Perhaps - though reflecting on it they may just say that Naim is a partner and of course you get the full, aherm, benefit of MQA!
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Tidal has one percent (probably lower) of the streaming market and at best a third of Tidal users have access to MQA content and not all of those cares.
MQA is a non-issue.
If you compare lossy to lossy between Spotify paid (correctly setup) and MQA (first unfolded) on musicality then I think Spotify (via Naim) is preferable.
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HI Clare, We have just received access to Qobuz in Australia and I can’t use it. I have an NDX and for some reason I have to buy an NDX2 to access Qobuz. I was expecting that Naim would roll out a firmware update for the NDX but they say they won’t. (Naim, if you are reading I would be delighted to buy an NDX2 if you offer me a trade in on my NDX.)
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…I traded in my NDX with my dealer who originally sold it to me. Naim does not sell direct so you will have to call some Australian dealers.
My apologies for false info!
Further checking and debugging on my system shows that the Tidal MQA stream sent to my Linn streamer is really 13/44.1 (or 48.2) MQA encapsulated as FLAC.
It’s not that Naim won’t roll out a firmware update to NDX, but rather that because of the limited memory capacity on the NDX, they cannot as there is no room left to include additional firmware for Qobuz.
Best
David
There is not enough space available in the firmware memory of the old streamers for both Tidal and Qobuz and they decided for Tidal, quite reasonably given the coverage
They could offer two versions of the firmware then, one for Tidal and one for Qobuz and you could choose which one you wanted to install.
If this is technically possible it would be ideal but I’m sure Naim know whether or not it is feasible - and everything they have said suggests that it isn’t.
Not technically feasible, i’m afraid. We’re committed to keeping legacy products performing well - for example, there’s a firmware upgrade in development right now for our older streaming products - but major updates are no longer possible. They still do everything and more they did when they were launched, though.
I’m not convinced by the argument that it’s technically impossible to add Qobuz support. That said, it took Naim a huge amount of time and effort to get Tidal working reasonably reliably on an old platform that really wasn’t designed for web streaming. I think there are limits to how much of Naim’s limited resources, as a relatively small company, could reasonably be allocated to putting this level of support into a discontinued product.
Even if they were to do this, they would almost certainly have to limit support to 16/44.1 to have any chance of the very small buffer coping with the stream. If you really want Qobuz, you need the right tool for the job.
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I think this is likely the case: sometimes they send an MQA-encoded 16/44.1 (lowest 3 bits swapped for the compression, hence “lossy”)), and sometimes they send a Red Book 16/44.1 (full 16 bits lossless).
Your experience in failing to find a non-Master version of Rumours when searching Tidal inspired me to try something in our control.
I used the Naim app to search for Rumours; played it (shows as 16/44.1 FLAC); marked it as a “favourite” (hence added to my collection. Switch to either Roon or Tidal app, and look in my collection to see what got chosen: it’s the Master version (in Tidal, that’s all it says; Roon specifies it’s the 96kHz Master version). Doesn’t look like there is a “secret” Red Book version of Rumours. I did not use any tools to scan the actual stream, I don’t have access to that… so this isn’t a definitive answer by any means.
I then searched for Solar Power (that was the new album I used as my example of how to select the Red Book rather than the Master version in Tidal). When I searched in the Naim app, there were three versions in the list: the top of the list turned out to be the Master version (as indicated by the logo in the Tidal app), while the other two turned out to be Red Book; there is no differentiation in the Naim app. You can make any one of the three a favourite; when streamed via the Naim app, all indicate 16/44.1 FLAC streams on the “now playing” screen.
I have no way of knowing whether Tidal supplies the non-Master version (if available) when a Naim streamer is making the request for a Master version title; I think it’s a fair assumption that Tidal supplies the Red Book version when it’s available and that’s the one you requested. This is definitely one for @Stevesky …
Lots going on under the covers here. Good luck getting further clarification!
Regards alan
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Hi @jsgreenwood @alan33 @ChrisSU
Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned MQA debate 
Streaming service track provenance
This is one of the biggest problem with any album that is not a modern release, is what generation of copy is it and has been compromised by some post production process.
In the case of TIDAL it is a server side decision the track that is delivered and just because its in a FLAC file does not mean its the best sounding version available. The MQA masters situation has definitely muddied the water as batch encoded material will always be hit or miss if it sounds any good + when applied to a 16bit file it will rarely outperform the original version that the mastering engineer signed off when they did the CD transfers. There will always be exception cases as there are some horrendous CD’s from the past that have been remastered and have sorted out some nasties in those original transfers.
Naim has no way to influence the Tidal system. We ask for Hifi (FLAC) and the track that comes back is the track we play.
On a side note the world of provenance is not always as it seems. Last month I noticed the Badgers friend, Brian May (Queen) re-released his 90’s album ‘Back to the light’. Remastered CD 16/44.1, 24/48 and also a somewhat harder to find 24/96 variant. The 16/44.1 and 24/48 and MQA version are not that great at all - sounds like it was recorded on an Alesis ADat. However, the 24/96 FLAC is completely different mastering wise and brings some life and dynamic range into what is otherwise a pretty lousy recording.
Qobuz support on legacy
Buried deep on this forum I have described in detail why its very hard to do highdef streaming over the net on this platform. Quick version: The bridgeco streaming IC used in those products only has a 6K DMA buffer for the Ethernet peripheral which in turn means the TCP/IP window has to be restricted to that size or risk overflowing and then causing a storm of TCP retries. For 16/44.1 FLAC its right on the edge (it works out that about an 80ms network link latency from CDN to streamer is supported). As data rates go up it gets to the point where it will be very unreliable on the average ISP that run their networks quite loaded. For Qobuz support we really need to support HD and not just a small subset of their catalogue. Using a UPnP server that proxies the stream works around this issue as the UPnP server hardware, if running on modern hardware will not have this networking restriction.
Best wishes
Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.
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Thanks, as ever, for taking the time to add detail and behind-the-scenes info for us, Steve. Much appreciated.
Regards alan
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Thanks for the input, Steve. Would it then be fair to say that a Tidal track could be either a regular 16/44.1 version or (perhaps increasingly) a 13/44.1 non-unfolded MQA if that’s what they happen to have?
I seem to remember that in the past you gave assurances that if an MQA was selected on a Naim streamer, Tidal would automatically send a lossless 16/44.1 version instead, but it seems that this may no longer be the case??
Hi @ChrisSU
So far I have not seen any evidence that they send an mqa 16bit encoded variant of a track for non mqa equipment, but if anyone has their suspicions that this can happen then let me know of artist/album/track and i’ll pull the flac file from Tidal and see what’s in it.
Best
Steve
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Thanks again Steve. Perhaps we are all getting a bit too paranoid about this! For the time being I’m happy to have bypassed the whole issue by jumping ship to Qobuz, so I’ll let others fret over it.
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Paranoia among audiophiles? Impossible! 
Thanks @Stevesky
In the (tl;dr) comments above, there was a specific question about Fleetwood Mac Rumours: it is only listed as a Master version via all search routes attempted…
Taking you up on your generous offer to look at the data, could you confirm whether Rumours arrives on Naim equipment as a 16-bit MQA file, or if there is a (non-advertised) Red Book FLAC that gets streamed?
Thanks!
Regards alan
Hi Steve, can you try this one? Album ID 703312 (I can’t post links)
According to the tools I have access to, it’s serving a MQA FLAC even when “lossless” quality is requested.