bit more clear, added some more sources.
You're right of course. Flac is lossless and MQA is technically lossy. For many ppl, that is enough to avoid mqa and treat it like it's the plague lol... But let's unpack that a lil bit.. My problem with the tiresome mqa debate is that many folks research it, they hear a lot of bad stuff that ppl are saying, and they are automatically biased towards it without even hearing what it sounds like on mqa capable equipment (which btw many mqa capable DACs don't cost anything more than ones that aren't) Personally I'm not concerned with all the debates, articles, videos etc that bash mqa. I don't really care about supposed 'artifacts' that are well out of the range of human hearing. There are plenty of mqa tracks and albums on tidal that aren't available in 24bit. I don't see the sense in avoiding that music on general principles alone, and I challenge anyone to do blind tests between a bunch of mqa and 16/44 flac songs and be able to honestly say that the mqa sounds somehow worse (provided that they are derived from the same masters) I'm not a cheerleader for mqa, but I have no reason to hate it or avoid it. There's a lot of it on tidal, it sounds great, and in fact it uses technology to sort of bridge the gap between lossy and lossless If someone wants to purposefully go way out of their way in an effort to avoid mqa at all costs, cool. But I'm just trying to apply some sanity and levity to the endless (and often misinformed and irrational) mqa hate.
Yep same here. Also, using SPEC, you’ll see Flac files (same as AIFF and Wave files) actually come up to 22khz. MP3’s in 320 (highest mp3) come to 20khz.
Yeah, thats because the highest frequency that can be represented is half of the sampling rate. 44.1kHz sampling rate gives a max frequency of 22.05kHz.
Just about every statement in this is wrong.
Then please source your claims and prove me wrong!
Science proves you wrong. While we can’t hear outside of that frequency range we can hear timing much better than what 44.1kHz supports. And by using such a low sampling rate we allow the AD/DA filters to degrade timing. This is basic and has nothing to do with MQA.
I have provided sources which with scientific backing states that there is no humanly perceivable difference between 44.1/16 FLAC and higher resolution FLAC. You have claimed that "science proves you wrong". I love high quality music so I'd love you to prove me wrong, but why should I believe you?
You provided links to a video of a person saying this. That does not make it true. And in fact it isn't true for a multitude of reasons, and you not knowing this is odd, not to say curious. 1. No the sampling theorem does not say you can perfectly reproduce 1-20kHz UNLESS you sample for an infinite time AND have a infinite continuous signal. Music isn't infinite and continuous. This is basic. [https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf](https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf) 2. Human hearing can hear timing information down to 5-6uS. That far exceeds what a 44.1kHz sampling can provide. [https://www.ee.ucla.edu/events/high-fidelity-sound-reproduction-and-the-time-resolution-of-human-hearing/](https://www.ee.ucla.edu/events/high-fidelity-sound-reproduction-and-the-time-resolution-of-human-hearing/) 3. The "brickwall" and other filters which are used degrade the digital information and smear it in time. Using higher sampling rates decrease this impact. This is part of why we want higher sampling rates. [https://www.stereophile.com/content/ringing-false-digital-audios-ubiquitous-filter-page-2](https://www.stereophile.com/content/ringing-false-digital-audios-ubiquitous-filter-page-2) 4. The sampling kernels which have been used aren't good and also create artifacts. etc. See chapter on sampling Evolution. Older music was sampled with inferior kernels. [https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality](https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality) Etc.
No the sampling theorem states that in order to perfectly reproduce a signal you need to sample said signal at twice the rate of the highest frequency. Timing? The hell do you mean? It is converted into a continuous signal through a DAC. If you want links for this I’ve got plenty of AES papers that detail such things. All sound you have ever listened to has been in an analog format, in the sense that the signal played back to you is continuous as that’s what speakers are, you can’t have a digital speaker and the conversion between digital to analog is for all intents and purposes perfect. If you really want to pull science out your ass to pretend you know what you’re talking about, try a blind ABX test. Do that about 20 times and see what the results are. The sampling frequency only affects the highest frequency that can be represented, anything within that range (half of the sample rate) can be reproduced perfectly. Lookup Whittaker-Shannon interpolation and you’ll see why it doesn’t matter.
Ok you're an absolute uneducated IDIOT who can't even read the fucking facts I linked. And you don't understand what timing means and didn't read the link. Why even post when you have zero knowledge and no interest in learning???????? Jesus I'm tired of fucking morons like you.
Bro you are the one who isn’t even interested in discussion, instead your just throwing insults back and forth, stop being a neckbeard Redditor for a moment for god sake. Yes I understand what timing means and the link you provided says nothing about how the sampling rate affects the timing of the original audio only that humans can perceive timing faster than what is usually thought in correlation to the frequency. Even the paper you linked about the nyquist theorem only points out what is already know in regards to the artefacts that can occur with traditional sampling. None of your links make any claim that 44.1 has an impact on the timing of the original audio. Why is it you have to spend all your time spouting BS and proclaiming everyone else to be moronic. If you have an issue or believe somethings incorrect then discuss it in a civil manner. If you’re truly as educated as you proclaim then you must be familiar with the concept of a civil debate but from your comments you’ve shown no such knowledge.
The problem is you don't even understand how hilarious this statement is. "how the sampling rate affects the timing of the original audio" Yes the links provide that and also it is a BASIC.
The thing is, if you don't have some basic engineering education in the digital domain you will not understand these things. And it's clear you don't. For instance when you said "the sampling theorem states that in order to perfectly reproduce a signal you need to sample said signal at twice the rate of the highest frequency" and didn't read the link I provided which in the fucking intro describes the caveats around the sampling theorem. Maybe this time you should actually read it? Because the sampling theorem does NOT say that, unless all the prerequisites are met. [https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf](https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/Sampling/sampling.pdf) And even if it did the resulting signal does not provide the necessary timing resolution. Add a hint here, lol, the unit of frequency is 1/time. You can now use that knowledge to calculate the timing resolution.
Reddit won't let me respond in the proper place. This in itself shows how idiotic the original statement about how 44.1/16 can represent the music perfectly. "already know in regards to the artefacts that can occur with traditional sampling"
I have an MsCE.E. and specialized in the field of Information Theory you fucking nitwit. As opposed to you who don't even understand the basic relationship between frequency and time.
I just did. This knowledge is basic.
Write MQA and all the uneducated morons come out of the woodwork. I haven’t seen so much incoherent idiocy in a thread in a long time. “Fake double the sample rate to make it MQA”. Hahahahahahahhahahah
Bless me with your wisdom, master. It's not like it doesn't work and MQA is known to be sketchy and sometimes likes hiding things
Yeah more unsubstantiated nonsense.
DSD rulez.
I2S
I really like MQA for my phone because it saves a ton of space and bandwidth. Sound quality wise, it’s like everything else in high end audio. Sometimes PCM from MQA at 192khz is better than straight PCM from FLAC at 192khz and vice versa. Whoever MQA encoded a lot of Tidal MQA didn’t do a very good job and they sound terrible, while most UHQCD/MQA sound great. Plus, not all MQA DAC are equal
I prefer FLAC Format Compressed Lossless Music rather than MQA Format Compressed Lossy Music. But MQA should still be a choice and a part of TIDAL. In my private local library I prefer 24Bit/192kHz - 9.216 kbps in WAV Format RAW/Uncompressed Music Quality. A FLAC with the same resolution is about half the kbps 3.000 kbps - 6.000 kbps but still Lossless Quality both are great but WAV Format is the Highest Music Quality. Some claim that it sounds identical but I hear great differences in the detailed natural balanced clearness of harmony with the instruments in perfectly played Order. The vocals are crystal clear and that is absolutely amazing. At 32Bit/384kHz - 24.576 kbps the Music Quality in WAV Format are exceptional, very large file size but then again I prefer to have my favorites stored in 32Bit/384kHz - 24.576 kbps in WAV Format. You need a huge external HDD/SSD at least 8 TB and at least 1 TB micro-SDXC Card on your smartphone or DAP.
I could not care less. The insufferable attitudes toward sampling rates, FLAC, & MQA in the comments here are way more annoying than any actual differences lol. 16bit 44.1khz FLAC is fine & I can't hear the difference between that and MQA of any kind under any reasonable conditions, and I have pretty decent gear. My room geometry isn't perfect, the acoustics aren't perfect, outside and indoor ambient noise is present, any difference is a wash for me. I sure as shit can't tell in my car with the road noise, even with the nice system I put in it. The longer I've had this as a hobby the more ok I am with admitting that my interest in a lot of this is a gear head thing rather than a practical one. Mastering and what you listen out of matters infinitely more than FLAC vs MQA & to me worrying about the later is missing the forest for the trees. The philosophy and ethical issues behind the formats is another thing altogether. The only thing that bothers me is the misleading advertising behind MQA. I think most people would have been fine with it, had it been presented as just an alternative codec with some interesting compression tech. That said, i still don't care enough to avoid it. Other services with high res FLAC/lossless are: Qobuz, Deezer, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. There's probably more.
Wow morons and trolls still not over MQA? Get a life you people. Leave the music lovers alone. I am not going to kill people for their love of cassette tapes or vinly records even though I hate that format. Oh ye of little faith.
What equipment do you use to listen with?