The creator of the MQA format went bankrupt, as reported by WhatHiFi, popular magazine and website run by Future, a famous multimedia company founded in 1985 in the United Kingdom. Consequently, Tidal, the streaming service that has adopted MQA as the platform’s main format, has declared that it will make changes to its application. The subject was discussed in a post on Reddit and below you see the details.
Creator of MQA announces bankruptcy
Last week, WhatHiFi website reported that the company responsible for creating the MQA format went bankrupt. The company is said to have stated the following:
Following the recent positive reception to MQA’s latest technology (SCL6), international interest in purchasing MQA Ltd has increased. At the same time, MQA’s main backer is looking for an exit. opportunities and streamline this process, the company has undergone a restructuring initiative, which includes going into administration and is comparable to Chapter 11 in the US.
During this process, MQA continues to trade normally alongside its partners.
We will not comment further while negotiations take place.
Today (12), the website of the US magazine Billboard said that in the United Kingdom, when a company declares bankruptcy, the country protects the insolvent company from creditors for a while. According to reports, this “breathing space” gives the company a chance to somehow get out of its financial troubles. There is also the scenario where the court-appointed trustee will advise the company to take steps such as selling assets to pay off debts.
Tidal announces changes to its platform with the bankruptcy of the creator of MQA
Jesse DoroguskerCEO of Tidal, made a AMA (Ask me Anything or Ask Me Anything) no subreddit “TIdaL”. In a comment post created by Jesse (“TIDAL_Jesse” no Reddit), he says Tidal was concerned with high quality and even experimental audio formats long before it was legal or common among streaming music services. The reason for this concern, according to Tidal’s CEO, is “because artists take care in making their art and want/expect to present their work in the best way”. This statement is directly related to Bob Stuart’s intention when creating the MQA format, which was to bring “studio quality” to streaming music. According to its developer, MQA was created based on “recent neuroscientific research”.
Bob says that traditional encoding in formats such as FLAC discards information to reduce the size, while MQA captures the entire signal and performs a process called “folding”. This folding causes the audio file size to be smaller than a FLAC song. For this reason, Jesse says in his comment on Reddit that “we live in a world dominated by mobile devices and cell phones have restrictions on memory, data plans, coverage maps – so there’s always a consideration of customer need amongst more quality and more bandwidth/storage efficiency”.
As we mentioned above, the company responsible for creating the MQA went bankrupt. As Tidal uses the MQA format as a highlight for the transmission of songs, there was a need for the company to clarify what happened. It was then that Jesse Dorogusker made a comment in his AMA (Ask me Anything) on the “TIdaL” subreddit, where he says that:
We will soon introduce FLAC Hi-Res to our HiFi Plus subscribers. It is lossless and an open standard. It’s a big file, but we’ll give you controls to dial up and down based on what’s going on.
What will change on Tidal?
According to the CEO of Tidal, the streaming application will stop using MQA and replace it with high resolution audio files in FLAC format. As the company knows that this will cause the data usage on the platform to increase, it was said that users will have a way to increase or decrease the bitrate (data stream) as needed.
With this change, Tidal’s Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi Plus plans will offer the following:
- Tidal Hi-Fi Plus plan: FLAC “Hi-Res” (Minimum 24bit/96kHz), Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio
- Tidal Plane Hi-Fi: FLAC with 16-Bit/44.1 kHz resolution (CD quality)
It was not informed what will be the maximum resolution supported in the transmission of FLAC files in the Hi-Fi Plus plan, but it is believed that it will be at least 24bits/192kHz, as it is practiced by Qobuz, Apple Music and Amazon Music services.
