"We are working hard to..." Ah, the standard utterly meaningless 'corporate' response. Do better Tidal. Thanks for highlighting this issue, good video.
I hope you guys never let off the pressure from companies who support the kind of greed and malice MQA did. Too many in the tech space are too tolerant of the greedy bullshit companies pull over them. The audiophile community is one of the rare few who can actually vote with their wallet and make a tangible difference within a relatively short period of time because of how niche the space is. Keep up the good fight.
@@tdmduc that's not gibberish Its self censoring And yea that was my initial reaction to the statement by golden sound and then he clarified later in the video
Thanks for killing the MQA scam! (they are mostly mastered with LOUDNESS WAR mastering, so even if it was not a scam in the first place, it would no make things better)
This is false. There's no difference in mastering for mqa. It was lossy compression with authentication. That's it. It's always been nothing but a scam.
This video earned a subscriber. I love consumer advocacy and that you're working to hold companies accountable. I'm going to stick with Tidal a while to see how this plays out, and look forward to your next update.
Good work as usual. I tried TIDAL again earlier this year, as the sometimes have music I like that isn't on Qobuz. Unfortunately I ran into what you describe here, that a lot of their music still only has the MQA versions, often only 16/44.1, which, as we know, is only about 13-bit.
I use Tidal a lot and really enjoy it, I've noticed that many albums that used to be MQA are now FLAC, I dont see much MQA content at all. I think they started ditching it about the same time they ditched 360 Reality Audio. There was an email announcement just a few months ago about it saying that the changes would take several months. I ditched Qobuz because its library is nowhere near as good as Tidal, the MQA thing isnt an issue for me.
Same, I've noticed Max on Tidal is much better than files on Spotify. I'm really liking the functionality of Tidal and the selection seems to have come a long way as well.
@@rogerhuston8287how do you know that all of qobuz's files aren't just upsampled from whatever 6 bit recording was lying around on the studios harddrive?
In my case, mostly are from Sony Music, and was very happy to see that in the last 2 weeks Universal send their replacements and they have no MQA anymore in my library. So, we have to wait until the record labels can or want to send their replacements for MQA... the record labels probably have to deliver certain period of time and number of files in their agreement with MQA
Thanks so much for the great work you do! So much audio journalism seems like little more than advertising. Great to see real investigative journalism in the audio field
Fair enough but I think they just need more time to sort it out. There is evidence that they are gathering the non MQA content. I imagine it's quite a task to replace it all.
I just recently switched to Tidal from Apple Music. Randomly got it in my head that certain things didn’t sound as good here and there. Honestly probably very little actual merit to this feeling, but this just validated my thoughts and I can’t go back. Until we meet again Tidal, we are all rooting for you
@alexisrojas3584 If you use a VPN, you can get a more favourable conversion. Currently, Argentina is $2 a month, but you need a bank in that country. For me, Hungary still works, which is $3 a month.
It's actually a normal thing companies do to make their products more accessible in lower GDP countries. A $20 game on the Canadian Steam storefront could be $2 elsewhere, for instance.
@krakentortoise7531 not to this extreme and the very largest corps don't. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon either convert by the dollar or give only minimal discount. Argentina had their numerical pricing (so the amount of that currency) raised by 300%. They clearly don't know what they're doing.
I have seen that too. Tidal clearly has a few API keys one can access the service through. Depending on what API key one is using, different track quality and format can show as the highest there is to get. I have seen that while I could get a 24/96 file from the Tidal app, another one just got 24/48 or 16/48, and not seldom MQA. Last time I have seen though that things changed, and even an API key I used previously that gave me sub-par results, returned a higher resoluted FLAC file without MQA. So I think Tidal is working on it, but it appears to take time... not that surprising.
There is no doubt even some economic reality to it... re-requesting FLAC music after having had MQA might imply increased costs - something Tidal might just not be willing to pull off. Mistakes cost money and things perhaps can't be fixed too fast. That would leave us with the likely optimal choice - going with one of Tidal's competitors instead. I also recall some people claiming that Qobuz sounded a touch better than Tidal. I have never compared as it would require some work to do; but it would be cool to explore what it is down to, and how much of a difference there actually is.
This is exactly why I quit TIDAL a couple months ago. ROON was showing it was playing an MQA file, but TIDAL didn't show it as MQA. I was even surprised, does no one notice this? Thank you!
marketing as a euphemism for what the folks behind the whole mqa thing did, seems too docile of a word, to say the absolute very least. thanks for keeping us enlightened
Tidal CEO left, their parent company are making redundancies across engineering and management roles, according to some sources they are focusing on other revenue streams and scaling back investment in the streaming platform.
This is exactly why I cancelled my Tidal in favor of Qobuz (despite the later's UI being inferior) because my Zen Dac was picking up these hidden MQA's. I'll go back when they are honest.
this is interesting and confirms what I already thought. I have a NAD C 3050 which has a glitch playing some mqa files . Bluesound/NAD confirm they know about this glitch which introduces noise to playback of mqa files but haven't fixed it . When tidal said they were dropping mqa this fixed my issue instantly , although in practice , every now and again I get the same digital noise on mqa(?) tracks ...v much hope tidal drop it completely , as I don't hold out much hope for NAD offering a workaround any time soon... which is ironic as i believe NAD or their parent company now own mqa..
Sometimes, I am proud of my ears. I had doubt checking two albums of an Italian band some years ago. I know them very well, and I had chances to hear them while recording in the studio. At home, I ripped their CDs on my hard disk system. Then I started to use Tidal. Those files in MQA were quite worse than my ripped files. That feeling put me in a skeptical position against MQA. I discovered the truth many months after that strange feeling because of people reporting the real situation. Now I am using Qobuz. In no case now, streaming is playing worse than my local files.
Good video! However i discovered something when i started using roon a couple month ago with tidal integrated. A lot of my tidal music was indeed still mqa yes. But, using the new function in roon to optimize/update my playlists it replaced like 80/90% of those songs with flac copies. That leaves me thinking flac DOES exist in bulk on tidal but not like you described on the most played track list of an artist. I dont know why they dont just delete the mqa copies to start with. Fyi my library in tidal consist over 15k songs. This might be interesting to test for yourself and maybe make a follow-up part 2 video. Interested to hear what you think. Cheers!
I wonder if his playback device had this Daft Punk track stored locally, cashed from times before MQA was dropped and that is why it keeps showing up as MQA
In some ways, hi-res in general is a busted flush in my opinion. For the vast majority of even wired playback, people are getting resampled 24-48 and, barring remasters, nobody can tell the difference anyway (even A-B testing, which isn't how people listen to music). I'm guilty myself of pursuing bit-perfect playback, but it's nothing to do with the music quality; it's to get the correct light shining on my player. It's a net negative, because my daft arse is always slightly disappointed when I 'only' get a blue light for Redbook. I've even purchased hi-res PCM and DSD music at stupid prices. The only difference I can hear is that DSD is quiet and needs volume compensation. I think it's too late now, but I wish more time had been devoted to optimising bit-perfect high-quality Redbook FLAC streams (and players); I can actually hear a difference between CD and notionally identical CD-quality streams and it's quite obvious. And, of course, using the reduction in development and delivery costs to either bring the consumer price down or the artist revenue up.
I'm a happy Tidal user, but my personal gripe with the service is how many duplicate albums there are. Go check out Taylor Swift's discography on Tidal and you'll get the same headache I have. It's frustrating because I want the highest quality I can get but with so many duplicates, it makes me worried there's some differences between the releases (there aren't). At this point, I just go by what's the latest remaster or what's just on the albums listing instead of "View All".
Very interesting. I’m in Australia and I’d switched back to Tidal when they dropped MQA but this raised my concerns again, however when I double checked the tracks you mention and random content from my library they don’t show as MQA on my dac, perhaps different libraries in different regions ??? Thanks for the follow up, keep em honest.
Experienced this a few days ago, a list was playing and I noticed some songs had lesser quality. Checked it after a while and then saw the MQA mark. I thought they were still cleaning up their old MQA files. Thanks for your video!
They are... just last week Universal replaced a good number of old MQA with FLAC 24bit Sony Music 16bit catalog, 2L and others audiophile record labels hasn't send their replacements but they will at some point
I think they should just have a switch that you can select in App that only shows lossless music. I have the same thing. Loads of MQA content. How hard would it be to just be able to select your File type?
Mqa files are encoded in flac files. They would need a tool to read the mqa metadata in the files so it's not that simple. They should use the tool to search their library and show you if they are mqa files or if this video gets as viral as the last one send a notice to the labels to ask for lossless versions or the mqa version will be removed. That will be necessary if tidal loses too much customers but I doubt they will. They have had a steady amount even though out the mqa days. They have been doing lay offs and other stuff so people might boycott them
Not sure if you tried again, but if not I would consider submitting your request for information again. I have had only good responses from them in my previous interactions. For me they have been the best company to deal with out of any tech company, so I hope they continue to be that way.
Even if they move back to real lossless for everything, how do we know they aren’t just converting the MQA to a lossless format and calling it lossless? It’s possible to check for individual tracks I suppose, but feasible to check everything?
For many tracks, the MQA flagging is in the audio data itself and so dacs will still detect this. Even if they did re-encode to break this though, the file can still be checked against other sources like band camp or Qobuz to see if they are indeed the same
@ yeah, I suppose the best we can do to hold them accountable is to check that Tidal’s lossless files are the same as on other platforms, as they (hopefully) add lossless versions. It’s clearly not possible to check all the tracks, but checking a wide range should be enough, perhaps
Well I would check some. Pink Floyd’s Animals 2018 remaster, that should be 24/192, is shown with “red” LED ( meaning 16 bit) in my A&K ACRO CA1000T using both embedded and downloaded Tidal (2.122). A&K says is a Tidal issue…
The level of incompetence and bad decision making on the part of Tidal is monumental. Instead of fixing an issue they create more issues in their attempt to fix the original one.
so this is not a topic for future music so they will get to it at some point. But my take away is two positive things: I didn't even realize that my subscription is now half of what it used to be, nice!! And they fixed offline listening, I always had to login ever day on my dap for it to work and it would stop at 00:00, but that isn't an issue anymore. Don't know at what interval I have to login for offline to work, but it isn't as strict anymore.
From a quality perspective, arguably no, as it's better to do vol control via your own setup usually. But the feature is useful for some, so it depends on whether the potential small hit to quality is worth the usefulness of the feature for you. I always disable it personally
Apple Music on Windows isn't lossless so says my DAC ( no WASAPI support either ). That's why I turned to Tidal aaaand because it's cheaper than Spotify. Few percent of tracks I play show as MQA so I'm hoping they'll fix it eventually as Qobuz is unavailable in my country and more expensive than Tidal.
I operate on the assumption that all of theses music streaming platforms are lossy/not actually living up to the claims. That said, Tidal is the one I use most, sounds better to my ears on my equipment, seems to have comprehensive library.
I ran all of my Tidal playlists through my Audirvana software and found only about 3% were MQA. Question comes down to when listening via my iPhone, which app Tidal or Qobuz sounds better.
@The Headphone Show and ... Android - what about bitperfect sound in native tidal app on android devices (via usb)?! How long will it be resampling to 48khz? When will track numbers finally appear in playlists?
This is a bit of a frustrating issue, and one that is unfortunately down to Android rather than Tidal themselves. For the moment, the workaround is to use something like USB Audio Player Pro rather than the native Tidal app. BUT, A friend of mine is in close contact with one of the people actually working on the audio stack for android at google, and whilst there's no ETA or guarantee, he's been pushing things hard and it seems like we may hopefully see some more OS level remedies to this coming (hopefully) soon! Google was pretty much unaware of this being an actual issue, but that's no longer the case
@@GoldenSound Thx - I'm not sure if this is an Android-specific problem. Apps like UAPP or hiby music support bitperfect on every Android device. But only in the streaming service. Unfortunately, in such a scenario, you can't use downloaded tidal libraries offline, because they are only available in the native app. The only solution in this situation is to buy DAPs that have a modified Android system. Only then can the downloaded tidal offline files be played in bit perfect mode in the native tidal app. Bitperfect has been expected for many years and nothing has changed. People will soon fly to Mars, biperfect is a more difficult mission 😄
Seriously... Tidal just needs to stop lying. If the stream is still MQA, say it's MQA ! If it's lossless CD (16 bit 44.1 kHz), just say that! How hard can it be 🤦
The ifi DAC is picking up MQA in stored MQA files, and so are my other MQA DACs (Hiby FC3 and R3 II), but I can't find any MQA streams in Tidal anymore. Even the albums that were identified as MQA are now streaming in FLAC, such as the "2L - The MQA Experience" by various artists. Maybe it's a regional thing.
What I don't understand is, are the 44.1 MQA tracks still being unfolded to 88.1 or higher? If not, are they basically just a lossy compressed version that's "better" than mp3 or ogg?
Disappointing, I did side by side between Qobuz and Tidal a couple of years ago and could tell the MQA was no good. Had to ditch Qobuz as issues working with KEF active speakers. Went back to Tidal having heard they went FLAC, and it's integration is spot on. Shame it's not as transparent as they make out
I am a music lover but new to high-res streaming. Although I understand the fraise's los-les and lossee I wander what it actually means when referring to Streaming, even with the highest capabilities of 32 768 that I have sourly there must be some band width limitation or however it would be expressed.
Longtime (5 year) TIDAL user here. I can't tell the difference between MQA and FLAC so I don't really care that much about that aspect, though some more transparency would always be welcome. I like TIDAL for the user interface and the editorial. I hope, despite the recent layoffs at the company, that the product will remain a reasonable competitor to Spotify & Apple Music for those who don't love lossy audio.
@@Mishael_Agyei-Boamah not the gotcha you think it is. I can hear the difference between a mp3 and a 16/44 FLAC, but I can't hear the difference between FLAC and MQA.
@@vintage0x no you still don't get the point of the video!!! and that will be the last response I give you since you've decided to not understand zilch
One thing I can't work out is Tidal through USB Audio Player Pro never appears as MQA on the DAC for me. Not sure if this is a quirk or UAPP or how I have it set up or if it's actually somehow serving me FLAC?
@GoldenSound It weirdly doesn't show as MQA even on things like the non hi-res Daft Punk example and Opeth stuff that does appear as MQA when I use the Tidal app on PC with the same DAC though. I thought maybe I had some setting that was disabling MQA playback or something but couldn't work it out.
@@adamarstall7 It may depend on your DAC. Which one are you using? Since the stuff is in 'folded' MQA form, DACs that are just MQA renderers and not full MQA decoders may not detect it, since MQA renderers only take MQA audio that has had the first unfold/core decode done by the player or streamer. But also, there are a few different ways that MQA is/can be detected which differ from DAC to DAC. On the dCS LINA for instance one track doesn't get detected as MQA but on the SMSL RAW-DAC1 it does.
@GoldenSound I'm using a fiio KA17 which I think is a full decoder. I wish MQA didn't exist so I could have confidence in what I'm listening to haha. Thanks for your responses.
This is extremely disappointing. Tidal needs to respond and fix this quickly or they will lose a lot of subscribers. I really don't want to switch platforms because I love their UI and track suggestions, but I just can't support the lies and deceptions any longer. I'll be back when they make things right.
Just dropped Tidal for apple music and it's much more competently designed apps. Tidal just closing your ticket without responding to reasonable questions seals the deal.
Not really but the only thing that will change the sound are going to be the headphones. You need to upgrade them if you want better sound. Also more money doesn't mean better.
I searched for the tracks mentioned here with iPhone 15 Pro Max and iFi Hip-Dac decoder (it decodes Mqa and show it with a different colour on the leds) but in my case they were all Flacs
![Eminem - Fuel (feat. JID) [Official Lyric Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/t5H_CewqpKA/mqdefault.jpg)
"We are working hard to..." Ah, the standard utterly meaningless 'corporate' response. Do better Tidal. Thanks for highlighting this issue, good video.
Qobuz catalog is meh sucking with tidal and Apple Music
I hope you guys never let off the pressure from companies who support the kind of greed and malice MQA did. Too many in the tech space are too tolerant of the greedy bullshit companies pull over them. The audiophile community is one of the rare few who can actually vote with their wallet and make a tangible difference within a relatively short period of time because of how niche the space is. Keep up the good fight.
Excellent, excellent content. This channel deserves way more subscriptions
Tidal isn't claiming "you won't hear the difference", they're claiming "it's bit-perfect from the master" -- and they're lying.
Videos like this are extremely important for consumers and keeps the services on their toes. A genuine thanks for this !
"Mqa went bankrupt"
Holy fucqk, that fills my heart with joy
It didn't. It's now owned by the people of Bluesound. Read some updates before cramming out jibberish.
How could you miss that?
@@tdmduc that's not gibberish
Its self censoring
And yea that was my initial reaction to the statement by golden sound and then he clarified later in the video
@@tdmducThey did, actually, go bankrupt. They just got bought out after filing for Chapter 11.
Thanks for killing the MQA scam! (they are mostly mastered with LOUDNESS WAR mastering, so even if it was not a scam in the first place, it would no make things better)
This is false. There's no difference in mastering for mqa. It was lossy compression with authentication. That's it. It's always been nothing but a scam.
You are not well informed
You need to read up on the difference between dynamic and digital compression.
@@ornorra Without providing the missing information, this comment is worthless.
@@cowboyflipflopped Exactly like the original comment then...😂
This video earned a subscriber. I love consumer advocacy and that you're working to hold companies accountable.
I'm going to stick with Tidal a while to see how this plays out, and look forward to your next update.
Excellent work! The Nyan Cat bit was hysterical!
Good work as usual. I tried TIDAL again earlier this year, as the sometimes have music I like that isn't on Qobuz. Unfortunately I ran into what you describe here, that a lot of their music still only has the MQA versions, often only 16/44.1, which, as we know, is only about 13-bit.
Which at minimum is double the bit depth of the best recordings made in the first 80 years of recorded music.
If it's 13bit it would be 13/44.1
I use Tidal a lot and really enjoy it, I've noticed that many albums that used to be MQA are now FLAC, I dont see much MQA content at all. I think they started ditching it about the same time they ditched 360 Reality Audio. There was an email announcement just a few months ago about it saying that the changes would take several months. I ditched Qobuz because its library is nowhere near as good as Tidal, the MQA thing isnt an issue for me.
Same, I've noticed Max on Tidal is much better than files on Spotify. I'm really liking the functionality of Tidal and the selection seems to have come a long way as well.
This is the same for me as well. And Tidal's tools to discover new music are way better than Qobuz.
GS still has a hard on against Tidal
I'll stay with Qobuz. I was a Tidal user for 6 years, until the MQA kerfuffle, but I left 2 years back.
is it considered better ?
@OrionHellscapeOrion of you want bit perfect lossless, yes.
@@rogerhuston8287how do you know that all of qobuz's files aren't just upsampled from whatever 6 bit recording was lying around on the studios harddrive?
Qobuz sounds the best, but their library not so great
Qobuz library is lacking
In my case, mostly are from Sony Music, and was very happy to see that in the last 2 weeks Universal send their replacements and they have no MQA anymore in my library.
So, we have to wait until the record labels can or want to send their replacements for MQA... the record labels probably have to deliver certain period of time and number of files in their agreement with MQA
I totally agree, thanks for explaining!
Thanks so much for the great work you do! So much audio journalism seems like little more than advertising. Great to see real investigative journalism in the audio field
What? Tidal didn't respond? Shocking!
Fair enough but I think they just need more time to sort it out. There is evidence that they are gathering the non MQA content. I imagine it's quite a task to replace it all.
I just recently switched to Tidal from Apple Music. Randomly got it in my head that certain things didn’t sound as good here and there. Honestly probably very little actual merit to this feeling, but this just validated my thoughts and I can’t go back. Until we meet again Tidal, we are all rooting for you
Very informative, thanks for keeping us in the loop.
The best thing about tidal is their inability to currency convert. If you know, you know.
Please elaborate
@alexisrojas3584 If you use a VPN, you can get a more favourable conversion. Currently, Argentina is $2 a month, but you need a bank in that country. For me, Hungary still works, which is $3 a month.
It's actually a normal thing companies do to make their products more accessible in lower GDP countries. A $20 game on the Canadian Steam storefront could be $2 elsewhere, for instance.
Regional pricing is a thing for ALL streaming services dude. Even Steam does it.
@krakentortoise7531 not to this extreme and the very largest corps don't. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon either convert by the dollar or give only minimal discount. Argentina had their numerical pricing (so the amount of that currency) raised by 300%. They clearly don't know what they're doing.
Oh boy, here we go again!
*grabs popcorn*
😂
I have seen that too. Tidal clearly has a few API keys one can access the service through. Depending on what API key one is using, different track quality and format can show as the highest there is to get. I have seen that while I could get a 24/96 file from the Tidal app, another one just got 24/48 or 16/48, and not seldom MQA. Last time I have seen though that things changed, and even an API key I used previously that gave me sub-par results, returned a higher resoluted FLAC file without MQA. So I think Tidal is working on it, but it appears to take time... not that surprising.
There is no doubt even some economic reality to it... re-requesting FLAC music after having had MQA might imply increased costs - something Tidal might just not be willing to pull off. Mistakes cost money and things perhaps can't be fixed too fast. That would leave us with the likely optimal choice - going with one of Tidal's competitors instead.
I also recall some people claiming that Qobuz sounded a touch better than Tidal. I have never compared as it would require some work to do; but it would be cool to explore what it is down to, and how much of a difference there actually is.
This is exactly why I quit TIDAL a couple months ago. ROON was showing it was playing an MQA file, but TIDAL didn't show it as MQA. I was even surprised, does no one notice this? Thank you!
I was still on the Tidal trial plan. Thanks for making this video.
didn't really understand what is MQA and Tidal until this video. cheers! thanks for the info. 👍👍👍
marketing as a euphemism for what the folks behind the whole mqa thing did, seems too docile of a word, to say the absolute very least.
thanks for keeping us enlightened
Tidal CEO left, their parent company are making redundancies across engineering and management roles, according to some sources they are focusing on other revenue streams and scaling back investment in the streaming platform.
I hope it doesn’t go down the toilet.
I’ve liked Tidal so far and if it goes the way of Spotify I’ll have to find another option.
You mean that thing people have been saying for years is true? The quality content I've come to expect here!
This is exactly why I cancelled my Tidal in favor of Qobuz (despite the later's UI being inferior) because my Zen Dac was picking up these hidden MQA's. I'll go back when they are honest.
That was great. Please keep making content like this.
Thank you for all your work I really appreciate what you do
Well i stick to Tidal...
this is interesting and confirms what I already thought.
I have a NAD C 3050 which has a glitch playing some mqa files . Bluesound/NAD confirm they know about this glitch which introduces noise to playback of mqa files but haven't fixed it . When tidal said they were dropping mqa this fixed my issue instantly , although in practice , every now and again I get the same digital noise on mqa(?) tracks ...v much hope tidal drop it completely , as I don't hold out much hope for NAD offering a workaround any time soon... which is ironic as i believe NAD or their parent company now own mqa..
Sometimes, I am proud of my ears. I had doubt checking two albums of an Italian band some years ago. I know them very well, and I had chances to hear them while recording in the studio. At home, I ripped their CDs on my hard disk system.
Then I started to use Tidal. Those files in MQA were quite worse than my ripped files. That feeling put me in a skeptical position against MQA.
I discovered the truth many months after that strange feeling because of people reporting the real situation.
Now I am using Qobuz. In no case now, streaming is playing worse than my local files.
shame...shame..shame.. Really thank you Golden once again!!!
Keep recommending competition!!!
Good video! However i discovered something when i started using roon a couple month ago with tidal integrated. A lot of my tidal music was indeed still mqa yes. But, using the new function in roon to optimize/update my playlists it replaced like 80/90% of those songs with flac copies. That leaves me thinking flac DOES exist in bulk on tidal but not like you described on the most played track list of an artist. I dont know why they dont just delete the mqa copies to start with. Fyi my library in tidal consist over 15k songs.
This might be interesting to test for yourself and maybe make a follow-up part 2 video. Interested to hear what you think. Cheers!
Thanks, more people should know about this so they can make informed decision
I wonder if his playback device had this Daft Punk track stored locally, cashed from times before MQA was dropped and that is why it keeps showing up as MQA
Nope, i just tried it
Not how it works
For some reason my favorite tracks on Tidal are mostly in FLAC. And the sound difference is minimal (if any) with TOTL headphones.
In some ways, hi-res in general is a busted flush in my opinion. For the vast majority of even wired playback, people are getting resampled 24-48 and, barring remasters, nobody can tell the difference anyway (even A-B testing, which isn't how people listen to music).
I'm guilty myself of pursuing bit-perfect playback, but it's nothing to do with the music quality; it's to get the correct light shining on my player. It's a net negative, because my daft arse is always slightly disappointed when I 'only' get a blue light for Redbook. I've even purchased hi-res PCM and DSD music at stupid prices. The only difference I can hear is that DSD is quiet and needs volume compensation.
I think it's too late now, but I wish more time had been devoted to optimising bit-perfect high-quality Redbook FLAC streams (and players); I can actually hear a difference between CD and notionally identical CD-quality streams and it's quite obvious.
And, of course, using the reduction in development and delivery costs to either bring the consumer price down or the artist revenue up.
I'm a happy Tidal user, but my personal gripe with the service is how many duplicate albums there are. Go check out Taylor Swift's discography on Tidal and you'll get the same headache I have. It's frustrating because I want the highest quality I can get but with so many duplicates, it makes me worried there's some differences between the releases (there aren't). At this point, I just go by what's the latest remaster or what's just on the albums listing instead of "View All".
Very interesting. I’m in Australia and I’d switched back to Tidal when they dropped MQA but this raised my concerns again, however when I double checked the tracks you mention and random content from my library they don’t show as MQA on my dac, perhaps different libraries in different regions ??? Thanks for the follow up, keep em honest.
What dac did you test with
@ Topping E50 which is MQA capable and used to indicate MQA content when it was still available but so far can’t see any in my Tidal library.
Experienced this a few days ago, a list was playing and I noticed some songs had lesser quality. Checked it after a while and then saw the MQA mark. I thought they were still cleaning up their old MQA files. Thanks for your video!
They are... just last week Universal replaced a good number of old MQA with FLAC 24bit
Sony Music 16bit catalog, 2L and others audiophile record labels hasn't send their replacements but they will at some point
Cameron are you no longer going to publish videos on your own channel? I was hoping for an HQ Player upsampling deep dive video. Thanks!
I think they should just have a switch that you can select in App that only shows lossless music. I have the same thing. Loads of MQA content. How hard would it be to just be able to select your File type?
Mqa files are encoded in flac files. They would need a tool to read the mqa metadata in the files so it's not that simple. They should use the tool to search their library and show you if they are mqa files or if this video gets as viral as the last one send a notice to the labels to ask for lossless versions or the mqa version will be removed. That will be necessary if tidal loses too much customers but I doubt they will. They have had a steady amount even though out the mqa days. They have been doing lay offs and other stuff so people might boycott them
Not sure if you tried again, but if not I would consider submitting your request for information again.
I have had only good responses from them in my previous interactions.
For me they have been the best company to deal with out of any tech company, so I hope they continue to be that way.
Even if they move back to real lossless for everything, how do we know they aren’t just converting the MQA to a lossless format and calling it lossless? It’s possible to check for individual tracks I suppose, but feasible to check everything?
For many tracks, the MQA flagging is in the audio data itself and so dacs will still detect this. Even if they did re-encode to break this though, the file can still be checked against other sources like band camp or Qobuz to see if they are indeed the same
@ yeah, I suppose the best we can do to hold them accountable is to check that Tidal’s lossless files are the same as on other platforms, as they (hopefully) add lossless versions. It’s clearly not possible to check all the tracks, but checking a wide range should be enough, perhaps
Well I would check some.
Pink Floyd’s Animals 2018 remaster, that should be 24/192, is shown with “red” LED ( meaning 16 bit) in my A&K ACRO CA1000T using both embedded and downloaded Tidal (2.122). A&K says is a Tidal issue…
How audible is the difference between true lossless and MQA?
My Eversolo DMP-A8 still shows many tracks as MQA. I find those tracks to be too loud and "in your face" compared to standard FLAC.
They are just louder. That's all
The level of incompetence and bad decision making on the part of Tidal is monumental. Instead of fixing an issue they create more issues in their attempt to fix the original one.
it is kinda theyre signature move
@@brunonjezic6208hahah yeah
Just completed my second Golden-inspired Tidal cancellation. No third chance is likely, regardless of their announcements. Thanks.
so this is not a topic for future music so they will get to it at some point. But my take away is two positive things: I didn't even realize that my subscription is now half of what it used to be, nice!! And they fixed offline listening, I always had to login ever day on my dap for it to work and it would stop at 00:00, but that isn't an issue anymore. Don't know at what interval I have to login for offline to work, but it isn't as strict anymore.
Hey golden question, should I keep volume normalization on in tidal?
From a quality perspective, arguably no, as it's better to do vol control via your own setup usually.
But the feature is useful for some, so it depends on whether the potential small hit to quality is worth the usefulness of the feature for you. I always disable it personally
Apple Music on Windows isn't lossless so says my DAC ( no WASAPI support either ). That's why I turned to Tidal aaaand because it's cheaper than Spotify. Few percent of tracks I play show as MQA so I'm hoping they'll fix it eventually as Qobuz is unavailable in my country and more expensive than Tidal.
It's lossless it's just being resampled. They are completely different things.
Nice Video
Speaking of which, @goldensound are you still doing anything on your channel?
I have noticed that some tracks sound like grap and others very good, that's life boys and its perfect.
Can I ask where you get those framed mini album art on the back wall? thanks for the info, hoping Spotify will have lossless out one day.
That's it, you keep on dreaming, lol. 🤣
I operate on the assumption that all of theses music streaming platforms are lossy/not actually living up to the claims. That said, Tidal is the one I use most, sounds better to my ears on my equipment, seems to have comprehensive library.
Any chance for a review of Sennheiser Momentum TWS 4?
I ran all of my Tidal playlists through my Audirvana software and found only about 3% were MQA. Question comes down to when listening via my iPhone, which app Tidal or Qobuz sounds better.
It's unfortunate, mostly because Qobuz's library is much weaker than Tidal's
I have DAC with MQA decoder and all the music I was listening the MQA decoding light never turned on 🤷♂️
What dac is it
S.M.S.L SU-1
I have just tested Daft Punk "Get lucky" (all 3 versions) and no MQA indicator 🤷♂️
I like Qobuz because I can buy lossless tracks and play them offline
@The Headphone Show
and ... Android - what about bitperfect sound in native tidal app on android devices (via usb)?! How long will it be resampling to 48khz? When will track numbers finally appear in playlists?
This is a bit of a frustrating issue, and one that is unfortunately down to Android rather than Tidal themselves. For the moment, the workaround is to use something like USB Audio Player Pro rather than the native Tidal app.
BUT, A friend of mine is in close contact with one of the people actually working on the audio stack for android at google, and whilst there's no ETA or guarantee, he's been pushing things hard and it seems like we may hopefully see some more OS level remedies to this coming (hopefully) soon!
Google was pretty much unaware of this being an actual issue, but that's no longer the case
@@GoldenSound Thx - I'm not sure if this is an Android-specific problem. Apps like UAPP or hiby music support bitperfect on every Android device. But only in the streaming service. Unfortunately, in such a scenario, you can't use downloaded tidal libraries offline, because they are only available in the native app. The only solution in this situation is to buy DAPs that have a modified Android system. Only then can the downloaded tidal offline files be played in bit perfect mode in the native tidal app. Bitperfect has been expected for many years and nothing has changed. People will soon fly to Mars, biperfect is a more difficult mission 😄
It depends on the region! There are FLAC files without MQA in my country. I did download some files to test it on Deltawave and it was fully green.
I JUST paid for a subscription last night, too. Bummer.
Golden shedding some weight. Love to see it!
How about dsd and pcm hi-res(48/24, 96/24, etc)? I know its lossless and useful for recording and mixing, but why exist for listener?
Although I agree with the premise you should get what paid for, very few people can hear the difference is my hypothesis, lab tests not withstanding
Lots of tracks are still MQA and is 100% decoded by Roon even now
does Qobuz have a "Radio" mode yet? That's the main reason I preferred Tidal back when I last tried out both services.
Yes it does
No it has not.
@@pascalnuman5391 It has artist radio
I'm okay with it. The service is still a better value than Spotify.
Seriously... Tidal just needs to stop lying. If the stream is still MQA, say it's MQA ! If it's lossless CD (16 bit 44.1 kHz), just say that! How hard can it be 🤦
Anyone know whether the
EverSolo DMP-A6 Master Edition
is a core MQA decoder/renderer?
Also, where can I find hi res tracks
to download?
Qobuz has always sounded better to my ears. I just use Tidal for the music Qobus doesn't have.
Ones Spotify comes out with lossless, Goodbye to all the other ones.
What happens if I listen to a disguised MQA track but my DAC doesn't have MQA ? What will be the quality of the audio stream?
I hope to see your review of HiFiRose RS130 streamer soon...
I am unable to find any mqa content on tidal. Even the daft punk album that was shown was not detected as mqa by my ifi dac. 🤔
You might be using b version of the firmware as my ifi dac is picking up MQA on Tidal
The ifi DAC is picking up MQA in stored MQA files, and so are my other MQA DACs (Hiby FC3 and R3 II), but I can't find any MQA streams in Tidal anymore. Even the albums that were identified as MQA are now streaming in FLAC, such as the "2L - The MQA Experience" by various artists. Maybe it's a regional thing.
@@slinkman79 strange, I'm finding many going through my play lists
@@slinkman79are you using a bit perfect playback system with a full decoder?
@@slinkman79 Canada here. That album is listed now as 44,1 in Tidal, but my smsl dac shows 352 MQA when streamin it.
What I don't understand is, are the 44.1 MQA tracks still being unfolded to 88.1 or higher? If not, are they basically just a lossy compressed version that's "better" than mp3 or ogg?
Disappointing, I did side by side between Qobuz and Tidal a couple of years ago and could tell the MQA was no good. Had to ditch Qobuz as issues working with KEF active speakers. Went back to Tidal having heard they went FLAC, and it's integration is spot on. Shame it's not as transparent as they make out
Is not about not being transparent. TIDAL deleted the MQA metadata reader. UAPP can't even read them either
FLAC was always and still is the best format, also the pioneer and most supported lossless. Fight me if you dare 😎
I am a music lover but new to high-res streaming. Although I understand the fraise's los-les and lossee I wander what it actually means when referring to Streaming, even with the highest capabilities of 32 768 that I have sourly there must be some band width limitation or however it would be expressed.
Just proves that it’s still better to get CD or vinyl and not bother with streaming
So did you actually listen to any music in your Tidal vs Qobuz comparison nine months ago when you said Tidal was the best?
Longtime (5 year) TIDAL user here. I can't tell the difference between MQA and FLAC so I don't really care that much about that aspect, though some more transparency would always be welcome. I like TIDAL for the user interface and the editorial. I hope, despite the recent layoffs at the company, that the product will remain a reasonable competitor to Spotify & Apple Music for those who don't love lossy audio.
Well they're delivering lossy music to you still by still having MQA stuff
@@Mishael_Agyei-Boamah not the gotcha you think it is. I can hear the difference between a mp3 and a 16/44 FLAC, but I can't hear the difference between FLAC and MQA.
@@vintage0x no you still don't get the point of the video!!! and that will be the last response I give you since you've decided to not understand zilch
totally agree.
I was just considering going back to tidal before I saw this. Thanks for the heads up!
Just returned to Tidal and honestly love it. Files are great as are the selections and rec's.
MQA is on Qobuz now and I hate it.
Uhh no its not
One thing I can't work out is Tidal through USB Audio Player Pro never appears as MQA on the DAC for me. Not sure if this is a quirk or UAPP or how I have it set up or if it's actually somehow serving me FLAC?
It'll only do that if the content is actually MQA. Whilst there is still some hidden MQA stuff, the majority is now genuine lossless it seems
@GoldenSound It weirdly doesn't show as MQA even on things like the non hi-res Daft Punk example and Opeth stuff that does appear as MQA when I use the Tidal app on PC with the same DAC though. I thought maybe I had some setting that was disabling MQA playback or something but couldn't work it out.
@@adamarstall7 It may depend on your DAC. Which one are you using?
Since the stuff is in 'folded' MQA form, DACs that are just MQA renderers and not full MQA decoders may not detect it, since MQA renderers only take MQA audio that has had the first unfold/core decode done by the player or streamer.
But also, there are a few different ways that MQA is/can be detected which differ from DAC to DAC. On the dCS LINA for instance one track doesn't get detected as MQA but on the SMSL RAW-DAC1 it does.
@GoldenSound I'm using a fiio KA17 which I think is a full decoder. I wish MQA didn't exist so I could have confidence in what I'm listening to haha. Thanks for your responses.
Im not complaining about a 4 dollar per month subscription, and also not getting a 15 dollar per month Roon subscription to "fix" said issue.
This is extremely disappointing. Tidal needs to respond and fix this quickly or they will lose a lot of subscribers. I really don't want to switch platforms because I love their UI and track suggestions, but I just can't support the lies and deceptions any longer. I'll be back when they make things right.
I find it funny its taken this video for people to get mad. I have been telling people about this for months
The record label needs to replace them, that's the only fix
You still claiming you can hear over 20khz? Not watched one of your vids since then. I need honesty not wild exaggeration.
At the current speed and bandwidht of the internet I just can not understand the use of lossy compression...
Just dropped Tidal for apple music and it's much more competently designed apps. Tidal just closing your ticket without responding to reasonable questions seals the deal.
Wat about apple music ???
Am I weird for only purchasing in WAV, flac if WAV not available.
DSD my dude
Am i wasting my money and time using tidal with ldac sony headphones?
Not really but the only thing that will change the sound are going to be the headphones. You need to upgrade them if you want better sound. Also more money doesn't mean better.
I searched for the tracks mentioned here with iPhone 15 Pro Max and iFi Hip-Dac decoder (it decodes Mqa and show it with a different colour on the leds) but in my case they were all Flacs