Dear Timstella,
Looking at your comment "As a professional musician and conductor, I am exposed to the sound of top notch New York musicians playing their instruments on an everyday basis. I listen to MQA on the top of the line Meridian DSP- 8000/ 818V3 DAC. I also use the same source in my serious all analog tube setups. Without trying to insult anyone, if you know what you’re hearing, there is no doubt about the quality of MQA. If you play a well recorded, high quality track such as on the 2L label, and then repeat the same selection with MQA, the improvements are easily heard. There is no EQ change! Only more air, separation, dynamics, and transparency."
You said: "The improvements are easily heard. There is no EQ change! Only more air, separation, dynamics, and transparency." This is where you lose cred. So many people here post "sounds great", or something similar. What matters is how it sounds, with less data, versus the master file. Full Stop. If it sounds better to you, that’s fine, yet if it’s not super close to the source, it’s not better. There is no "better" possible, there is the source, with less data. To say it’s better is to say that it fails and has a subjective appeal to some people.
Understand?
Factually, there cannot be anything "better" than the master. If I want to put more air and separation and dynamics and transparency into a master, then I would have done that in the first place. A master has many cooks and we are happy with it in every way when you get it. (Hard as that is to believe in some cases, which just proves that people hear things differently and from a different frame of reference. We focus on different elements)
What you are hearing is the Aphex Aural Exciter effect from the 80s, also used by AfterMaster in it’s robot mastering, also called here "loudness", or the presence peak of a SM57, it’s older brother the 545SD or a Telefunken 251. There is more in the high mids, and that to 99% of the population sounds "better", like air and separation. People also choose mp3s over 24 bits, for the distortion they think is "better".
What you are missing is the forward MID, and the recessed SIDE with the thinner low mids and the overall change to the harmonic distortion. I don’t want a cleaner harmonic distortion or a more dirty change, I want the same thing harmonically. This is very hard to reproduce with less data, maybe impossible. No one has done it yet.
What matters in music to me, is the humanity, which lives majorly in the low mids, and the way the low end moves drivers, the Africa, the groove. High mids is easy. Many amps etc sound good up there. More "air and separation" is also easy with distortion (see: those mp3 vs 24 bit tests). I use NOS tubes in a Fairman TMEQ and a class A A to D for that purpose. More dynamics is also easy, I use a Mytek DA that’s punchy to feed my desk. More "transparency" is not happening with MQA however, you are confused there by the other elements. Less data = more transparent would make a rational person pause, a long pause.
MQA fails on low mids, low end and keeping the MID/SIDE in tact EXACTLY BECAUSE of the effect you are enamored by. No offense yet your listening skill could be better, which is good news if you can see it. The excitement that comes when people are wowed by these sonic tricks is evident in the style of posts I often read.
A mastering engineer could do that with PCM, and then he/she//they/I would be upset with MQA for taking it too far.
The only way to test this is an A/B on material you personally have engineered. The rest is subjective, and very subject to marketing and concept sales from the team trying to feed their family, or those looking to get on board with the new corporate tech chuck wagon.
If a label, artist or consumer want this, no problem for me. But it’s not better or equal to the source files. Full stop. Facts matter.
And they are looking to control the conversation, which I find rude given the sales pitch. If they said "here’s an interesting alternative" I would have no problem with it. They say it’s better. On it’s face not possible in principle, or in practice. Buyer beware.
Looking at your comment "As a professional musician and conductor, I am exposed to the sound of top notch New York musicians playing their instruments on an everyday basis. I listen to MQA on the top of the line Meridian DSP- 8000/ 818V3 DAC. I also use the same source in my serious all analog tube setups. Without trying to insult anyone, if you know what you’re hearing, there is no doubt about the quality of MQA. If you play a well recorded, high quality track such as on the 2L label, and then repeat the same selection with MQA, the improvements are easily heard. There is no EQ change! Only more air, separation, dynamics, and transparency."
You said: "The improvements are easily heard. There is no EQ change! Only more air, separation, dynamics, and transparency." This is where you lose cred. So many people here post "sounds great", or something similar. What matters is how it sounds, with less data, versus the master file. Full Stop. If it sounds better to you, that’s fine, yet if it’s not super close to the source, it’s not better. There is no "better" possible, there is the source, with less data. To say it’s better is to say that it fails and has a subjective appeal to some people.
Understand?
Factually, there cannot be anything "better" than the master. If I want to put more air and separation and dynamics and transparency into a master, then I would have done that in the first place. A master has many cooks and we are happy with it in every way when you get it. (Hard as that is to believe in some cases, which just proves that people hear things differently and from a different frame of reference. We focus on different elements)
What you are hearing is the Aphex Aural Exciter effect from the 80s, also used by AfterMaster in it’s robot mastering, also called here "loudness", or the presence peak of a SM57, it’s older brother the 545SD or a Telefunken 251. There is more in the high mids, and that to 99% of the population sounds "better", like air and separation. People also choose mp3s over 24 bits, for the distortion they think is "better".
What you are missing is the forward MID, and the recessed SIDE with the thinner low mids and the overall change to the harmonic distortion. I don’t want a cleaner harmonic distortion or a more dirty change, I want the same thing harmonically. This is very hard to reproduce with less data, maybe impossible. No one has done it yet.
What matters in music to me, is the humanity, which lives majorly in the low mids, and the way the low end moves drivers, the Africa, the groove. High mids is easy. Many amps etc sound good up there. More "air and separation" is also easy with distortion (see: those mp3 vs 24 bit tests). I use NOS tubes in a Fairman TMEQ and a class A A to D for that purpose. More dynamics is also easy, I use a Mytek DA that’s punchy to feed my desk. More "transparency" is not happening with MQA however, you are confused there by the other elements. Less data = more transparent would make a rational person pause, a long pause.
MQA fails on low mids, low end and keeping the MID/SIDE in tact EXACTLY BECAUSE of the effect you are enamored by. No offense yet your listening skill could be better, which is good news if you can see it. The excitement that comes when people are wowed by these sonic tricks is evident in the style of posts I often read.
A mastering engineer could do that with PCM, and then he/she//they/I would be upset with MQA for taking it too far.
The only way to test this is an A/B on material you personally have engineered. The rest is subjective, and very subject to marketing and concept sales from the team trying to feed their family, or those looking to get on board with the new corporate tech chuck wagon.
If a label, artist or consumer want this, no problem for me. But it’s not better or equal to the source files. Full stop. Facts matter.
And they are looking to control the conversation, which I find rude given the sales pitch. If they said "here’s an interesting alternative" I would have no problem with it. They say it’s better. On it’s face not possible in principle, or in practice. Buyer beware.