Huge release of Tidal MQA Masters

Streaming Audio
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So Warner Music Group have just released a large number of their back catalogue as Tidal Masters, i.e. MQA releases. Some 20k tracks.

Included are all Pink Floyd albums, Kraftwerk, Duran Duran, Madonna, 10,000 Maniacs, Talking Heads,

The list is available in XLS at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rvKkhI1x4d06YE4hp-eKWG1sbYsXQXc3/view?usp=sharing

The list of 24-bit MQA encoded Tidal Masters is now 891,954 tracks if any one is wondering

Sounding really great on my Roonified NDS with the Roon Core unfolding to 24/96 (which is 95% of material) and presenting to the NDS as a stream of UPnP WAV (which it was designed to work best with & all the Roon processing is performed off-board of the ND player).

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Press Release is available here https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-to-add-millions-of-master-quality-mqa-tracks/127573?u=simon_pepper

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Reminder of what is involved In MQA Authentication, from Bob Stuart http://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/mqa-authentication-and-quality/

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MQA is a sham.

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So who ‘remastered’ all these to make them MQA then?

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Last week I read that Qobuz had expanded or is in the process of expanding its catalogue including the hi res offerings and improving its subscription offer. Those in hi res are of course full hi res, not compressed using a contentious process, so available to stream online by anyone other than those with very limited data bandwidth, without being limited to MQA licensed DACs. And available to download for those with insufficient data bandwidth to stream online.

Of course, which of Tidal and Qobuz is more suitable for any individual will depend on the catalogue on offer.

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I understand it was a project kicked by Warner Music Group a number of years ago, to convert and re-release their back catalogue.
There was some early examples, and new releases made as Tidal Masters using MQA, but this is the batch release of this project & I believe there is much still to come.

Now as part of a streaming service, the Tidal Masters don’t require the listener to repurchase media as with CD, SACD, DVD-A etc.
If you want to listen to them you can, but there is always the standard lossless CD version available on the regular subscription.
Playback of Tidal Masters is possible in the native iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS Apps, which are free with the streaming service. This is to the first unfold at 24/96, if the device DAC supporting this format.

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Well I can see them there, but I wonder just how much more blood they can extract from the PF back catalogue jesus!

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Exciting news for fans of MQA. This community forum has seen Naim engineers firmly say they will not be programming for MQA content. Naim is working closely with Tidal for the Tidal Connect feature for next year. With this avalanche of MQA music content available (with hopes of more to come), and maybe a closer working relationship with Tidal - will Naim engineers warm up to the possibility of bringing MQA to Naim?

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I really hope not.

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The good thing appears that many of the new MQA content (though not all) can be found in lossless hidef over on Qobuz in regular pcm. I kind of suspect the Hidef pcm media files might be used to create the MQA versions.

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The easy way to bring MQA to Naim is with Roon.
The Roon Core performs the 1st unfold upto 24/96 and presents the bit perfect lossless PCM to the Naim Streamer either natively with the ND5XS2, NDX2, ND555 or through a UPnP Bridge for the ND5XS, NDX, 272 and NDS.
This will cope with 80-90% of all Tidal Masters, some 1M+ now available.

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Are you sure about that? The only comments I’ve seen from Naim staff here have been that they are not anti-MQA, and that they would consider supporting it if they saw wnough demand from customers to make it worthwhile.
Personally I have no interest in it whatsoever, but it seems to me that Naim are keeping an open mind here.

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Chris, yes your point is more accurate. What I have read about their sentiment towards MQA is exactly that. I am very curious if the news from Warner (and maybe others to follow) may be the signals Naim are looking for to suggest incorporating MQA. I have Tidal and am unable to conveniently pursue the MQA option, but if it was available, I would likely use it.

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My guess is that Naim will want to see a positive response from users to the increased amount of MQA material available. Time will tell.
Meanwhile…do you have access to Qobuz?

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Could you please clarify as I don’t understand the issue with MQA. I’ve read about it before but haven’t really understood if there is anything wrong with the format soundwise. I get the issue with needing different hardware to make it work as intended though. That might be a problem, especially for someone like myself using an NDS.

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I guess it’d be difficult to see the interest within Naim sources since they don’t support MQA. Its kind of a catch 22

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Lucifer, just my personal view. Some like MQA, some do not. I have compared with standard HiRes and just prefer the latter.

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As I understand it, the “owner” of the music is consulted, whether that is the music company, or the artist, or recording engineer, or other, and they determine the best master. This is then processed with MQA to remove the timing errors of the a/d’s and the phase errors of the rest of the analog recording chain, and it is then authenticated as an MQA Master.

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No doubt. They sound exactly the same as the 2011 remasters to me, but I only have ‘one unfold’ to play with.

I am not in the market for an MQA dac, according to roon its lossless, they sound like the flacs to me so I dont care. If they start sounding worse or are not lossless then I guess I will have to make do with quboz