Tidal class-action

The great thing about forums is that you don't have to read all the threads of stuff you're sick of.

If you think mqa works, ask why your processor can only handle the first unfold to 96, and then you need another cheap chip, that has to be in your dac, for some reason, to make it able to go to 192 and beyond, with the same sized 44.1 stream.

Streaming is the price of 1 album, 1 higher res album if you get a higher res plan (unless you get the Tidal mqa plan, which upsamples from 44.1).  If you listen to more than that, or especially if you want to explore new music to find out what to buy, streaming is great, though automatically inferior in sound output quality compared to files.

Enjoy your logic.

Tidal's defense against having to give everyone their money back for all this time, would be that they didn't understand that MQA was fooling them, and sure won't want to give all that money back to customers for not even having to spend more on streaming.  They would have to try to get whatever money they gave MQA back in their own separate Tidal v MQA lawsuit.  That's probably what MQA sees coming.

You're right not to be a fan of MQA, though.  You can't prove they have any files over 44.1khz.  You could think you're playing your new favorite Beethoven track at 192 like it says, and think it sounds great, but it's actually Dua Lipa at 11khz.

"Are you alleging illegal behavior?"

Is anybody getting what's advertised?

"MQA Ltd. continues in operation, just as a US company would operate under Chapter 11. It's not especially uncommon. Qobuz, Kodak and American Airlines each went bankrupt. They're all still around."

That's very bad news.  Weill, if they don't shut down, Tidal could get some money back from them for having to give us ours back.

If you buy an engagement ring, and a dealer says it's cubic zirconium, indistinguishable from diamonds, and still costs double the regular price of what that would be if it were a diamond, she might still be happy with it, too.  Would you suffer inury if you found out cubic zirconiums were not the same as diamonds, and were actually cheaper too?

MQA will only ever prove to be false.  They can't sell it, new engineers would spill the beans.  They already sent the money to Switzerland.

Tidal doesn't tell you very much about MQA at all.  You find out later that everything is being streamed as MQA 44.1, your cpu handles 'unfolding' until 96khz, but you need their little chip to go up to 192.  And you won't get identical output to what your gear would be doing if Tidal had streamed the unaltered higher res.

You can't go too wrong if you avoid the scam plan you showed, that says it's better than basic 44.1, I don't know what they do to change the 44.1's to 44.1 mqa, but in that case any addition would only make them have to stream that bit more.

No, you don't see them say too much about mqa.  The technology's purpose is designed to give you higher res without the servers having to use more bandwidth than 44.1.  But it doesn't work, and they still just charge you double anyway.  Double burn for you.  Anybody on Tidal with that plan is burned, unless playing a 44.1 track, except it says it's mqa, so we don't even know if they have the original track.  There is no question that the original files would be fine.  It's MQA's job to be able to prove that their versions turn out identical, which is not going to be possible in the first place.  There is no reason for the consumer to worry about fraudulent mqa files, any difference to the original can only be worse.  This is why it is good news that mqa is shutting down.  They are trying to tell you that Master Quality Authenticated files sound better than higher res files.  Well, it could have a nice ring to it compared to the more grass-roots sounding 'higher res', but it doesn't work, it measures badly, they lied.  We don't want MQA.  MQA sounds like My Queer Ambitions.  The injured\damaged party is anyone who is or has been paying for the plan you quoted.  You got noise instead of the originals.

Compressing flac files again for use with a cpu the first unfold, need a cheap chip to go further, is never going to be real.  Tidal isn't proving they have the original higher res files on their drives in the first place.  Even if such a bandwidth saving chip existed, (no story why they say you need the chip to go higher than 96), we would still be paying double even without them having to use more.  You can't improve the format when you compress it.  Of course they'll choose the name Master Quality Authenticated.  It sounds the opposite of what they're actually doing.  My Queer Ambitions.

I'll pay $30/40 monthly for an uncompressed higher res wav stream with a good sounding default player, especially if Audirvana makes it work in theirs.  But I'd rather they just make streaming players decompress the track to a temporary hard drive file, and then play that.

Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water.  Those sales are good for people who don't have much capital, too.  Hey, maybe there's a nice desk chair at there?  Noo, it's MQA, you would be too.

The point is that we could go for our money back, because we can't prove that mqa tracks are the original unaltered streams that their licensing must have required, otherwise the artists could go after them also.  The thread is gauging the reaction to the hypothesis.

I should be posting this in a lawyer’s forum.

Let's get Julia Roberts to find us someone like the lawyer from that poison water movie.

Yeah, Qobuz is comingto Canada next month, we're making them work with a Quebec arm to make sure we have enough french content.  MQA has scammed their clients, nobody can prove that Tidal even has a copy of any higher res file.

moto_man:

mqa claims they are redbook rate that uncompresses to 96 with your cpu, but you have to buy gear with their cheap chip in it for it to be able to uncompress to anything higher, which will still be a redbook sized stream they say they 'fold' even more.  If it were possible to compress audio more, there would be a new file format with a codec, and people could compress and then fold their entire collections, even making 44.1 into something smaller.  The more you listen to the tech talk, the more obviously it isn't true.  There can only be fraudulent marketing supporting mqa.  They are using mqa to avoid bandwidth costs, while charging double anyways, and the result is output that looks like upsampling instead of the original higher res according to measurement devices.  Subscribers have been paying double for almost 10 years, and only been getting noisy upsampled results for it.  Even if it worked and unfolded to 192 and beyond from the same 44.1 stream, it won't sound the same as a simple stream of the same samplerate.  Many people don't seem to care to much about chip noise in their output, though.  But it doesn't work, it creates noise, anyways.  Since the mqa streams look like upsampling instead, Tidal can't prove that they even have an original copy of the mqa tracks, which is what the mqa name is designed to make it sound like they are even better at being.  False marketing.  Big ripoff technology.  Next, they'll charge double again and tell you you have to go buy the files and play them yourself.

People with 10k dac's are not talking about buying the same one with the new cheap chip.  They hate compression, even flac is not the original higher res stream, folding is upsampling.  There's no reason your cpu couldn't do the unfolding if it worked,  Actually they say it does do the first unfold to 96, then you need the cheap chip to make it to 192 with the same stream.

False claims.  MQA is currently still playing on Tidal, and many people are paying double for it to sound noisier than unaltered redbook would been.

If you prefer Tidal with MQA, you could ask them to start streaming everything at 22khz mqa rates.  Tell them you'll pay double for it.

I don’t understand why people are trying to make sure audio streamers don’t have to stream very much. Look at what Netflix is doing for it’s price. Probably at least 50 times as much bandwidth for it’s movies compared to higher res audio.

Audio is where there are picky people, too. I looked for forums where people complain about low streaming bitrate for video, and found none, started my own thread, not too much interest. But most audio people hate low res. Very small trickle, the original usb 1 spec can handle what’s coming for, well it looks like it will be a long time.

Probably because chicks are always into blockheads.

That's what they all look like to uncompressed high refresh rate video gamers, the blockhead stars.

If Netflix streams it’s 4k video at 15gbhr, that’s a bitrate of roughly 4166kbs. I haven’t seen anything released yet at 384kbs. but if you could be getting 192 for your track, that'ss roughly 21 times as much. That Netflix plan is 14.99 here, Tidal’s plan with the mqa that makes it stream only at 44.1, is 19.99.

bowinkle:

mqa’s use of upfolding instead of upsampling can indeed make your yamaha indicate whatever they want. When Tidal gets a 384 track, they will say that if you bought the same 10k dac with their cheap chip in it first, your dac will light up 384, also, from a 44.1 stream, instead of them streaming you the original 384.

If you're listening in your car, you'll have to trade it in for the current model with the chip in the dashboard that only works on Tidal, to get upfolded bitrate from Tidal.

The only merit would be for the provider to conserve bandwidth, chips add noise to the signal, they are full of transistors, which don’t sound as natural as tubes. But since it’s fake, they don’t spend any more, and you get noise for double your money.

Remasters happen in digital, they're starting to come out in higher res, now.  If you get real higher res files, it gets better than cd.  192 sure would be nice more often, but 96 is catching on.

juss49:

I haven't had much to complain about, until mqa.  I guess I could start another thread telling people I love mqa unfolding, so that I'm more popular.

nyslkye:

Why only 2.79, when people have been paying an extra $10 for years?

My hearing is broken if I think higher res sounds better?

Any talk of mqa should be unnecessary.  Compared to just streaming higher res, it's all noise.

It won't have costed much for the gearmakers of gear cheap enough to use the chip to have put it on there.  They can't cost too much, you can get the dac's for only 300.  Then it will unfold hidden data that takes no size, instead of upsamplnig.

tomcy6:

Well we'd just have to settle for justice served, sent a message to the future, then.

I think I remember my first internet speed after using a telephone modem was around 200kbs.  Enough for 192 uncompressed, not even flac'd, if they had had it.

People probably usually have around 100Mbs now, your higher res audio is a tiny trickle that must cost nothing, since games companies will let you download constantly at full speed, even though there's no reason to.  If there were, I'm sure it would eventually change.

cleeds:

It's the lawsuit thread, so that's what it's about.  People are just saying why they aren't interested, or we would only get $2.79 each.

When I don't get what I'm paying for, I want my money back.

MQA can not prove to users that Tidal has the original higher res track on it's server, based on what it is streaming.  That's why it chose the name Master Quality Authentification, it's what end users would be unable to prove they get with it.

I can hear that there are many satisfied users, but how would they know it's wrong if it is?

moto_man:

You paid for top tier, and they call it upfolding instead of oversampling. That’s why they chose the name that mqa stands for, it’s a decoy that sounds better than higher res.

fbgbill:

I like streaming as the option to discover more music. I can just pump a lot of funds into my digital playback, and not have to spend on a separate tuner also for foreign exposure, so my playback from all sources benefits. I get better sound than movie theatres from videos and games, too.

audioguy85:

I found that the Tidal player didn't sound as bad as the Amazon one did. Even better, Tidal plays in Audirvana, my favorite sounding player, so it's playback shoots to the top of streaming, though Qobuz works in there too, which isn't in my country until next month. I’m disappointed Tidal is faking it’s higher res with mqa.

For sure you will beat foreign sources with all of your other gear, but for auditioning new candidates, why not improve what you’re getting also?

It’s a relief hearing you disagree with everything even mqa says it’s doing, moto_man. You should be asking for an unaltered simple 24/96 stream, not lossless, if you don’t like people messing with your stuff.

MQA would probably tell Jay-z that he could do something so that it wasn’t the same as oversampling, so that they could have their stories straight. If Jay-z isn’t in on it, his whole company sure got taken.

If Jay-z shoots the mqa creator, all the other guys like that will want to kill him because of it.

If you haven't yet discovered everything that was recorded on tape, wouldn't you still eventually rather discover the dac they play the music on for the conversion to vinyl that they all need now?