MQA Discussion

Interesting what they say about Multichannel recordings...




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He doesn't mention whether he's actually heard it. It's not a flaw with Mastering techniques, MQA is reportedly fixing flaws with A2D converters.

Until my listening tests prove otherwise, I'm an MQA believer.


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Mike said:
He doesn't mention whether he's actually heard it.
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However I’m always open minded and am not a crusty cynic like some, so I gave it an open minded listen.
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Mike said:
It's not a flaw with Mastering techniques, MQA is reportedly fixing flaws with A2D converters.
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That is their evidence free claim...but his point is still dead on, the original is the "intent".
Mike said:
Until my listening tests prove otherwise, I'm an MQA believer.
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Purely subjective. He heard the added aliasing distortion/ReEQ for what it is. YMMV
 
AJ - many Mastering Engineers feel threatened by MQA. It essentially negates the need for them. As you know, Mastering is the last step in the process. My personal opinion is that great Mastering engineers are the ones who do the least damage.

That being said, at the recent AES, our mutual friend Mike Chaffee was telling me the Mastering Engineers would "sign off" on MQA, if they could have a sandbox to do some Mastering work after the MQA filters had been applied. It seemed well received by all parties he said.


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Mike said:
AJ - many Mastering Engineers feel threatened by MQA. It essentially negates the need for them.
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Mike, that's crazy talk. MQA is just a "black box", another special effects processor, of which studios have dozens. It by no means replaces the skill, experience and knowledge of good mastering engineers.

Mike said:
That being said, at the recent AES, our mutual friend Mike Chaffee was telling me the Mastering Engineers would "sign off" on MQA, if they could have a sandbox to do some Mastering work after the MQA filters had been applied. It seemed well received by all parties he said.
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Yes, of course opinions among mastering engineers, just like audiophiles, will vary.
Again, it is a purely subjective decision whether to add HF aliasing distortion to the audio band by using an MQA type special effects processor with it's "lazy filter" of aliasing components and "folding" back into the audio band...and the required HF re-equalization. Some will like the "special effects", others not. YMMV.
As to whether the Mona Lisa should be redone with more modern state of the art paints, rather than the existing archaic faded ones on the canvas, to restore the "artists intent" and make it more "authentic", well.....:rolleyes:

Btw, at that very same AES, Bob Stuart admitted to Bruno Putzeys that no valid, controlled listening tests of MQA had been performed. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2044350049128525&id=100006606498666
That may fly for believers, but for evidence based folks, not so much.
It seems both our own listening produced at best, subtle differences, if any.
Personally, I'd take the subtle sound of 16/44 etc from a Chord Dave, over anything I've heard from MQA aliasing spicing/effects. Again, YMMV.

cheers,

AJ
 
It's not crazy talk, it fundamentally addresses problems in the A2D conversion process. The A2D converters used in studios - especially early on, were not ideal. https://mqa-production.s3.amazonaws.com/default/0001/01/6a10f3ba2385770ac3658df2cadc537ffcd09cd3.pdf

There will continue to be non-believers, and that's ok. But for MOST of those who are listening and experiencing MQA like myself, the results are positive. Those of us who have done our own comparisons have found, in most cases, the MQA is better than the redbook - but NOT ALL.

It reminds me when 24/96, 24/192 files were coming out. People claimed that we couldn't hear above a certain frequency and therefore CD was all we needed. Sound familiar? Anyone still believe that today?
 
Mike said:
It's not crazy talk, it fundamentally addresses problems in the A2D conversion process. The A2D converters used in studios - especially early on, were not ideal. https://mqa-production.s3.amazonaws.com/default/0001/01/6a10f3ba2385770ac3658df2cadc537ffcd09cd3.pdf

There will continue to be non-believers, and that's ok. But for MOST of those who are listening and experiencing MQA like myself, the results are positive. Those of us who have done our own comparisons have found, in most cases, the MQA is better than the redbook - but NOT ALL.

It reminds me when 24/96, 24/192 files were coming out. People claimed that we couldn't hear above a certain frequency and therefore CD was all we needed. Sound familiar? Anyone still believe that today?
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Mike-I'm not trying to pile on, but I would venture a guess that there are plenty of people who think that 16/44 is all we need including some in the business of manufacturing servers and DACs.
 
mep said:
Mike-I'm not trying to pile on, but I would venture a guess that there are plenty of people who think that 16/44 is all we need including some in the business of manufacturing servers and DACs.
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I agree with you.


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Mike said:
It's not crazy talk, it fundamentally addresses problems in the A2D conversion process.
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That's a conflation of issues, the alleged deficiencies of ADCs and mastering engineering skills.
There is no "black box" that can replace mastering engineering skill, sorry. I doubt the pro MQA camp of mastering engineers would agree there either.
The fact is, they are not all on board, as Mr Lucey rather clearly stated.

Mike said:
The A2D converters used in studios - especially early on, were not ideal. https://mqa-production.s3.amazonaws.com/default/0001/01/6a10f3ba2385770ac3658df2cadc537ffcd09cd3.pdf
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Robert Harley?? LOL.
He isn't an expert in information theory or psycho-acoustics by any stretch of the the imagination, including his hyper-active one! :)

Mike said:
Those of us who have done our own comparisons have found, in most cases, the MQA is better than the redbook - but NOT ALL.
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Again, purely subjective and anecdotal, which is fine. The problem is the intent for MQA to be forced upon all, including non-believers. When (not if) masters begin to be encoded with MQA, there will be no choice for those who don't prefer aliasing spicing, the components in the audio band will be permanent! No filter, sampling rate or word length changes that!
There is no "fix" for such deliberate un-authentic imbedded distortion.

Mike said:
It reminds me when 24/96, 24/192 files were coming out. People claimed that we couldn't hear above a certain frequency and therefore CD was all we needed. Sound familiar? Anyone still believe that today?
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Yes, all familiar with science do. 50 year old male ears still can't hear >20k, regardless of what they imagine. There is zero scientific evidence to support the belief they can...and a mountain of evidence they can't.
That does not mean there are no audible differences in high sample rate files...it's just that hearing >20k isn't one of them. I agree this is very much like HDCD, DVD-A, SACD, DSD, etc, etc, etc.
Same old guys, different day.:D
 
It sounds like Mr. Lucey is defending that ALL mastering engineers over the past three or four decades did everything perfectly up through mastering and A/D conversion. I'm not casting doubt on his particular work, but why does almost everyone seem to agree that a lot of digital recordings suck to varying degrees? He also states that remastering is "impossible." Then why do we get a new "remastered" version of classic recordings every few years? I, for one, hope that good recordings get remastered to correct over-compression sins.

A lot of the MQA antagonists seem to think something is being forced on THEM. If you don't want MQA, then don't pay whatever premium you seem to think is involved and let the market decide like it did with all the other failed formats.

D
 
Unworthy said:
It sounds like Mr. Lucey is defending that ALL mastering engineers over the past three or four decades did everything perfectly up through mastering and A/D conversion.
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No, the exact opposite. MQA is claiming all mastering over the past is "unauthentic".
Mr Lucey correctly points out "BS". MQA wants everything remastered in MQA.
Every recording till now was problematic, in need of MQA's "fix"? That's preposterous.

Unworthy said:
but why does almost everyone seem to agree that a lot of digital recordings suck to varying degrees?
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I missed that poll, link please?

Unworthy said:
If you don't want MQA, then don't pay whatever premium you seem to think is involved and let the market decide like it did with all the other failed formats.
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Agree.
However, how do I do that when MQA is the master?
 
AJ Soundfield said:
No, the exact opposite. MQA is claiming all mastering over the past is "unauthentic".
Mr Lucey correctly points out "BS". MQA wants everything remastered in MQA.
Every recording till now was problematic, in need of MQA's "fix"? That's preposterous.

I would agree that not EVERYTHING needs to be fixed, but that is not realistic anyway.

I missed that poll, link please?

I admit it was unscientific :)

Agree.
However, how do I do that when MQA is the master?
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That's a good point I had not considered.
 
I assume this ADC fixing wizardry is only done on master tape to digital transfers and only for particular problematic ADCs? Anything that was multi tracked to digital could have any number of different ADCs involved.

Or does the MQA team think all ADCs do it wrong and thus fix everything?
 
The latest Beta firmware upgrade for the Oppo 205 includes "MQA support". Apodizing filters were already available, so perhaps not much more was needed to allow full MQA support, but if you ask me (and no one is, I suppose) this is more support for the idea that MQA is just post-processing hocus-pocus and nothing that couldn't be matched or bettered sonically by other means (than buying into the proprietary Meridian scheme)

However, I suppose I will get another TIDAL subscription to see how "fully unfolded" MQA on my Oppo sounds. As it was, partially unfolded usually sounded better through the Oppo than fully unfolded on the AQ Dragonfly.
 
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