MQA Discussion

Thanks for sharing. He has stated many of the same things I said 8 months ago. It's nice to hear validation from others.

I also agree with him on the finding that not all MQA releases are as stellar. I would attribute that to the lack of access to the ultimate best master (i.e. Tape that is unusable and now they can only use an early A2D copy).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Ok Hans likes MQA. Now who the hell is Hans? :huh: (Don't answer, I will look him up...)
 
jdandy said:
Scott.......Let me help you out.

http://www.aes.org/aes/hansbeekhuyzen

Check out the Hans Beekhuyzen Channel on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR4tuhqPppVp-PD0q17sPEA
Click to expand...

LoL

Hans loved the Chord Hugo too, so he has his own special taste.

FWIW, I have nothing against MQA, as is a clever way to get audiophile remasters into the marketplace and there are many ways and many "levels" that it can be accessed from. The bottleneck seems to be the 18 months it takes to get certified nowadays, so that only few hardware pieces can do full decode. Many like the Brooklyn are on the BRIGHT side, so not ideal for everyone and in any case, a trusted pal who had the Brooklyn preferred Roon/HQP native AND upsampled to a better Dac, rather than Tidal full decode to the Brooklyn.

I would love to hear full decode to a quality MSB Dac, for example.That should be a significant reference point!

But YEAH Mike, MQA is a GOOD thing overall.
 
Met with the owner of Auralic this morning. They will NOT be doing MQA. He said MQA filtering technology conflicts with the new filtering technology they are developing. According to him, it was one or the other.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Mike said:
Met with the owner of Auralic this morning. They will NOT be doing MQA. He said MQA filtering technology conflicts with the new filtering technology they are developing. According to him, it was one or the other.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

This has always been and continues to be a BIG (IMHO) problem with MQA. Once you have a recording locked into MQA, further advances in DAC technology appears to be limited. And who is to say that at some point in the next few years one or more DAC designers won’t have made refinements or discoveries that allow any hi-res album (assuming by then that they aren’t all/only MQA) to sound better than a full MQA decode? That seems likely to me, but obviously no one knows for sure.
 
rbbert said:
This has always been and continues to be a BIG (IMHO) problem with MQA. Once you have a recording locked into MQA, further advances in DAC technology appears to be limited. And who is to say that at some point in the next few years one or more DAC designers won’t have made refinements or discoveries that allow any hi-res album (assuming by then that they aren’t all/only MQA) to sound better than a full MQA decode? That seems likely to me, but obviously no one knows for sure.
Click to expand...

MQA is a closed format controlled by one company, so why would any serious DAC developer allow themselves to be controlled by another company? And on top very average Meridian of all the options?

My wild guess is this won’t be very long lived. Not because it sounds good or not - because the model is flawed.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Not surprising that the owners of Auralic are not going to put themselves in the position again of being burnt a second time by Stuart and the MQA people. Their own method has been in Beta test for almost 6 months now and seems to work well to my ears.
 
Jack said:
Not surprising that the owners of Auralic are not going to put themselves in the position again of being burnt a second time by Stuart and the MQA people. Their own method has been in Beta test for almost 6 months now and seems to work well to my ears.
Click to expand...

Jack, could you elaborate on your comment a bit. Are you saying that Auralic are developing their own full MQA decoding w/o being certified by Meridian?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
They were one of the original members of the MQA group and were set up and prepared to conduct a demonstration at CES 2016 with a software based version. That demonstration was stopped and their participation ended. Earlier this year they released to Beta testers a refined version of that demonstration software and have updated it several times. It takes MQA encoded recordings to the same place bit rate wise as the official MQA encoding. I can't tell the difference in casual listening between the Auralic version and the "official" version through the Lumin, but that is me and I am not going to spend a lot of time doing the comparisons.
 
wklie said:
Auralic said they're using their own proprietary resampling, not MQA code, in their firmware release notes.
Click to expand...

If this happens it would actually be good for MQA.

In case other companies develop own algorithms that work and Meridian is just one option, MQA might have a fighting chance.

Way more powerful Sony already demonstrated earlier that this kind of one-company-dominance model is doomed to failure.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Kuoppis said:
MQA is a closed format controlled by one company, so why would any serious DAC developer allow themselves to be controlled by another company? And on top very average Meridian of all the options?

My wild guess is this won’t be very long lived. Not because it sounds good or not - because the model is flawed.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Amazing that you don't consider MSB, dCS or Berkeley "serious" DAC developers.
 
Esoteric is now "all in" on MQA. The new N-01 playing MQA files was stunning. Add the new clock, and you have one hell of a system.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
still-one said:
Amazing that you don't consider MSB, dCS or Berkeley "serious" DAC developers.
Click to expand...

Quality wise yes, volume wise no.

All those three can afford to pay a bit of royalties to Meridian, volume players cannot. That is why it is easier for the high end guys to implement it.

I have neither interest nor intention to get into a MQA spat with anyone who likes it. Just referring to what happened with SACD.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Kuoppis said:
If this happens it would actually be good for MQA.


Way more powerful Sony already demonstrated earlier that this kind of one-company-dominance model is doomed to failure.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

they oughta know....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top