Tidal scraps MQA and spatial audio format – here's what that means for subscribers

[What Hi-Fi?]

From July, 360 Reality Audio and MQA streams will no longer be available on the hi-res service.

Tidal scraps MQA and spatial audio format – here's what that means for subscribers : Read more

 

[JR75]

This is disappointing. With hardware decoding of MQA files, music sounds much better than FLAC files. I will have to see what HDTracks eventually comes out with. They have no where near the content of Tidal, but if they amp that up and have MQA, I will probably dump Tidal.

 

[Matthias M]

Really disappointing!!!
Tidal just replaced all MQA files by CD quality. I really liked the sound of MQA. It was better than CD in my opinion.
Now, all the goodies in MQA are gone: Depeche Mode, Vangelis, Phil Collins, Genesis, etc. At least, Tidal could have replaced those by HiRes files, not only CD. CD is just not good enough! Then, I might as well use Spotify Hifi...

 

[supaplex]

Good riddance. MQA was a horribly user-hostile format whose DRM integration makes it unplayable on all standard DACs without serious degradation.

 

[MishaHiFi]

Good move ! Better with CD lossless (FLAC) than with Hi-Res lossy (crappy MQA) !
And when Hi-Res lossless will be available for all those replaced files it will be even better.
In my opinion, in a true Hi-Fi system lossy formats have no place.