<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Hi everyone,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The question came up and I asked Bob Stuart if MQA can support Loudness Normalization on Tidal. I got to spend 3 days with Bob Stuart, George Massenburg, and the great Shawn Murphy soundtrack engineer (Star Wars etc.) in Montréal. I forgot to ask him in person but he just got back to me:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class="">5) <i class="">Can Tidal stream <u class="">loudness normalized</u> MQA streams? As you heard from my talk, we mastering engineers hope universal adoption of Loudness Normalization will lead to the end of the Loudness Wars.</i></div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> </div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> * With MQA the exact file you create is streamed. </div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> * As a download this can include the loudness/replay gain info in the header. </div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> Our encoder calculates it. It's up to the label if the leave it there.</div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> * Tidal (and other streaming services) keep replay gain information and that is sent to the App at streaming time. </div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> The App can level the gain.</div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> In the case of MQA it can't just apply gain to the audio because that breaks it so the replay gain is passed on to the MQA decoder. </div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""> The way we do it is best because we want replay gain to be passed all the way down the chain until it hits the only (and hopefully analogue) volume control. Not all MQA decoders respond to this information yet although we expect firmware updates to make that happen in the next few months - now that we have a clear policy from the streaming companies.</div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="font-size: 12.8px;" class="">MQA fully supports normalisation in the RIGHT way (as you might expect)..</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Have a great Sunday!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div apple-content-edited="true" class="">
Bob Ludwig<br class=""><br class="">Gateway Mastering Studios, Inc.<br class="">428 Cumberland Avenue<br class="">Portland, ME 04101<br class="">(207) 828-9400<br class=""><a href="http://www.gatewaymastering.com" class="">www.gatewaymastering.com</a><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">
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