Tidal HiFi Plus has always offered its listeners losslessFLACaudio at CD quality, but the company only streamed its Masters collection of better-than-CD quality hi-res tracks in theMQA format, something that many of Tidal’s customers have objected to. Some of the AMA participants referred to MQA as ascamandsnake oil.

At issue is the concern that MQA isn’t a truly lossless format like FLAC, which some audiophiles see as an impediment to getting the very best sound quality. The MQA problem is compounded by the fact that if you want to hear MQA audio at its highest possible level, you need a device like aDAC/ampthat can fully decode the MQA format.

Curiously, Dorogusker’s comments come just days after the company that oversees the MQA format (also known as MQA) announced that it will beentering into administration— the U.K. equivalent of Chapter 11 proceedings. The timing raises questions about the future of MQA at Tidal. At the moment, Tidal is the only major streaming music service that uses the MQA format.

Shortly after Dorogusker made his remarks on Reddit, Digital Trends reached out to Tidal to find out if the new hi-res lossless plans meant that the streaming service was considering abandoning MQA. In an email sent on April 14, we were told, “To clarify, we are adding hi-res FLAC to the platform, as part of our TIDAL HiFi Plus subscription. Our existing MQA catalog will continue to be available on the platform.”

We thought the use of the word “existing” in the description of the MQA catalog sounded like a way of saying that while MQA tracks will remain, the current catalog won’t be expanded, so we asked for clarification. In an April 18 response, we were told that what was shared is all that Tidal has to share on the topic at the moment.

With a move to supporthi-reslossless FLAC audio, Tidal would joinAmazon Music,Apple Music, Deezer, and Qobuz in the lossless hi-res streaming space. If Tidal were to drop MQA from its service, it would lose a major point of differentiation. For as much as MQA has its critics, there are also those who believe the format can sound better than its lossless hi-res rivals.

Moreover, both Apple and Amazon offer their full hi-res catalog within their standard pricing tiers, while Tidal would make its own hi-res lossless offering a paid upgrade at almost twice the cost of those competing services.

Music fans have also been patiently waiting forSpotifyto make good on its promise to launchSpotify HiFi, a lossless audio tier, but so far that has yet to happen.