Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music Tidal MQA albums found so far

Oh, there's some classic Rod Stewart? Great!

Can any of these MQA albums being released on Tidal be purchased yet?

American Pie and Vincent on the lone album of Don I can find are PCM files while the rest of the album are MQA. Crossroads sounds amazing. 192.

Is this experience the same for you folks ?

thanks /bt

Not with all the money in the world.

I for one would point to the absence of album art for the low key release !!

Yes I've noticed a surprising lack of cover art on many of these new Tidal Masters releases. Some appears a few days later, others don't. You'd think they'd take a little more care with the type of customer who evidently cares about quality more?

Made me think this is just a guinea pig experiment by Universal to get the tracks on stream in a public service. If this all takes off, no reason they just don't stream direct themselves. \

But Im not complaining Karajan Ninth Sym I find needs vol 70 min to be impactful. Mravinsky on the other hand is much better volume wise.

VK,

The Solti Walkure in 44.1 is sounding very good.

Best /bt

Not if it was from a digital master and the master was 44.1... quite the opposite of a con IMHO. To peddle higher res that isn't would be a con.

I've posted lists of 44k MQA previously that sounds great. I actually don't really look at the res data much lately.

I read Bob Stuart talking about how high resolution should be considered in the Analog context which is something we are not used to.
The digital resolution, although of interest, should not be the determining criteria in MQA.
I'm para phrasing my understanding here.
Chris

BengTi, my comment about the Pure McCartney is not about 44k.MQA in general (it can sound really good), but the fact that the studio has clearly done everything as 44k.MQA on a compilation album. I would have expected the 70s stuff and maybe more recent stuff to be 96k or higher.

Edit: Nick, I don't doubt that the master for Pure McCartney could have been 44.1k, but I somewhat doubt that it's the best master for each of the tracks. For something as important as McCartney's catalog, MQA the original albums first, *then* choose the compilation tracks. Yes, it's more work. IMHO.

It seems unlikely that over the years all the tracks on the album were 44.1. Indeed that would contradict what Bob said about finding the original original master and then MQA that. On the other hand they have thousands of albums to get through so it's down to some graduate engineers and a young producer to get it done. Hopefully like wth ADD and 24bit and some other waves prior, when things settle down, they will go back and mine the archives for the original originals and issue those.

I'm still a little hazy about how MQA can be better at 44.1. It's same as CD FLAC no ? But I must say on the right recording like Solti's Walkure, it's pretty stunning.

Other abnormalities irk me: Don McLean American Pie album has 2 tracks that are not MQA for me when I play it - American Pie and Vincent. I mean of all the tracks !!

Sampled the Solti Mahler 8 in 96k MQA today. It's really a revelation in the detail, soundstage and instrumentation. I never really liked this recording - it's CD issue had terrible sound, and I couldn't understand why critics gushed over it. The remastering was slightly better but nothing great. Now I can hear the standard of performance.

Also, I always disliked the chorus, it sounded artificial and poorly caught relative to the orchestra and soloists. Now they are more consistently projected as a single soundstage. A gigantic one.

Lastly, there is a smooth seamlessness to the sound that is akin or very close to analogue sound. Very natural ebb and flow.

Makes me wanna find a way to compare the vinyl LP of this with MQA. Hope everyone is also enjoying it.