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Tidal will make ‘Master’ quality recordings available to Android users soon

Tidal will make ‘Master’ quality recordings available to Android users soon

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And it’s about time

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Photo: Tidal

If you’re a Tidal subscriber on the company’s HiFi subscription tier and use the Android app, then you’ll be excited to learn that “Master” quality recordings are finally coming to your device.

Thanks to the MQA decoder being bundled with the latest Tidal for Android update, Android users will be able to maintain an optimal audio quality experience between the desktop Mac / Windows versions and their phones, both online and offline.

Photo: Tidal

This has been a long-awaited feature that I’m personally looking forward to. After all, bringing the Android version of the app in line with the desktop app has been overdue. Considering “masters” are supposed to be Tidal’s best-quality recordings for growing portions of its catalog, it’s a no-brainer that a high-fidelity music streaming service would want to bring the feature to all mobile users.

To accomplish this, Tidal partnered with the company that’s also the namesake of an audio codec — MQA — back in 2017. It’s what allows the app to stream high-res audio inside a lossless container such as FLAC or WAV — typically at 96 kHz / 24 bit — without using an immense amount of bandwidth, according to Tidal.

Tidal’s MQA update for Android is rolling out to HiFi premium subscribers starting today.