Any one with experience of MQA CD

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Whay, Jul 23, 2018.

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  1. Whay

    Whay Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yemen
    It seems more legit than blu spec since you need a specific DAC and all, but I dunno. I don't mind spending extra for some new releases to sound better, but I want to know if it actually sounds better than CD.
     
  2. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    No
     
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  3. art

    art Senior Member

    Location:
    520
    Sound worse to me. Processed.
     
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  4. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Yes - for two weeks or a bit more, along with a couple of friends. The discs are all from CD Japan. I’m getting ready to post the results of listening sessions. All of the MQA CDs we used were compared to their non-MQA versions during the listening sessions.
     
  5. Whay

    Whay Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yemen
    Nice
     
  6. SquishySounds

    SquishySounds Yo mama so fat Thanos had to snap twice.

    Location:
    New York
    Since they are JDM (Japanese domestic market) only for now, I’m guessing you’ll get very limited 1st hand experience on an American forum.
     
  7. JMCIII

    JMCIII Music lover first, audiophile second.

    Cheskey has an MQA encoded CD available right here in the US. Be warned however, that not all DAC's can accept MQA coding from co-ax or optical, only from USB. In order for me to hear the full unfolding of the Cheskey, I have to play it back through my MacBook Pro via USB to my DAC. That said, I do hear an improvement. But to each ear their own....
     
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  8. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues

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  9. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    The Japanese are more receptive to electronics as trendy or stylish, and will buy in to new technology even when it is far from the best on its technical merits. See Minidisc. Probably a calculated move to find some suckers.
     
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  10. Rick Bartlett

    Rick Bartlett Forum Resident

    Pretty quiet topic, is this going to be the next quick death formats?
    Very little discussion on them.
     
  11. Whay

    Whay Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yemen
    I think so, like the blu spec CD, this is just gonna be another Japan only reattempt at the compact disc.
     
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  12. Rick Bartlett

    Rick Bartlett Forum Resident

    maybe Techmoan's video might spark some interest:
     
  13. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Except . . . Techmoan never got it to work properly. The video has been posted in other threads before, several times.
     
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  14. One can hope. In this day and age, I can’t see the need for a new lossy format, particularly as it’s now being pressed on CD which - obviously - has the capacity to house a non-lossy signal.
     
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  15. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Agreed Shawn, my money won't be investing in this...
     
  16. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Please stop with these Techmoan videos. I have home improvement work to do today!

    Just...one..more...video....
     
  17. Rick Bartlett

    Rick Bartlett Forum Resident

    Ah, get to work then and make some big $$$!!
    Can't you see i'm trying to entice you into this expensive format?
    :evil:
     
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  18. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
  19. The Beave

    The Beave My Wife Is My Life! And don’t I forget it!

    Not really.
    There are three cheap samplers that have an mqa CD and it's regular CD counterpart available for $10 each at cdjapan.
    I used those on my OPPO 205 and concluded that the mqa version, although different, did NOT make for a better sounding experience over the CD version.
    Just different, mostly a slight forwardness in the 1-2k range.
    But ymmv.
    Me, I'm done with it, as it didn't impress me.
    Beave
     
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  20. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    Did they come from the same masters? If not, the comparison is flawed.
     
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  21. Joint Attention

    Joint Attention Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gig Harbor, WA
    I have a DAC that will decode MQA, but really no interest in this. Would much rather just download lossless hi-res, for less money.
     
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  22. Agitater

    Agitater Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Who knows and who on Earth cares? We never planned on making note-for-note comparisons of the two Getz/Giberto release, Blind Faith releases, Aja releases, Mozart Requiem releases, etc.. The point of the comparison was not to undermine MQA or support MQA or do anything other than try to determine, as reasonably as possible, which release listeners preferred.

    Should the masters be identical? Ideally, yes. But because none of the MQA group reveal the source of the ‘masters’ used to create their so-called “Master Quality Authenticated” version, it is functionally impossible to match masters in the context of an effort intended to culminate in an comparison review on an audio forum.

    Of course my comparisons may be flawed, but until @Carl Swanson comes up with a way of matching masters, I’m just going to have to bungle along in my amateurish effort to continue trying to figure out why all of the home listening sessions I’ve done or conducted so far with MQA files fail to live up to the carefully prepped and structured show demos conducted the the MQA group itself.

    Even the act of using the exact same master as the one used to produced an LP release in 1963 and a CD release in 1992 and an MQA-CD or streaming file in 2018 is bound to reveal sources differences because of the aging of the original tape and because every re-use of the tape causes minute deterioration and associated changes all on its own. Using material produced with the same master is always preferable when doing a direct comparison, no question about it. But we all have to suck it up and admit that a few more masters or master copies or master backups that were available or usable just ten years ago, aren’t viable today. That means alternative sources are supposedly being used in some cases by the MQA group. That means, also, any hint that it is even vaguely reasonable to suggest that only identical source master comparisions are valid is a completely unrealistic.

    I am also sure, based on the audible results of listening to hundreds of MQA files/streams (and now UHQ-MQA-CDs too) that it seems certain that some of the masters that the MQA group may be using are digital masters. I haven’t yet taken the time to try to find out (if it’s actually possible to do so) the master source for the Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers UHQ-MQA-CD release, but I’d bet real money it was the master used to help produce fifty year old LP I own or the twnety-two year old CD I own. Anybody else want to kibitz in here and help me out?

    Which brings up yet another sore point about MQA. The MQA group seems to have been largely completely silent, as far as I can tell, about which “masters” they’re using to create all the MQA files being supplied to TIDAL HiFi, among others. If MQA was legit to begin with, one would think that the MQA group would be detailing its master sources (at least every so often) rather than remaining completely silent on the matter.

    It all makes absolute comparisons exceedingly difficult. So is the MQA group just short-handed and therefore unable to spare anyone one in the marketing department to pander to audiophiles by providing a list of master sources every so often? Or would the MQA group just prefer that we all shut up and let them get on with whatever actual business plan they’re up to with the labels and some of the streaming services?
     
  23. Whay

    Whay Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yemen
    well said
     
  24. cdgenarian

    cdgenarian Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I watched Techmoan's video that was cited above. Since there was a malfunction involved in the comparison (either the music file or the DAC or both), I wasn't persuaded by the presenter's final assessment that the MQA sounded better. Perhaps when the DAC switched back and forth between MQA and CD quality, the CD quality bit was not played correctly. But what I heard was that the MQA sounded louder, so maybe the gentleman was subject to the "louder = better" mistake. Dunno, but the more I hear, the less interested in this "new technology" I am.
     
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  25. gd0

    gd0 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

    Location:
    Golden Gate
    I choose Door Number Two.
     
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