Roon/Tidal - MQA still available?

[Anupc (Anup)]

@PAR

The extent is unclear to me as the figure of 13 bits remaining comes , I think, from Archimago’s Musings and I do not know if or how this was validated.

No. It comes from one of MQA’s Patents.

@PAR

However if I accept the figure I wonder what its significance is with real commercial recordings.

To me subjectively at the time, on Chord DACs at least (both Dave and the Mojo both of which I owned), it was quite apparent that MQA encoded tracks were not quite Redbook quality. Never got round to exploring it more objectively given dCS supported decoding from quite early on.

[still-one (Jim)]

In my listening MQA recordings were significantly better than most Redbook versions.

As for myself I am glad there are still the occasional albums available on Tidal. Listened to one yesterday.

[Anupc (Anup)]

@still-one

In my listening MQA recordings were significantly better than most Redbook versions.

Jim, you might have misunderstood, my post above is about MQA tracks as listened to on Non-MQA capable DACs.

[still-one (Jim)]

You are correct. I reread your post and agree you were discussing what you heard with non-MQA dacs.

sorry.

[still-one (Jim)]

A fine version of Linda Ronstadt’s “Prisoner in Disguise” is still available in MQA on Tidal.

[Donald_D]

It sounds amazing. I also listened to the Qobuz version with the F1 filter (with F3 it’s unlistenable). It doesn’t even come close to the Tidal MQA version with F3.