Hello milesF; Actually there are many things that MQA does, and lowering bandwidth is only one. In some areas, this may not be important, but not every one has access to 100 mbs. The authentication means that I am getting the master from the owner of the music–not some derrivative that may or may not be paying the musicians what they agreed to. The reduced time smear to inaudible levels contributes to making the reproductions sound like the real instruments to my ears. The fact that it is backward compatible with cd, and can be used for streaming, cd, vinyl, and video sound makes the low time smear signal available to all these formats. As for being closed source and available by paying a royalty, so is RIAA, cd, Sony and Phillips for the invention of the cd, dolby, etc, etc, etc. Some companies sell hardware, and some license their technology. Its a perfectly normal business model.
24/192 FLAC needs like 5 Mbit/s, so “not everyone has 100” is a bit of a red herring.
The claims about authenticity were always interesting to me, but while the idea is good it’s not really working in practice. See what Neil Young had to say about it.
Similar with the supposed digital conversion correction, in reality nobody really knows what was used in the studio in most cases, and usually it’s many different tools lying around.
Take a look at the Times article about the big Universal fire. The music industry does not even properly preserve original masters because they wanted it as cheap as possible. They are not in a state to make the interesting MQA possibilities a reality:
(And even if it was, it should still not be done in a proprietary format that puts one company into a position to collect fees from everyone forever. It may be a normal business model to try to sell it, that doesn’t make it necessarily a good idea to buy into it)
I think this thread has gone off topic about whether MQA is good or bad.
My question is why can’t the app on the phone or tablet do the first unfold and send the data on thru Tidal Connect like how roon does first unfold? Would think limiting bandwidth to just 44.1k would be reason but Naim HE has no issues with Qobuz 192k files wirelessly from roon.
That’s interesting and ,as I say, first unfold sounded pretty good to me on the equipment I was using at the time. For whatever reason Naim have quite clearly decided to give MQA a wide berth though.
We’ll see how long Tidal stick with it as right now that seems the main thing preventing MQA becoming the Betamax of digital streaming.
But the weird thing is once it’s unfolded thru the app, it’s just 96/24 data at that point. Not asking Naim to do any further decoding. It’s just the sample rate Tidal Connect can receive. 44/24 vs 96/24. Naim itself would not be involved with MQA at all. All done within Tidal app.
Unless I’ve got this backwards and Tidal Connect on the end device is the one decoding. I thought was supposed to be done on app itself.
Oh Lord. No.
This is a man who is who is unable to distinguish between dynamic range and dynamics. His comments on audio are from a good place. His actual knowledge is risible.
The man has been in studios and producing his own music for decades now 
I’m sure he doesn’t know how his masters sound either.
The answer is because you have to send money to the MQA people. And the first unfold does nothing that a proper hi-res flac doesn’t do better
Actually I got it backwards. The app on the phone is not streaming the file to Naim, but just controlling the streaming that’s played natively on Naim. That’s why no MQA, as mentioned. Fees and fact Naim opposes MQA decoding on their devices.
I personally don’t like MQA and now avoid it. When I had Tidal unfolded vs folded was up for debate. Sometimes unfolded did weird thing with soundstage. Found unfolded was soother sounding and helped on cheap dac like ifi idsd. But on hig quality dac like Naim or Chord, hires sounds best.
True, I try to stay away but always fail. If people who like MQA could just buy an MQA DAC, that would be great. Then others could stay away from it and thereby ensure that alternatives exist, preventing the MQA rights holders from taking the entire music industry and marketplace hostage
Nice straw man argument. Wasn’t aware I was critiquing his music. Plenty of people are great musicians and producers but their skill set stops there.
I was commenting on his knowledge of matters audio on which he is generally an utter buffoon. At the last count he confused dynamics with dynamic range; claimed upsanplimg was the same as high res; was caught repeating bogus figures about Pono and claimed that even if you couldn’t actually hear any difference between analogue and digital you could feel it. That’s before you get to his repetition of the general confusion between the image of a digital sample and an analogue sound wave.
So yeah. Genius.
Maybe some of these people already have one of those, and would very much like their Naim in another room to have the same capability? 
He should join the Naim forum then, I’m sure he’d feel at home here.
I wasn’t meaning to talk about his music. Apart from writing and performing, he has spent a large part of his life trying to reproduce his sound in studio and on stage. I’m pretty sure he knows how it should sound. He can sit down in his studio, listen to his actual master tapes and compare them to hi-res and MQA on the same system. His verdict was that the MQA sounded nothing like his masters.
We are way off topic, but if that wasn’t the case, some actual quotes would be worthwhile
Porsche won’t make you a front-engined 911 either, even though that would be more similar to the KIA in the other garage
I know nothing about cars. 
And since this thread is about Tidal Connect, people with a Tidal HiFi subscription just maybe would like to use it to its full capabilities on their streamers, whether they run on fossil fuel, electricity, hydrogen, or are pedal-powered.
The point was that every company does the things how it thinks they should be done.
Naim has said many times that if there is sufficient demand for MQA, they are not opposed to it. So in that sense it’s of course right if customers who want it make themselves heard (maybe better a separate thread like one of the 100 MQA threads that already exist/ed). But so far, this demand was not sufficient according to Naim.
And my personal opinion is that MQA has big problems, but those who want it should have it. However it’s important for the health of the music industry that alternatives exist.
That we agree on. I mean, people have a Tidal subscription, it offers MQA, Naim support Tidal and now Tidal Connect. It seems a reasonable request to ask for MQA support (I myself have asked Clare nicely). Why this has to turn into an “MQA is the spawn of the devil” mud pool every time those three letters are mentioned is beyond me.
It’s because asking for the feature nearly every time is accompanied by claims that just don’t stand up to the facts, so some poor sod with a less-than-perfect day gets annoyed by it 
Check out the MQA website and you can find all the manufactures who support the capability. If you stick with Naim then settle in and enjoy the CD Quality (44.1/16) from Tidal.
I moved from Tidal to Qobuz a couple of years ago and have been enjoying Hi Res music. What they do not have in their catalogue is usually available on my NAS.