Tidal announced on Reddit that HiFi Plus subscribers will soon have a new streaming option: high-resolution FLAC. This announcement comes shortly after the information that the company MQA has opened insolvency proceedings. This development indicates financial difficulties for MQA and raises questions about the future of the company. Tidal currently uses FLAC for its CD-quality streams, but relies on MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) technology for its high-resolution streams.

“Breaking news for my reddit peeps: we will be introducing hi-res FLAC for our HiFi Plus subscribers soon. It's lossless and an open standard. It's a big file, but we'll give you controls to dial this up and down based on what's going on.” - from Reddit.com.

What is FLAC?

FLAC stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec” and is an open source audio format developed for compressing digital audio content without any loss of quality. Unlike lossy audio formats such as MP3, AAC, or WMA, which remove parts of the audio data to achieve a smaller file size, FLAC preserves all information in the original signal and reduces file size by compressing the data.

FLAC is a lossless format, which means there is no loss of data due to compression. Compared to uncompressed audio formats like WAV or AIFF, FLAC can reduce file size by about half, resulting in faster transmission and smaller storage footprint.

FLAC is a widely used format in the audio world and is supported by many music streaming platforms, music players and audio editors. It is particularly useful for audiophiles and music producers who require high sound quality and accurate reproduction of the original signal.

High definition FLAC, also known as HD-FLAC or High-Resolution FLAC, refers to FLAC files with a higher resolution and sample rate than traditional CD-Audio files. While CD-Audio files typically have a sample rate of 44,1 kHz and 16-bit resolution, high-resolution FLAC files can have a sample rate of up to 192 kHz and up to 24-bit resolution. This allows high-resolution FLAC files to offer significantly higher sound quality than traditional CD audio files.

High-resolution FLAC files are particularly popular with audiophiles and music producers who require high sound quality and accurate reproduction of the original signal. However, they also require more storage space than traditional CD audio files and usually require a special audio player or software to play them.