MQA?

[sterling shoote]

I've been reading about MQA. Although the articles I've read tell me this technology is all about delivery of recordings more faithful to the master, no one seems to be able to hear it; yet, one thing can be acknowledged, this technology is designed to thwart digital copying, as MQA processed recordings can not be copied using the copy methods available to us in our computers without sounding awful from what I've gleaned in my reading. Makes me think therefore that MQA is the equivalent of a Trojan Horse. That's to say folks will buy MQA for its audio enhancement promise, manufactures will all install it on everything, MQA will be in all recordings for download, and then copying anything passing at some point through an HDMI connection will not be possible. It's why I today have ZERO interest in buying or renting MQA recordings. After all who would want to buy anything that would hinder copying of material that they previously purchased. Nope, I don't even like HDMI. It's IEC 958, AES/EBU Digital XLR, or Optical S/PDIF for me. With these I can copy most anything without downgrading the original purchased recording. Long live my Sony PCM-7010F DAT Recorders.

 

[Irvrobinson]

MQA appears to be a strategy for convincing consumers that they don't need access to lossless digital music files (MQA is lossy), potentially giving content owners a monopoly over the original studio lossless versions, just like they had before the appearance of digital media. There's also what sounds like a convoluted bullshit story about how MQA is actually better than non-MQA lossless because it fixes some supposed timing accuracy issues in the digital playback chain resulting from repeated DA/AD conversions (temporal blurring). The questions seem to be: 1) Is Temporal Blurring audible at all?, and 2) In the recordings that have multiple DA/AD conversions, is temporal blurring a significant factor in the reasoning why these recordings often sound less than ideal?

The basic notions in MQA are that you take typical hi-res studio masters and process them to produce a basic 16/44.1 version that just includes some temporal blurring fix-up, and can be played back on standard DACs. MQA-enabled DACs can "unfold" information tucked into "unused" high frequency samples to allow a partial reconstruction of the hi-res studio version. Of course, it's not really a full reconstruction, so the lossless studio original stays in the archive, and is not allowed out in the commercial wilds. What a wonderful story for the music industry! And the best part, Meridian gets royalties from everyone. Hmmm. How convenient.

I think I'll stick with 16/44.1 CD audio, and if any CD says MQA on it, I'm not buying it.

 

[KenM10759]

Here we go again.

I have MQA full unfold with my (3) Bluesound players and Tidal HiFi "Masters" (MQA) files. A great many of the albums have both 16/44.1 CD and MQA versions. Back-to-back, I can clearly hear the improvement on many, not all. I can also compare many of their MQA files to actual CD's I have ripped and stored, same result. Don't hear it tor don't believe it, don't bother with it but don't criticize those who enjoy it at no additional cost.

 

[Irvrobinson]

Here we go again.

I have MQA full unfold with my (3) Bluesound players and Tidal HiFi "Masters" (MQA) files. A great many of the albums have both 16/44.1 CD and MQA versions. Back-to-back, I can clearly hear the improvement on many, not all. I can also compare many of their MQA files to actual CD's I have ripped and stored, same result. Don't hear it tor don't believe it, don't bother with it but don't criticize those who enjoy it at no additional cost.

I've heard full MQA exactly once, on someone else's system, using the Fleetwood Mac Rumours album, though a Node 2 player. The owner ripped a native CD version to a WAV file and also played through the Node 2. The MQA version always seemed louder, not by much, but definitely louder. With the apparent level differences it was difficult to make any serious comparisons. How did you get the levels matched for your comparison, or are many albums already matched?

 

[KenM10759]

Poor example. It's actually a crappy quality digital master no matter what digital format, while the LP is really good.

I can level match easily because I have Bluesound native to my AVR put also have a Bluesound Vault 2 attached to it. This way I can simply set levels with a meter, then start the two players one at a time by selecting source. The lag between starts is exactly the time it takes to switch sources, so it's really close in track time toggling between the two.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I don't know another blog which went into more trouble than this dude to test MQA claims:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/search?q=mqa

tl;dr; he doesn't like it:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/10/mqa-final-final-comment-simply-put-why.html

 

[KenM10759]

I case I wasn't clear:

If you like it and aren't paying anything more to have it, enjoy it. I am.

If you don't like it, just keep on not liking it and ignore it.

Am I over-simplifying things?

 

[Irvrobinson]

I case I wasn't clear:

If you like it and aren't paying anything more to have it, enjoy it. I am.

If you don't like it, just keep on not liking it and ignore it.

Am I over-simplifying things?

So you're looking to have us shut up because we implicitly disagree with you?

 

[Irvrobinson]

Poor example. It's actually a crappy quality digital master no matter what digital format, while the LP is really good.

I can level match easily because I have Bluesound native to my AVR put also have a Bluesound Vault 2 attached to it. This way I can simply set levels with a meter, then start the two players one at a time by selecting source. The lag between starts is exactly the time it takes to switch sources, so it's really close in track time toggling between the two.

I understand how level matching occurs when the exact same recording and source are used. I don't understand how how you level-matched with two different recordings.

 

[KenM10759]

So you're looking to have us shut up because we implicitly disagree with you?

Absolutely not!

By all means, please carry on.

It won't sway me because I do enjoy it, and haven't paid anyone a dime more than I was before I had it to enjoy it now.

 

[sterling shoote]

MQA appears to be a strategy for convincing consumers that they don't need access to lossless digital music files (MQA is lossy), potentially giving content owners a monopoly over the original studio lossless versions, just like they had before the appearance of digital media. There's also what sounds like a convoluted bullshit story about how MQA is actually better than non-MQA lossless because it fixes some supposed timing accuracy issues in the digital playback chain resulting from repeated DA/AD conversions (temporal blurring). The questions seem to be: 1) Is Temporal Blurring audible at all?, and 2) In the recordings that have multiple DA/AD conversions, is temporal blurring a significant factor in the reasoning why these recordings often sound less than ideal?

The basic notions in MQA, that you take typical hi-res studio masters and process them to produce a basic 16/44.1 version that just includes some temporal blurring fix-up, and can be played back on standard DACs. MQA-enabled DACs can "unfold" information tucked into "unused" high frequency samples to allow a partial reconstruction of the hi-res studio version. Of course, it's not really a full reconstruction, so the lossless studio original stays in the archive, and is not allowed out in commercial wilds. What a wonderful story for the music industry! And the best part, Meridian gets royalties from everyone. Hmmm. How convenient.

I think I'll stick with 16/44.1 CD audio, and if any CD says MQA on it, I'm not buying it.

I'm glad you explained this to me. I too am sticking with 16/44.

 

[Irvrobinson]

I don't know another blog which went into more trouble than this dude to test MQA claims:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/search?q=mqa

tl;dr; he doesn't like it:
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/10/mqa-final-final-comment-simply-put-why.html

Great links. This excerpt sums up my feelings:

No. I personally do not want this. So far, I have seen no evidence that what this is doing actually improves quality. "Time domain" improvements, if any, appears to be contingent on the idea that one believes these short filters can achieve the goal and are thus desirable. I do not see where the company has so far provided evidence for their claims. If there are improvements that can be made by some kind of proprietary time-alignment DSP, then just offer it as such instead of wrapping it into this unnecessarily complex encoding scheme. As for the data compression being beneficial... Well, since the announcement of MQA in late 2014, my Internet download speed has already gone up from 25Mbps to 150Mbps for around the same price. 4K HDR video streaming with multichannel sound is a reality. And Qobuz is now offering Sublime+ lossless FLAC audio streaming up to 24/192. So why bother streaming partially lossy 24/48 when you know technically full resolution, unmolested 24/96 or 24/192 can actually already be done and will only get easier and cheaper in the years ahead?