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Tidal Masters post possibly hundreds of Universal Music Group titles

The first fruits of the announcement earlier this year that UMG will support MQA are now appearing, totally unheralded as Master recordings on Tidal. I have found dozens and dozens of titles from artists sprinkled throughout their catalog. At this point it seems mostly focused on the Capitol pop catalog and the DG classical one, although I have seen a few Philips and Decca recordings, too.  The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, The Band, Nat King Cole, Glen Campbell, Iron Maiden, Tina Turner, Daniel Barenboim, Herbert von Karajan, Gustavo Dudamel...just to name a few.

Preliminary auditions are also favorable. Listening to  "The Band" right now. "A drunkards dream" indeed.
sarich
6 responses Add your response
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Not sure I buy the MQA logic (is it really worth dropping bit depth to get higher sample rate than 48KHz) but my hats off to Tidal because the Masters selection does have some well mastered stuff!

I now use Roon to control Tidal and my own music collection. I love it.
calloway
874 posts
 
shadorne..i have been listening to full MQA through my Lumin A1 for about a week comparing MQA/nonMQA tracks on the same album and 90% of the MQA tracks are easily sonically better then their nonMQA counterpart.Some are significantly better..There is a list of 3400 MQA albums with a link on audioshark.com in the lumin forum section.. it is great that apparently Universal is beginning to release their albums and they are beginning to appear in the 'Masters' section of Tidal..pretty cool
willgolf
936 posts
 
Calloway....I have a Lumin A-1.  I am getting some buffering on albums that have a little M at the bottom of them through Tidal.  Regular albums are fine.  Might that M stand for MQA?   Have you experienced any buffering?  I do like the Lumin App.  It is very easy to use.
oharchie's avatar
oharchie
31 posts
 
The M is for Master quality tracks. You need a DAC that can process MQA files in order to take advantage of that feature from what I understand.

The buffering is the app negotiating with your internet connection. If you can adjust your router/modem to produce a stronger signal you might not see that anymore.

Tidal HIFI/MASTER is entirely worth it IMO.


oharchie's avatar
oharchie
31 posts
 
http://www.schiit.com/news/news/why-we-wont-be-supporting-mqa
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,597 posts
 
willgolf, I have a Lumin and I usually use the Linn Kazoo app to control it because it works better than Lumin’s app on the Android tablet I use. I occasionally get buffering  that I can’t find a reason for. It happens with both cd quality and MQA albums.

MQA streams at approximately the same bit rate as cd quality so it shouldn’t make a difference, but chips and software have minds of their own.

Are you using an iPad for control?
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