Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music MQA listening impressions (with a MQA decoder)

I have heard decoded MQA on a few occasions now and I am a firm believer. In fact, I think that undecoded MQA played on decent machines is a worthwhile advance in its own right.

However, I do have some concerns about whether the bulk conversion of existing catalogues will be carried out with sufficient thought or care. When we read that TIDAL is converting its 30 million tracks to MQA, what exactly does that mean? Presumably that represents something in the order of 3 million albums, which is an impractical number for recording engineers or artists to “authenticate”. Are we really expecting TIDAL to go back to the high res masters to do all of these conversions, tweaking each one for the original ADC?

Personally I can see the advantages to TIDAL of using MQA mainly as a file compression technique, but I can also see the concerns some subscribers may have if TIDAL cease streaming in 16/44 FLAC and replace everything with MQA.