What makes you want MQA, as opposed to streaming unadulterated hi res from Qobuz? Or even standard resolution (with which people often struggle to hear a definitive difference compared to hi res)?
I thought I was pretty clear that I failed to research MQA on the Uniti Atom before I bought it. My bad. Didnāt think to join the Naim Forum before owning a Naim. Lesson learned. Still makes me angry, though, because my logic was sound, and based on the transitive law in mathematics: If TIDAL has MQA, and the Uniti Atom has TIDAL built in, then the Uniti Atom has TIDAL MQA. Except, in this case, not.
A few years ago, when I was looking for a replacement for Pandora on my phone, TIDAL seemed like a good choice, not only for better sound quality than Pandora but because I really liked their user interface. In those several years, Iāve spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours building up my collection of music in TIDAL. I guess Iāll have to decide if getting higher-than-CD quality will be worth it to completely start over building a collection in yet another app. So many streaming apps and a lack of a standard format is frustrating!
If you want to try Qobuz, you can use an app called Soundiiz to transfer playlists etc. from Tidal. If you take out a trial subscription to Qobuz you can then transfer your saved Tidal stuff, compare the two services side by side for a while, then decide which way to jump.
Obviously this is only an option if you live somewhere that Qobuz is available. For me, the move was a no-brainer, and I wouldnāt go back.
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Good info; thank you!
Chris, how do you, personally, use Qobuz for Hi-Res? Do you have a wired ethernet connection to your Naim and use the built-in Qobuz app? Or do you maybe download Hi-Res to a drive and connect it to your Naim?
I donāt really bother with downloads, mainly because they always seemed overpriced compared to CDs, and HiRes didnāt always sound better. I use either native Qobuz in the Naim app, or Roon. For Ā£15 a month you get everything in at least 16/44.1, but where available, itās in 24 bit, either 24/44.1, 24/96 or 24/192. The amont of material available in HiRes seems to be steadily increasing, in much the same way as MQA stuff is in Tidal.
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Yes it is a shame Tidal limits itās lossless bandwidth to 44.1/16.
Much new material now is 44.1/24 or 48/24 ā¦ and is readily available elsewhere such as with Qobuzā¦ and they do sound better than their decimated/downsampled equivalents of 44.1/16. Clearly if mastered for 96 or 48 then down sampling to 44.1 is not going to be a perfect operation and be a compromised version.
I can only assume they have a licensing deal with MQA to prevent higher definition pcm being made available, or Tidal have commercial constraints with their CDN provider, whereby they canāt afford to stream the higher bandwidths of lossless PCMā¦ I think itās more likely the former however.
As far as comparing tidal and Qobuzā¦ I find Roon a great way of doing thisā¦ and can give clear info for your libraryā¦ one observation some referenced albums donāt match between Qobuz and tidal and vice versa ā¦ so you need to manually re searchā¦ and then they match ā¦ might be because of different releases or versions.
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Dr Aix has taken another blast at MQA, as has Neil Young for them āremastering his work not as he intendedā and queries whether with $100 million losses MQA will be around in the future. Might inform userās choice.
[Dr. AIX Post for January 19, 2021 (campaigner.com)
(http://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/566i-2cn52b--t824c-5bleb293)
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Are the links broken now? First one goes to the home page of course, for the second I get the ādot comā but even after fixing this I am getting āThe email is no longer available.ā
Only one link. Try one below.
Thanks. For some reason there is a long dash in the middle of the earlier link, between bāt of 566i-2cn52bāt824c-5bleb293, which my browser converted into two hyphens when copying the link, hence it failed
That is rather interesting given MQA claims that they achieve quite the opposite! ((IIUC).
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I can think of a couple of reasons why someone may want MQA via Tidal as opposed to streaming unadulterated hi-res from Qobuz:
- because Tidal has a more comprehensive music catalogue for his/her tastes than Qobuz, and MQA āhi-resā on Tidal sounds better than equivalent standard unadulterated 16bit/44.1
or - because MQA hi-res on Tidal simply sounds ābetterā on that someoneās system than do unadulterated hi-res equivalents on Qobuz
The second of these reasons does not apply in my case. I hear little if any difference between MQA hi-res on Tidal and equivalent hi-res downloads I have purchased from Qobuz. I fall into the first of the above categories, even if I feel that the difference between 16bit/44.1 and hi-res (MQA as offered by Tidal or āunadulteratedā hi-res offered by Qobuz) is often (but not always) subtle at best.
However, I do believe that some people hear a difference, and that some of them prefer the sound of MQA files on their systems. Perhaps a little akin to some people voicing a preference for the extra āPRATā they hear from Naim Audio amplifiers or streamers, rather than the possibly more ābalancedā or āaccurateā sound of some other high end audio brands such as Vitus or DCS?
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The catalogue differences may be marginal although, as suggested, there may be better support of some genres.
Surely the comparison is with Qobuz Hi-Res, not 16/44.1.
No!
The reason for my use of 16/44.1 in this context is because if someone decides to go with Tidal rather than Qobuz because of their respective music catalogues, then that person may well perceive Tidal (āhi-resā) Masters to be providing extra value when āstandardā hi-res is not available by any other means.
That is certainly my position.
I donāt claim that Tidals MQA files are better than hi-res from Qobuz - only that they are at least very nearly as good (when the same original masters are used as a base).
If I were a classical (or perhaps Jazz) music person, then I would probably choose Qobuz, and if there werenāt specific gaps for me in the Qobuz catalogue that would be extremely difficult to fill then I would almost certainly switch to Qobuz myself for a number of reasons.
Of course, I could always record the missing Qobuz albums using my current Tidal subscription onto my Pioneer RT-909 reel to reel deck. But then, that in itself would be very expensive (do people realise just how expensive good reel-to reel tape is?), not to mention very illegal!
Iām curious about the gaps in the catalog. I have quite a lot of obscure bands in my vinyl and CD collection that are not on streaming, but found no significant difference between Tidal and Qobuz. (In my case, these are mostly non-US/non-UK punk and post-punk from the 80ies and 90ies, but they tend to not exist on either service with some small seemingly random differences)
how can we know this? apologies if itās been answered elsewhere
I reluctantly sacrificed a loss of some content many years ago when I decided that streaming was for me and moved from Spotify to Tidal for the significant sound quality uplift. However, I was not prepared to do the same by moving from Tidal to Qobuz for a ālesserā quality uplift.
I have taken the time to compare the music catalogues of Qobuz and Tidal on a couple of occasions. Itās a fairly onerous task, but perhaps itās time for me to do so again to see if there has been a significant shift. However, I now use Roon as my music control (and will continue to do so), and Iām just a little worried by reports from some people that Roonās integration with Qobuz (eg with Roon Radio) is currently not quite as successful as that with Tidal.
There is no way to be absolutely sure.
However, ādifferentā masters can often be pretty glaringly obvious. At other times, Tidal MQA content played on my systems can sound to me more or less identical to equivalent Qobuz hi-res files. When this is the case then I assume that either they are from the same original master, or that it doesnāt matter because I canāt hear the difference anyway.