Bitperfect tidal software#
Bitperfect tidal series#

“After a series of such manipulations, the resulting 44.1 kHz data, the layered data streams, and a final “touchup” stream… are provided to the playback device… together distributed as a 48/24 stream, of which 48/16 bit-decimated part can be played by normal 48/16 playback equipment. The MQA playback process is displayed in Roon software. It’s entirely possible it delivers on all its promises, but they don’t clearly explain how they achieve it. Sadly, the lack of transparency does MQA a disservice. And if there’s something that gets the audiophile community riled up, it’s when they think there is a whiff of ‘snake oil’ in the air. Their documentation uses proprietary terms, jargon, and unmeasurable claims. Unfortunately, the MQA corporation itself hasn’t made it any easier for consumers.

A ton has been written on the subject, and if anything is consistent between it all, it’s that the MQA process isn’t easy to describe or understand. To understand the controversy around MQA, we need to have a basic understanding of what Master Quality Authenticated is all about.

Concerns Raised by the GoldenSound Video.

Science, Neuroscience, or Psuedo-Science? Time-Domain-Focused Filtering.

This stands in stark contrast to the near-ubiquitous ‘lossless is best’ philosophy in audio.įrom the consumer’s point of view, what is most obviously important? Simply, does MQA deliver the highest possible sound quality? Seems easy enough. Unsurprisingly, a big part of the controversy comes from the use of a lossy format to deliver the claimed highest-fidelity audio experience.

Bitperfect tidal software#

MQA certified hardware or software is required on the end user’s side to ‘unfold’ the file for playback. MQA involves using a proprietary lossy compression technique to ‘fold’ (their term) an audio file into a lossless (FLAC) container, primarily intended to reduce its size for streaming.

MQA is a new approach to high-resolution digital audio encoding and reproduction, focusing on the time domain, rather than the more common strategy of increasing bit depth and sample rate. MQA is the creation of Meridian Audio (and now MQA Ltd.) company founder Bob Stuart and long-term collaborator Peter Craven. Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) was publicly launched in 2015 and has been caught up in controversy since its inception. Test tracks were submitted to TIDAL for conversion to MQA and compared to the originals. The GoldenSound video is far from the first source to raise concerns with MQA but has garnered a lot of interest likely due to its rational, scientific approach and exposé style.