What happened to tone controls?

[atmasphere]

Whoa, looks like Joe was really triggered by my jest.



Regarding your claim about aliasing/brightness, it is the most relevant. More than any other "digital" format. *IF* one understands digital/MQA etc.
If you are interested in learning Ralph, I'll provide. If not, no worries.

The problem with your prior assertion is it assumes that all MQA recordings are derived from recordings where aliasing is a problem. On this account it renders the statement false. It was easy to demonstrate aliasing with some early digital recorders- simply record an analog sweep tone at a slow sweep and the 'birdies' are plain to hear. This problem varied from one ADC/DAC system to another.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

My problem is that MQA is a closed system

Don't disagree with you there Joe...but, like tone controls or not, I think folks should be allowed to choose. Including MQA if they like it vs other formats.
Here is a great, easily understood explanation by Information Theory Prof Jim Lesurf, of how it works, ironically, as a "tone control" http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/origami/ThereAndBack.html

The more temporal ‘sharpening’ we want, the higher the levels and frequencies we may get from anharmonic aliasing added to the output. We tend to end up with a conflict between making changes to the filtering to get better temporal response versus changes that reduce the amount of unwanted HF aliasing. Optimising this seems to potentially be a matter of the extent to which people with ‘golden ears’ hear aliased components as if they were also part of the musical harmonics rather than unwanted distortion! So it seems to rely on people either not noticing the aliasing (which implies they might not be noticing the HF anyway) or hearing it without being able to notice its actual anharmonic nature in general.

Whether the much higher amounts of aliasing distortion inherent with MQA vs say Redbook, is preferred, is a subjective decision.

cheers,

AJ

 

[JoeESP9]

An uneeded explanation does nothing to change my mind about dealing with closed systems. I'm a retired BS EE, MS Comp Sc. So I believe I have a fairly good grasp about MQA, digital files and "folding/unfolding" in general. I won't embrace MQA nor will I purchase Apple products. As for tone controls, if you have them and want to use them that's your business.

I am a Linux fan and would use it for everything were the applications I prefer available for linux.