TIDAL MQ

[Ali Tait]

I had a Mytek dac which does MQA, as above results were variable, but some sounded very good indeed.

Best dac I’ve heard in my system, not the cheapest though. Using a SEG at the moment, which gives the Mytek a serious run for its money.

[NickB]

Just for interest if you play music through Roon it has the ability to unfold MQA to 96/24 built in to the software so will do so with any DAC.

[Gazjam]

Just for interest if you play music through Roon it has the ability to unfold MQA to 96/24 built in to the software so will do so with any DAC.

Great point.

Tidal/ Roon user here, but my dac does MQA so dont use this feature.
Verdicts still out in MQA here, results can vary and to me MQA 24/96 doesnt sound as good as the same album in native 24/96...it IS a lossy format after all?
24/192 MQA is another thing altogether, sounds soopadoopa, but not as good as straight DSD.

Also, maybe the old mastering/ EQ quality chestnut is raising its head again?

I noticed the EQ on MQA of Roberta Flack first album too, I dont worry about it that much though, as the same track at 16/44 can sound different on a ‘best of’ album compared to the original...Just one of these things.

I always go for MQA versions of albums I dont have in 24/96 though, even though to me the difference from 16/44 isn’t that major its worth it.

MQA thrown in with Tidal subscription...hundreds of 24/96 albums I dont already own..?
I’d buy that for a dollar!

(or 20)

[Sherwood]

I have an original vinyl pressing of the Roberta Flack album as well as two different cd copies. I thought the cd copies were OK but preferred the vinyl pressing (despite the tape noise) for the space around voice and instruments. I think the MQ version is the best of all three formats.

Geoff

[Gazjam]

I have an original vinyl pressing of the Roberta Flack album as well as two different cd copies. I thought the cd copies were OK but preferred the vinyl pressing (despite the tape noise) for the space around voice and instruments. I think the MQ version is the best of all three formats.

Geoff

Weirdly, the one I prefer to listen to (at least “Compared to What” is the version from the Man From Uncle soundtrack...

[lovejoy]

My 2 cents on MQA...
I dived into it pretty early on after having a demo of it way back in 2014 when there was nothing more than a few demo titles floating around. Bought a Meridian Explorer2 DAC to try it out on and eventually moved to a Pioneer portable player with MQA built in and rather fortuitously it came with all of the demo tracks (I guess it must have been used by their sales rep who managed to forget to delete them all). A selection of Roberta Flack, Dire Straits, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin and a load of other classic tracks all of which sounded absolutely sublime to me and the best I'd ever heard any of them on any digital format. My next amp/DAC change was to move to something MQA compatible, so sure I was that this was the future...
Then nothing happened for ages, save for the tiny trickle of MQA releases by independent artists (most of which I couldn't stand) and it remained like that until Tidal suddenly unleashed its Master Quality catalogue which was, after so much waiting with what essentially already felt like obsolete equipment, a very exciting day indeed.
The excitement was pretty short lived however. Whereas the early demo masters had me spouting hyperbole about every single track, after just a couple of hours listening to the Tidal Masters, something struck me - everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, sounded exactly the same. It was almost as if, in the rush to get a large catalogue prepared for release by Tidal, there was no 'mastering' as such, and it was more like everything had been taken from whatever source it was and run through a Pro-Tools plug in. Everything seems to have this bump in the upper mid frequencies, so there's clearly some EQ going on - Whether Tidal has any hand in this I don't know, but then my DAC is doing all of the MQA unfolding and it's the same on both my Pioneer portable and NAD Masters/BlueOS kit.
What put the final nail in the coffin for MQA for me was coming across a couple of recordings - Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 was one of these - I have a number of copies of this album, vinyl and CD and the MQA version is the only version I've ever had where left and right has been swapped. Another example was one of Beck's albums (though I forget which one now) which has a massive digital glitch in one of the songs - Possibly a corrupted file on the Tidal server maybe, but you couldn't explain the Sergio Mendes away like that. To me that's pretty shoddy QC work and given that MQA is supposed to be built on 'provenance', those examples hardly fill me with confidence.

[Macca]

Interesting post that, Richard.

[Yomanze]

I know how old the recording is and the imperfections of the original vinyl pressing. That is why I chose this album to comment on. What I don't know is how they have managed to take the original tapes and make it sound so good.

I would be interested to hear the impressions of other Tidal users on these and other MQ titles.

Geoff

It’s all in the (re)mastering.

[Sherwood]

It’s all in the (re)mastering.

I'm sure that's the case. What intrigues me is how they manage to improve on 50 year old mastertapes which must be a bit ropey by now. I have to say that most of the Tidal MQ files I have listened to have sounded pretty good on my main system which is highly revealing of fine detail.

Geoff

[Yomanze]

I'm sure that's the case. What intrigues me is how they manage to improve on 50 year old mastertapes which must be a bit ropey by now. I have to say that most of the Tidal MQ files I have listened to have sounded pretty good on my main system which is highly revealing of fine detail.

Geoff

There is advanced DSP available today, something that can rescue, or ‘fill in’, the gaps, get rid of the hiss, and more.