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"MQA One Year Later -- Suddenly, More Questions"

rthe young population are not interested in any high cost high quality music files so were is the market for any thing new. years ago I purchased a few dsd and 192k files and now it is is rare to do so. I would rather buy cheap cds/box sets and rip them
 
AndyU said:
Well one CD company, Chesky has already decided to release an MQA CD - i.e. sub CD quality (aiui) for those who don't have an MQA enabled DAC, and MQA quality (whatever that actually is) for those very very few who do have an MQA DAC.

And their plans ...?

"If all goes well, we'll do all our future issues like this."

So for most people such a CD will no longer deliver CD quality. And the worse they just happen to make the the sub-CD bit sound, the better the MQA bit will possibly sound, so the comparison is rigged as well.
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Interesting and good to know, I'll make certain not to buy any!
 
I've lost the battle to try and get people to stop calling these formats 'high resolution'.

Nyquist must be spinning in his grave—at variable r.p.m. obviously.

Stephen
 
HarryB said:
I have about 3,500 CDs. I guess that's several lifetimes.

But I'm currently listening to Sean Rowe's latest album in MQA on Tidal Masters. It's excellent.

So I guess the sort of people they're aiming MQA at might include me.
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As a Tidal HiFi user and owner of an MQA enabled DAC it's also aimed at me.

For the first time streaming music sounds truly good to my ears!

Just listening to Bowie's Hunky Dory right now. :cool:
 
johnhunt said:
Suspect it will play on a std cdp just as audio
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Yes, it will as the cd player has no way to tell that the data *isn't* plain LPCM. The snag is that even the MQA info will be rendered as - at best - added noise.

So *provided* the MQA doesn't actually add any specific audible artifacts (unknown at present) the result may sound OK if the music is loud enough that you can't hear the noise. i.e. if you'd have been happy with a <16bit version of CD.
 
Tony L said:
Interesting and good to know, I'll make certain not to buy any!
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And moreover, when asked to say more about his personal impressions of the format, Chesky said:

"Listen, what is real and what is not real? You sit in front of two boxes in your home, and it's a magic trick. But we can't say live is always better, because some halls are over-reverberant, excessively dry, or just plain bad. Sometimes, the recording sounds better than the live experience. MQA addresses digital harshness, and gets the timing and transients right. It's like walking through the woods and smelling the trees vs putting Febreze in your house."

So all his conventional recordings on the Chesky label sound like toilet air freshener, and suffer from unadressed digital harshness, wrong timing and wrong transients. So don't buy any of them either.
 
AndyU said:
And moreover, when asked to say more about his personal impressions of the format, Chesky said:

"Listen, what is real and what is not real? You sit in front of two boxes in your home, and it's a magic trick. But we can't say live is always better, because some halls are over-reverberant, excessively dry, or just plain bad. Sometimes, the recording sounds better than the live experience. MQA addresses digital harshness, and gets the timing and transients right. It's like walking through the woods and smelling the trees vs putting Febreze in your house."

So all his conventional recordings on the Chesky label sound like toilet air freshener, and suffer from unadressed digital harshness, wrong timing and wrong transients. So don't buy any of them either.
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Erm, the player playing the music was presumably real. As were the pressure variations hitting the microphones. Interesting to regard MQA as an equivalent of air freshener, though. But presumably no sign of recognising that this 'steals' bits from LPCM replay which then, presumably 'smells even worse' or must be 'even harsher' than plain old Red Book.
 
Was in the Guildford branch of Sevenoaks last Thursday afternoon & asked if they had had any interest in MQA. They had a demo laid on for them & the guy I spoke with said "Even I could hear the improvement!" I merely pass this on.
 
busb said:
Was in the Guildford branch of Sevenoaks last Thursday afternoon & asked if they had had any interest in MQA. They had a demo laid on for them & the guy I spoke with said "Even I could hear the improvement!" I merely pass this on.
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Who laid on this demo?

Where did a get a copy of the master that was used to generate the MQA version so they could compare them?
 
busb said:
Was in the Guildford branch of Sevenoaks last Thursday afternoon & asked if they had had any interest in MQA. They had a demo laid on for them & the guy I spoke with said "Even I could hear the improvement!" I merely pass this on.
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I've been into that branch a few times, pretty sure the staff were on loan from B&Q as was their hifi knowledge.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Who laid on this demo?

Where did a get a copy of the master that was used to generate the MQA version so they could compare them?
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My impression was it was done for them rather than by them - my interest in MQA is currently low enough not to give it my undivided attention, Jim. I was more interested in the NAD Masters series.
 
thebiglebowski said:
I've been into that branch a few times, pretty sure the staff were on loan from B&Q as was their hifi knowledge.
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Over the years, I've probably heard more shite for Hi Fi shop employees than from B&Q staff. I've fortunately also had some very positive interaction, especially recently over the phone from Richard Allan of Kronos AV regarding outriggers & other forms of speaker isolation. Hw went the extra mile to help. The guy I spoke with perhaps should have known that the new NAD Master series power amp was nCore-based.
 
busb said:
My impression was it was done for them rather than by them - my interest in MQA is currently low enough not to give it my undivided attention, Jim. I was more interested in the NAD Masters series.
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As rehearsed in the past. Simply 'liking' an MQA replayed sound doesn't tell us if that would compare well against the source it was generated from. Nor does comparing an MQA file rendered with and without using MQA decoding tell us if any difference is because the MQA encoding degrades non-MQA replay.

So for any listening tests to mean much beyond "that sounds OK" these factors need to be taken into account.

FWIW I'm not surprised or concerned that someone may have some MQA files, played as MQA, and get likable results. But that doesn't tell us if a carefully made non MQA version could sound as good - or better. When a comparison is made, we'd need to know the full details for both versions to look for other possibly causes of a 'difference'.
 
What is "rendering" wrt MQA? Audivana3 renders ( which I guess is different to decoding) Tidal Masters, but I don't know what the term rendering actually means in hifi terms.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
So for any listening tests to mean much beyond "that sounds OK" these factors need to be taken into account.

FWIW I'm not surprised or concerned that someone may have some MQA files, played as MQA, and get likable results. But that doesn't tell us if a carefully made non MQA version could sound as good - or better. When a comparison is made, we'd need to know the full details for both versions to look for other possibly causes of a 'difference'.
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I entirely agree - my post was more a comment on how MQA is being viewed out in the wild rather then my approval. I'm concerned as you regarding the potential increase in noise floor & even more regarding the lack of peer scrutiny of the whole concept.
 
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