@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!
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…
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Yes it’s a late reply. I have never heard an mqa file ever I’ve never heard a DSD file either. I am 100% Flac nobody’s ever going to sell me mqa DSD I’m happy with red book just because I listen to tidal does not mean I support mqa… that was my point. I don’t know how people assume that I was trying to push listening to Tidal it was just the format I was using at the moment nothing to do with mqa. I have a Denifrips ARES II?? No mqa here lol
I know this is a late reply. I would never push any format on anybody I’ve never heard an mqa file in my life! And I never will. Redbook 44.1 k is my happiest place. Unless you’re a newborn baby or a coyote my opinion you can’t hear the difference so long as you have a good DAC
Sorry I know it’s a late reply. I’ve never heard an mqa file and I don’t plan on it. People have the misconception that if you subscribe to Tidal it’s automatically mqa…that’s not the case. I’ve addressed this several times throughout this conversation so if you see the same comments from me I apologize
