Tidal is revamping its lossless and immersive audio formats

Big quality for audiophiles: Tidal is shaking up its audio formats. Starting July 24th, Tidal volition driblet enactment for Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) and 360 Reality Audio formats. Going forward, the streaming work says FLAC volition beryllium the default for stereo, portion Dolby Atmos volition beryllium the format of prime for immersive sound.

Tidal allows users to watercourse successful 3 tiers of audio quality: low, high, and max. Low uses AAC files, which spell up to 320kbps. High offers CD-quality lossless FLAC files. And Max goes beyond that, with MQA and higher-res FLAC files. The Max tier is wherever the determination to driblet MQA matters — and astir apt isn’t each that astonishing to longtime Tidal users.

Tidal was 1 of the fewer services that supported streaming successful MQA format. The main payment of MQA is that you tin clasp superior audio quality, but with a smaller record size than FLAC. The occupation is that MQA files necessitate peculiar hardware oregon bundle to play files. What signaled MQA’s days connected Tidal were numbered was erstwhile the work introduced a caller HiRes FLAC format past year. (HiRes FLAC is conscionable a fancy mode of referring to a FLAC record that’s larger than modular CD quality.) Not lone was this caller format introduced, but Tidal past made HiRes FLAC the preferred default for Max prime streaming. Not helping matters, past year, the institution down the MQA format entered medication successful the UK, oregon the equivalent of filing for bankruptcy.

Based connected Tidal’s FAQ, it appears these format decisions were made to prioritize entree and cost. For example, it says it picked Dolby Atmos due to the fact that it has a wide scope of “compatible devices, catalog availability and creator adoption of the format.” While galore audiophiles bask Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, it’s conscionable not arsenic wide adopted. Tidal besides says it’s going with FLAC for stereo due to the fact that it’s open-source, meaning artists won’t person to spell done a 3rd party. Also, dissimilar FLAC, MQA is simply a proprietary format, meaning licensing costs are involved.

For Tidal users who person MQA tracks oregon albums, those files volition beryllium automatically replaced with the highest prime FLAC versions that Tidal has available. This besides applies to MQA files downloaded for offline playback. Meanwhile, 360 Reality Audio files volition beryllium grayed retired and unavailable for streaming.

Tidal says it has “no further plans to alteration our audio format offerings.” However, the alteration comes soon aft the institution precocious decided to lower its subscription price from upwards of $20 monthly to $10.99. It besides decided to consolidate its HiFi and HiFi Plus plans into a azygous tier.