Meridian MQA Poll

It's this kind of argument I was talking about-it's early in this format's life but is this an accurate informed opinion or just a generalisation?

There's no evidence the industry is going to back it quite clearly it has a licensing aspect that both manufacturers and labels might resist. However it is backwards compatible which is virtually unheard of for a new format-therefore you don't need to buy new equipment.

What will happen with it is anybody's guess personally I think the odds might be against it however IF it can be heard over time to have superior sound it may replace SACD as a niche audiophile format. Too soon to say much on it.

 

You may want to try comparing some free 24/352 DXD recordings to their MQA-encoded versions from 2L test bench.

 

Oh, I was not expecting you to know..it was a question asked out loud.

I am just starting to feel that MQA requires magical thinking and a lot of faith.

I could be wrong.

 

As Mark Twain said, "Faith is believing what you know isn't true."

 

I thought that was Amrose Bierce who wrote that in his Devil's Dictionary.

 

Thanks looks interesting.

I have the 2L Blu Ray SACD comp so it will be interesting if any of those tracks are from that......

 

Whether TAS carries weight or not and whether the writer this issue is credible or not is I suppose always up for debate but he is indicating he believes MQA has a strong future both from the perspective of it's performance and the fact it can piggyback into existing systems.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or another-it's too soon.

 

That's actually factually incorrect in a lot of cases isn't it?

 

Some spectral insight...

 

A lot of insight in that thread interesting part for me was when the guy said what he thought sounded better....

 

Sort of makes one wish for the day that, "We won't have MQA to kick around anymore." An awful long wait with serious obstacles to overcome for a supposed epiphany. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "and so it goes.........."

 

Original DXD recording upsampled to DSD256 or DSD512?..

 

Fair enough..just ask your self if the magazine has a financial stake in the "success" of MQA. MQA/Meridian are an advertising client.

 

MQA Controversy | DirectStream DAC | ForumsPS Audio »

 

Meridian making a dog's breakfast out of this IMO. Trying to imprint their "way of doing things" looks like it's going to have the same long term success as their MLP (as seen on a handful of titles - King Crimson and Yes I think).

 

Not surprised that MQA didn't sound better, but I am encouraged that 24/44 MQA can sound equal to 24/176. Actually, I am surprised that it sounded equal to the non-compressed file given the higher noise floor in the MQA files.

 

You are not correct regarding the definitions of "lossy" and "lossless" compression. They have nothing to do with the sound quality of a file. Rather, they refer to data integrity. A file than undergoes lossless compression can be decompressed so that the data is bit-for-bit identical to the original uncompressed file. With lossy compression, when it is uncompressed the data will not be identical to the original uncompressed file. This is because when the file is compressed, some data is "thrown out" or "lost" by the compressor. In mp3's, this happens via a perceptual encoding algorithm which removes some audio data that (according to the algorithm) people either cannot hear or are not sensitive to. All frequencies over 16kHz are removed and certain sounds that are "masked" by other, louder sounds are removed.

Do a null test between an mp3 and a WAV file and the resulting sound you hear is what has been "thrown out" by the mp3 algorithm. You will be VERY surprised how much music is missing.

 

What he said.

 

I'm having to adjust my head to the concept of lossy being a music file with more data than Redbook - in the case of playing wrapped MQA.

In my adjustment period, I was pondering:
If a Redbook CD is created from a Hi-Res file source would that be considered lossy?

 

An inconvenient truth: MQA sounds better! | DAR__KO »

 

Yes; this has been true for quite a while

 

I was drawing from the data imaging realm where there are two categories of lossless: numerical and visual.

Visually lossless is a subjective measure as compared to the original image.

 

If a Redbook CD is created from an analog tape that could be (debatably) lossy?

If a Hi-Res file is created from an analog tape that could be (debatably) lossy?

Not trying to be difficult, just trying to understand this (new to me) concept of lossy.

 

Here is my unsuccessful ABX test result :

Code:

foo_abx 2.0.2 report
foobar2000 v1.3.10
2016-06-01 10:40:40

File A: 2L-056_03_stereo_DXD.flac
SHA1: 1dd9a4538e579fd26d1d80ee82a8b372aab93b46
File B: 2L-056_03_stereo_DXD_mqa.flac
SHA1: a8683af0e21d1c6e8776bfd29ab52ed02b638d96

Used DSPs:
Resampler (SoX) mod2

Output:
ASIO : Meridian USB2 ASIO Driver
Crossfading: NO

10:40:40 : Test started.
10:41:20 : 00/01
10:41:53 : 00/02
10:42:24 : 01/03
10:42:56 : 01/04
10:43:28 : 01/05
10:44:16 : 01/06
10:44:23 : 01/07
10:45:10 : 02/08
10:45:38 : 03/09
10:46:24 : 04/10
10:46:24 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 4/10
Probability that you were guessing: 82.8%

-- signature --
0991ab381c45475b532fe6d207fee65e442f0edb

 

We all have better sounding music in the high rez formats of 2496, 24192, and DSD/SACD, yet most music listeners do not own a compatible usb DAC to listen to these formats and most have probably not downloaded a high rez file for a trial. Of course all of this "improvement" depends upon the quality of the original (reissue) file and how it was remastered and by whom. Some care more than others and others are just better at doing a mastering job.

None of us would complain about music that is presented in a better way, but now to have to buy a MQA DAC when most audiophiles already own a good quality DAC up to 24/192, and some like me have not yet jumped into a DSD DAC. I have found that the files I've bought from HD Tracks, BlueCoast Music, eClassical, and now from Primephonics to be excellent and all I could ever want from an affordable download.

What I see more here is an attempt to keep the file sizes more manageable and to make the format suitable for "streaming". This is a larger market, one I'm not really involved in, and I wonder if that improvement in sound quality will be noticed if the streaming listeners are just using the streaming as background music while doing something else? There is no doubt there is business motivating this movement, but that in and of itself is not a bad thing if many really want it.

Most audiophiles have always questioned the masses for what we see as a lack of interest in better sounding music presentation when all we saw was that ITunes was "good enough" for them. Audiophiles always seem to be looking for better sound and the masses not so much. This doesn't bother me anymore. The fact that with MQA, the process does not make the music sound worse when listened through non-MQA gear, so that is a good thing.

Where this all ends up is up to the customers to decide. Until the mastering of all reissues starts to get better none of this will matter. I am not convinced that the reissue business is not just currently driven by money rather than just the idea to offer old music in a new format and remastered in a way that "always sounds better" than the original issue. I would hope that this becomes more the norm in the future. At $30-$50 a reissue, customers deserve the best engineering can offer.

If sound quality really mattered to the labels would they now offer new music @ 2496 on DVD-Rs as DVD-Vs already with a free digital download at redbook? If the industry really cared about better sound before this, MQA would not be around right now and new album tracking would not be at 2448 now. This is why many artists are going back to analog tape as 30 ips just sounds better than 2448, even when mixed down on a second analog deck. I wonder where all this would be if all tracking was done at 24192? Now you would be saving more of an original performance and really have something to work with for a reissue.

Whether MQA will be for me only time will tell. I will probably not be an early adopter this time, but I do hope it fulfills the promise of better sounding music for everyone. If it is affordable and Meridian makes money, that is not a bad thing. If to all to many it just sounds "different', well that is something else.