There is a lot of information going around about MQA and a lot of different opinions. if you want my one-line opinion it is this: MQA is not lossless and increases the cost of an already expensive hobby, it has no reason to exist.
The Youtuber GoldenSound has done an amazing video on this subject that I will use to create this topic. Watch the video here and support him, because he does great reviews.
But according to the tests done by GoldenSound, we can say the following:
- MQA is NOT lossless
- MQA adds unwanted noise and distortion
- MQA is not usually sourced from an high sample rate master
- MQA ‘authentication’ does not authenticate anything
So what is MQA?
MQA is an encoding format that uses the FLAC container. They claim the following:
- Unlocks every detail of the original master recording
- Wherever audio exists, MQA ensures it’s the best it can possibly be
- Uses an unique ‘origami’ folding technique, the information is packaged efficiently to retain all the detail from the studio recording. Devices or apps with MQA decoding capability can fully ‘unfold’ the MQA file and reveal the original master resolution.
- They authenticate the file to guarantee that it is the definitive master recording from the studio.
- Retains 100% of the original recording
These claims are just not true.
Let’s look at some pictures, the following picture is a file comparison between the original file and the lossless file published on Deezer (Streaming service). This is good, all green, it is a bit for bit copy. Just how we want it.
Now let’s look at the same file, but published with MQA on Tidal.
Pricing
Outside of just not being lossless, MQA also needs to be implemented in software and hardware. To do this the companies must pay licensing fees to MQA. Which the consumer in the end will pay for. For example at the time of writing the Topping D90 DAC without MQA is 700 euros, the version that supports MQA is 900. So that is 200 euros to gain access to a service that we do not care about. Note that some other small changes are made, due to supply issues. But this is by far the main change.
To round it off
MQA has been caught in some lies, refused to give clear answers, and is asking licenses that make no sense. Even if the quality would be audible the same as true lossless it would still not be good for this hobby to have it around.
Let’s look at one last bad thing from Tidal and MQA. Tidal has been “mastering” albums to MQA without the permission of the artist. The artist Neil Young has already removed all of his music once from the service.
https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Tidal-Misleading-Listeners
And to make it even worse, if you select the “HIFI” option in Tidal in some cases you will not get lossless, you will get MQA without the unfolding.
We live in a time where we have easier access to music than ever, but it’s still a massive pain to get true lossless files from services. Let’s hope other services pick this up…
*Information by GoldenSound