Jafant, It is in my view. I cannot use SACD with the server and don't want to invest in two different formats, CD being dominant. In addition 90% of CDs I have are not available in SACD or HDCD. I realize limitations of CDs (Nyquist applies only to continuous waves) but it is good enough for me.
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What do you suggest we should do to save the industry and consumers from
the evils of MQA? Do you think constant bickering on audio forums is
going to deter the forward progress of MQA?
" My friend, we hear all the time politicians telling us that robotics and automation are the way of the future and that as a nation, we don't need most of the jobs that employed millions of Americans over the past half century. People "need to be retrained for jobs of the future" - so they tell us. The same can be said of the "music industry". We don't need large corporations making copies of music recordings and selling them to us with large profit margins that made them rich - like in the old days. Technology has essentially made the big record company executives and their profits - extinct as a species. Time to move on and try to make boat loads of money for doing nothing in a different field. To quote some of our favorite liberal politicians - "those jobs are gone forever". |
There were many attempts to improve sound, like HDCD or SACD but all pretty much failed. They had one thing in common - a strong copy protection. Myself, I don't care for MQA since I don't see sound quality limitations of existing media. I have few CDs with breathtaking sound proving that the format is not the bottleneck - at least for my old ears. |
This thread is NOT just about someone personally enjoying listening to MQA. This discussion has risen above this to touch on the broader issues that MQA brings to the entire music industry and home reproduction. Those who do not like the discussion here are welcome to just move along, instead of trying to impose their will on what a thread should or should not be. Seriously? What is wrong with some people? BTW, I have actually listened to and compared MQA to non-MQA files, and MQA is inferior to redbook, native hires pcm and dsd in a high resolution audio set-up. And I am not talking about streaming where I have stated before elsewhere that MQA Tidal is generally better than non-MQA Tidal. |
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Have you actually heard a MQA file...or should I just chalk you up in MQA haters club 😉
" - lalitk I listened to a few Norah Jones tracks on a system that I was told were generated with MQA source files. I couldn't hear anything remarkable about them. I have most of her catalog on CD and am very familiar with her music as I've been listening to her for many years now. While I have the equipment to measure a lot of acoustical and electrical phenomenon, I have never been in a position where something I could clearly hear could not be seen in measurements. It's almost always the other way around - measurements show things I could potentially hear but don't. In the case of MQA, measurements show it is inferior. But the level of precision and accuracy inherent to the digital media format is sufficient for the limited adulteration imposed by MQA to be largely inaudible. When it comes to reproduced music, some people actually like the bass doubling that occurs when a mediocre loudspeaker woofer struggles with signal overload. To some, more distortion is better. Attenuated bass/exaggerated "warmth" often experienced with tube amps is welcome. These kind of subjective arguments are ALMOST useless in terms of being capable of informing the uninformed or misinformed. It's a lot more useful to say for example that amplifier X has a high output impedance and will attenuate bass below Y hertz Z decibels at a particular drive level than to say to someone who's never heard it - bass is kinda rolled off with low impedance speakers. The bottom line is MQA adulterates or diminishes signal quality - whether or not you personally can hear the degradation or like the degradation is largely irrelevant when it comes to the value or usefulness of a proposed standard. There's no room for subjectivity when the overall goals are supposed to be "authenticity, precision, accuracy, and faithfulness to the original". You pick your criteria standards and measure them to verify that you've achieved your goals. You don't establish a standard based on subjective mumbo jumbo that can't be measured or objectively proved through some kind of rigorous, reproducible testing/evaluation procedure. |
While I agree with your sentiment overall, I have more faith in the general public understanding what's really going on ( record company attempts to control the market and boost profit by intentionally cheapening the product to the masses and offering original quality we've been used to at a premium price to those willing to pay) and stopping MQA before it can do too much damage. Perhaps I'm being too optimistic thinking that the lion's share of music buying people are not gullible fools who believe they have to spend many thousands to get good accurate reproduction of recorded. music. |
It’s not really about MQA, or Bob Stuart. It’s about having the entire industry locked into a standard that has a near 100% chance of being found to be at fault, found to be detrimental, found to be limited..to have that ’standard’ run into/as everything... and have that faulty low quality be all we can get, for very high costs. For at least a decade. A decade of music listening ruined. Forever. Gone. Wiped out. About 1/4 of your music listening life, cut out from underneath you. If not half your listening life cut out from you, if MQA ends up having longer legs in the market. wake up and fight it, or lose it. So, instead of high fidelity, all you'll get is a forced pay ....for a 'good enough' format. Wasn't CD bad enough? Did people not learn anything? |
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My thoughts, I suggest you try and spend some time listening to MQA tracks than wasting your time with these futile posters.
"- lalitk I don't think anyone here cares about YOUR "suggestion" with regard to whether or not someone has a right to discuss (correction) Bob's "philosophy". In fact, from a technical standpoint, Stuart's "invention" is more of a philosophy than an actual technical development that improves sound quality. If you actually care enough to enlighten yourself and closely examine the impulse response graphs posted in Stereophile, you'd see that MQA adds latency (distortion) to the signal and also adds dither (background noise) that masks legitimate ripple in the process of encoding.decoding. It is actually inferior to the original format. This also serves as positive proof that most "audiofaithful" couldn't tell the difference between a 192khz/24 bit replica vs. a 14 bit MQA rendition. Again, no double blind testing has been done to verify any of Stuart's claims. He's just another high priest of audiophooldom preaching to the gullible and vulnerable. |
ptss... what are you trying to accomplish from this thread? Your last thread on MQA pretty much sums it how you and other Naysayer thinks about MQA. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/mqa-foolish-new-algorithm-vote I suggest you try listening to MQA tracks and post your thoughts. |
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John Stuart is merely supplying a technical solution to the recording industry's money problems. Digital let the cat out of the bag and the record companies (those still standing) have been doing everything they can to put the cat back in. So far, in the past 2 years, the record companies have only been getting a look at the cat's claws - cat is having none of it. The essence of digital technology is to render the original recording as many times as desired in a form that is essentially indistinguishable from the original. And if the data can be shared and transmitted easily and essentially losslessly from one person to another, where does that leave the money man who wants to control/tax distribution? - Holding a great big empty bag of course! What John is doing is providing a technical means to degrade the quality of the original recording and digitally restore it to those willing to pay. The clever aspect is that this entire MQA charade was supposed to offer "improved sound quality" - LOL! As if one could somehow improve sound quality/accuracy over the original 192khz/24 bit format!! Most people can't appreciate the quality inherent to 90 decibel dynamic range and 22 khz bandwidth associated with "lowly" CD format - let alone 192khz/24 bit. But somehow, John Stuart is going to improve sound quality! If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.... |
