Tidal Releases Apple Watch App With Offline Playback and More

[bwayne]

I don’ t care about my watch. However all of this lossless related talk is giving me a headache because I know I’ll soon wind up wanting to rip the streams and repackage them for Roon. Just when I thought I had my FLAC tags cleaned up and organized perfectly!

 

[Takeo Apple]

wait til you try to update your apple watch. You'll have to delete those 5 songs..and EVERYTHING on your watch. You will have to individually delete all your messages or if you're like me, just reset the dang thing, update, then restore. 🙄

wow, the Apple Watch has 32 GB internal storage and you must have had a lot of stuff then...

 

[Azzin]

If people really cared about lossless music they would have already had it for years via tidal etc. The sudden interest on here seems a bit plastic. That coupled with the sneering isn’t a great look.

Your post sounds like you sneering about people that haven’t dabbled in lossless music yet.

 

[pauloregan]

Your post sounds like you sneering about people that haven’t dabbled in lossless music yet.

Not at all. I haven't dabbled myself yet.

 

[Attonine]

Unfortunately Tidal is fairly regularly criticised for the quality of their master tracks.

Exactly, and the criticism of MQA seems to be gaining momentum.

 

[darkharbour]

I've seen the awesome tidal activity at the Bay of Fundy. 😝 Is that it?

As a resident of the Fundy area (highest tides in the world!), I highly approve of this reference.

 

[HDFan]

As a resident of the Fundy area (highest tides in the world!), I highly approve of this reference.

Totally worth it to get up at 5 am to see a river reverse tide.

the criticism of MQA seems to be gaining momentum.

Unfortunately neither MQA or Tidal did well in the recent testing:

Researcher publishes music to Tidal to test MQA

This is a long video so here's some highlights: On the files he looked at (including one professional release) MQA renders ultrasonic content into audible noise and reduces dynamic range. MQA added noise and distortion to the file in the audible band and the 44.1khz unfold. It adds even more...

www.avsforum.com

• On the files he looked at (including one professional release) MQA renders ultrasonic content into audible noise and reduces dynamic range. MQA added noise and distortion to the file in the audible band and the 44.1khz unfold. It adds even more above 22khz when fully unfolded. This was true for both 44.1 and 88.2 Khz masters.
• Tidal appears to be streaming 44.1khz MQA files instead of FLAC when MQA is available which means you're not getting lossless streaming for those files
• The MQA "blue light" indicates nothing, it will light up when a master file has been altered from what was submitted by the engineer and can still be triggered if you remove up to 30% of the track's audio data.
• The most accurate way to listen to MQA is on the first unfold (44.1) only.
• MQA's behavior is extremely shady, they intentionally obfuscate the quality of source files, refuse to answer questions, do not provide test tools and had his tracks pulled from Tidal.
• MQA's response to this research (starts at 29 minutes) was full of errors, the usual vague buzzwords and outright misinformation.

The fact that MQA removed the test tracks, does not permit evaluations (you can't MQA to digital to do a bit-by-bit comparison, only analogue), and in the meeting avoided answering the questions pretty much confirms that his evaluation is correct.

 

[Attonine]

Totally worth it to get up at 5 am to see a river reverse tide.



Unfortunately neither MQA or Tidal did well in the recent testing:

Researcher publishes music to Tidal to test MQA

This is a long video so here's some highlights: On the files he looked at (including one professional release) MQA renders ultrasonic content into audible noise and reduces dynamic range. MQA added noise and distortion to the file in the audible band and the 44.1khz unfold. It adds even more...

www.avsforum.com

• On the files he looked at (including one professional release) MQA renders ultrasonic content into audible noise and reduces dynamic range. MQA added noise and distortion to the file in the audible band and the 44.1khz unfold. It adds even more above 22khz when fully unfolded. This was true for both 44.1 and 88.2 Khz masters.
• Tidal appears to be streaming 44.1khz MQA files instead of FLAC when MQA is available which means you're not getting lossless streaming for those files
• The MQA "blue light" indicates nothing, it will light up when a master file has been altered from what was submitted by the engineer and can still be triggered if you remove up to 30% of the track's audio data.
• The most accurate way to listen to MQA is on the first unfold (44.1) only.
• MQA's behavior is extremely shady, they intentionally obfuscate the quality of source files, refuse to answer questions, do not provide test tools and had his tracks pulled from Tidal.
• MQA's response to this research (starts at 29 minutes) was full of errors, the usual vague buzzwords and outright misinformation.

The fact that MQA removed the test tracks, does not permit evaluations (you can't MQA to digital to do a bit-by-bit comparison, only analogue), and in the meeting avoided answering the questions pretty much confirms that his evaluation is correct.

Totally worth it to get up at 5 am to see a river reverse tide.



Unfortunately neither MQA or Tidal did well in the recent testing:

Researcher publishes music to Tidal to test MQA

This is a long video so here's some highlights: On the files he looked at (including one professional release) MQA renders ultrasonic content into audible noise and reduces dynamic range. MQA added noise and distortion to the file in the audible band and the 44.1khz unfold. It adds even more...

www.avsforum.com

• On the files he looked at (including one professional release) MQA renders ultrasonic content into audible noise and reduces dynamic range. MQA added noise and distortion to the file in the audible band and the 44.1khz unfold. It adds even more above 22khz when fully unfolded. This was true for both 44.1 and 88.2 Khz masters.
• Tidal appears to be streaming 44.1khz MQA files instead of FLAC when MQA is available which means you're not getting lossless streaming for those files
• The MQA "blue light" indicates nothing, it will light up when a master file has been altered from what was submitted by the engineer and can still be triggered if you remove up to 30% of the track's audio data.
• The most accurate way to listen to MQA is on the first unfold (44.1) only.
• MQA's behavior is extremely shady, they intentionally obfuscate the quality of source files, refuse to answer questions, do not provide test tools and had his tracks pulled from Tidal.
• MQA's response to this research (starts at 29 minutes) was full of errors, the usual vague buzzwords and outright misinformation.

The fact that MQA removed the test tracks, does not permit evaluations (you can't MQA to digital to do a bit-by-bit comparison, only analogue), and in the meeting avoided answering the questions pretty much confirms that his evaluation is correct.

MQA posted a blog rebuttle to this YouTube video. The Youtuber has since responded to the MQA blog, it’s worth a watch. To note is that MQA didn’t remove the files from Tidal, MQA can’t do that, so it looks like Tidal are responsible for this part anyway. However, it still holds that MQA are getting hit from all sides. Personally I moved from Tdial to Quboz, indirectly because of MQA….Neil Young removed his catalogue from Todal so took me with him.