Should we be Worried? Tidal MQA is Gone!

Should we freak out?

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[bigbuckoramma]

MQA = Unnecessary DRM = Nothing of value was lost.

So long, and thaks for all the fish.

[lambdastorm]

How MQA gained traction in the first place is beyond me.

[matthewhilty]

Goldensound did a good video about MQA. FLAC is a lossless compression, MQA is a lossy format. There is not a large difference in a lot of songs but the FLAC sounds better to me and does not have that preringing noise that can sometimes give me listening fatigue.

[stevetech]

to my ears, i perceive more clarity, detail and dynamic range in flac files vs. just about any other file type i listen to.

[mickeybreg]

i really never understand mqa. i’m not using it but learning something new is always fun. thanks for explaining things in easy way

[sworddice]

actually i'm happy. MQA is exclusive, narrow compatibility and somewhat inferior compared with widely used flac. MQA benefits them, not users. we need a proper setup just to play it.

[ssdemon]

Yep, I'm glad that
MQA is gone. i absolutely support FLAC as a format. I am currently using a topping e50 and l50 stack, and i own a hifiman
Sundara headphone. I will be upgrading to the a70 pro and d70 pro as my final flagship headphone amp and dac. Also, i noticed a huge improvement with using exclusive mode with Tidal taking full advantage of my current dac and its beautiful. Anyways i enjoy the video, and im glad Tidal went straight FLAC this time.

[theobserver]

FLAC is lossless format so no concerns about quality (is even better because is open source, so more artists can access it). The only ones making a fuss about it are: The people who do not understand audio formats or the MQA mafia members
suggestion: talk about different audio file formats (mp3, m4a, flac, aac, etc) and your experience with quality with them. Even more interesting would be to have a blind test done with different people. (also talk about an alternative that occupies less space than FLAC but without much noticeable loss of quality)

[humanbass]

Imagine when people find about this open source lossless format known as Flac. What a revolution it will 😅

[Andersljungberg]

About the Flac
It may depend on the degree of compression on the Flac or something else. If I download a flac from a well-known torrent site, I don't think the sound is particularly airy more to the upposit

[Milo_Molnar]

Super news. I can buy ibasso DC04 Pro which doesn t support MQA. By the way great explanation.

[Pdevantier]

I was a bit skeptic about the change.. but I have to say that I find the sound quality have changed to the better.. goodbye MQA and welcome to FLAC🎯

[nathz]

Yes i get your point, i also research this year ago flac is better than mqa even the cd 16bit flac file is better.

[WorthlessDeadEnd]

Thank you for this thorough, detailed explanation.

[AndrewLamas]

I see this as an absolute win. Also Andy you should check out the e1da 9039s.

[herlonsilva]

This base of understanding is very cool and interesting.👍

[Zombieflourish]

MQA has never been a thing in my book when we talking about quality, it has always been inferior when comparing to FLAC and WAV, let along DSD. Im also aint gonna lie that when Tidal introduced MQA, I did use it almost all the time when I still had my LG phones tho xD

[rawjugv.u]

Your explanation is perfect, i can fully understand. TQVM Andy. However, what happened to devices that support MQA unfolding or rendering or whatsoever, which is i saw it state like MQA x 8, is that this particular devices will changing as well or the features will no function at all. As i can see, the more MQA unfolding is the expensive that devices can be. Let say MQA x 4 is cheaper than MQA x 16.

[ultraprimez]

i Also Love Local Audio Playback Sir .

[robsteinert]

I 100% agree. Good explanation, thank you