How Is MQA Fareing?

No idea about MQA progress but Tidal Masters often sound excellent and that is what I am very happy about.

I have a theory that high frequencies generated in excessively high resolution help with DAC performance ....a kind of dither if you like as none of thse excessively high frequencies are actually audible but the audible audio spectrum often sounds better at higher sample rates.

@lalitk    

Thanks. It explains things without explaining anything.

How lossy is the unfolded data? Obviously taking a 24 bit 196KHz original and compressing to 24 bit 48 KHz file means that there is some lossy compression.

Also de-ringing implies DSP???

@lalitk 

MQA is a black box. I guess the benefits depend on whether the MQA lossy de-ringing processed 24bit 192KHz file is better than a lossless bit perfect 24bit 48 KHz file....

@lalitk  

I see - so there is a time correction and even with lossy compression it sounds better than the original raw full resolution file. Sounds magical!

@jon2020

Good article, the author seems to be without a strong technical background (gets a few things wrong or confused and some misunderstandings) but overall a good critique with solid concerns about MQA. A bit wordy. TLDR.

Here is a technical summary in short version:

MQA is all hand waving BS and has absolutely no sound technical basis. It consists of manipulation of the audio file to give up some bit depth (loss of about 6 bits resolution) in exchange for a higher sample rate (a portion of higher sample rate data is buried in the lost bit depth data). Lots of hand waving to say that this is a beneficial trade off which is dubious as the greater bit depth has proven benefits (dynamic range) and the benefits of ultra high frequency stuff is useless or dubious at best. As anyone can see - you are almost certainly better off without this lossy form of compression.