Tidal chucking MQA?

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jan.didden

jan.didden

Retired
Joined 2002
linearaudio.net
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#1
Got this just in the mail.

Sign of the times? Or is there a commercial/cost factor involved?

tidal.PNG


Jan
 
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#5
MOQ was an invention of Bob Stuart of Meridian, probably 10 years ago.
I got into a discussion with him about the audibility at an AES convention and he got very mad at me but had no counter arguments.
The idea was that it would greatly increase the reproduction of high resolution audio above 20kHz or so.
You had to pay extra and needed a special decoder to 'fold' the contents back to where you can actually hear it.
Or something like that, don't remember the details anymore.
Last I heard was that a big company bought the rights.

BTW FLAC is lossless.

Jan
 
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#7
From Wikipedia:

Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) is a proprietary system for delivering high-quality digital audio. The system includes audio signal processing, lossy audio compression and authentication. MQA requires licensing fees to use. The system was launched in 2014 by Meridian Audio, and is now owned by Lenbrook.

The MQA system is a three-part process applied to digital audio music recordings consisting of: 1) modifying and controlling the end-to-end digital filter response;[1] 2) preparing the audio for transfer to a smartphone or audio device using a lossy audio compression format with authentication; and 3) decompressing the recording for playback.[2]

There has been controversy regarding several aspects of MQA. These aspects include but are not limited to: whether the audio signal processing improves or degrades the sound quality, whether the lossy audio compression degrades the sound quality, the utility of the authentication function, and the effect of licensing fees on music recording and playback businesses.

Jan
 
#8
I receive FLAC on TIDAL from the start of my subscription.

Using the build in TIDAL functionality of my streamer it's 44.1 kHz flac.

Using the TIDAL app on my phone I get 24 bit 192 kHz flac, but I then have to send it by Bluetooth to the streamer.

The perceived quality is best using the former option.
 
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#15
Yes, correct on this intrinsic quality FLAC itself. But, say a recording process and delivery to end user:

Analog -> 96k,24bit studio mastering -> down converted -> 44.1k 16-bit FLAC CD quality for sale. Lossless overall i.e.?

MQA was promised to deliver the original studio digital quality in the CD bandwidth. That’s why TIDAL proudly stamped “MASTERS” on select deliveries. Will they do the same with FLAC offerings, that’s my question?
 
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#17
Good riddance. MQA used every trick in the literature to try to cram more information, such as they thought humans could aurally process, into less bits. Part of it worked based on the observation that most music does not have a high density of high frequencies. That is to say, frequencies emitted by acoustic instruments tend to fall off in intensity as frequency increases. That means not all of the frequency versus amplitude space is being fully utilized in most music recordings (say, X is frequency, and Y is amplitude or maybe amplitude density, in some domain). Therefore, some other information can be encoded in the less used part of that space and be made to appear as noise by scrambling it. The extra information could then be used to extend FR response and or bit depth when unscrambled. All kinds of stuff like that.
 
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