MQA Makes Software Decoding Concession at CES 2017

January 27th, 2017
By: Carlin "Rick" Smith

At CES 2017 TIDAL announced that MQA streaming would be immediately available to their HiFi tier customers.  Read more here.   Both Roon and Audirvana announced software decoding support coming soon of MQA files.  Now if you have not followed MQA closely since its exception this is a somewhat significant development.

MQA when introduced required the use of a decoder that would have to be provided by licensed hardware manufacturer typically via a DAC.  If a customer didn't have such hardware then the MQA file would play at normal redbook CD quality but not at the full benefit of MQA encoding.  Our friends at Computer Audiophile used what I thought was a great analogy with Hybrid SACDs that when inserted into a SACD player that can decode the extra bits/layer you get the full sound but the medium still works in a normal CD player.  This is similar to how MQA files work.

So how does this apply to the TIDAL announcement?  Since MQA files can be played back via the TIDAL Desktop Apps without the new for any special hardware it means that MQA has changed their stance and are supporting software decoding in addition to hardware based decoding via a DAC.  In theory there should be little difference as a DAC executes software at the end of the day but it does appear MQA has placed some limitations on software decoding at 24/96 versus full unfolding of potential higher res formats. 

To be clear I have not seen this limitation formally announced but observationally it appears to be the case so this might be a limitation in the TIDAL app.  This will be interesting to watch unfold over the coming months.