This just in on the Reddit hotline: Tidal CEO Jesse Dorogusker has shared that the streaming platform, which still uses MQA to deliver hi-res content to HiFi Plus Subscribers, is moving to FLAC.
From Jesse’s Reddit post:
So many questions about MQA and hi-resolution audio. I hope we don’t spend all of our time on audio format details, but it’s an AMA and you’re asking.
TIDAL has cared about high quality and even experimental audio formats long before it was cool or common among music streamers. Why? Because artists take care when making their art and they want/hope to present their work in the best light (whatever they think that is exactly). We also live in a world that is mobile-dominated and mobile phones have constraints in memory, data plans, coverage maps – so there’s always a consideration for the customer’s need between more quality and more bandwidth/storage efficiency.
Breaking news for my reddit peeps: we will be introducing hi-res FLAC for our HiFi Plus subscribers soon. It’s lossless and an open standard. It’s a big file, but we’ll give you controls to dial this up and down based on what’s going on.
This news comes just days after MQA announced it was entering into administration and is comparable to Chapter 11 in the US.
Here’s the full public statement from from MQA:
Following the recent positive reception to MQA’s latest technology (SCL6), there has been increased international interest in buying MQA Ltd. At the same time, MQA’s main financial backer is seeking an exit. In order to be in the best position to pursue market opportunities and expedite this process, the company has undergone a restructuring initiative, which includes entering into administration and is comparable to Chapter 11 in the US.
While purely speculation at this point, it’s difficult not to see these two announcements as being related. For those who’ve been living under a rock or purposefully ignoring what is for some a demon spawned from the fires of Hell, MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated, a proprietary lossy compression codec that requires certified (licensed) hardware to play back encoded content in what MQA described as “origami,” folding and unfolding the original audio file. It seems likely that if this news pans out, Tidal may eventually replace MQA-encoded content with FLAC.
Unfortunately, all of my reporting on MQA, including an in-depth review, has vanished from the Internet, talk about lossy, when Stereophile’s parent company, AV Tech Media, decided to pull the plug on all AudioStream content year’s ago.
I’ll be keeping an ear out for developing news.
To quash one rumor (from the same Reddit thread):
