Paul McGowan said Does that mean we lose TIDAL as a clean source of CD quality streaming music? More and more people are adding TIDAL to their libraries.My expectation is, yes. The average consumer drives the market. They will not notice/care. And will prefer MQA if the service is quicker, requires less bandwidth, etc.
magister saidbillg saidI personally reject a subscriber service (roon) that doesn’t let you continue to use what you’ve already paid for.
I agree with everything billg said but am confused about the part quoted above. Roon claims to use your existing music collection; what am I missing?
As far as MQA is concerned, there are many reasons not to jump on board, and others have expressed them very well so I won’t repeat them.
As I understand it, once you stop subscribing you can’t use Roon at all. With Jriver you can use the version you paid for forever but you can’t get version upgrades until you pay some more.
billg saidAs I understand it, once you stop subscribing you can’t use Roon at all. With Jriver you can use the version you paid for forever but you can’t get version upgrades until you pay some more.
https://roonlabs.com/pricing.html
It’s software AND a service. You can pay a smaller amount annually, or a larger amount once off for a “lifetime” entitlement.
If you don’t like subscription business models you just have to decide whether the “job to be done” is worth the higher initial price – bearing in mind you won’t ever be charged for a version upgrade if you do that.
dvorak said It's software AND a service.If you subscribe to Roon for a year and stop subscribing, what of Roon do you have that you can still use?
Well, for Tidal the main consumer segment would be the non-audiophile (e.g. millennials who use iTunes and Spotify). If MQA is going to help Tidal to sell CD-quality music to non-audiophile consumers, then they will go that route – even if it means “sacrificing” the audiophile market - which I think is quite a small market.
I went down the PSA DS route because among others the DS supported DSD64 – and I love Ted’s FPGA approach. Don’t need Tidal.
If only every CD/SACD sounded as awesome as the Sonoma Master Series 
dux servit said If MQA is going to help Tidal to sell CD-quality music to non-audiophile consumers, then they will go that route -- even if it means "sacrificing" the audiophile market . . .Exactly. Just like the universal adoption of MP3.
Well, if the average Joe drives the marketplace then I guess we’ll be stuck with MQA and Trump.
At least one I can ignore.
wglenn said Well, if the average Joe drives the marketplace then I guess we'll be stuck with MQA and Trump.At least one I can ignore.
So I’m waiting to hear Apple’s response to MQA. If Tidal manages to eat into Apple’s streaming music service because Tidal+MQA can deliver CD-Quality, then Apple may just upgrade their “Mastered for iTunes” music into CD Quality as well.
Bear in mind that Apple already owns about 30% plus of the TV streaming market. They have numerous hardware footprints in the home (e.g. Apple-TV, Airport Express, etc), not counting the iPhones and Macs out there.
Elk saidIf you subscribe to Roon for a year and stop subscribing, what of Roon do you have that you can still use?
Nothing. But I’m pretty sure you already know that.
For a company to provide a service costs money on an ongoing basis. Developing new versions of software costs money on an ongoing basis. So it’s totally reasonable IMO to be a paying customer on an ongoing basis.
If you choose to pay only $119, you are buying one year’s worth of access to the service and its accompanying software. It’s not underhanded. It’s not greedy. It’s just what Roon Labs figure is the right amount of annual income for them to run a sustainable business and you either agree that’s worth paying or you don’t.
For those folks who think Roon is the best thing ever but can’t stand the idea of recurring payments for anything which has a software component to it, you have the option of paying a one-time amount and then you get perpetual rights to use the service and its accompanying software. $499 is less than the asking price of Amarra Symphony, and way less than the majority of our audio hardware components, so it’s not exactly crazy money.
Other than those people who think anything made of bits should be free of charge as a matter of principle, I can’t understand why anybody would be offended by Roon’s business model.
(Apologies for going off-topic re MQA. Mods, feel free to relocate this to a more relevant thread.)
dux servit saidSo I’m waiting to hear Apple’s response to MQA. If Tidal manages to eat into Apple’s streaming music service because Tidal+MQA can deliver CD-Quality, then Apple may just upgrade their “Mastered for iTunes” music into CD Quality as well.
Bear in mind that Apple already owns about 30% plus of the TV streaming market. They have numerous hardware footprints in the home (e.g. Apple-TV, Airport Express, etc), not counting the iPhones and Macs out there.
Tidal already offers CD quality without MQA.
“Mastered for iTunes” is a good thing for audio quality, but it’s nothing more than best practices guidance for people submitting final masters into a process which low-pass-filters and compresses them. Things like avoiding clipping at all costs, using dynamic range compression sensibly, leaving a few dB of headroom, and mastering in resolution of at least 24/96. Doing all of that results in 256kbps AAC sounding pretty much indistinguishable from raw 16/44 PCM even on quite good playback equipment.
If you have an iPhone or iPod touch or iPad with a lightning port, and the lightning to USB adaptor, you can connect up to the DS DAC’s USB input and get Apple Music or iTunes through your stereo with a minimal amount of electronic audio degradation. (Just remember to set the device’s playback to full volume.) Mostly what you’re hearing is 256kbps AAC at its best – and with well mastered content it’s remarkably decent. On the vast majority of equipment that people use to listen to music, and for the average ear, it’s equivalent to CD quality in a sixth of the file size.
My household uses Apple everything, and I pay monthly for a family subscription to Apple Music. There is absolutely no way Tidal is a threat to that income for Apple, because Tidal offers no upside and heaps of downside for four out of five people in this family. Even for me the upside would be minimal – nowhere near being worth the money. So we have a lot of happy listening to lossy Apple Music going on around here. MQA doesn’t change that one whit.
On my “good stereo” though, and especially since it got a dose of Torreys , for music I love it’s gotta be lossless. For me, on this system, AAC misses the mark. I use Apple Music for discovery and background music then buy CDs or lossless downloads of things that matter.
If Apple started offering lossless audio as part of Apple Music subscription, I’d pay up instantly. But that’s only because I have a “good stereo” where it would make a discernible difference, and ears/brain which would care about that. My guess is the vast majority of Apple customers would not get any benefit from it, so I can’t see why they would bother.
The same arguments work pretty strongly against MQA. And that might well be why they’re trying to bring it to market as a kind of vendor side keep-up-with-the-jones checkbox requirement and offering a lot of hand waving and hoopla about the benefits it allegedly brings.
dvorak said Mostly what you’re hearing is 256kbps AAC at its best – and with well mastered content it’s remarkably decent.I understand what you mean, and it is a fair comment, but I am thoroughly enjoying the damning with faint praise comment "remarkably decent."
But I believe you are correct, like high bit-rate MP3 which is similarly “remarkably decent,” AAC meets the audio needs of the masses, and the masses drive the market.
Yet, unfortunately, once one hears the problems with AAC and MP3 you cannot unhear them.
“Mastered for iTunes” is cynical marketing at its best. Yes, some claim highly compressed lossy AAC files sourced for 96/24 files sound better than if sourced from CD, but they are still low bit rate lossy compressed files. Given that bandwidth and storage is now cheap, iTunes should be offering actual CDs and higher bit-rate files - not “CD-like” specially labeled compressed lossy files.
MP3 and AAC were remarkable when we had little storage space and slow modems. But they should have been temporary work-arounds, not the end game.
As an aside, I have long wondered who the market is for Apple’s Mastered for iTunes white paper. It clearly is not for audio professionals. It is also not for the casual listener. Perhaps it is for the audiophile, in an attempt to convince him highly compressed lossy AAC files made from high-resolution sources are somehow special. Oh, boy.
Elk, the only cynicism I see in that is from you 
I am somebody who cares deeply about sound quality – a card-carrying audiophile. That’s why I’m here, why the most expensive thing I own after houses and cars is my stereo. And the specific items in that music system were chosen on the basis of years worth of active listening and auditioning, not just fancy marketing or fashion statements or rave reviews in snobbish magazines.
On that basis, let me assure you that AAC tracks produced following the “Mastered for iTunes” guidelines sound CLEARLY better than AAC tracks produced from a typically awful “CD quality” master file. The whole point of it is to produce better sounding files, and it works. Unfortunately it’s kind of like the good advice our health experts give to the general population… Eat better food, get more exercise, avoid nasty drugs and you’ll have a better life… Yet of course the majority of people ignore it even though it’s true. Likewise for the music publishers in iTunes: they could follow the (free) mastering advice and deliver a better product, but the majority of them just don’t care enough to do it.
The final thing to note is that there’s no extra money involved anywhere – not as a publisher and not as a customer. And that’s really all there is to say about Mastered for iTunes.
Changing topics…
I think you (and many others) are way too quick to dismiss the costs of storage and transmission when talking about lossy vs lossless audio compression formats. All of us here place a far higher value on accuracy of audio reproduction than the vast majority of our fellow Earthlings. For everybody else, AAC and MP3 are truly “good enough”, and they cut storage and bandwidth needs (and therefore costs) by something like 50-65%! They’d be crazy not to make lossy compression the default scheme.
This goes to the heart of MQA’s pitch (and my turn to be cynical). They try to make the mass market value “sound quality” using technobabble and coordinated marketing. They try to appeal to audio industry with the promise of differentiation in the mass market and an opportunity to place restrictions on distribution. And they try to minise their cost impact by claiming to get “HD” quality from 16/44 FLAC bit rates.
It’s possible MQA has something beneficial to offer in terms of their technology. They just haven’t demonstrated that sufficiently or provided enough information to come to an informed opinion, but they have acted in ways reminiscent of snake oil vendors – so they trigger our scepticism.
dvorak said I am somebody who cares deeply about sound quality – a card-carrying audiophile.I hope you do not believe I am criticizing you personally in any waqy.
. . . AAC tracks produced following the "Mastered for iTunes" guidelines sound CLEARLY better than AAC tracks produced from a typically awful "CD quality" master file.I have read this elsewhere as well, as I mentioned above. It makes some sense in that a better quality source should result in a better quality end result, even when reduced to a highly lossy low bit-rate format.
Regardless, even if this is true, if Apple was actually interested in streaming better quality audio, it would stream at least 44/16 Redbook in FLAC or a similar lossless format. Instead, Apple is jealously guarding its closed system and keeping its customers bound to its proprietary format.
By the way, what do you mean by a “a typically awful “CD quality” master file?” What is this?
And do you not find playing the CD of a recording sounds considerably better than Apple’s “Mastered for iTunes” lossy AAC file?
For everybody else, AAC and MP3 are truly "good enough", and they cut storage and bandwidth needs (and therefore costs) by something like 50-65%! They'd be crazy not to make lossy compression the default scheme.Yes, but consumers are purchasing the bandwidth and storage required to stream HD movies. They will never even notice the streaming and storage requirements of good audio, much less care Consumers are not shopping between the bandwidth needs of compressed audio and 44/16. Instead they are concerned whether they can stream multiple HD movies at a time because Suzy wants to watch something different than Johnny who is watching something other than mom and dad.
Bandwidth and storage is non issue for audio. And this from a guy with only an old T1 1.5mbps-on-a-great-day line.
Elk said I hope you do not believe I am criticizing you personally in any waqy.Not at all, and it's kind of you to check. I was just trying to provide some background credibility to support the claim I was about to make about sound quality.
Regardless, even if this is true, if Apple was actually interested in streaming better quality audio, it would stream at least 44/16 Redbook in FLAC or a similar lossless format.That's a non-sequitur. Good mastering produces better quality audio at the same bit rate, so there's no cost to anybody in doing this and those with half-decent equipment and ears will appreciate the improvements. More than doubling the bit rate to use lossless codecs incurs costs for Apple and for the customers yet the relative improvement is basically unappreciable for the vast majority due to them having inferior equipment or a lack of actually caring.
So I see evidence of Apple caring about sound quality, tempered by completely rational pragmatism which results in them not doing the thing you assert they must do.
Of course I would be so delighted if I could have the option to get music from Apple in lossless formats, and would happily pay more to do so. It just seems they’re not interesting in pursuing that marginal business case at this time. (Or maybe it’s just a bad business case to start with.)
Instead, Apple is jealously guarding its closed system and keeping its customers bound to its proprietary format.Which proprietary format are you referring to, and how am I bound to it?
AAC is a ubiquitous, standard audio format (licensed, not “free” as in beer). iTunes originally had DRM on music but Steve Jobs started a push in 2007 to make all iTunes music DRM-free and he succeeded in a short space of time: 9.1 Movement against DRM
Any track I buy from iTunes can be downloaded onto any Mac or Windows computer and it’s just an AAC audio file with no DRM.
Only subscription content from Apple Music uses DRM, which makes sense to me because what I pay for is a right to listen for a period of time. I think Tidal does a similar thing in that respect.
By the way, what do you mean by a "a typically awful “CD quality” master file?" What is this?Just referring to the actual PCM content of many modern CDs, which is what I understand most labels use as their "masters" when submitting to iTunes. The awfulness in question is largely due to the Loudness Wars – a result of production practices not any inherent limitation of 16-bit 44.1ksps PCM audio.
And do you not find playing the CD of a recording sounds considerably better than Apple's "Mastered for iTunes" lossy AAC file?On my good stereo? Yeah, with this level of equipment a well-made AAC file can be thoroughly enjoyable but the CD is always better.
However on consumer-grade gear I have frequently found myself preferring the AAC, even just comparing the original CD with an AAC rip I made myself. Doing a blind test I can reliably detect differences between the two but I most often pick the AAC as sounding “better” when the equipment is not really good. I first tried this more than a dozen years ago with an Apple iBook laptop driving some Grado headphones, and the results shocked me. Have replicated on different systems a few times since then.
consumers are purchasing the bandwidth and storage required to stream HD movies. They will never even notice the streaming and storage requirements of good audio, much less care Consumers are not shopping between the bandwidth needs of compressed audio and 44/16. Instead they are concerned whether they can stream multiple HD movies at a time because Suzy wants to watch something different than Johnny who is watching something other than mom and dad.And if it was only the customer side of the equation that mattered, you'd have nearly won the argument. However, most of the cost that matters is borne by the music service provider. Go ahead and try and convince companies *which aren't trying to significantly differentiate themselves on the basis of audio quality* that they should double or triple their storage and bandwidth requirements for a change which most of their customers wouldn't appreciate.Bandwidth and storage is non issue for audio. And this from a guy with only an old T1 1.5mbps-on-a-great-day line.
In truth, some of their customers would strongly object – Apple Music streaming defaults to 128kbps over cellular to keep data usage charges as low as possible. You have to manually change the setting to even get 256kbps. I think other major streaming services also default to something lower than 256, but could be mistaken on that one.
At the risk of going further off topic:
Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously. : http://bitperfectsound.blogspot.com/2016/05/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously.html
One reason I never installed iTunes: their TOS threatened the music I already owned.
To bring it back on topic: I have to wonder what the licensing for MQA will require of me as a developer as well as a what terms will they force Tidal, etc. to pass on to end users… It would be great if some of these things were better spelled out now rather than us having to trust that MQA won’t ever attempt to do what Apple has sometimes done and what others have done in the past.
[Edit: I guess the thing that made me think of this was that their EULA basically implies that Apple may think that their version of a track is the “best” one (or at least their code might), which in some circumstances seems at odds with the idea that they really care about me having the best quality music (e.g. replacing higher quality tracks with lower quality tracks.)
That’s also the reason I don’t use, say, Amazon to store any of my music: there’s no guarantee that I’ll get the same version that I had before (or at least the last time I checked there wasn’t.)]
Ted, are you seriously suggesting that the poor bloke whose music files got deleted was the victim of a nefarious corporate scheme rather than just a programming error in a software package which is famous for its monolithic complexity?
And, that the TOS indicate an actual intent to screw people rather than just a series of defences being erected against the reflexively litigious in the unfortunate instance that a programming mistake does do something unpleasant and the end user wasn’t wise enough to have a backup of their system?
What is it that you think “Apple [and others] have sometimes done” and now fear MQA might attempt?
[Edit: ] Oh I see your edit You are basically saying you want software that doesn’t even consider the notion of deleting things, ever. Fair enough.
I know enough about software errors to not trust any of my music to essentially ad hoc decisions made by software. But I’m saying something slightly stronger - the Apple EULA (at least when I read it before I installed a version of QuickTime and then again iTunes) reserved the right to delete any of my files that they thought might not be “legal” - WHETHER OR NOT I got them from Apple. Even assuming bug free software that wasn’t something I chose to put up with. YMMV.
Paul McGowan said I am with you guys. My biggest concern in TIDAL. When TIDAL streaming services switches to MQA the thought is little should change for people without MQA installed since the default MQA is equivalent to Red Book CD, even if they're streaming higher rez stuff. The problem for me is two fold: their compression scheme is lossy, and to my ears Red Book CD on the same track is much better.Does that mean we lose TIDAL as a clean source of CD quality streaming music? More and more people are adding TIDAL to their libraries.
It’s an interesting question since reducing 24/96 PCM files to CD size (16/44) is a big part of the MQA marketing pitch. On the other hand, we have the Prime Seat folks in Japan streaming in PCM and even DSD up to DSD 128 with no encoding/compression. Interesting times.
https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html was last updated in October. The relevant section is probably the one on iTunes Match.
There’s also this in regard to the recent brouhaha you linked to: http://www.loopinsight.com/2016/05/13/apple-comments-on-itunes-deleting-music/ . Jim Dalrymple is a credible source on these matters, having been an outspoken critic of iTunes despite being the publisher of an Apple-enthusiast blog for many years.
I’ve been in the Apple camp since the 1980’s too, so yes I’m bringing a strongly positive opinion to the conversation. But in life generally I find Hanlon’s Razor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon’s_razor) to be a helpful way to think about unfortunate events. If it was the intent to delete everybody’s Napster collection iTunes would have erased everybody’s files years ago. iTunes started life with the slogan “Rip, mix, burn” – it has no way of knowing whether your MP3s came from your own CDs or from somewhere else. DRM for online music sales was something the record labels insisted on at the start of the iTunes Store era, and it was Steve Jobs who got rid of it.
I’m not trying to argue that you should install iTunes. I just think it’s weird to imagine that Apple would deliberately delete your music.
As for MQA… at least part of their business model makes sense. They want to create demand for music files and players which can only be produced with MQA’s cooperation and hence licensing fees. That doesn’t actually require DRM, though it’s easy to see how constraining distribution that way could be used to increase sales – not just for MQA but also the publishers – providing that customer demand outweighed the inconvenience and ill-feeling associated with DRM.
Tidal is a natural fit for MQA content distribution since they have recurring revenue, DRM which is more palatable because it’s part of a subscription service rather than an outright “purchase”, and are willing/able to integrate their streaming API into 3rd party players.
No, I’m not accusing Apple of deliberately or nefariously deleting files. On the other hand there’s no possible way for them to avoid deleting the wrong files now and then it if they don’t either promise to only delete files they created (and that I didn’t pay for), or promise to ask about each file that they want to delete and pay attention to the answer, or otherwise document the algorithm that they will use to decide what files they will delete (e.g. that the audio data is identical to a file that they provided, or that the metadata is identical to a file that they provide or that x% of the audio is identical or that the so and so audio fingerprinting program also says the files are identical…) Until they specify specifically which files they will delete and under what circumstances I can’t allow their software on my computer as a matter of principle: my files are my living.