![]() ![]() The market changed whereas the consumer was just going to pay a flat fee for enough bandwidth to not need (or save money via) stream compression (i.e, the music being lossy). MQA was developed right about the time it became apparent that the consumer was not going to continue to pay the higher costs of lossless. When streaming costs were paid by both the provider and consumer, this made some sense MQA was always about improving music quality while maintaining lossless to save streaming costs. One of the largest costs facing streaming companies, if not THE largest cost, is the bandwidth/streaming/hosting charges, which are significantly lower if your stream is compressed in any way to any degree (i.e., not lossless). ![]() It’s about lossless (compression) and the costs of providing a stream. Always keep in mind when discussing why Tidal is reacting so defensively when MQA is challenged, it’s not about differences in perceived music quality. Meaning for tracks WITHOUT the ‘MASTER’ tag, Tidal does deliver lossless files as long as the one provided by the artist/label was lossless in the first place. Starting with a track that is NOT marked as ‘master’, I used “Save me from myself” by Louis the Child.Ĭomparing the TIDAL version, and the Qobuz version using the DeltaWave software, we can see that they are bit for bit identical. So, let’s take a mainstream track, and compare the lossless version that is available on Qobuz, Deezer, and Amazon HD, to the version on TIDAL. Then compare the files using a tool such as DeltaWave. To check this you can either rip the file from TIDAL (I will not mention any software as I do not condone piracy), or you can record the bit-perfect audio stream using a tool such as VB-Hifi cable and recording software such as Adobe Audition. I wanted to find out if along with this new pricing structure, TIDAL had put back lossless versions of tracks, or if it was still the same ‘hidden MQA’ versions. ![]()
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