What has happend With Tidal?

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Realisticandcredibility

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What has happend with Tidal? Most albums are now in HIGH instead of the highest resolution MAX. It’s like you have the subscription for just CD-quality, but there is still some MAX, but most albums/artist has get down to HIGH. Someone knows something about this?
 
It’s generally accepted that around 90% of the catalogue of the major streaming services are just CD quality, and for the remaining 10%, only a small amount are the highest 24/192 resolution. Maybe MQA in Tidal masked those numbers
 
If you are specifically interested in what's available in HiRes you can e.g. have a look at the HiRes Albums and HiRes Playlists straight from the WiiM Home App:
IMG_20240818_110514.jpg

They used to be called MQA Albums and MQA Playlists. :)
 
Realisticandcredibility said:
What has happend with Tidal? Most albums are now in HIGH instead of the highest resolution MAX. It’s like you have the subscription for just CD-quality, but there is still some MAX, but most albums/artist has get down to HIGH. Someone knows something about this?
Click to expand...
Before 24 July the "MAX" badge, was for anything not at CD resolution, including masters 44.1KHz 16bit MQA encoded. If you touched the max badge, it changed to MQA or sampling rate value in case of hi-res flac.
Starting from 24th July Tidal removed MQA headers from all remaining MQA files. Hi-res ones were truly replaced by hi-res flac last summer.
As I wrote many times, those remaining "former MQA's" were not replaced by new flac, since when they are 44.1KHz 16bit their pcm content is the same as 44.1KHz 16bit flac and total replacing is a useless work. Just a file header changed.
Some compatible dac, like Bluos ones, still recognise those files as MQA, since they don't look at header but recognize the file structure. This can be a bad or good thing, depending from anyone biases. Among many things a good one for MQA was the custom antialias process.
Surely MQA never gave a clear overview of what the system does, choosing a mystical aura (supercazzola) and Tidal too never been clear about. Anyway I prefer it as streaming service...
 
harkpabst said:
If you are specifically interested in what's available in HiRes you can e.g. have a look at the HiRes Albums and HiRes Playlists straight from the WiiM Home App:


They used to be called MQA Albums and MQA Playlists. :)
Click to expand...
No longer reliable...
 
The list is not much…but many of the MQA was 24 bits, now they 16…and many was also 88,2/96 and some 192. Now 16 44,1.
As I wrote, it is like you’re going from MAX subscription to the cheaper CD-quality subscription. If they continue with this and not put them to hi-res agian then I Will go to Qobuz until Spotify comes With hi-res, then we’ll see…
 
harkpabst said:
It's been working with my (limited) tests.
Click to expand...
Maybe I misunderstood... 😎
Anyway, if you are searching for true hi-res, better use Tidal's search directly, it has a specific voice.
Instead, if you're looking for former MQA's 44.1KHz 16bit, there's no way unless using a Bluos dac...
 
Realisticandcredibility said:
The list is not much…but many of the MQA was 24 bits, now they 16…and many was also 88,2/96 and some 192. Now 16 44,1.
As I wrote, it is like you’re going from MAX subscription to the cheaper CD-quality subscription. If they continue with this and not put them to hi-res agian then I Will go to Qobuz until Spotify comes With hi-res, then we’ll see…
Click to expand...
You seem to be of the opinion that higher sample rates and bit depths (than 'CD') must intrinsically be better.
Try turning off / hiding anything that displays such info, sit back, relax, and see how much you enjoy just listening rather than looking!
 
Realisticandcredibility said:
The list is not much…but many of the MQA was 24 bits, now they 16…and many was also 88,2/96 and some 192. Now 16 44,1.
As I wrote, it is like you’re going from MAX subscription to the cheaper CD-quality subscription. If they continue with this and not put them to hi-res agian then I Will go to Qobuz until Spotify comes With hi-res, then we’ll see…
Click to expand...
Not exactly, after last summer 2023, quite all hi-res MQA's, those relying on 48KHz 24bit were replaced by genuine hi-res Flacs. Just some remained, due to editor choices, exemple L2.
The 99% of remaining MQA were 44.1KHz 16bit, they were encoded from 44.1KHz 16bit masters and not carrying any hi-res component. It's the MQA antialias process aka first unfolding that upsamples to 88.2KHz 24bit in order to "better" manage the impulse response. That's was WiiM app did with MQA enabled and WiiM app displayed 88.2KHz 24bit, just in conseguence of that process.
Those 44.1KHz 16bit MQA were improperly labeled MAX by Tidal and they didn't come from hi-res material.
If you believe me, I checked many files previously labeled max and now just CD quality, they are the same on Qobuz..
Don't know if such clarity lacking by Tidal is unintentional or not, or they feared to confuse customer... 😳
 
Achim1811 said:
So for changing to Qobuz you will get my 👍 Waiting for Spotify would expand many remaining life times 😂
And, what the .., will you get cheaper than Tidal with 10.99 per month??
Click to expand...
Have been trying out Tidal as I got 2 months for £2 which ends on the 5th September. To be honest apart from the Connect feature of Tidal it has nothing to bring to the table apart from a very few albums that Qobuz does not have in its catalogue. The other thing to note is to get Qobuz for £10.99 a month you have to pay a year up front £129.99 ( Which I prefer to do ) otherwise it is £12.99 a month. The Tidal Album suggestions and playlists are a bit more intuitive than Qobuz but not enough to poach me away from Qobuz.
 
hippyeverafter said:
Have been trying out Tidal as I got 2 months for £2 which ends on the 5th September. To be honest apart from the Connect feature of Tidal it has nothing to bring to the table apart from a very few albums that Qobuz does not have in its catalogue. The other thing to note is to get Qobuz for £10.99 a month you have to pay a year up front £129.99 ( Which I prefer to do ) otherwise it is £12.99 a month. The Tidal Album suggestions and playlists are a bit more intuitive than Qobuz but not enough to poach me away from Qobuz.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you should stick with Qobuz as you’re happy with it. I can understand people paying for a 12 month subscription in order to save £2 per month. But, personally I prefer to pay monthly as then you can ‘up sticks’ and move at any time. Case in point, for many (not me) Tidal recently dumped its whole MQA catalogue in favour of FLAC. For those invested in MQA that’s a dealbreaker (I’m not interested here in the arguments of which sounds better etc etc), because THEY believe MQA is preferable.
I’m ok with Tidal as it’s now £2.70 per month here. Qobuz would be £12.99 for me and I just don’t see it being worth the extra money.
Wish you happy listening
 
Yanto said:
Sounds like you should stick with Qobuz as you’re happy with it. I can understand people paying for a 12 month subscription in order to save £2 per month. But, personally I prefer to pay monthly as then you can ‘up sticks’ and move at any time. Case in point, for many (not me) Tidal recently dumped its whole MQA catalogue in favour of FLAC. For those invested in MQA that’s a dealbreaker (I’m not interested here in the arguments of which sounds better etc etc), because THEY believe MQA is preferable.
I’m ok with Tidal as it’s now £2.70 per month here. Qobuz would be £12.99 for me and I just don’t see it being worth the extra money.
Wish you happy listening
Click to expand...
But Qobuz hasn,t have the connect function. Haven,t they?
 
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