MQA Discussion

So in order to actually hear MQA I have to buy a player like this one:

pioneerxdp_100r_angle.jpg
http://www.whathifi.com/news/pioneer-xdp-100r-worlds-first-mqa-ready-hi-res-music-player
 
I don't stream.... and storage is cheap so file size matters not to me. With that said I doubt my old ears could hear any difference compared to my DSD files or my SA-CD disks :)....
 
wklie said:
The sonic benefit comes from time domain deblurring / minimizing pre-ringing and post-ringing.
Click to expand...
That's their claim. Except like the Bogey man there is no (audio) evidence to support it. Bob Stuarts own AES paper doesn't support that claim.
But less assume the Bogey man is real, that poor filtering >20k with Redbook (most audiophile can't hear 16k...but I digress) is omnipresent, never mind Meridians own manual claims TPDF leads to "transparency" with 16/44 :disbelief:

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There is no evidence whatsoever that this sort of filtering was/is omnipresent in ADCs i.e. encoded during production. A great many are encoded at higher sampling rates for mastering then downsampled to 16/44 for distribution.
The whole damn thing is absurd. Go back and "fix" recordings made with Bogey man filtering, that can then only be properly decoded by handing Meridian a fist full of $$ in licensed hardware.
I think they knew better than to try to sell a ("deblurred") 5th version of the same 70s album, so looks like Tidal is the way.

cheers

AJ
 

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AJ Soundfield said:
There is no evidence whatsoever that this sort of filtering was/is omnipresent in ADCs i.e. encoded during production. A great many are encoded at higher sampling rates for mastering then downsampled to 16/44 for distribution.
The whole damn thing is absurd. Go back and "fix" recordings made with Bogey man filtering, that can then only be properly decoded by handing Meridian a fist full of $$ in licensed hardware.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that the brickwall filter is known to have negative effects that degrade the sound in ways people can actually hear. Before MQA, Meridian tried to address this issue with apodizing filter. If one does not trust Meridian, we can also look at what Ayre said, who confirmed the same problem but came up with a different filter to address it: (By the way, Charles Hansen of Ayre criticized MQA too.)
https://www.ayre.com/pdf/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf

Miska/Jussi of HQPlayer has yet another scheme to address the same problem. His opinion is that his HQPlayer fixes the same problem without needing to use proprietary MQA.
 
wklie said:
My understanding is that the brickwall filter is known to have negative effects that degrade the sound in ways people can actually hear.
Click to expand...
Not under controlled conditions using non-pathological filtering. If it were true, then the Meridian manuals claim above is false. Can't have it both ways.
The Bogey man is everywhere in high end audio, just waiting for that "fix".
 
Can't help myself, but to my ears the whole MQA story lacks credibility, especially as they refuse to provide 1:1 comparison evidence that it actually sounds better. Shouldn't be that hard if it was true.

And something like this definitely sounds a lot like snake oil, from one of the reviews:
"MQA works by scrubbing clean what's known as temporal blur (timing errors), quantization distortion and computational-induced noise - essentially finding the mistakes and sonic elements your ears can hear well and providing only the correct bits for your brain to decode."

...scrubbing clean? ...what, music, files... what are they talking about?
...computational induced noise (that's not even grammatically correct)...
...correct bits for your brain to decode... what is that nonsense, the brain does not decode anything, it's analog.

Ergo: Too much mumbo-jumbo and putting nonsense words in a row.


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Randy Myers said:
I don't stream.... and storage is cheap so file size matters not to me. With that said I doubt my old ears could hear any difference compared to my DSD files or my SA-CD disks :)....
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Actually I think you will find that DSD files and SACD discs sound better than MQA encoded music.
That was my experience.

So MQA has become a moot point here.
 
bmoura said:
Actually I think you will find that DSD files and SACD discs sound better than MQA encoded music.
That was my experience.

So MQA has become a moot point here.
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It actually depends more on the hardware.
MQA will always be a moot point if your dac/player makes redbook/hi-res/dsd files
sound better than MQA files played through an MQA dac.
 
j2020 said:
It actually depends more on the hardware.
MQA will always be a moot point if your dac/player makes redbook/hi-res/dsd files
sound better than MQA files played through an MQA dac.
Click to expand...

It should have been an unfair advantage for MQA - since the demo was on an $80,000 state of the art Meridian DAC, Amp, Speakers, etc.
My audio system isn't close to that in price.

But the familiar tracks they played from MQA files said to be created at recording studios vs. the FLAC and DSD downloads I own of the same music were not as good sound quality wise.
Very disappointing.
 
bmoura said:
It should have been an unfair advantage for MQA - since the demo was on an $80,000 state of the art Meridian DAC, Amp, Speakers, etc.
My audio system isn't close to that in price.

But the familiar tracks they played from MQA files said to be created at recording studios vs. the FLAC and DSD downloads I own of the same music were not as good sound quality wise.
Very disappointing.
Click to expand...


I agree.
My experience with my current dac bears this out too even as it alone costs nowhere near the $80,000 system(although my whole system does cost almost there).
After auditioning the Meridian 808v3 at home with MQA files, my current non-MQA dac sounds better with redbook/hires pcm(the 808v3 does not do dsd).
 
Over at http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f...ogue-converter-s-28631/index2.html#post560401
Wang Xuanqian, CEO of AURALiC, posted:

AURALiC has done a live demo during CES for MQA on ARIES and ARIES MINI. It is however after MQA realized that ARIES does not have any DAC built-in and ARIES MINI has a digital output in parallel connection of its DAC I2S signal, they pulled it back immediately. MQA believe the MQA process is end to end and the DAC has to be optimized for MQA playback, so any digital output of fully decoded signal is unacceptable. The Bluesound MQA implement must be something different, the digital output is not full MQA decoded as I heard from someone whom own the unit that it only work up to 96K.

AURALiC has wasted a lot of money for the expensive 2016 CES promote something which has been integrated (after spend some money on software engineer hours) but the feature will probably never be able to release to public. Future more, because of NDA contract between AURALiC and MQA, the team is not even been able to give a proper explanation.
Click to expand...

I guess he's not too happy...
 
j2020 said:
I agree.
My experience with my current dac bears this out too even as it alone costs nowhere near the $80,000 system(although my whole system does cost almost there).
After auditioning the Meridian 808v3 at home with MQA files, my current non-MQA dac sounds better with redbook/hires pcm(the 808v3 does not do dsd).
Click to expand...

Try again. You cannot audition MQA files on a 808v3.
 
If I were a HiFi brand, I would be aligning with the PC industry much like some have had success with the automotive industry.

I don't think it will be long before we see quite acceptable DACs being integrated into laptop and tablet devices. MQA if it takes off, will have a place under the hood.

Microsoft Surface Book 3 McIntosh Edition anyone?
 
still-one said:
Try again. You cannot audition MQA files on a 808v3.
Click to expand...

Maybe that was just a mistake in naming convention, as the 808.3 costs below €15K.

So I guess the reference to the $80K DAC was about the Ultra DAC, which also does MQA.



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bmoura said:
It should have been an unfair advantage for MQA - since the demo was on an $80,000 state of the art Meridian DAC, Amp, Speakers, etc.
My audio system isn't close to that in price.

But the familiar tracks they played from MQA files said to be created at recording studios vs. the FLAC and DSD downloads I own of the same music were not as good sound quality wise.
Very disappointing.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing, finally some end user feedback on MQA.


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