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MQA arrives on Tidal

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The Meridian DAC has arrived and I've been able to try it out briefly.

I did have one of these before some months ago.

To recap, I'm the one (the only one?) who cannot actually listen to 16/44 for more than about 20 minutes at most. I hear it as unacceptably distorted. Always have done. This is why I have never adopted digital audio. I was waiting for someone to "fix it"..

I ordered one of these DACs to try out hi-res and MQA and had positive results with both. However with MQA I was rather restricted in what I could try - the DAC only lasted for about 8 hours before it broke, and so I only got to hear "Magnificat". Still, it was positive.

Like many others, I really wanted to hear MQA with music with which I was familiar. While that's a beautiful operatic track, it isn't what I listen to.

I've only spent half an hour with the DAC plugged into the laptop feeding the main system but MQA does exactly what it says on the tin. Sort of..

If I'm the one who actually can't listen to CD or 16/44 because of what I hear as distortion then the golden test is not whether it has "just been EQ'd a bit differently", but whether that distortion that I hear has gone. Just EQ'ing it differently wouldn't accomplish that.

What distortion? With 16/44 as I hear it, primarily:

- The sense of choppiness and truncation especially on the fade of things.
- The poor quality sound-staging which readily collapses when the music is complex.

Both of those may or may not be attributable to ringing. But even without a technical analysis of the how and why, and judging the results:

I picked out a couple to try (I have subjected partner to much Italian TV, my interest, lately, so didn't want to push it too far with "what I like" and kept the session short).

Phil Collins and Pink Floyd.

I have two Phil Collins albums. They don't often find their way onto the turntable (it seems customary to slag off Phil on here). Actually I don't mind his stuff. I don't like his slightly off-key average voice.

The Pink Floyd album was "Division Bell". I have this on CD. It is unlistenable. I have "The Wall" on vinyl. That is wonderful.

Both of these rendered so beautifully.

No, I haven't put these side-by-side with a "standard" 16/44 cut. In all honestly, and I'll be derided for this, I don't need to. I can spot 16/44 distortion a mile off.

It isn't there. It is "fixed".

I also tried Bruno Mars's "Locked Out of Heaven". That's perfectly listenable but I'm still hearing digital artefacts and distortion.

I have a feeling that much of the stuff that has been produced in the last twenty years may be beyond saving thanks to poor quality digital mastering.

I see MQA as a "set of tools" rather than a single formula. With the latter, perhaps it is simply a case of taking the master and applying an algorithm. With the former two, perhaps more effort has gone into it (analog master?) right from the start, beginning with the original "master tapes".

Early days yet, but I'll echo a point made by another poster - it's "hi-fi come alive again".

I will try the MQA versions versus vinyl (for the ones I have on vinyl obviously) and report back.
 
Californication still sounds shite, ear bleed had to turn the amp down 10 notches:D
Crikey Mark you must be one of those golden eared types we hear about you should donate your body to science.
 
muzzer said:
Californication still sounds shite, ear bleed had to turn the amp down 10 notches:D
Crikey Mark you must be one of those golden eared types we hear about you should donate your body to science.
Click to expand...

I have a bit of a theory that actually, most people can hear what I hear but few would call it "distortion" - and that it has been "normalised".

Until it is removed and the difference becomes obviously audible, and to my ears, it's not subtle.

The irony is that while I have a decent TT I have an otherwise average setup and a penchant for dance music. Actually, I have a secondary theory that it is this attachment to highly rhythmic music that makes me subject to being able to spot what I call "timing failure" more readily.

But, who cares ;) I don't. All I care about is being able to immerse myself in music without the various distortion artefacts of both CD and vinyl.

I have a suspicion that, in the MQA vs vinyl comparison, MQA is going to win.
 
mark-hants said:
- it's "hi-fi come alive again".
Click to expand...

Or maybe - 'Perfect sound forever' as how CD was described on it's birth.

Maybe, in the way that CD was so much easier than vinyl.

Maybe, in the same way that streaming is so much easier than CD.

Maybe, to combat the resurgence of vinyl, those who believe that not having to leave the listening position is indeed the nirvana of all things auditory.

Or maybe not, only time will tell.

Though of course with Hi Fi there is never consensus.
 
mark-hants said:
I have a suspicion that, in the MQA vs vinyl comparison, MQA is going to win.
Click to expand...


The problem is that in order to achieve comparable contentment it is necessary to spend 3 to 5 times as much on an analogue set up as a digital one.

Spreading the cost of MQA at only £ 20 per month, and then never actually owning anything seems like a good deal to many.

Though over 10 Years the £ 2500 spent could have bought a decent TT.
 
misterdog said:
Or maybe - 'Perfect sound forever' as how CD was described on it's birth.

Maybe, in the way that CD was so much easier than vinyl.

Maybe, in the same way that streaming is so much easier than CD.

Maybe, to combat the resurgence of vinyl, those who believe that not having to leave the listening position is indeed the nirvana of all things auditory.

Or maybe not, only time will tell.

Though of course with Hi Fi there is never consensus.
Click to expand...

In the context of Tidal:

One side of our living room is full of vinyl records. There are about 400 12" singles. Maybe 150 albums.

As I'm into dance music, I tend not to "do" albums so much. Dance music singles tend to be 7+ minutes long.

Flicking the speed change from one position to the other and changing the record is a pain in the backside.

Most of them are on Tidal @ 16/44 but they sound dreadful. It is worth getting up to "change the record". A Tidal playlist is no substitute.

Nor is it worth listening to "The Wall" on Tidal. I have the vinyl. Walks all over it. 16/44 Tidal is OK for the mobile phone and the office PC.

I fully recognise that we're not going to get MQA versions of, for example, Italo-house from the late 1980s. The vinyl is going to have to stay.

But I can certainly make some playlists of the Tidal MQA selection as it is now - I do listen to more than dance music (!) and that's with a tiny selection.

Really hoping this takes off. Initial impressions are - it's what digital promised it would be.

Alternatively, if you don't hear the distortion that I do with 16/44, and most don't (above supposition aside - maybe actually people do) then MQA may sink without trace.

But the selection available should have "something for everyone" to try - this is what MQA needed.
 
Indeed SACD and HDCD ( both also hi-fi come alive again) were stuck with limited and expensive content.

Does Faithless Saturday 3AM sound better on MQA than vinyl ?

Is it even available.
 
misterdog said:
The problem is that in order to achieve comparable contentment it is necessary to spend 3 to 5 times as much on an analogue set up as a digital one.

Spreading the cost at only £ 20 per month, and then never actually owning anything seems like a good deal to many.
Click to expand...

Hmm... separate issue. Tidal isn't a substitute for an owned collection.

I say this since, even though I don't use it that much - frequently, there's at least one track "greyed out" in my "Tracks" list. Things "vanish" now and again.

For instance, as I look at it now, Crush's "Jellyhead (Motiv8 mix)" isn't available. Was OK last week. Might come back next week. Maybe if I search for it again I'll find it on another album which isn't "greyed out". It's a bit random. OK, that's hardly a "play every day" stunning hi-fi track. It's in a "party" playlist from when I last had mates round.

The issue I've always had is that I've never come across anything capable of playing anything at 16/44 which doesn't offend. That's up to about a grand. Maybe it needs more than that. Maybe no spend would work for me. I realise I have extremely specific hearing and am rare in this respect.

I do think that what I'd call "entry level" vinyl is circa £1500. I tried a Rega RP3 with the standard supplied cartridge once. Is that all £580 buys these days? It's no wonder people wonder what vinyl is about.

To be fair my TT setup would probably be about £2k in today's money. Unfair to digital? Is the entry level for a DAC to play 16/44 above £2k? Is there any entry level which would work for me? Rhetorical, before anyone responds with "You just like vinyl artefacts". No, I do not.

But then we all have our own version of "entry level".

Honestly, if MQA takes off and we get a decent catalogue, I wouldn't recommend anyone "get started" with vinyl unless their tastes are highly specialised.

I'm so enthused by this "glimmer of light" that I may not need to traipse across the living room, find and pull records off shelves, clean them, faff about changing the speed.. ;)
 
misterdog said:
Indeed SACD and HDCD ( both also hi-fi come alive again) were stuck with limited and expensive content.

Does Faithless Saturday 3AM sound better on MQA than vinyl ?

Is it even available.
Click to expand...

I shall confess that I wasn't a big fan of Faithless. "Making excess mess in darkness". I don't have any of their vinyl.

Even though, musically, they had some fine moments. It's probably just the lead guy's vocal that hacked me off. More of a BT man myself.. ;)
 
muzzer said:
Californication still sounds shite, ear bleed had to turn the amp down 10 notches:D
Click to expand...

Just tried that - the mixing is very "strident" ;)

That said, when it "breaks out" at around 1 minute in, and to my ears, the "master" version has clearer separation of the various bits than does the 16/44.

Tidal is about to crash again - after a few MQA files the laptop appears to run out of memory and shuts the program.
 
mark-hants said:
No, I haven't put these side-by-side with a "standard" 16/44 cut. In all honestly, and I'll be derided for this, I don't need to. I can spot 16/44 distortion a mile off.

It isn't there. It is "fixed".
Click to expand...

Believe it or not, I have some sympathy with this. I've never been able to capture New Order 12" singles satisfactorily for example, and the digital versions don't sound as good as the vinyl to me. At its best, vinyl has a realism that I've not heard from digital. Joni Mitchell "Blue" ... I have an old US pressing and it is just beautiful. Bowie's Ziggy Stardust ... you really need an old RCA pressing.

At the same time, you know, Ivor Tiefunbrun, loads of evidence that people have difficulty distinguishing between an audio source and the same source converted to and from 16/44.

I've done some of these experiments myself, on my own and at hi-fi shows. DSD vs PCM. High-res vs 16/44. Not vinyl yet!

So it is a bit of doublethink for me.

With vinyl there are also awkward questions ... can you tell if the source was digital? Or if a digital delay was used in cutting? Let alone inner groove distortion, which is very real.

I'm planning an MQA bake-off in Nottingham on 29 Jan, ping me if anyone is interested.

Also planning a move to Hampshire so maybe we could try a few tests then!

Tim
 
mark-hants said:
I have a bit of a theory that actually, most people can hear what I hear but few would call it "distortion" - and that it has been "normalised".
Click to expand...

I'm sure that is true in a number of situations. e.g. both LP and FM stereo give quite high levels of distortion, particularly for L-R at HF and high level. (In general, magazine reviews long ago ceased even measuring and plotting such values.)

However when it comes to Audio CD and other 'standard rate' material my experience is rather different to yours.

Yes, I find many 'early era' CDs sound wrong. Have a grainy quality that after a while tends to cause my ears to get whistling tinnitus, even when played at modest levels. Particularly EMI ones from the 1980s. And mainly classical ones that have massed strings, etc. Things like electric guitars, etc, on pop/rock are harder to assess as I don't know what they are *meant* to sound like anyway.

Yet other CDs *don't* give me this problem. And many later CDs sound excellent to me. Whilst if I replay the old ones, I can hear the grain again.

(For the sake of 'balance' I'll add that: I also sometimes find end-of-side distortion on some classical LPs really noticable. Yet it isn't present to the same extent on others. And when playing LPs at an audio show many years ago I started to think that the same 'distortion' from some cartridges that made massed violins very 'wiry', made electric guitar have more 'attack' a la ye olded PRAT.)

The difference in the CDs puzzled me for years, beyond concluding that EMI's ability to mass produce was crap. (As was their sloppy LP pressing, etc, compared with other companies.)

The evidence eventually showed up when I did stats on the sample values. This revealed the accursed EMI Audio CDs actually had fouled-up samples that had much poorer linearity than they should. So not linear 16 bit at all. No surprise after that they sounded irritating.

However I've listened to Radio 3 for years - first via FM, now by fetching aac files from iplayer. Despite FM having its own stereo distortion and the distribution being via NICAM, I've never heard a systematic 'distortion' problem like on the early EMI CDs due to the sample rates, etc, involved. Hence I've concluded the problem with CDs isn't the sample rate, its the way some may have been produced in a flawed manner. But certainly not all.

So I doubt your problem is with the sample rate, unless something about all the kit you've been using is fouling up.

That said, yes, I'd expect some kit to foul up. And the problem then is that people can easily place the 'blame' on something else.
 
Rug Doc said:
This is the most informative and very interesting read about MQA That I have found, written for the Japanese Audio Society by Bob Stuart & Keith Howard

You'll enjoy reading it i'm sure, I found it fascinating..
Click to expand...

Just had a look. It seems only to re-hash what they've already said in various other places. Doesn't either explain the details of *how* they do what they say they do, or deal with any of the questions or issues which have been raised.

Since Keith Howard is an author I'll email him and ask him if he wants to comment on the analysis, etc, I did on the webpages I wrote related to MQA. I'll then report back if I can.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
I'm sure that is true in a number of situations. e.g. both LP and FM stereo give quite high levels of distortion, particularly for L-R at HF and high level. (In general, magazine reviews long ago ceased even measuring and plotting such values.)

However when it comes to Audio CD and other 'standard rate' material my experience is rather different to yours.

Yes, I find many 'early era' CDs sound wrong. Have a grainy quality that after a while tends to cause my ears to get whistling tinnitus, even when played at modest levels. Particularly EMI ones from the 1980s. And mainly classical ones that have massed strings, etc. Things like electric guitars, etc, on pop/rock are harder to assess as I don't know what they are *meant* to sound like anyway.

Yet other CDs *don't* give me this problem. And many later CDs sound excellent to me. Whilst if I replay the old ones, I can hear the grain again.

(For the sake of 'balance' I'll add that: I also sometimes find end-of-side distortion on some classical LPs really noticable. Yet it isn't present to the same extent on others. And when playing LPs at an audio show many years ago I started to think that the same 'distortion' from some cartridges that made massed violins very 'wiry', made electric guitar have more 'attack' a la ye olded PRAT.)

The difference in the CDs puzzled me for years, beyond concluding that EMI's ability to mass produce was crap. (As was their sloppy LP pressing, etc, compared with other companies.)

The evidence eventually showed up when I did stats on the sample values. This revealed the accursed EMI Audio CDs actually had fouled-up samples that had much poorer linearity than they should. So not linear 16 bit at all. No surprise after that they sounded irritating.

However I've listened to Radio 3 for years - first via FM, now by fetching aac files from iplayer. Despite FM having its own stereo distortion and the distribution being via NICAM, I've never heard a systematic 'distortion' problem like on the early EMI CDs due to the sample rates, etc, involved. Hence I've concluded the problem with CDs isn't the sample rate, its the way some may have been produced in a flawed manner. But certainly not all.

So I doubt your problem is with the sample rate, unless something about all the kit you've been using is fouling up.

That said, yes, I'd expect some kit to foul up. And the problem then is that people can easily place the 'blame' on something else.
Click to expand...

I certainly don't think that all of the issues are simply at the DAC end, and in this manner, have solely to do with the sampling or the bit rate. I think it just part of the "puzzle".

I know what you're getting at with early CD. I suspect "Division Bell" was one of the earlier ones and it is utterly atrocious. Yet the Tidal copy seems to have performed miracles.

I don't think that's purely because it's 24/96 (+MQA) versus 16/44; more than just bit/sampling rate is going on here to make such a leap.

Back in vinyl world for a moment, for a moment, assume that as a "reference source" purely for the sake of this argument when we all know it's riddled with colouration:

I can pick out a couple of records from the early 2000s which are clearly both digitally mastered. One has all the failings I would associate with poor mastering. Specifically digital artefacts. Vinyl doesn't "fix" those. Arguably the colouration of the medium may smooth them a little.

The other sounds frankly stunning (obscure reference here - Paffendorf, Be Cool) and exhibits no timing failure that I can hear. It just sounds superb. It has all the "brightness" and "speed" of a digital master but none of the failings.

It's a fairly rare exception and not only that it has bass and HF going together with simulated imagery that's exactly where 16/44 tends to struggle. And it's perfect. It can be done.. as an aside the CD sounds dreadful. On that one I will accept that the masters are different. Sounds like it. Not just the format.

Now given the year of that, clearly, it isn't going to be some super high resolution master. It probably is simply 16/44. OK, at a big stretch it might just be a 24/96.

It isn't that digital "can't be done right", I'm sure that it can. And has been. But in general it is not.

For an analogy: imagine we went from the gramophone to tape cassettes. People would be stunned by the SQ, the relative durability, the convenience. So much so that the appalling tape hiss would be forgiven.

But now, if you listened to some classical on tape, forgiving everything else, the tape hiss would basically render the quiet sections unlistenable. Same with surface noise on vinyl.

16/44 has the equivalent of that "tape hiss" to me. I don't mean that it hisses. It really does seem to be something specific to 16/44. I can hear that it's gone at 24/192 (same master, down-sampled).

It's not the bit-rate. It's the sampling rate.

Ah, but then..

A fairly poor ADC which could manage 16/44 at best could well be beaten by a better one that can do 32/768. Technology has moved on.

And therefore maybe 16/44 is "possible". It "can be done right".

My stance on it is that it never has been. Apart from maybe in some rare cases.

I don't think it "desirable" that the answer lies in a closed proprietary format, but to give credit, anyone else could have fixed this by now.

But people have been happy with the "tape hiss". I know that sounds condescending and I don't mean it to. I accept I'm in a tiny minority here and that's important.

Flipped around the other way, the likes of Jason Derulo and Bruno Mars, modern stuff, still sound distorted to me even with MQA. That "tape hiss" isn't there, but other artefacts are, those which I have "come to associate" with digital. Most notably a sort of "crystalline edge" to the fade and the overlapping of things at peaks.

But as per your point those don't necessarily have anything to do with sampling rates. Maybe more to do with, er, laptop sound cards.

I don't see that MQA is suddenly going to have studios falling over themselves to "sort it out". Much "modern pop" has always sounded fairly poor, or often competent, hardly stunning.

What is impressing me, as I listen to MQA, and this touches on that golden question - how much of the "vinyl-like" aspect is preserved (with wider stereo separation at the same time). So, how much of that is simply colouration that people enjoy, and how much of it is in fact how it's "supposed to sound"?

Coming full-circle now, to answer that needs a "reference point". Which still comes back to the quality of digital audio generally. Not what's written on paper but what is actually delivered, since that's all that really matters.

I'm not sure any of us has that "reference point" which is what makes an unequivocal answer rather elusive.

My position comes from the negative, I suppose - given that every time I hear "straight" 16/44 (unless the music is simple) it has an annoyance effect similar to someone with a JCB in the street; I ask others for "good sounding CDs" and put those on only to hear exactly the same, consistently, over 25+ years, I'd like to know if there is "something wrong with my hearing". It doesn't bother anyone else.

What therefore interests me particularly is how close the comments others are making about MQA versions are to my own findings.

It isn't as if others are having the same sort of revelatory moment where something dreadful has suddenly become wonderful, but the same sorts of things seem to be being identified.

And how MQA may well give this industry a push to "fix it", whatever it is.
 
mark-hants said:
I know what you're getting at with early CD. I suspect "Division Bell" was one of the earlier ones and it is utterly atrocious. Yet the Tidal copy seems to have performed miracles.
Click to expand...
Division Bell was released in 1994, so it is not an early CD and most likely a 48k all digital production, probably too long ago to have been a 96k+
Compared with the older analogue Pink Floyd it sounds lifeless to me
 
This gets more interesting now..

One of the albums I used for my "24/192 vs 16/44" comparison has arrived on Tidal in the MQA section.

That's the one I downloaded from HD Trax at 24/192 and down-sampled myself, and also had someone else do it.

Picking out the 24/192 was easy when blind-testing. 16/44 had a choppy aspect to it where the tail of things was stunted.

MQA is noticeably better than that 24/192.

It's all in the "edges" of things, but especially on the fade. MQA reveals the "truncation effect" quite readily.

There is, actually, more music. I'm actually quite startled by how much more.
 
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