I really like the wordplay of "origami unfolding" instead of compression-decompression. My know-it-all kids explained to me that if it is lossy, it cannot be origami, they tried to illustrate this through an analogy with "real" Transformers vs. Hollywood-style transformation of a VW Beetle into a 50-ton battle-tank. They lost me then and there...
Anyway, I listen to Master Tidal on Windows 7, thru Schiit Eitr into Wadia 781i. MQA of my favorite ECM albums do not sound as good as those same CDs played through Wadia (or Naim CDS3). One explanation is that Wadia is old and outdated and/or that it sounds better from internal transport, not as good when used as DAC. Another explanation came yesterday from Tidal support: "A DAC which is MQA capable can unfold up to 8x
(provided the DAC has that capability). With the desktop and/or a non-MQA DAC
you will get 24bit/88.2 (96) kHz...
In order to listen to the MQA format to its fullest extent,
your equipment needs to be MQA capable. Otherwise, you will not be getting the
full MQA experience but you will still have better quality than HiFi."
I am constantly seeking out new music, much of which is older -- until I recently brought digital into my systems, there were many recordings I did not have access to. In my case, I suppose being uninformed is better than being misinformed, I gather the industry is promoting MQA and there is a fair amount of resistance to it from the audiophile community. Rather than stake out a position-- since I don't really have one-- I have a few questions: 1. Wasn't MQA through some sort of file compression, supposed to facilitate streaming of hi-rez files which could get bottlenecked in the passage from the originating server to the user's player? 2. Is DRM part of the code, or is it simply a fear that once you allow a standard like this to gain traction, that is a potential next step?
I own SACD, CD. But I now stream MQA through Tidal. Compare to 44k/16bit, MQA does sounds better. Since it come with Tidal HiFi. Why not listen to them? I recently acquired an Opportunity 205 enable me to do SACD/CD/4K/MQA. I am open to any formate that improve my listening experience.
I don't consider my position to be closed minded. I don't own an SACD player or even a CD player, everything is digital files--10 Tb in the server with back-up, 4Tb of 16/44, 24/96 FLAC and MP3-320 files.
Can we improve upon the sound of 24/192 PCM? like @elizabeth,
Don't Know, Don't Care.
When I stopped watching TV and started listening to my Musical Medicine, I lost interest in the clown car and circus parade which is the daily "news"
Now, tell me about a Jazz player I need to hear...
I liked S Stone's MQA comments in recent TAS...that you need properly recorded music in acoustic space, and be sitting exactly in sweet spot to appreciate/evaluate MQA...I have not done that...though I do enjoy streaming in addition to LP and CD...no interest in MQA, hoping my mind is not hermetically sealed...
I have at least that many LPs and CDs/digital files, but I have to admit that MQA streaming of Tidal through Roon has been a revelation. Roon core software does the first MQA unfold to 24/96 or 24/88.2, and you don't need an MQA DAC to hear the difference vs. 16/44.1.
Tidal has been poorly served by a marketing strategy focused on hip hop/rap. The Tidal MQA library contains pretty much the entire '50s and post-bop jazz catalog of Blue Note, Impulse/Verve, Riverside, Prestige, as well as ECM from '70s to the present. Not to mention MQA of most of Bowie, Rod Stewart, Beach Boys, and many new release alt/indie hi-res artists like Father John Misty, Beach House, Calexico, etc. that I would have otherwise purchased on physical media. For $20/month I'm all in.
I already own all the music I will ever buy. So, for me, MQA in meaningless. I own 4,500 LP, 2,500 CDs. I don't stream, I have all the music I will want. I have read the pros and cons of MQA. and I know the market will decide. Not some guy who dreams of making money, not some recording studio execs who dream of getting the cat back into the bag.. The Market. If enough folks buy processors with MQA, and buy enough music with it, MQA will win. If not ... MQA will lose. And not one argument or fact check or discussion makes a single bit of difference. Just your DOLLARS. Did you buy? or not buy? I voted, I bought a $7000 SACD/DAC without MQA this Summer.Enough said on my part.
I am doing likewise - listening to my own music collection with a non-MQA dac, no streaming.
The only reason for me to think about MQA is for the next dac I buy - should it be MQA-capable or not? Will cross the bridge when I get there, I guess. :)
The latest issue of TAS has a very favorable review of the Rossini, even more so with MQA material. After reading the section on how dCS implements MQA for its OWN hardware, my interest in MQA is now reignited but only with regard to SQ of MQA vs non-MQA files played via the same dac. dCS seems to be the first company to implement MQA in this way. The MQA-capable Rossini may just be the ticket to end all MQA debates based on SQ alone.
I posted the above in another thread. Is dCS getting it wrong about MQA?
@johnmuoio .. I ‘hear’ what your ears are telling you. However it seems you perhaps are unaware of the details in the mqa process. Simple old fashioned tone controls, that distorted the music in many ways, made a sound that many,using less than state of the art equipment, felt was better to them. No denying that. But the stated reason for using the name ‘master guality’ - authenticated yet! was to convey that the so named recordings represented the quality of the master recording. As you will learn,if you do a little research, is that nothing could be further from the truth! Scoundrels in England just like in America .. ie liars.
MQA is included with Tidal HiFI for $20. I am streaming from my iMac to Oppo205 now. It does't sound better than 44.1k/16bit. MQA is a compressed 192k/24bit format. No complaint.
I would agree it’s a philosophy in that it comes down to whether it sounds more realistic rather than some sort of scientific comparison. Have you haters actually listened to MQA content? It does sound more realistic, it does correct lots of artifacts and the artist agrees, or it wouldn’t be authenticated. And it takes up much less space and data for streaming. So what if the industry makes money? Why should it all be for free?
without profit, nothing would ever improve. What makes some of you believe that you’re entitled to the hi-res digital file sampled from the master? And, why do you think it’s better?
MQA is a clever way to efficiently use bits so as not to include unnecessary “white space” found in your hi-res (ie 96k/24) files in the MQA data. It’s not using “perceptual coding”, like that awful MP3.
If youve not listened to MQA, don’t let a thread like this discourage you. Have a listen. An MQA of 192/24 content sounds more realistic than the straight up, original.
MQA is a psyop. When $300,000 speakers failed to establish "Audiophilia" as a clinical definition of insane, the Audio industry had to work up a new test.
It’s Mindboggling to me that Bob Stuart could say MQA, which places -noise- in the 3 lsb’s,could provide sound that is ‘better than the original’. Scoundrel.
To Brian Lucy. Your input, as a professional in the Audio industry, is much appreciated. I believe your ,kernels of truth, will evolve into a positive influence on this discussion.
"
Batch processing of my work, by labels, is happening as we speak. It’s
not "Authenticated" as a master by me, or my clients ... it’s just
another lossy codec.
" - Brian Lucey
@brianlucey The only thing "authenticated" is the addition to Stuart's bank account. Out of which he possibly pays Stereophile and Abso!ute Sound to keep gaslighting their readers relentlessly so they actually start to believe this lossy mqa CODEC is better than, well, just about everything digital on the planet. Now there are even mqa CDs being released. As if they didn't learn from the failure of HDCD. I'll take the word of professional engineers who actually record and work with this stuff over some money-grabbing hack who owned a high-end audio company, and presents us with psychobabble-laden white papers as proof that his lossy CODEC is valid...
As a mastering engineer who has heard pre and post MQA for what it is, please ... it’s not a "good sound". 24 bit files are all we need, to be "in the studio" and to "hear what the artist intended"
Unless you like harmonic distortion and Mid/Side eq changes, stick to the actual mix files, at whatever is the native sample rate (higher rates are not better, another myth used to sell gear)
Stuart and Co are about securing income in a world post Netflix where video has dried up for them, it’s not hard to figure out. Money is a powerful force on anyone’s ears.
If you search Bob’s own words on You Tube (sorry can’t find the link off hand), he has said that 24 bits is all anyone needs (in a video formats discussion 4 years ago) then suddenly PCM is fatally flawed?
Batch processing of my work, by labels, is happening as we speak. It’s not "Authenticated" as a master by me, or my clients ... it’s just another lossy codec.
No argument about 24-bit files sounding great. That is to say, both my DACs play them. But, before I spend money on HDtracks I have a good library of Redbook CD quality discs. I am glad they had a $99 entry-level Modi which did 192 native on Linux. If you're able to get a new library for MQA for free but how much is Tidal... that is the hitch. Being an Audiophile on the Cheap means listen to what have. Thanks for your help, I will look into it. Funny thing is I had use of a pair of HFC Ultimate Titanium interconnects and even MP3s sounds good. I have an opinion in the cable discussion...$6,000 cables sound better than $20 Straight Wire PYST. From my lips to God's ears...
Tidal desktop will stream MQA at 24bit/96khz without a MQA decoder. I have an Oppo HA-1 DAC will can decode 24/96. Consider MQA is free with Tidal, I have no complain. Compare 24/96 to 16/44.1, 24/96 is much better.
I subscribe to the philosophy at Schiit. There is no interest in MQA. Period. There is no interest in Class D amplifiers. Period. Same for DSD. Period. Jason and Mike make my predominantly Redbook collection of Music sound Magical. I would like to say that maybe a more expensive DAC might improve 24/96 Hi-Res files...but that isn't what I have collected. Make my CDs sound better, without charging me $25 per SACD or DSD download. Never heard MQA, probably never will. That's why I am listening to 16/44.1 CDs. Because I have already bought them.
erik_squiresI'm afraid I can't follow your "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to constructing an argument
Do not be afraid I have discovered that most often when an argument can not be followed/understood it is because the person putting forth the argument can not follow they're own reasoning, ideas and thoughts because if they could then everyone else could too.
“The full scope of it’s ambition, to correct all timing errors in the A/D, D/A chain and to do so using equipment specific data is monumental.”
This is impossible. Everything is done in the studio to try and get it right with as little processing as possible. Basically every instrument and vocals are often recorded in a seperate chain to a separate track. No amount of clever processing in playback can magically fix a recording. You actually need master tapes with all the tracks separately to do anything really meaningful to improve a recording - anything else is just simple noise filtering and eq that affects the entire recording.
MQA is hand waving nonsense. Stuart is so full of it.
I'll just leave you and your writing style alone. I'm afraid I can't follow your "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to constructing an argument.
In real music signals played back on real linear, time invariant audio systems, there is no "pre or post" anything. You have passband, stopband, and transitions between them which can be anything from very steep to very shallow. The only "ringing" that can occur in such systems happens when they are not properly damped such as for transition bands using high order filters. The whole notion of "pre" and "post" ringing has nothing to do with PCM A/D and D/A conversion and everything to do with impulse responses. And if you know anything about digital sample and hold or zero/hold circuits, you know that the spectral content is tightly controlled and band limited. There is no high frequency ringing if sampling rates are sufficiently high and the sampled content is sufficiently band limited with low order filtering circuits. If you impose band limiting as Craven allegedly did - rolling off frequencies at the upper end of the sampled content, it is possible to wind up with an impulse response of mush that attenuates both pre and post ringing spectral content while adding substantial phase delay (energy storage) with attendant post impulse oscillations. It's important to remember that we're dealing with continuous time invariant audio signals. There's no Hanning window. No time zero. Do yourself a favor and buy a cheap used 100mhz scope from Ebay or borrow one from a friend. Splice an RCA cable on your stereo and connect your scope to it while playing back music. See if you can find some impulse spikes that are in the microsecond range or lower in duration. Every now and then, it can be helpful to take a step back or two to look at the big picture. Context is everything and voltage/current spikes don't exist in a vacuum. There's a great big world of energy storage elements from tiny diaphragms in microphones to 200 gram 14 inch woofers and everything in between. None of this stuff responds in any meaningful way to stimuli that span mere nanoseconds or microseconds. And neither do our ears. Craven and the Meridian gang have had significant challenges to their professional reputations over the years. I'll leave it at that.
Just one small quibble ... The MQA decoders rely on apodizing filters (no pre-ripple, lots after) which Meridian has championed, but they are available without MQA. You can probably find lots at Stereophile written about them. My DAC let's me choose 3 different filters with MQA turned off, including apodizing.
Having said that, after listening it is not the filter I ever choose to use. I find it far too soft.
If MQA were to actually be an ADVANCEMENT for the digital media distribution industry, it would have provided meaningful compression of digital files WITHOUT ANY PERCEPTIBLE LOSS OF CONTENT INTEGRITY/FIDELITY. We all know that 16 bit and much more demonstrably - 24 bit digital media precision is largely a waste when it comes to real world signals. The full dynamic range that comes with 24 bit systems translates to 140 db!!! That's enough to make your ears bleed! So clearly, there is potential in the marketplace for a coding scheme that scans digital files, records dynamic peaks in the content, and adjusts bit precision accordingly to fully accommodate the individual file's needs before encryption or compression takes place to facilitate more efficient transfer to the intended target. A new industry wide digital standard could place dynamic range information somewhere in a predetermined location in the media content that signals to adaptive encoding/decoding equipment what algorithm to use to fully accommodate the file without padding it with a hole bunch of 1's and 0's that don't change before it is either transmitted or stored on media. MQA could have done this and dispensed with the entire fraudulent "time correction" BS. They would have provided some factual justification for existence in being able to legitimately say - you now have lossless transmission that is more efficient than the current standard. Unfortunately, they lost all credibility when the actual response data showed a degradation of the signal (no longer lossless) while they were claiming WITHOUT ANY PROOF WHATSOEVER that time domain errors allegedly inherent to PCM were being fixed.
The above referenced article and "Archimago's" work confirm what the impulse response measurements posted in Stereophile say directly with actual data. Noise is added by this "codec" to raise the noise floor and mask the low level ripple (commonly and erroneously referred to as "pre ring") in the impulse signal. For those who work with impulse response signals on a regular basis, they don't need a detailed explanation of how MQA degrades the signal. They can see it immediately in the response graphs. Not only is noise added (dither) to adulterate the signal - thus losing net signal precision from effectively 16 or 24 bits down to 14, but the claimed "time error correction" actually adds time domain distortion to the end result. You can see this in the Stereophile impulse response graph easily from the delayed negative going spike. The impulse response of any linear system or approximate linear system is the fullest expression of signal quality and fidelity that we know of today. It is a complete characterization of the system's time (and thus frequency domain for linear systems) domain behavior. One need look no further than the impulse response graphs. They tell the full story in an instant. MQA is not merely a flawed codec. It's a licensing lock box piece of garbage masquerading as an industry standard for digital media distribution.
Forgot to mention something. IMHO, MQA is about 2 decades too late. With high bandwidth internet and terabyte thumb drives, and DACs that in the last 5 years play Redbook MUCH better than they used to, the pure need for MQA has really diminished a great deal IMHO.
If this had been introduced a few years after the CD, I am sure it would be the dominant digital standard today.
I think it's worth having this discussion if we can separate the value (which is arguable) from the process, which is in fact pretty ambitious.
From a technical point of view, I think it is clear that MQA is "not just a codec" by any sense of the meaning. The full scope of it's ambition, to correct all timing errors in the A/D, D/A chain and to do so using equipment specific data is monumental.
Benchmark has one of the best explanations, as well as technical criticisms I've ever read about MQA here:
I think cj1965 and the other naysayers are the ones who are gullible and vulnerable to bad mouth anything that they cannot hear. They are probably in the same club that can’t hear a difference between cables/cartridges/amps/etc... we all know that there are these types out there, we just need to ignore them.
I still purchase vinyl, CDs and HiRez downloads for portability purposes. I am trying to grasp how this "portability" will work with MQA. I love listening to my AK240 with a 100 albums on it, (especially when I am stuck in hospital). Unless I can get decent WiFi in hospital (which I know from experience is terrible, like the food), I can't stream, so I need to use my AK. I wonder how MQA is going to get around this. (Bob can buy me a new portable that plays non streamed MQA :)
CJ, Cha-Ching. I'd prefer my money tho go in equipment, not on authentication software that takes care of 5% of degenerates who indulge in illegal copying, and a lot of the copying is not carried out by "civil" countries. Can I say that on this forum?
Ptss, Thanks for the heads up about John in J. Robert Stuart. We all know who Bob Stuart is wrt MQA but good to know he is also John S. The audio world will continue to call him Bob as does himself. Cheers! :)
"
FWIW, to my ears and in my system, MQA files sounds consistently better
than 16bit/44.1kHz files. That’s not to say that Tidal streaming sounds
bad on non-MQA files. I enjoy both formats and by personal preference
rooting for hi-res streaming.
" - lalitk
Brought to you by Tidal Music Streaming Service - Aspiro AB.....
No matter how many people try to politely ask you to respect that this is not a " cast your vote for/against Tidal or MQA" thread, you just had to get that last one in there, didn't you? Is that you Jayz?
Btw, your FWIW was not worth very much in this thread. People here are still trying to move beyond the cheerleader pep rally BS and focus on the wider, real world implications of what is being sought by certain members of the recording industry.
“We, in this forum, are music lovers first and foremost. It’s why we buy quality equipment and freely share experiences that may benefit others” - I appreciate and agree with your sentiment.
Please keep us updated on the progress of your proposition. I wish you the best!
FWIW, to my ears and in my system, MQA files sounds consistently better than 16bit/44.1kHz files. That’s not to say that Tidal streaming sounds bad on non-MQA files. I enjoy both formats and by personal preference rooting for hi-res streaming.
My days of buying CD’s and paying for hi-res download are long gone, thanks to Tidal streaming!
A chief inherent feature of MQA is security and authentication. Very little of this side of the "product" is talked about or acknowledged by the "inventor". The files cannot be copied for example to serve as a backup should the original get corrupted. You don't "own" the copy after purchasing it. You merely purchased the right to playback the file. The codec is proprietary and guarded as if it were (actually is) the mechanism that ensures complete control of distribution and pricing in the marketplace. It is a means of guaranteeing that all copies of the copyright protected material in the marketplace come from and fall under the full control of one source. Effectively, it is nothing like the open source standard we now have with respect to PCM digital audio. If you are an electronics company that wishes to build products that handle MQA, you have to secure a licensing agreement with MQA.
I thought MQA - Master Quality Authenticated music, dealt with providing a common standard to streaming and download files, which can range through 256kbps or 320kbps, AAC, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis depending on your source. It is the provider of the source to ensure a common standard of audio reproduction. It also (sneakily) will make sure that the original has been paid for and therefore can be played. sort of what is happening to Blu-Ray standards.
Red Book is comprehensive set of standards relating to digital media such as CDs. (Please correct me if I am wrong). I don't know if it relates to streaming or downloads because it was written over a decade ago.
MQA is trying to standardise these download/streaming files so that the listener gets a common quality of sound. I am not saying that this sound is better or worse than vinyl or CD. It is just a method of reproducing to a common standard (and verifying that is an original or purchased copy).
I realise that you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but a lot of older vinyl and CDs were mastered on some woeful masters and remastering can exemplify/amplify a lot of original inherent faults.
I have heard a standard stream of tracks I know and then listened to the MQA versions and they do sound cleaner and more even. This is via digital jiggery to sound better. Can you honestly make a common CD sound better than how it has been produced? Having said that, I do not agree with the point that we will need to/ or should pay more for music that
1. We already have but it sounds better as "MQA" so we must pay more for it,
2. We should pay more for MQA via streaming, in which case we wouldn't know what we were being charged,
3. The past music we know and love should not have a premium for MQA placed on it. If MQA is to be an extra charge, do it for music starting from a "date" or all new music or some such.
All input is much appreciated. jon2020 - “Bob” Stuart Is J(John) Robert Stuart of Meridian & MQA. lalitk: I appreciate your question. I’m trying to wisely expose a business idea/proposition, supported by 2 of the largest recording companies, that if implemented will have a significant “detrimental” and “long lasting” effect on the recording of new music of all genres. We, in this forum, are music lovers first and foremost. It’s why we buy quality equipment and freely share experiences that may benefit others. Peter ptss
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