Who’s been ridiculed and by whom?
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My feelings are extremely hurt I’ve been crying all day LOL I think I posted on the wrong comment. Not that I give a shit but I have been ridiculed for posting music from Tidal… most of the people on this forum are cool,but there are few trolls
I think he’s actually trying to be helpful and do his job as a mod. If you’ve been ridiculed by someone they should be confronted over their behavior. That’s why he asked who was responsible for the ridicule.
Yes for the most part this forum is awesome! I have had a few problems I’m not going to go all the way back and try to find it. It really is not a big deal. Thank you for your concern.
It would appear OP is referencing his conversation in this thread; Listen to "Occult" on TIDAL
To be clear, it could entirely be a miscommunication. When I first read through that thread, I did not interpret what was said to OP as ridicule, but going back over it, I think I can see where he might have interpreted some of it in that sort of light.
The problem is, Tidal is one of the primary services trying to push the MQA standard, and it is that standard which caused the negative reactions to the links to songs from that service (as I detailed in this post)
It’s alright though, we all start out not knowing everything, if we had all the information from birth, life would be rather a bit more boring, because there would be nothing to learn. =)
I suggest avoiding Tidal as a service, and avoiding anything else that supports MQA as much as possible.
Just because I use tidal doesn’t mean I use mqa. I do not support mqa in any way shape or form. That format will never come out of my speakers! That’s like saying you shouldn’t support Spotify because they don’t play lossless music?
Do you not support Spotify because they do not play lossless music? I don’t support mqa in any way shape or form! That format will never come out of my speakers. That being said, I just happen to be listening to Tidal that night. I’m good with red book 44.1 k
No worries there, it’s just that which generated the response in that thread. I only made the suggestion to avoid it because it will keep you from getting poor responses such as what you experienced in that thread.
I personally take things a bit further when it comes to avoiding companies and products if they do things I think are particularly abusive toward the customer, it’s a vote-with-your-wallet situation.
For example, I won’t buy any EA (electronic arts) products because they are particularly abusive and damaging to the gaming industry, and I avoid Apple products entirely because of their anti-consumer stance on right-to-repair and their use of slave labor in China to produce their products, and their invasion of their customers basic right to privacy by monitoring and examining all the data on Apple phones. Apple is pretty egregiously terrible
- (did you know Apple is now helping the Chinese government to track down and squash anyone who is protesting against the constant lockdowns the CCP are still doing over in China using Covid as an excuse? And when I say squash, I mean the protestors are being hauled off into prisons by the thousands. And these aren’t violent protestors in any way, they are just standing around holding up signs and complaining publicly about the lockdowns! Yep, it’s still going on over there… it’s a huge mess over there right now. Apple sucks, never buy anything from them)
But I understand if other people will still buy from those companies, though i will continue to suggest they avoid doing business with companies like that for the previously listed reasons.
Services and products that support MQA are in the same boat for me, that service is bad for the audio community, it’s an attempt to abuse the community with a bad product that not only reduces quality (and lies about it), but it also tries to hook people on services that require endless subscription fees to continue using. It’s a bad egg all around - don’t eat bad eggs. 
And never pay companies to abuse you.
@TECH-73 I was under the impression that if you use Tidal you don’t really have a choice about using or not using MQA…it’s how they stream. if that’s right, then the only way you’re not using it is if you have a DAC that doesn’t have MQA supoport, in which case I do believe it’s been found to have a worse audio quality vs. having a DAC that can decode it.
I don’t care what you use, lots of people here subscribe to Tidal…but, if you were to start saying MQA is the best there is and won’t back down with reason, that has proven it’s just okay and doesn’t add anything, well then, you’d likely get the ire up of a lot of people here.
some are very opinionated and arguments happen, but if you look close enough, most of the time they are saying the same thing but from a perspective that appears to be opposing. its quite the conundrum, actually!
Tidal quality depends on your subscription level. Even with a mqa-enabled one, you can chose to stay on flac 44.1 quality.
I use tidal because it allows me to pay much less than any other service (subscription in Argentina).
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Yeah it’s 44.1 k. I would never say mqa is a better format. I enjoy their algorithm. And it’s only $10 a month. I can care less what format anybody uses as long as you’re enjoying the music that’s all that matters…
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It always starts out small… if there’s anything I know about companies, they will always push and push until they can’t push anymore.
Remember Oblivion/Bethesda horse armor? I do. They were charging 2 dollars and 50 cents for horse armor back in the day. And now we have games charging upwards of 40 dollars just to have access to the color blue on some weapon skins, and games are flooded with piles of micro-transactions that just get worse and worse all the time.
- It’s to the point now where some games will take your money and then give you an entirely random thing. Not pay to get what you want. Oh no, what sort of fantasy would that be? It’s pay to get a chance to get what you want. Oh, you didn’t get what you want? Well you can just pay again! and again, and again…
The only purpose of MQA is so they can lock your music down, and prevent you from listening to it, if you don’t constantly pay their fee. And you can bet, once they get a stranglehold on their marketplace, they will put the screws to their customers and jack that price to the moon. MQA’s endgame is for ALL audio to require MQA. Expect it.
And before people say, ‘but that’s different!’ - NO. No, it’s not. Everything in life works like that.
- Governments constantly squeeze away citizens rights and endlessly increase taxes. Companies squeeze their customers and their workers giving them less and taking more money. Apple uses actual slave labor to make their products!~ and that’s not just some conspiracy theory, they locked their workers inside the factory in China and put nets on the outside to stop the workers from jumping off the building to kill themselves! Even babies squeezing as much milk as they can to grow until the mother cuts them off entirely - That’s Life.
The only place anything stops is where you make it stop. Or the universal state of matter reaches zero and there’s nothing left to take.
I prefer to keep the ball from rolling to begin with. Pay those companies trying to lock down the music industry and squeeze the customers with endless fees… - absolutely nothing.
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By the year 2025 we will all have mqa chips inserted into us…
mqa doesnt cost to use and barely has any cost built into devices anymore. the uno is 80$ dac/amp with mqa. dsd costs for every device that supports it. and back in the day, a device with dsd cost a ton more then the same without. R&D costs money, most companies reduce the cost once they have paid for the R&D.
I prefer FLAC personally. It’s a great container, and doesn’t have any copy-protection BS built in. Once you have a FLAC, it’s yours and you can play it on anything you want. IMO if a service doesn’t offer FLAC, then i’m not interested. I don’t care that they have to ‘make money’. I’m not willing to put up with the limitations that goes along with typical ‘streaming’ services, I don’t trust most companies further than I can throw them. (which is not very far).
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flac is the way to go for sure…if you own music. a lot of us don’t.
and to each their own. mqa is a bit over rated. not because it sucks. but, like upsampling to 256 or 512, shit in is shit out. and most music is recorded for shit.
and i like mqa and stream tidal, but 3/4 or more of music, it makes no difference over cd quality because the recording quality.
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It really is bad for the music industry though. MQA is a snake oil service. They claim to deliver ‘master quality audio’ but that is a lie. It is a lossy compression scheme that loses quality from the original. The whole ‘unfolding process’ is just an excuse to try to justify adding their particular brand of copy protection. It only exists to suck money out of everyone else.
(I have rather strong feelings on this topic - but it is backed up by valid information, as referenced in my earlier posts on the topic).
Basically, the artists pay, the companies using MQA pay, and the customer pays, all for the ‘privilege’ of MQA locking their music down even more and reducing it’s quality.
Here is a video on the topic of MQA which I have not posted often, but it goes over MQA as a service from the view of manufacturers.
He softballs his answer on this, but it’s fairly clear that his company does not like the service. And this is not a unique feeling across the industry. Most companies are not fans of MQA, they only offer it because some of their customers don’t know why MQA is bad, and a few of those customers demand it’s inclusion.
Many artists are also quite strongly against MQA and have pulled their music from using it.
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kind of yes, kind of no. in theory, it should be great. stream the studio copy. but in practicality, it doesnt work out that way.
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Personally, I will never support MQA. It’s bullshit, plain and simple. It solves a problem that today simply doesn’t exist. The only problem that it “solves” for them is how to take more money from our wallets. From what I can gather, it’s bad for the artists, it’s really bad for the consumer, and it’s bad for the industry. The only people that benefit really are the thieves who cooked this scheme up. I won’t even buy anything that has that stinking logo on it. I won’t pay for a feature I will never use, number one. More importantly, if you buy a piece of gear that has that garbage in it, you are just giving your money to these thieves, and they win. I’m just not going to do it.
But again, that is my take on the situation. No one is obligated to agree. That is why there is so much out there to choose from.
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