It’s the time of year for saving money!
A couple of weeks back TIDAL announced a new update that, finally, enabled MQA-encoded streams to be processed and decoded by an IOS device, such as an iPhone or iPad. And while two years ago I would have been extremely excited by this new feature, now in 2019 it strikes me as worthy of note, but not worthy of much enthusiasm. Why?
Because high-rez through an IOS device is still, when compared to other ways of obtaining high-rez music from a portable device, is kludgy, clumsy, and physically inelegant. Not only do you need an Apple-certified Lightning to USB adapter, but also a portable DAC to hang off the adapter.
Even with the smallest DACs, such as the Audioquest Dragonfly Red, you have a slightly over 6-inch-long daisy-chain of devices trailing off your phone or pad’s lightning connector. Add a slightly larger DAC, such as the IFI xDSD (which I have tested along with the Dragonfly for MQA compatibility and they both passed) and you are left with a 1 ½ inch thick mass that I guarantee you will not fit unobtrusively into your pants pocket.
And then we have that darn Apple digital dongle. I have, during my lifetime, purchased several Apple-certified USB adapters, as well as several that were supposed to be fully-compatible, but were not.
When the new feature was announced I went searching for a dongle, since it isn’t something I normally carry, and after finding two incompatible dongles in a row and spending another 45 minutes looking for the camera adapter that I knew I owned, I gave up and ordered a new one…and yes I like to live dangerously so I got a third-party one from EBAY. It worked fine and kept an additional $20 in my pocket.
Another disadvantage of using some external DACs with an iPhone or iPad is that is if they do not have their own built-in power supply, such as you find in the IFI xDSD, the DAC will draw power from your phone. Your phone’s battery life will be affected. This can be a problem during a longer trip where you might not have access to recharging opportunities. You can get a portable additional power supplies to recharge your phone, as they have gotten dirt-cheap as of late, but that is one more thing to carry. Once you combine the additional convertor, DAC, and extra power supply, the final result takes up more space and is less convenient that carrying an additional separate portable player!
When you compare the IOS solution with some of the latest Android-based phones high-rez capabilities, it’s quite obvious that the current Apple solutions to high-rez music listening are still decidedly second-rate in terms of convenience and form factor.
Yes, the addition of MQA capabilities is a step forward for Apple devices, but even before this announcement IOS users could access un-encoded FLAC format high-rez music from Qobuz through their IOS device. Of course, they still needed the same kludgy hardware set-up, which makes listening to high-rez via Qobuz on an IOS device equally inept.
I have my annual trip to the AXPONA audio show in Chicago coming up. Despite my iPhone’s new high-rez streaming capabilities through both Tidal and Qobuz, I will not be relying on my iPhone as my traveling music source. Nope, it’s still easier for me to travel with a separate portable player than to depend on my iPhone as my primary portable music source.
Sure, MQA on IOS is a step in the right direction, but I would prefer to see something more akin to an adult-sized step rather than the latest baby-step from Tidal for the IOS eco-system…
Currently the primary stumbling block between high-rez music and portable devices isn’t their ability to decode and play high-rez files, but the inability of Bluetooth headphones to pass full resolution without some form of compression. The best Codecs, LDAC and aptX HD, are still not capable of passing high-rez completely unscathed. That is the next big hurdle for universal high-rez music availability…in comparison adding MQA to IOS is merely another mile traveled along an endless digital highway…
The tech analyses I’ve read of MQA are less than favorable; I don’t care what some subjectivist or marketeer has to say about it, show me the data, double blind verified.
I don’t bother with MQA personally, and if I’m after true high res content 24/96 FLAC does it – the 24 bit depth is actually more important than the higher sampling rate, as 44.1/48 already covers human hearing and even exceeds it for those of us over 20+ years old. 24/96 exceeds Red Book standard, and also human hearing.
The problem with the vast majority of “tech analysis” of MQA is they have a strong bias that affected their conclusions. Whatabouters can be found in almost every pursuit nowadays…
Ahem… “show me the data, double blind verified” 😏
Steven, the “strong bias” you attribute to those that have determined that MQA is nonsense is not true. People like John Siau, Archimago, Andreas Koch, myself, and others have simply pointed out that MQA is completely unnecessary, seriously flawed, and a purely business venture that benefits the investors and Meridian. MQA along with hi-res music in general are marketing ploys that don’t move the fidelity needle one bit.
MQA is a DRM enabled proprietary & lossy format that exactly NO
ONE from the audiophile community ever asked for. No artist, record
studio, recording engineer, etc, ever contacted Meridian for MQA.
MQA was born out of the streaming industry when their subscription models
reached into the hundreds of millions and bandwidth costs began to
mushroom. I repeat: MQA was DELIVERED to us as an “audiophile/hfi”
product when in reality it is simply a form of compressiony designed to
save the streaming giants money on bandwidth — that’s it.
Here’s the magic, and I truly mean the magix of MQA.
MANY AUDIOPHILES WANT IT!
Yes, audiophiles — those crazy fools hell bent on lossles this
and bit perfect that — are praising the strengths of a lossy format!
They’re asking for MQA not only in their content but in their hardware,
too.
Gotta have that little blue light!
What’s next — maybe within the hifi community the mp3 will make a comeback?
Bob Stuart is a freaking marketing genius.
After about two years of listening to MQA titles (“Masters” on Tidal, mostly) I’ve been waiting for the “AHA” moment when the plugs are removed from my ears and I can hear a recording that is “better” than a non-MQA title of the same resolution. That moment has not happened, and I have stopped waiting for it.
There was some early marketing crap about how MQA knows what DAC you have and that MQA match your DAC to the ADC that made the recording, but that doesn’t seem to have much currency in the current dialectic.
Now with Qobuz available with Native hi-res content, I would drop Tidal entirely except for the family plan which Qobuz does not have.
I will no longer require that my new device purchases require MQA support. It just doesn’t seem to add much magic to the musical sauce that is otherwise being created.
Regarding Bluetooth, yes, it’s true, it’s not so good. For the cases in which I use a portable device, LDAC is considerably better than just acceptable, but it’s not universally available; for example, Windows doesn’t support it at all. To my ears, AptX HD sounds pretty good, too. Apple — as usual — says “NIH” and doesn’t support either. Samsung never supported AptX HD in tablets and seems to be dropping it from phones. It’s a damned shame, not just that full HD is not available, but that even these pretty-good solutions are not readily available, either.