Tidal Connect

Nope, that’s how TIDAL Connect works!

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Thanks! I just did that and seems to work fine now.
Counter-intuitive, indeed :slight_smile:

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Glad we could help. Welcome to the Forums, by the way!

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No - I don’t believe you are. You play something - then “sling it” at the Naim.

I agree it’s a bit inelegant - but it’s the nature of the beast

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I’m a bit lost here and coming to the subject late…

I have just one question.

I know that Tidal MQA (aka Tidal Masters?) isn’t supported on the Naim Streamers native….

…but is it supported via TIDAL CONNECT?

…so when I “throw” a “Tidal Masters” playlist at the Naim from my phone, is the native resolution, or being down sampled?

…I’d be surprised if Tidal signed off Tidal Connect support with down sampling - but hey, I’m surprised all the time :man_shrugging:

This has been answered before, but here goes: since the Naim doesn’t announce itself to Tidal as “MQA capable”, it gets the ‘regular’ hifi stream, which is usually FLAC at 44.1 kHz, 16 bits (although occasionally I come across some stuff that even on Tidal is only available in AAC).

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Thanks - that’s a shame - and a missed opportunity of course. But I know other people may disagree, viewing it as proprietary, but in my experience it sounds great (and I also know some people disagree on that!)

It’s not “viewed as” proprietary, it IS proprietary without any doubt.

But instead of rehashing the arguments on both sides, if you put “MQA” in the search box and check “search this thread”, you will find 50+ posts about this including Clare’s official statements.

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That’s told me… :roll_eyes:

…was a little late to the thread - possibly because of the pinned threads announcing this feature, making hard to see other “hot threads” :roll_eyes::joy:

…but I have my answer now - so I’ll move on :+1:t2:

I’m not trying to tell you anything except that Clare spent considerable time answering this question, and the fabulous invention of data storage and search lets us read these answers without bothering her again.

But I’m not the forum police, feel free to restart the same discussion, I don’t care.

Cool :sunglasses:

Hopefully it won’t be long before you have a distraction from all this streaming lark (keeps fingers, toes and everything crossed.)

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My feeling is that MQA was developed at a time when few if any of us had reliable broadband access and hence could not stream uncompressed HiRes content ie 24 bit reliably.They may have bet that widely available broadband would not come to pass. I think if it were today they probably would have never developed it. Just my opinion.

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No, they would have developed it either way. Bob Stuart who developed MQA (and owned Meridian) has been called a “proven liar” by the late Charles Hansen of Ayre acoustics.
Hansen tells a few unflattering stories about Bob Stuart. Just look up the dinner story when Stuart “obtained” a circuit technology from John Curl and tried to patent it. It tells you everything you need to know about Stuart and MQA.

I have now carried out another quick look through my music library and this time round found that around 65 albums in my Roon music library appear not to be available from Qobuz. Last time I checked there were around 95 omissions, which is a bit strange. Possibly a number of these albums have been very recently added by Qobuz, or a number of the Tidal albums in my library are no longer available.

Anyway, here is a sample list of those omissions in Qobuz (I’m not going to list the full 65). In summary, the vast majority of the omissions fall into the ‘Blues’ genre, and most are understandably not what most people would classify as ‘mainstream’. Here are some examples (in no particular order):

Ronnie Earle & the Broadcasters: “Blues Union” - Blues
“Good News” - Blues
“The luckiest man” - Blues
“Spread the love” - Blues
Keb Mo: “That hot pink blues album” - Blues
Doug Macleod: “There’s a time” - Blues
Susan Tedeschi: " Wait for me" - Blues
Delbert McClinton: “Room to breathe” - Blues
“The great songs” - Blues
Elvin Bishop: “Red dog speaks” - Blues
Kaz Hawkins: “Feelin’ good” - Blues
Julie Rhodes: “Bound to meet the devil” - Blues
Kirk Fletcher: “Shades of blue” - Blues
Mike Zeto: “Greyhound” - Blues
Baba Blues: " Fishermen" - Blues
“Kompassemars Man” - Blues
Robben Ford: “Purple House” - Blues
Moby Grape: “Moby Grape” - Blues
Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee: “Live at the new Penelope cafe” - Blues

etc, etc and now some other genres:

Bob Seger: “Going places” - Pop/Rock
“Workout” - Pop/Rock
Focus: “Focus 3” - Pop/Rock
Donovan: “Season of the Witch” - Pop/Folk
John Cruise: “Acoustic soul”
Stephen Inglis: " Soul sound slack"
“Shades on Dylan”
“Fringes of the wayside”
The Cate Brothers: “Radioland” - Soul
Iain Matthews: “Contact”
James Gang: “Miami” - Rock
Terry Reid: “Seed of memory” - Pop/Rock
Imelda May: “Life.Love.Flesh.Blood” - Pop
“No turning back” - Pop
“Tribal (Special Edition)” - Pop
Patrick Watson: “Adventures in your own back yard” - Pop/Rock
Spyro Gyro: “Wrapped in a dream” - Jazz
Jacob Bro: “Balladeering” - Jazz
Eric Tingstadt: “Electric City” - Jazz/New Age
Craig Chaquico: “Follow the Sun” - Jazz/New Age
Bruce Becvar: “Time Dreamss” - New Age
Jean Baptiste Marino: “De mi alma a la Marino” - World/international
“A mi vera” - World/International
Ron Ickes: “Road song” - Folk/Country
Hayley Thompson-King: “Psychotic Melancholia” - Country

Now most of these may well be artists who are completely new to you. However they are all albums that I listen to fairly regularly, and most of which (particularly those in the ‘Blues’ genre) have been discovered by means of Roon Radio.

They would be a big miss to me were I to move from Tidal to Qobuz.

Think you’re right. I got into it when my only domestic broadband source was metered 4G off the local mast. First unfold of MQA on an old Denon DAC sounded appreciably better than 44/16.

Now we get unlimited 4G up to around 100 mbs and Qobuz hi res is a no brainer at £12 pcm.

These days MQA looks like a solution in search of a problem.

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Interesting. I have to say there is lots there I would never classify as blues so, to me, it still looks essentially random.

I would definitely agree with Roon’s classification of most of these as blues - unless of course you are of the opinion that in order for an album to be truly classified as blues, the performers have to be long dead. Do you actually know any of them? I had never heard of most of the blues performers I have listed, with the exception of Susan Tedeschi, Keb Mo, Delbert McClinton, Moby Grape, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (all of whom definitely fall into the blues category). I would never have found the others without the assistance of Roon Radio.

It doesn’t really matter!

Even if you believe that the missing albums are completely random and not in your opinion primarily blues related, it’s irrelevant. The fact that they (and many others) are in my Roon music library and I don’t want to lose them is what counts to me.

I know about 60% of those and I’d say they aren’t especially left field. On reflection I think the genre classifications are largely correct. I do appreciate it’s just a sample but equally I think it demonstrates what we already know i.e. that streaming is not “all the music ever”. Equally I’m still not seeing those “large” gaps or omissions described by several hi-fi mags. I’ve a list probably even more mainstream than yourself. I consider them inexplicable omissions (although probably licensing) but I don’t see them as illustrative of a wider issue with Qobuz.

There is for example one John Cale album only available on Tidal. A Graham Parker album which no longer exists anywhere obvious. A Nils Lofgren compilation which was near perfect but no platform has it. And so on.

Yes, I agree that there are some inexplicable and seemingly arbitrary gaps across all of the streaming services.

I hasten to add that I have nothing whatsoever against Qobuz. Qobuz is my go-to provider for the purchase of ‘hi-res’ downloads. In fact, were I to be moving into streaming for the first time nowadays I would almost certainly choose Qobuz and be very happy with its music catalogue. However, I moved into external music streaming quite a few years ago with Tidal and am very reluctant to switch and accept the loss of those albums in my Roon music library that Qobuz can’t deliver.