No still not there!
If you are using System
Automation volume control it cannot use the slider, only the +/- buttons, so the option is not shown in the app.
I donât prefer MQA or tidal
I like to have bit perfect files delivered
Unfortunately MQA is not despite their advertising that they are
Bob Stuart of meridian claims of studio masters is highly questionable
How on earth can it be a studio master when the file is modified by their proprietary MQA process ??? And to my ears I donât prefer that modification
When Spotify goes to CD quality ⌠
why would any need tidal connect ???
I agree with all but it does not seem to have anything to do with my post. What I wrote was that you can ignore MQA, Tidal does not force you to use it, Naim does not use it, but using the Tidal app and Tidal Connect may still make sense for some users. And I would never choose Spotify over Tidal because they rip off artists
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Yes well itâs becoming increasingly difficult to find non MQA albums in tidal
Using a 44.1 quality file but of the MQA album still gives the modified album
Well seems that way to my ears
Just turn off Master? Anyways, it still has nothing to do with what I wrote
That actually doesnât work. I have all set to HiFi and still get Master albums everywhere. (Obviously when playing itâs HiFi, if only because I donât have any MQA enabled devices)
OK, havenât used Tidal in a while. But if itâs playing Hifi, why would one care?
In any case, point was that for some people it makes sense to use the Tidal app, Naim customers requested the feature, so why not provide it.
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Oh, I donât. I was just clarifying that what you wrote doesnât work that way.
I fully agree with what youâve said so far.
Thanks, itâs good info!
If you attempt to play an MQA file on a device that doesnât support it, Tidal will automatically send a regular 44.1 stream instead. There was some speculation that this wasnât the case, and that you could be getting a claimed 16/44.1 stream that was not actually bit perfect, but I recall that @Stevesky confirmed this some time ago.
There are 2 versions of albums and I donât prefer to hear the MQA remastered one as it sounds inferior on my Chord DAC
Terrible treatment of transients⌠on the MQA remaster
If it nothing to do with what you wrote I offer you a big apology mate⌠lol 
hope you accept it, it will break my heart otherwise
My point however stays⌠wish tidal would just STOP with their relentless MQA remastering
It just confused me, all good. FWIW I do understand a lot of the criticism vs MQA
Or in fact give us the option to not play the MQA remasters
I have to go and find the non MQA versions and add them to favourites to play them
When I play a MQA file from Tidal via Roon, the Naim app shows its playing a hi-res file, for example:
Yes, thatâs correct behaviour. The Naim App is just showing the PCM decode of the MQA that has been unfolded by Roon.
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Thatâs because youâre using Roon.
Hi @ChrisSU
Re: Naim vs Tidal vs MQA
When a manufacturer decides to support TIDAL their unique access key has properties attached to it which include lossless format preferred and also if MQA is supported. To get the latter requires the product to be MQA certified.
When a TIDAL stream is requested to be played the product can give a hint on the quality wanted (naim = lossless by default). On Tidalâs server lots of if/but logic is done based on users subscription, country, what the device can play, the quality hint + actual quality tidal have and eventually a stream is returned to be played. We at Naim duly play it. TIDAL Connect uses similar logic so itâs more a preference if the end user prefers using the TIDAL app or ours - they have different pros and cons. The MQA encoded streams are not sent to a non MQA TIDAL enabled product.
The provenance of these lossless streams are however unknown and maybe totally bit perfect as signed off by original mastering engineer, or may have a bit of a questionable history as its gone through the labels & distribution channel. In the days of CD it was not uncommon to see some releases that have been bounced though DAT machines, analogue nâth generation copies, audio watermarking etc. I have various CDâs where they were HDCD encoded by the studio, but the encoding (and recording) was unintentionally damaged later on by the record labels.
On MQA the provenance in theory is handled. Aka a blue light should indicate that the audio was signed off by a trusted source, a green indicates otherwise. Bob did a good article on this here: https://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/mqa-authentication-and-quality/#
It is unknown how much has been batch encoded by the permission of the label/publisher vs carefully tuned by an experienced mastering engineer to sound right when replayed through the MQA process. This key factor can seriously muddy the waters on audio performance when dealing with any algorithm that is reducing data in a lossy manner or trying to optimise things. A software algorithm has no tuned ear for music and subtleties of the original performance, so anything being batch encoded will be a bit hit or miss if it achieved its performance goals or not.
Best wishes
Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.
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Thanks for the explanation, Steve.
Surely the whole point of the blue light/green light thing is to verify exactly this. Otherwise âMaster Quality Authenticationâ is, by definition, a sham, or am I missing something?