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MQA 6 months later- have thoughts evolved?

I wish Apple would up their game beyond 256k AAC on iTunes, as the real long term risk is that and MQA only.
CDs have all but vanished from the market in Malaysia
 
I’m astonished they haven’t. The mechanisms for lossless or high-res have been in place for ages now with ALAC and the ‘Mastered For iTunes’ initiative. I don’t understand the decision not to at all. It makes Apple’s offering look obviously inferior quality to the competition, which is the opposite one would expect from a company that tries to position itself at the top of the market.
 
I’m astonished they haven’t. The mechanisms for lossless or high-res have been in place for ages now with ALAC and the ‘Mastered For iTunes’ initiative. I don’t understand the decision not to at all. It makes Apple’s offering look obviously inferior quality to the competition, which is the opposite one would expect from a company that tries to position itself at the top of the market.

But Apple has never been about absolute quality, but about user experience.
 
Some technical stuff to do with MQA timing in this month’s Stereophile plus an interesting opening editorial from John Atkinson who seems a little bemused by the anger towards it in some online quarters. I’ve not read the tech stuff yet, but a quick skim gives the impression it does do something and this is backed up with impulse plots etc. They’ll be analysing the compression next month.
 
In fairness that is the sort of thing I’d expect to sound terrible on anything. Modern pop/rock really is not a good way of evaluating hi-fi IMO. There are some really good recordings, e.g. a fair bit of Sufjan Stevens, Lambchop etc, but most is just compressed to hell and sounds more crap the better the system.
 
Have a listen to the new Noel Gallagher album in Tidal Masters esp the single, shocking sq.

I've not heard it and don't know it, but without even looking i can bet that it's mastered at Metropolis! Even though i'm not into that much popular music Adele etc, it would still be nice to listened to it without my ears bleeding! If engineers at Sterling sound and (Bob Ludwig etc) can master popular albums and make them fairly listenable i don't know why others can't.

Just to give you an example there is a live album mastered of Kelis's that i was really looking forward too after seeing her perform at Glastonbury and on KCRW etc, obviously the BBC sound and KCRW are excellent, the Live from London album is absolutely appalling! My first guess was it was mastered at Metroplis.

How you doing anyway Muzzer, you well?
 
Hi Jon I'm doing fine thanks, can't seem to find any info on where it was mastered but I do know it sounds terrible just a wall of sound that MQA can't save.
 
Some technical stuff to do with MQA timing in this month’s Stereophile plus an interesting opening editorial from John Atkinson who seems a little bemused by the anger towards it in some online quarters. I’ve not read the tech stuff yet, but a quick skim gives the impression it does do something and this is backed up with impulse plots etc. They’ll be analysing the compression next month.

Is that on the web now, or am I correct in assuming they don't publish such material until a later date? I gave up subscribing to Stereophile. I did enjoy reading it, but a mix of issues that got 'lost in the post' and delays in sorting out renewals made me give up persisting.
 
I don’t know when it gets up to the website, but I assume a little later or they’d have nothing to sell!
 
Is that on the web now, or am I correct in assuming they don't publish such material until a later date? I gave up subscribing to Stereophile. I did enjoy reading it, but a mix of issues that got 'lost in the post' and delays in sorting out renewals made me give up persisting.

You can get a digital subscription through www.zinio.com for almost nothing a year. (€4.37 for 12 issues in Europe)
 
You can get a digital subscription through www.zinio.com for almost nothing a year. (€4.37 for 12 issues in Europe)

Alas, I prefer ye olde printed magazines. I tend to find reading a lot of text off a screen isn't comfortable.

FWIW Someone I know in the USA has just said (via email) that John A. has said something about me or something I've written. But if so, I have no idea what! :)
 
I wouldn't know about JA, but Adamdea has called you a 'real expert' in his reaction to Jim Austin's first instalment of S'phile's new MQA propaganda series.
 

Thanks! Wow - so they use an artificial test signal that doesn't comply with the Nyquist criteria, then look at pictures of ringing that is at an inaudible frequency. But the conclusion is interesting:

Apparently, as long as the MQA decoder is enabled, the impulse response is basically the same—even for non-MQA data.

So it doesn't matter if the material is really MQA - the MQA-enabled DAC employs a different filter algorithm when in MQA mode irrespective of input data being MQA-encoded or not.
 
Looks like this debate is potentially irrelevant, with the news about Tidal. If that goes, MQA probably dies with it, possibly followed by the other HD streaming services.
 


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