MQA Doubts?

Actually, I did mention "in-band" in my post.

 

No - that's wrong. Various successive generations of wireless communication networks, including the upcoming 5G, are telecom networks that provide access to consumer subscribers. Streaming music providers use direct connections to the Internet backbone. Those are hardline, ultra high bandwidth, extremely fast connections that are much faster and much more expensive than any wireless distribution network. Stop conflating vastly different networks. They're utterlyl different and separate.

For you to get your streaming TIDAL connection on your phone or SIM'd tablet, you connect to your telecom account. It's servers go to the Internet to find the IP address you requested. That IP will be found through an interface with one of the backbone fiber connections that leads back to one of TIDAL's server farms. All the 3G, 4G or 5G connections do is provide greater speed and capacity to you, not to TIDAL or any other streaming company. And none of those wireless telecom network connections affect how TIDAL or any other streaming company gains access to the Internet. None of those wireless telecom networks has anything to do with what TIDAL pays for bandwidth or speed.

You're opening a nasty can of worms by conflating these things. Telecoms that have older network sections that are overly burdened by streaming demands actually go to some companies (Google, Microsoft, streaming music services, etc.) with requests for money to help fund network upgrades. The reasoning behind such telecom requests is that the streaming companies never paid for any of the existing infrastructure but yet are trying to build and grow their business on it while only paying for 'net accesss and bandwidth that doesn't account for the 'burden' on the wireless networks built by the telecoms.

It's swamp out there. Don't get into the telecom or the streaming business.

 

An article I read in Wired suggested that 5G networks would help with bandwidth for companies too. Either way the difference between MQA and FLAC encoded 24/96 isn't massive when you consider how much traffic Netflix handles, including 4K streams.

 

Yeah, when I finally read through to his bio, I had an Emily Litella moment. (i.e., "What's all this fuss I keep hearing about LSD? Oh, Never mind.")

 

Also, too, extortion. I think it was recently revealed that one of the big video streamers (Netflix?) paid Verizon's troll under the bridge. ("Nice movie ya got there. It'd be a shame if it were to.. stutter a bit.")

Streamers' bandwidth problems and consumers' bandwidth problems are apples and oranges. For streaming companies, every little bit helps.

 

Video can also be compressed and delivered to your screen upsampled to 720p and look like crap.

Just ask any Comcast subscriber.

Also, too... most of the movies I pirate have been compressed with something to get a 2-hour 720p to fit on a CD (700MB). The eyes and the ears and the algorithms are two different things.

 

For sure 5G will help content companies sell more content, because end users will be able to buy more and stream more. That's end-user bandwidth enabling a potential increase in business for TIDAL, but it has nothing to do with the additional bandwidth TIDAL will have to pay for in order to serve more and more subscribers. If the article in Wired was basically then saying that 5G will enable enough new subscribers to potentially get TIDAL (and other music content streaming suppliers) over the profit line, then the article is partially correct. The slow march to profitability for TIDAL and most of its competitors is a direct result of escalating music licensing costs (MQA's smaller files come with a curse - the MQA licensing fees), escalating bandwidth costs and the subscriber base increases, and the base costs of server expansions and the related hardware costs. Dollars and sense reality. If the article was floating conjecture about bandwidth, rather than that pure dollars and sense reality, then the article in Wired was either flawed or you read it wrong. The point is that content suppliers don't connect to the Internet backbone via wireless 5G networks. The whole notion is absurd.

What you also have to consider is that your Netflix comparison tries to connect different things that are really only partly related. If the other member who posted the idea of cost savings for content suppliers is correct, every single reduction in the size of individually streamed files amounts to fractions of pennies. When you add up the fractions, the real cost savings become significant.

Netflix streams large individual files across greater bandwdith. Netflix pays for backbone access and more recently has taken a shareholding position in parts of the backbone. Netflix is big enough and generates enough revenue to do that sort of thing. TIDAL, Spotify, Qobuz and the other major streaming music and video providers don't generate the kind of revenue or clout with the backbone providers to take any sort of investment position yet in the Internet as a whole. So the Netflix business structure and its partial bandwidth ownership position are largely unrelated to the facts of life for TIDAL's business structure and the access methods TIDAL employs in order to makes its files accessible online to subscribers.

 

Depends on the original Source, from what I read, HiRez digital recording sources to begin with, when MQA STREAMING, Tidal seem to have increased Dynamic Range, and Spacial quality to them. The Tutu Miles Davis album I started my thread with, is showing 96/24. The older Miles Davis tracts are showing CD quality. There is a noticable sound improvement to my ears, and I think to most trained ears there should be a audible improvement. That is the point I was trying to make. Same can be said of Coltrane music, listen to a few of small number or Tracks that are MQA processed and some that are not, older CD quality analogue tracks? The difference jumps out at me.

 

I find your posts confusing. Have you compared MQA Coltrane and Miles Davis (Tutu) to the HIREZ versions commercially available or JUST the CDs?

 

I think that was part of it, but I think the oddball nature of DSD was seen as the real big-advantage to Sony, since they wouldn't be "rippable" or easily-processed by the consumer PCs of the day.

 

That's another "can of worms" aspect about this that I have vague recollections of but was hesitant to bring up because there are many here much more knowledgeable than I, but, if I recall correctly, I remember the hubbub online many years back about folks getting AV receivers with 7.1 analog output jacks because analog output was the only way one could attempt to extract SACD content. It was either that, or one particular model of PS3 out of maybe fifteen that are able to copy SACD. Either way, I know SACD out via digital was a big no-no.

Things may be different now, I haven't kept up with any disc-based format in ages, but, even so, one could argue that the original intent of the labels with regard to SACDs isn't much different than what we're seeing now.

Either way, again, while I respect Andreas Koch's expertise, his hypocrisy with a straight face here is too obvious.

 

I think SACD ripping has become much more widespread courtesy of the handful of Oppo and Pioneer players that, courtesy of a particular Mediatek chip, can fairly easily be set to rip SACDs. Plus, greater interest in DSD has resulted in more downloadable music being available.

 

I think you mean analog inputs since that was the only way to play SACD content. Analog output jacks (line level and/or speaker level) are standard features.

That was resolved by the appearance of HDMI v1.2.

However, all the above is about playback but not ripping which was impossible (without professional equipment) until Mr. Wicked's patch app for early PS3s and the more recent one for some Oppo and Pioneer players. One could always record SACD's analog output but that's not the same as ripping the digital content.

 

Bingo. The Oppo and Pioneer solutions make ripping SACDs essentially like ripping CDs.

 

Meridian should partner with someone to make a MQA Certified™ amplifier, MQA Certified™ speakers and MQA Certified™ speaker wire with proprietary ultra half banana inputs so I know I'm hearing exactly what the artist intended music label wants me to hear.

Spoiler

The above is a sarcastic statement.

 

PONO!

 

Thank you. I'm not even entirely sure what I meant, to be honest. haha I was just tossing off some vague recollections I had around time spent in various forums 10-12 years ago. Thanks for clarifying.

 

Once again, I am reporting, my experience, listening to Tidal Streaming. MQA encoded Jazz classics, compared to their standard CD encodings being streamed. Not upsampled HD versions of these originals. Modern digital recordings in Flac from mosts streaming services sound good, 16/44. MQA allows that to expand up to 24/96. To my ears MQA makes most of the Jazz classics from the Analogue era come to life. I am sure the Hi sample rate versions of these classics sound as good or most likely better, but I have long ago got tired of hauling around my LP collection, CD collection, Open Reel collection, and opted for the Rip, media on a computer, then rent that music in the highest quality option that is available. The latest version of the listening paradigm is Tidal/MQA, and it has me listening to music again.

 

Ok, now are you going to compare the MQA versions to the HD versions they were created from? NOT the CDs.

Because coming on here praising MQA when compared to CDs, of undetermined vintage...is really misleading. There are literally 5 or 6 different CD versions of most of the well known Miles Davis or John Coltrane titles.

Compare MQA to the corresponding 24/192 or 24/96 version then let us know your findings.

 

I was interested in MQA when I first read about it, but after learning more about it and doing some comparisons using Tidal, I decided not to pursue getting an MQA DAC. I couldn't hear any significant differences on my system and can't see how there are any real benefits to the concept in general over standard PCM or DSD flac files and CD rips.

 

Some people are criticizing Koch and SACD, but DSD is an open book compared to MQA. You may like it or not, but it's scientifically all out in the open.

 

..and now about the fact that DSD is an actual real format...MQA is a marketing fabrication. You can't make an "MQA Recording". DSD, you sure can. As you said, it scientifically clear as day.

 

Yup. We can agree or disagree on the presumed benefits (and pitfalls) of DSD (I think it's a solution to a problem that hasn't really existed in going on 20 years), but it's well-documented and - more to the point - well-measured.

 

What does Pono have to do with any of that?