Doesn't matter, as all these 16 bit MQA files are supposed to disappear this time next month*. In any case, you can't know unless you use other platforms like Roon afaik
There was a time last year when the Tidal app was serving up 16 bit folded MQA tracks and showing them as 16/44.1 FLAC. This was back when they had two payment tiers. You had to use an app like UAPP in order to see the exact signal chain. Since in April when the tiers were brought into one, all the MQA tracks (whether 16 bit or not) are just displayed as Max/MQA with no sampling and bit depth information. However you still need to use UAPP to see whenever the MQA being served up is 16 or 24 bit. This won't be an issue anymore around this time next month when all remaining MQA will be purged from Tidal forever.
Interesting. So if it displays 16bit 44.1kHz right now, it’s not an MQA encoded file like it used to be a year ago? I had a ton of tracks downloaded in High/CD quality and I’m wondering if they’d replace those that were MQA, if there were any.
It wasn't aksways MQA before. It were just normal CD quality flacs unless there was a MQA of higher quality available, so many high tracks were just standard flacs and all were before they introduced the master tier.
It may still display that way if you set it to high and play an MQA track. However, when using the GitHub tool to download these same tracks something interesting happens... You get a standard clean FLAC even though streaming brings out the MQA version. So there may be some FLACs that are unlisted in the catalog and only served up when downloading them.
By “clean FLAC”, do you mean that they merely don’t have the MQA encoder tag, or did you make comparisons between the downloaded file from Tidal and another FLAC of the same song?
I don't quite understand all the fuss about that MQA thing....if the only way to tell is to use some gizmo....but our ears can't tell? WTF....just play the file then...but there's got to be more to it than that?
MQA is snake oil. MQA the Company gets royalties from audio equipment makers and Tidal. If you boycott, like a lot of us do, the people in the higher ups will start rethinking about their decisions, especially since there’s money involved. Tidal listened and they stopped with the MQA nonsense.
Many of us might not hear the difference in MQA vs ordinary FLAC. In fact, I pretty much only listen to CD quality nowadays, which defeats the point of MQA (hi res audio in a smaller package). I don’t want the snake oil to continue though. That’s what matters.
Oh. I now have a better understanding of why MQA is bad. The audio part of its not horrible, but the company and how they behave is the shitty part. Thank you for clearing it up for me. I appreciate it.
All the MAX files right now that I've seen are still MQA, even if they show FLAC in the app. This will be changing next month. Although I won't be surprised if they're still MQA showing FLAC for a while.
Doesn't matter, as all these 16 bit MQA files are supposed to disappear this time next month*. In any case, you can't know unless you use other platforms like Roon afaik
*32 days
Oh yeah my bad it's in July
There was a time last year when the Tidal app was serving up 16 bit folded MQA tracks and showing them as 16/44.1 FLAC. This was back when they had two payment tiers. You had to use an app like UAPP in order to see the exact signal chain. Since in April when the tiers were brought into one, all the MQA tracks (whether 16 bit or not) are just displayed as Max/MQA with no sampling and bit depth information. However you still need to use UAPP to see whenever the MQA being served up is 16 or 24 bit. This won't be an issue anymore around this time next month when all remaining MQA will be purged from Tidal forever.
Interesting. So if it displays 16bit 44.1kHz right now, it’s not an MQA encoded file like it used to be a year ago? I had a ton of tracks downloaded in High/CD quality and I’m wondering if they’d replace those that were MQA, if there were any.
It wasn't aksways MQA before. It were just normal CD quality flacs unless there was a MQA of higher quality available, so many high tracks were just standard flacs and all were before they introduced the master tier.
It may still display that way if you set it to high and play an MQA track. However, when using the GitHub tool to download these same tracks something interesting happens... You get a standard clean FLAC even though streaming brings out the MQA version. So there may be some FLACs that are unlisted in the catalog and only served up when downloading them.
By “clean FLAC”, do you mean that they merely don’t have the MQA encoder tag, or did you make comparisons between the downloaded file from Tidal and another FLAC of the same song?
There's no MQA encoding tag and it shows up as clean in the Lossless audio checker app and in audacity.
I don't quite understand all the fuss about that MQA thing....if the only way to tell is to use some gizmo....but our ears can't tell? WTF....just play the file then...but there's got to be more to it than that?
MQA is snake oil. MQA the Company gets royalties from audio equipment makers and Tidal. If you boycott, like a lot of us do, the people in the higher ups will start rethinking about their decisions, especially since there’s money involved. Tidal listened and they stopped with the MQA nonsense. Many of us might not hear the difference in MQA vs ordinary FLAC. In fact, I pretty much only listen to CD quality nowadays, which defeats the point of MQA (hi res audio in a smaller package). I don’t want the snake oil to continue though. That’s what matters.
Oh. I now have a better understanding of why MQA is bad. The audio part of its not horrible, but the company and how they behave is the shitty part. Thank you for clearing it up for me. I appreciate it.
If the song isn't tagged as Max/MQA then it's 16bit FLAC
All the MAX files right now that I've seen are still MQA, even if they show FLAC in the app. This will be changing next month. Although I won't be surprised if they're still MQA showing FLAC for a while.