TLDR: Tidal ‘HiFi’ is not lossless. It just streams the MQA version of track
s with some metadata removed to prevent most DACs from recognising it as MQA a
nd limits streaming to 16 bit.
A while ago I posted a video which discussed how MQA was not lossless, and add
itionally, how there was actually no way to stream the lossless version of any
track on TIDAL that was marked with the ‘MASTER’ label, even if you had all
settings configured not to use MQA.
Example of a track tagged as ‘MASTER’ on TIDAL.
The issue was that depending on your settings, one of a few things happened:
– ‘MASTER’ quality setting – Track streamed in MQA. Tidal client or your
DAC can do the unfolding depending on setup. MQA is not lossless. – ‘HiFi
’ quality setting – Track streamed in what was claimed to be ‘lossless’, b
ut it was actually seemingly just the MQA version without any MQA flagging or
metadata, so it would not be unfolded. And is also not lossless. – ‘High/No
rmal’ – Track streamed in compressed format.
原文網址
https://goldensound.audio/2021/11/29/tidal-hifi-is-not-lossless/