Tidal now streaming MQA!

[User211]

Hmnn...can be a bit of a moot point that, but hear what your saying Martin.

I still prefer ripped CD to 16/44 Tidal Flac, but the 24bit MQA versions sound slightly better to me.
Interestingly, non streamed 24-bit versions of the same album on my hard drive sound better than the MQA versions to my ears.
Lots of variables to get a handle on really and make a definitive judgment I guess, especially given all the different systems and setups everyone has.

Bolded bit - I do. But it is really fractional. And I defo prefer TIDAL to Qobuz. A while back I tried to find out why by trapping the bytes being sent to the USB port. They aren't the same BTW for the same tracks. Which is interesting. I just didn't have the willpower to absorb the specs and fully decode it. It would have taken hours if not days to suss it. Possibly more than a week with no definitive answer is the most likely outcome.

It is interesting that playing non-streamed .WAV 44.1/16 bit files takes about 1% CPU, whereas streamed TIDAL FLAC decoding takes 10 times the amount and streamed MQA 20 times the amount. You can't help but wonder if somehow this overhead has some sort of detrimental affect, but it is well within the capabilities of the hardware so I can't see why it should, really.

The difference I hear may well be due to JRiver messing around doing everything differently maths wise i.e. using 64 bit floating point maths internally for non-streamed data. As I say though the SQ is so fractionally different imagination and expectation bias may well be what is happening.

Spotify Ogg Vorbis 320KBps is definitely audibly worse than Qobuz or TIDAL with full bit rate subscriptions, though. Even so, scoring 90% correctness between that and TIDAL would be beyond the realms of anyone. Just because you can identify a difference doesn't enable you to always guess which is better purely because sometimes the lower bit rate actually sounds better. It is just that overall, over a wide range of programme, the lower bit rate doesn't sound better.

Anyway my freakin' ear infection is back after appearing to go. Went to the doctor to get the emissions tested, so to speak. £55.63 to get it tested. I've gone private these days as I find it is about the same price as the NHS or better!!! Really. Obviously that depends on what is wrong with you, though. I also personally know this private doctor.