The only thing that had me interested in MQA initially was the suggestion that to be MQA certified a basic level of mastering would be required.
I thought maybe this would lead to more consistency amongst recordings - the engineer would pay more attention if they knew it was for MQA. Yeah, that didn’t happen.
In case those that are MQA users have not seen this, some new news around MQA dropped today.
MQA’s bankruptcy has to be alarming to subscribers of Tidal. Wonder what will happen there.
It’s a bankruptcy so Nothing Good, in all likelihood.
Mark Gosdin
MQA has been variously characterized as the greatest thing ever, not what it claims to be (@GoldenSound), irrelevant in an era of cheap uncompressed streaming, and unrelated to the Tidal sound because that’s actually high-range filtering rather than MQA per se.
What I do know is that MQA involves licensing fees, and manufacturers and buyers resist paying for something they’ll never use or don’t want. So, has it become as irrelevant as the “Dolby” button on a cassette player?
Well Dolby actually did something good for the Cassette medium, but yes I won’t buy a product that has the MQA logo on it.
Mark Gosdin
I was trying to avoid expressing my opinion of MQA…
When you have nothing nice to say…
Why should I care if an otherwise excellent product has MQA support? The license cost may result in additional sales allowing a lower overall price point.
I pulled the plug on Tidal years ago but still use iFi and AQ Dragonfly. The iFi GO Link certainly isn’t overcharging me.
Tidal is a separate company, this won’t have a direct impact on them other than whatever portion of customers were only there for MQA specifically.
I’d imagine that one of two things will happen:
Tidal will simply start moving away from pushing masters/MQA, or perhaps just quietly start swapping masters content for actual hires content to cause minimal disruption/confusion.
Tidal may actually seek to purchase necessary IP if MQA goes into liquidation. This is less likely though as it probably wouldn’t be financially worthwhile for Tidal to do this, and acquiring the IP without acquiring any of the associated debt may be a little messy. Not to mention Tidal is not in such a great place financially themselves afaik so they may not want to be purchasing stuff like that.
You’re absolutely right, but if MQA goes into liquidation and Tidal’s license to use the technology comes into question it’s doubtful Tidal is in a position to reconfigure such a large portion of their content and infrastructure. Swapping mqa files for actual hi-res flac SOUNDS simple, but I’m certain that’s a far more complex and costly proposition than we can possibly appreciate from our outside perspective. Given Tidal’s already shaky financial condition this should be very interesting to watch.
I’ll be watching as I listen confidently to Qobuz. 
Mqa was a rather interesting compression solution for high quality audio music when bandwith was a problem. Unfortunately the inventors tried to make money out of it by asking licensing fees to manufacturers and users making it in fact a DRM system, although Bandwidth is no longer a problem in Most countries, FLAC is lossless and superior and it all other compression algorithms like OGG or VORBIS, AAC, remained free too. So why would anyone invest money in MQA?? Remember the Dolby logo on all the cassette players 30 years ago. The same fate awaits MQA… deservedly, because the company refused to accept that time and technologies move on.
The Dolby company’s licensing practices are even more infamous. Fortunately for Dolby, though, their algorithm actually does something materially important that has lasted the test of time. MQA, as you correctly observe, does no such thing. FLAC is incredibly capable and bandwidth is no longer a scarce commodity. In evolutionary terms, MQA has no real reason to survive EVEN IF it actually did what it claims it does.
All Tidal really needs to do is send out high-res and a signal to turn on the purple LED … .
They need a “Turbo” button!
Bring back 1980s fakery!
Well Tidal has just announced that it will add a FLAC version of its catalog for high-res subscribers, AND that it has no intention to buy MQA. This is the last nail in the coffin for MQA…finally and deservedly. Who would be so stupid to invest in an expensive compression algorithm that is expensive and inferior to FLAC which is free. Quobuz has been surviving on FLAC for a while now. Tidal and Quobuz are in direct competition now, and the outcome will depend on the size of the catalogue, sound quality and the ability to develop a user-friendly ‘connect’ feature similar to that of Spotify.
Tidal’s catalog dwarfs Qobuz’s. Qobuz sort of specializes in “audiophile music” - their catalog of hi-res jazz, classical, opera, etc is spectacular. But Tidal’s catalog goes deeper and wider into pop, rock, electronic, etc. Anecdotally, I had problems with Tidal deleting my custom playlists over and over again, and that drove me away even before Goldensound tore them down with his MQA expose. But I do sometimes miss the breadth of content that was available on Tidal that just isn’t on Qobuz.
Easy solution. Subscribe to both. That’s what I do
I don’t think that’s been true for a long time, although it would certainly feel that way if you are trying to dig into deep cuts from your favorite popular bands, and Tidal is generally better organized and it’s easier to discover new stuff there.
If you’re on the beaten path they’ll look the same, but if you’re digging in it really depends on what you’re into. The actual library size is now supposed to be about the same (“over 100 million tracks” for both).
Very true. Along the well-trodden path I find very little difference between Tidal, Qobuz, Apple, Amazon, & Spotify. But when you search for alternative artists, deep cuts, experimental & lesser known electronica Qobuz tends to come up noticeably short. Qobuz excels in jazz & classical, though, and I presume Tidal still goes deeper in hip hop than the others. Spotify, of course, has everything - except hifi.
It may be worth noting here that with the recent price hike I’ve dropped Spotify as I no longer find enough difference between it and Qobuz to warrant paying the old monthly charge much less the new. I kicked Tidal to the curb ages ago, mostly because it kept deleting my personalized playlists.
