Meridian MQA Poll

I don't see it having value beyond improved sound quality for streaming.

 

Agreed

 

Has HDTracks made any commitment to MQA?

 

At this point I have no interest in streaming either, but I know many 'hi fi people' who do.

Making the leap to getting rid of playback from physical media (vinyl discs, cd discs) certainly separates 'hi fi people' into camps. I'm in the it's-all-on-a-music-server camp. In my experience, quite a few who've embraced getting rid of physical media also totally embrace having all of the source material 'in the cloud' and not on any in-home storage device that they own.

We'll see, but I think that the idea of (lossless) streaming will stick around. Maybe I'll embrace it at some point. (I tried a cheap trial of lossy Spotify Premium but didn't stick with it when the trial ran out.)

 

I don't believe that HDTracks do anything other than market files they obtain from 'the record labels.' If the labels commit to it, I'd expect HDTracks to try to sell it.

 

Okay, thanks for the info. Cheers.

 

If it sounds as good as the handful of audients say it does in articles ... then I want it to be the universal standard!

But I'll reserve judgment until I've heard it. Hopefully in a comparison between a well-mastered CD of an album I know well, and a new version done with the MQA process.

 

I admit that my response to date is largely a big yawn, but I also have to admit that I'm content with CD quality digital files and remain unconvinced that there's a major benefit to resolutions beyond that. I'm much more concerned with overall recording/mastering quality.

I'm also a bit concerned by the lack of apples to apples comparisons in any of the MQA demos so far. I'm quite sure that the music chosen for the demos sounds fantastic on the high end rigs that Meridian has used, but quite frankly, what well mastered music wouldn't regardless of the format (excepting low bitrate lossy formats of course).

Maybe MQA will turn out to be a revolutionary format and will turn the music industry on it's head. But at this stage I'm fairly sceptical.

 

I don't understand: acording to some people, MQA is a lossy format that will serve better for streaming. So why Meridian is saying that this format will preserve the artist intentions better, and that will sound more authentic, more like the studio master?

 

Yes, this is where I think there's some slight of hand and obfuscation. It's PCM with a base 48kHz rate and reconstructed to 96kHz+. They could claim better impulse resolution with upsampling and various filters. Maybe they even have some kind of metadata embedded as parameters for the type of digital filter used in the upsampling process. Hard to see any of this being a big deal despite Meridian's brouhaha...

The lack of A/B testing and possibly playing remastered material in these audio shows is telling I think.

I'm not a mastering engineer, but I can't imagine anyone asking the artist "Hey Mr. Rock-and-Roller, do you want your music using linear/intermediate/minimum phase antialiasing decoded? How steep would you like that filter? Do you want us to allow a bit of aliasing to just make it more 'crunchy'? How about we not do antialiasing and make it like a NOS DAC? Would you prefer we upsample to 192kHz or 384kHz on playback?"

Yeah... We'll see what the final outcome looks like. As if that'll "revolutionize" music quality...

 

Can we all agree that the term "audiophile" should be scrapped in favour of "audients"?

 

In reading the latest TAS issue the promise seems to be disruptive in that we could get best digital sound ever --better than today's hi Rez by a "laughable" amount -- and a side benefit is that it has a lower bit rate so it can be streamed allowing a true audiophile grade Streaming option: volumes of music anywhere - anytime

If I can buy a $299 DAC and get best ever digital sound I''m interested and my CDs may start to look like VHS.

It seems this could be disruptive like cd was in 80's.
Will you be able to buy the encoded files on a disc?


Funny note from stereophile on the Metallica demo


That the music could be lower in volume, yet sound meaner and more vile in the best of ways, confirmed the musical dividends that MQA can deliver.
Read more at Meridian's MQA: One Listener's Impression »

 

This was another good read on MQA:

Computer Audiophile - My First 24 Hours With MQA »

 

And just started in on this:

Computer Audiophile - A Comprehensive Q&A With MQA's Bob Stuart »

 

Has anyone here heard a demo at a Meridian dealer yet? A proper a/b with a CD or un-MQA'd file?

 

Meridian updated their little Explorer portable DAC with the MQA firmware update a few months ago. Anybody who wants to check out MQA files right now can do so. It'll cost you $300 for the Explorer and the best part of $25 for an MQA file download to get your feet wet. Just make sure the download is of something you already own on CD or as a 24/192 FLAC so that you can at least do a useful A/B comparison. Even then, the playing field might not be level because if the first batch of available MQA files were shepherded through the re-mastering process with the same care and attention paid to newborns in the hospital, and you're comparing a selected file to a run-of-the-mill CD of the same music, you're missing the fact that anything that gets such attention in mastering is bound to sound better.

I just finished reading the May/June issue of The Absolute Sound. The over-the-top, effusively adjective-loaded descriptions of the MQA sound ended up turning me off completely. Nothing can possibly live up to that sort of widly improbably hype. It sounds like just so much babbling about yet another new file format/CODEC/encode-decode method that, when the dust settles and third-party DACs start showing up, will prove to be another incremental improvement. As noted earlier in this thread, so far dealer and show demos conducted by Meridian's people haven't offered any apples-to-apples A/B demonstrations. Lots of knowing looks from the industry insider crowd, absolute nonsense from TAS (and other) audio mag writers competing to win the I-used-more-meaningless-adjectives-than-you-in-my-article contest, the only other MQA product besides Meridian's $299 Explorer DAC is Meridian's $22,000(!?!) 808v6 CD player/DAC, and Tidal seems to be the trying to be the first major service to offer MQA streams.

Remember the hype around DSD/dsf? Remember how it turned out to be an appreciated but only incremental improvement (as long as the files were generated from original masters, rather than monkey business using CDs as masters)? MQA will prove to be the same. It initially sounds quite different. Different, in audio, most often does not mean better. Still, I'm waiting for a real demo, locally to me, so that I too can be ebulliently delirious about MQA like Robert Harley in TAS. We'll see.

BTW, in the TAS article Harley insisted that an MQA file made using an off-the-shelf CD sounded better than the CD. No access to the master tape or master file used to make the CD. MQA is just better than everything ever devised by humans, according to Harely. He doesn't quite state that MQA is true magic, but he comes real close when he implies (and actually partially statest) that there is more musical information in the MQA file than on the CD used to generate the MQA file. Technically though, he may be right if MQA is changing the information from the CD in different ways. Again, that's simply different but by no means necessarily better. I think Harley and other TAS stalwarts have been industry shills for so many years now that most of what they write has to taken with a heavy dose of skepticism.

 

Agitater, thanks for that detailed reply ...

Does anyone know, what is the price of a current-model, entry-level Meridian CD player?

 

They only have one model in their product line - the 808v6 at $22k. I own one, just upgraded last week to v6 from the v2 model (later upgraded to v5) I bought a few years ago at $18k. The unit also contains an analog preamp, networking digital communication capabilities, and various digital and analog inputs, as well as balanced and unbalanced analog outputs in the chassis. There are several modular interface cards included. It's very expensive, yes, but flexible, upgradeable, and can be used as an entire system hub, not only as a CD player. The optical drive is a DVD type computer quality unit, and seems almost like an add-in at this point to the other digital processing technology in the networked player. The algorithm for disc reading and its error-correction function is more sophisticated than the average player, though. The build quality is superb and quite heavy, for eliminating any mechanical energy condution or resonance. When I bought the player initially, I viewed it as a final purchase for a digital front end in my system. I thought it was the best player available at the time, at least for my needs. Now I have upgraded it twice and it still seems to be competitive as one of the world-class players available. There are much more expensive CD playback systems out there, like the multi-box DCS Vivaldi and such. The Meridian strikes the right balance of sophistication and value for me, and the upgrade to MQA processing along with a new analog output stage and new digital input card was well worth the relatively modest v6 upgrade cost, IMO.

 

Have you tried playing back any MQA-encoded material and comparing it with its source?

 

Not yet. I just got the unit home Saturday, and will be busy with other stuff including some travel until next week. I will be anxious to try it out soon though! Another thing that may delay the kind of comparison you'd like to see - so far on the MQA website, there is a link to only one supplier of MQA files. That is a Norwegian classical music label, with their whole catalog (over 100). I expect or hope there will be other sources soon, and maybe there already are, but they haven't been linked to the MQA site yet, with the exception of one obscure new artist. I haven't done any further investigation myself as to what is available in terms of demo files or any official record company releases. It's all just getting started at this point, and I suspect the availability of MQA releases is still a matter of conjecture and planning. I've heard that negotiations are underway with Atlantic Records, and then of course there's a streaming arrangement (with Tidal), which I haven't had an interest in so far. Some folks are scoffing and calling MQA "vaporware" but I'm tentatively a little more optimistic than that. Hey, at least I'm ready, if and when.

 

SoundQman already answered, but just so it's clear, Meridian is strictly a high-end maker - the company does not offer an entry-level anything. By mid-summer, as the TAS article stated, there will be quite a number of DACs hitting the stores or getting firmware updates with MQA compatibility. That is to say, it will happen if Meridian is able to successfully pitch its SDK to enough licensees. If not, MQA will die quickly. Looks like Meridian has a dozen companies signed up so far, since late last Fall, but that's not enough to get it done. Presumably, Meridian's reps are out there knocking on corporate doors every day.

 

I'm hoping for MQA-processed physical product (i.e., CDs) ... am I on drugs?

I don't have Internet, so am not able to do streaming or whatever it's called. Hopefully they might come out with a DAC that will allow one to play existing CDS through it, applying MQA before it hits the preamp ...

 

Almost one year later and not a single person has voted "I've used it...", yet there is plenty of fairly declarative opinion about it.

Seems pretty standard...

 

MQA-encoded files published on disc is a definite possibility, although my guess is that downloads and streaming will likely be favored.

And Meridian does have an entry level MQA product. That would be the Explorer v2 DAC. It's very small and portable, and is powered through its USB connection. It has headphone and line-level outputs.

 

The poll was closed on August 9, 2015. No way to vote for the past eight months.

Like I said earlier in the thread, Meridian is knocking on doors trying to sign up licensees. At the moment, as well, the 'library' of native MQA titles is basically little more than a list that's just long enough to do beta testing - a couple of hundred so far. Even early adopters are scratching their heads. As/if MQA compatible DACs and firmware updates start rolling out in the next couple of months, there'd better be more than a couple of hundred titles. If not, MQA will stall.

Anyway, I thought there was and even dozen licensees. That's wrong - there are eleven - plus four streaming services (including Tidal), and only unfortunately so far one label/content provider - a company called 2L. I've got a Bluesound Node2 hooked up to a North Star Incanto DAC right now in a secondary system. Works great and Bluesound is a device licensee, so I expect a firmware update soon. When it shows up, I'll try the Node2 on its own with some MQA files from either Tidal (if I can find them) or from 2L (if I can even stream them in Toronto - regional licensing restrictions being what they are quite often).

If anybody wants to stay up to date on MQA developments, partners, streaming services and labels/content providers, hit the MQA web site. The Meridian web site barely mentions MQA, so it looks like Meridian has fully spun off the MQA division into a separate entity. Probably a very smart move.