I'm with Schiit. We don't need another format, especially one controlled by one commercial company. We don't need another codec that will alter recordings so that they can be decoded in full resolution only by a proprietary decoder.
MQA - One Filter to Rule them All?
Hi Everyone,
Just thought I'd start another flame....er, discussion. I've been reading some about MQA. It has several components, but I want to focus on one in particular. The digital filter compensation.
The other two parts are compression and authentication.
We don't have a lot of DAC's to listen to with MQA right now, but here's my understanding.
By measuring time or amplitude errors in ADC's AND DAC's MQA seeks to correct the behavior, making the entire A/D --> D/A chain closer to ideal. It's pretty ambitious. What I'm wondering is, assuming this is real and not snake oil, does this mean all MQA DAC's will begin to sound alike? Will otherwise mediocre DAC's step up, and great DAC's not have that much to contribute anymore?
If so, maybe this will usher in another great era of tone controls being built into our preamps or DAC's instead of having to make tonal changes via cables and tweaks.
What say you? Assuming MQA is not snake oil, (could be, haven't heard it) doesn't it mean all DAC's will sound the same?
Best,
Erik
Just thought I'd start another flame....er, discussion. I've been reading some about MQA. It has several components, but I want to focus on one in particular. The digital filter compensation.
The other two parts are compression and authentication.
We don't have a lot of DAC's to listen to with MQA right now, but here's my understanding.
By measuring time or amplitude errors in ADC's AND DAC's MQA seeks to correct the behavior, making the entire A/D --> D/A chain closer to ideal. It's pretty ambitious. What I'm wondering is, assuming this is real and not snake oil, does this mean all MQA DAC's will begin to sound alike? Will otherwise mediocre DAC's step up, and great DAC's not have that much to contribute anymore?
If so, maybe this will usher in another great era of tone controls being built into our preamps or DAC's instead of having to make tonal changes via cables and tweaks.
What say you? Assuming MQA is not snake oil, (could be, haven't heard it) doesn't it mean all DAC's will sound the same?
Best,
Erik
Showing 3 responses by mike_in_nc
@erik_squires I consider HDCD a cautionary tale. It received similar over-the-top press when it was introduced. However, Pacific Microsonics now is out of business (bought by Microsoft), and there are no HDCD hardware decoders available. I believe those were always in a DAC chip, and since DAC quality has improved since the HDCD days, even using NOS HDCD DAC chips (if available) in current products would be a poor idea. A non-proprietary software decoder does exist and is built into (e.g.) JRiver Media Center. It is not a success. From discussions on the JRiver forums, it's clear that no one knows how to use the public-domain decoder to figure out which HDCD features are needed on any particular recording. Smaller storage requirements are always nice (one reason I wish some real research on DSD would be done, so we'd know how to get the good parts of DSD sound from a reasonably efficient format). Still, storage is getting smaller and cheaper, and to my ears, high-rate mp3 is indistinguishable from lossless encoding, except on a high-quality audio system in a quiet location. Have I stated enough heresies for one morning? |
@erik_squires My memory is that Stereophile was extremely enthusiastic about HDCD at the time. Their online archive doesn't go back far enough for me to see if my memory is right. Meridian also introduced MLP, Meridian Lossless Packing, which became an optional standard for DVD-audio. I would prefer that new codecs be lossless and reversible. |