Thinking of subbing to Tidal? Watch this MQA review first

[qubit]

As you can guess from the title, the review isn't good, revealing lots of false claims and shady practices. I wouldn't touch them. Check it out.

 

[CityCultivator]

The moment I saw the title, I knew what video you were going to post.

When I saw the overall design of MQA, I immediately realised it would be a mess.
Encoding data on the audio itself sounded nonsense from the start. This would create high level of noise and distortion, which usually cannot be completely removed. Yes, with MQA, irreversibly manipulated audio is "Master quality".
You want to encode additional data, you use a separate data stream. DTS-HD codecs is able to do that. Open source WavPack is able to do that. These codecs are able to do hybrid encoding (Lossy with Lossless stream addon).
Or just don't. FLAC is perfect for lossless transmission and most users of lossless audio streaming will have available bandwidth for FLAC streaming.

 

[qubit]

Exactly, it's snake oil and I hate to see scammers getting away with garbage like this, hence why I posted this video, to help warn people who may get sucked in. It's clear from the video why Tidal makes it so hard to test their claims, too. Respect for this YouTuber for the lengths that he went to expose them.

If one wants to capture more information than is possible in a 44.1/16 stream then you need more bits and/or faster sample rate, it's as simple as that. Basic physics.

 

[CityCultivator]

The silly thing about MQA is the encoding scheme.
That is no quality encoding procedure.
A terrible encoding coupled with no normal testing method allowed.

 

[Frederik S]

For starters you only need 44.1 kHz-48 kHz sample rate to capture everything audible as per Nyquist-Shannon. Bit depth is never a problem with audio as even masters with huge dynamic range rarely exceed 20 dB, 16 bit is capable of 96 dB. For comparison a good recording microphone with amplifier has around 15-30 dB SPL-A noise floor. I think it is quite common for people to misinterpret how much bandwidth is actually needed to reproduce audio signals. If you add psychoacoustics on top of this you are looking at even less being needed for perfect transparency.

Higher sample rates mean more issues in the DAC with a higher likelihood of producing audible artifacts. If you look at spectral analysis of what is going on above the 16 kHz threshold in most recordings you find it is noise. If you are unlucky this noise can impact stuff going on in the audible range as well.

What obscures the picture is that some "high quality releases" are based on different masterings compared to what is available in lower bit rate and bit depth. So for playback you could low pass and down sample to waste less space.

And I absolutely agree FLAC is great, it works well and is reasonably efficient to encode, decode and transcode (at normal compression levels). I do not see any need for MQA other than marketing and being able to sell a proprietary standard.

I definitely need to watch the video later, MQA is new so there is not a lot of information about it. Good find