Julf
Facts are our friends
If you read the whole thing, you notice that he had trouble finding material that was genuinely even 24/96.
MQA arrives on Tidal
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If you read the whole thing, you notice that he had trouble finding material that was genuinely even 24/96.
radamel
Music Fiend
He's funny:
" "extreme audiophiles" are emotionally insecure obsessive-compulsives cognitively weak in performing reality testing and prone to the use of superlatives in advertising and media. Dear readers, IMO don't be an "extreme audiophile" and end up like that
."
radamel
Music Fiend
He's funny:
" "extreme audiophiles" are emotionally insecure obsessive-compulsives cognitively weak in performing reality testing and prone to the use of superlatives in advertising and media. Dear readers, IMO don't be an "extreme audiophile" and end up like that
He certainly is.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
The main thanks are due to John for permitting the notes to become public! I just scanned them and put them up.
Purité Audio
Trade: Purite Audio
Are there any genuine benefits to MQA, Archimago mentions folding 24/96 to take up less band width?
Keith
Keith
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Yes, there are benefits. The folding and bitstacking will reduce the required stream rate or file size as they claim. Not really any doubt about that.
However the questions then arise, since you can get much the same sort of reduction in file/stream sizes *without* MQA or even reducing the sample rate. And avoiding the added anharmonics. etc. So a fairer question might be "Why do it this way when alternative exist that people might prefer given a choice?"
I must admit, also, that given a historic perspective, people developed and used low-rate mp3 many years ago and it was widely adopted because they weren't able to stream or store the LPCM. Yet that would now be seen as a quaint reason.
As the internet and hardware develop, how long will it be before no-one worries much about streaming plain boring old 192k/24 flac all day? 8-] ...if they still have a choice, of course.
johnhunt
pfm Member
Yup genuine in the sense that it sounds much better than cd and is or is beginning to be readily available, at sensible cost. What is archimago?
garyi
leave blank
In my listening its not about MQA trying to deliver effectively CD quality over a stream, to my ears its simply the best I have heard albums I know ever. Period.
Essentially, for me I can turn the volume up louder, without ear bleeding. The soundstage is far wider and instruments are rock solidly placed. Its not one of these cable A vs cable B, where no one in their right mind can *really* tell the difference. The sound is fundamentally better, its obvious and makes me giggle listening to music I thought I knew so well.
Essentially, for me I can turn the volume up louder, without ear bleeding. The soundstage is far wider and instruments are rock solidly placed. Its not one of these cable A vs cable B, where no one in their right mind can *really* tell the difference. The sound is fundamentally better, its obvious and makes me giggle listening to music I thought I knew so well.
Different day, same old corporate shit. They've sold you it on vinyl, sold you it again on CD, got you to buy the Steven Wilson remaster, now they're getting you to pay for it all again.
radamel
Music Fiend
The thing is that to my ears MQA sounds better than 24/192 so why should they waste bandwidth and get lower SQ?
Purité Audio
Trade: Purite Audio
I may have misunderstood but I thought MQA takes the original 24/192 packs it up , then unfolds it but the unfolded version is not bit perfect any more because of the additions of the MQA process?
Keith
Keith
radamel
Music Fiend
Welcome to 2016.
Here's a link for you:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/694-comprehensive-q-mqa-s-bob-stuart/
Julf
Facts are our friends
And you have ensured that what you are listening to is the properly decoded and unfolded MQA stream, and not the raw MQA-encoded stream?
adamdea
You are not a sound quality evaluation device
No you are not wrong. MQA employs a very selective interpretation of what is required above 16/44. It plainly discards much of the information in 24/96 and includes nothing which could not be contained in 16:96 flac at similar bitrates. In the rare instances where the master was over 24/96 the remaining information will be mangled further. If anyone could actually hear that stuff, who knows what they would think.
Still if bald men want to argue over a comb, it hardly matters what the comb does.
garyi
leave blank
I don't know what that is, all I know is when I play masters my dac turns to 96, and it sounds bloody awesome. Now if a MQA dac means I would get even more goodness, then wow, thats great. But for now what I am hearing is better than my own rips of the same album, but a country mile. Ripped with a naim server.
garyi
leave blank
On the downside last night I had three times where it cut out. Must have been the server end and it was almost like it just lost the file rather than streaming issue, once it found it again it started playing without issue.
Put a clanker in the works though and brings home the fragility of streaming.
Put a clanker in the works though and brings home the fragility of streaming.
adamdea
You are not a sound quality evaluation device
Mind you after saying that the MQA sounds the same as the (bogus or genuine) hi rez, he adds...
"However, achieving that sound quality in my opinion was never difficult nor did it require these contortions... Show me evidence that humans can successfully choose 24/192 vs. a 24/48 high quality downsample in a blind test using the same mastering. Would dithering and downsampling 24/192 to 18/96 with lossless compression not also sound good with decreased file size?"
Shame as he says that it would be difficult to do a distributed file test.
Julf
Facts are our friends
But what would you say if you found out what you are hearing is actually added noise (because that is what the un-decoded MQA data stream contains), and not the decoded/unfolded end result that you are *intended* to hear? What if it is a similar thing to turning the tone controls on a preamp to something that is definitely not true to the original, but sounds "better"?
When I say MQA is "effectively" lossless that is my interpretation of MQA's process. The key observation to consider is that real music has only low amplitude ultrasonic content which can therefor be encoded with fewer bits than full range baseband signals without loss of fidelity. So yes, there is perceptual compression going on, but no ultrasonic musical content is lost or encoded at lower resolution than full bit rate PCM. I would describe that as "effectively lossless".
Whether the sound improvement, especially in the soundstage, that I and others hear is due to re-mastering or a real effect of MQA de-blurring or de-ringing matters not a great amount - the music sounds better, which is a great thing.
Similarly if someone came up with a reason for the music industry to stop compressing sound and offer greater dynamic range then I would be for that also.
Any new music distribution system has to work for many stakeholders and keeping them all happy is a very difficult thing. I think MQA have mostly pulled that trick off and I salute them. I hope they get rewarded for their innovation.
Whether the sound improvement, especially in the soundstage, that I and others hear is due to re-mastering or a real effect of MQA de-blurring or de-ringing matters not a great amount - the music sounds better, which is a great thing.
Similarly if someone came up with a reason for the music industry to stop compressing sound and offer greater dynamic range then I would be for that also.
Any new music distribution system has to work for many stakeholders and keeping them all happy is a very difficult thing. I think MQA have mostly pulled that trick off and I salute them. I hope they get rewarded for their innovation.
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