How many of you believe in MQA?

Hi @Gregm,
I meant that in theory, humans should not be able to hear better than 44/16.

PS - Before anyone says it's my hearing, I had an old DAC and a new DAC at the same time and was able to compare side by side.

192 is not inherently superior to 96 is not superior to 44.1. This is a marketing myth. AD or DA is clock, chip, analog parts and filter.  Sample rate is not the primary factor in quality.  And engineers adjust each session for the subjectively best result given the audio chain.

Mathematically, this is correct, but from a practical perspective, for a very very long time, DACs just performed better at higher resolutions.


Fortunately in the last 15 years DAC's have improved a great deal in how well they play Redbook. My suspicion, with little to support it, is that cheap clocks got really good and/or really cheap, which has brought up the capabilities of most DAC's.


Number of DACs before which would absolutely show a sonic difference with different sample rates. Far behind us now.
So, no argument from me anymore. :) I've not really sought out Hi Rez files in a very long time.

Best,

E

Hi Larry,

From a digits point of view, nothing wrong with that.  MQA is just FLAC with additional data hidden in the stream.

The issue of getting MQA all the way out has to do with licensing and design choices, not always sure which.

If your streamer gets MQA and unfolds it, it will destroy the MQA envelope in the process. The DAC won't receive MQA stream, just normal high resolution.

The trick is to get your streamer to request MQA but leave it alone for the DAC to completely unfold.

Kind of on a side note, in the past when these questions came up there were always fanboys, with lots of canned counter points.

They seem to have vanished. Guess they've given up the fight?

If you want to hear genuine hi rez sources, plenty of online stores for you like HD Tracks.

You asked about MQA though, which is a different story.

I think MQA is terribly over rated.

I have a Mytek Brooklyn which was one of the first fully MQA compatible DACs out there. I've disabled it and never looked back.


As I've written before, MQA is to my mind, about 20 years too late. 20 years ago DACs playing Redbook just did not sound very good. Now that has greatly improved to the point where the best DACs make high resolution files a lot less important to me. I spent time with an older ARC DAC 8 and the Mytek, but other DACs I've heard more casually confirm this. Something about new DACs, perhaps better and cheaper clocks, perhaps better jitter reduction, has shifted things.
With the ARC 8 I had to use high resolution files for it to sound good. The red book did not. With the Mytek, this delta in performance really disappeared.

I talked to a few audiophiles at the SF audiophile society and they basically concurred, they could not find an improvement. 
And yes, I agree, the performance of the DAC in terms of it's output stage is FAR more important to me now than MQA or even the original file resolution.

Go with your ears.


Best,

E