Hi all, I’m a new Naim owner so started with a Uniti Atom (which is great!). I’ve been using Tidal Hi fi for a year or so now but want to know, can I stream any higher than ‘CD quality’ (16 bit 44KHZ) on this device? If so how???
Not with Tidal. You’ll need Qobuz or downloaded 24 bit files for that
Interesting. I’m actually considering trying Qobuz for this reason. I recently had my broadband update in our village to about 90-110 mbs. You can only get the “higher resolution “ in the Master service they have but only with the necessary hardware.
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Yes, you can. Use Roon, which will unfold the MQA format that Tidal Masters are provided in.
This process then present a bit perfect lossless file to the Roon endpoint for playback.
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MQA is not lossless.
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As a fellow bumpkin I’d recommend you give it a try. In our case the only decent internet speed available is off the local 4G mast - which works surprisingly well- but the 500gb pcm data limit kept me loyal to 44/16 streaming on Tidal.
Now the cap is off I can gorge on 24bit hi res goodness til the cows come home. Literally sometimes.
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Nope. This explains it well without getting too technical:
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This is Benchmark’s view, as a manufacturer.
Plus Miska and archimago on computeraudiophile.com are not impartial
I have listen extensively to albums in local MQA, Tidal Master, local non-MQA HiRes and Qobuz HiRes formats referenced against a CD rip. The Tidal Master version sounds identical to the streamed Qobuz version.
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Pretty much what I have found when comparing Tidal Masters with their Qobuz hi-res equivalent on my systems.
But you do need Roon or an MQA enabled DAC. I see you have a Uniti Atom (which is not MQA enabled), so unless you subscribe to Roon, then I’m afraid the answer is “No”.
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Well, it could very well be that what is lost is things that wouldn’t have been outside the audible spectrum. (Although you’ll find plenty of people on this forum they can hear inaudible stuff anyway).
I’m making no claims on what sounds better or whether there even is an audible difference, I was only commenting on the fact that it isn’t lossless.
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Brilliant, thanks for all of your help, I have just started a Qubuz month trial so I’ll try that as well. I want to sort this out before I start buying better Naim stuff.
Thanks for all of the comments, very helpful indeed! Still newish to streaming but going to give Qubuz a try and compare the two
Ensure that it has the music you want. There are still gaps compared to Tidal, but depends on genre and artist
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My impression on my Uniti Nova is that Tidal MQA and Qobuz HiRes sound very close when streamed through Audirvana from a MacBook which sends the uncompressed PCM stream to the Nova. What surprised me is, that Qobuz HiRes sounds better than Tidal MQA and better than Audirvana when HiRes FLAC is streamed directly from Qobuz to the Nova. Therefore, although I prefer the Tidal App‘s recommendation algorithms, I decided to go with Qobuz. However, this might change if Naim decides to support MQA on the Uniti series in the future and supports all MQA unfolding steps.
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That is exactly my thought too, the Qubuz (even in CD quality) sounds IMO better than the Tidal on the Uniti’s so my conclusion is the same, to continue with Qubuz until or if Naim start support for MQA
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