MQA bails on Rocky Mountain Audio Fest*

Required reading (both post and article) if you want the whole story.

 

The ultimate goal is pay per play. Unlimited streaming becomes limited and pay for each play per song. Thar's money in them there Music!

 

HiRes is definitely not snake oil. I have been doing a lot of listening through my new-to-me Sony HAP Z1Es digital music storage player, switching between 192 FLAC, redbook CD quality, DSD, and even some 320 and 192 kbps mp3s, and you can hear the differences between the grades. I'm not a huge fan of digital to begin with, so I really have no dog in this race - I just hear what I hear. The DSD and FLAC recordings just have a depth that the lower MP3 grades don't have, even when upsampled and converted to DSD. The 192 and 96 FLAC files are nearly the equal of DSD, but lack just a smidge of smoothness.

I have only experience MQA through by MBP running Tidal desktop software through my Rega DAC. Even with the partial MQA decoding this method yields, I have to admit that the MQA albums sounded very good. I listened all evening to various albums in MQA and was tapping my foot and non-fatigued after hours. Christopher Cross's first album was the best I have ever heard it. I wouldn't go out and buy titles again just for MQA, but for streaming, why wouldn't you want it? No brainer.

One more thing - Speaker guru Richard Vandersteen is on record as loving MQA. I've met Richard many times, and he definitely speaks his mind - good, bad or indifferent. If he didn't like it, he would say so. He usually has nothing good to say about digital. In fact, he said that he and his wife listen to analog audio almost every night, all evening, and if he slips digital into the system without her knowing about it, she will ask him if he wants to watch some TV instead. He was raving about MQA at one of the audio shows last year, though, as being a breakthrough. To win over a strong digital opponent like him, I think they may be on to something.

 

Well, probably at least 99% of the population cannot discern "hi-rez" from standard audio, if we compare apples to apples, i.e., same recordings and same masterings.
Therefore, such super-audio formats are only a niche thing for golden eared audiohiles.

 

Absolutely no way I can see that MQA has a significant impact on recorded music. Major discontinuities in the market have always been driven only by convenience, durability and portability of media. Any other driver, such as sound quality, has been incidental. MQA will part its proponents from their money for a year or two and it will fade into obscurity, like DIVX and HDCD. Tidal alone isn't nearly enough to shift the market, with Apple Music and Spotify and Pandora et al. Now, media companies may try to move to pay-for-play, but that needn't have anything to do with MQA.

 

On the nose-y.

All the more incentive for The Suits to bull-rush MQA to the marketplace, with lotsa vague-but-glitzy marketing. Institutionalize DRM and pay-per-play ASAP, before the goobers can figure out what's happened.

 

I like MQA. Sounds damn fine.

 

I don’t think that people who have actually heard MQA are welcome on this thread.
Take your listening results elsewhere.

 

I don't think MQA is welcome in this hobby.

There, fixed it for you.

 

I can't vouch for MQA but I can assure you that anyone doubting hi-res quality is either unable to hear the difference or does not have the equipment to do so. The problem with digital music right now is that the players needed to really uncover the level of detail in digital are still very expensive. I don't personally own a player that can really unlock the possibilities of hi-res because they cost a fortune, but I can def hear the difference between true lower and hi-res files when they are done right. It is possible to get very high detail on a phono player at a much cheaper price than it is to get that level on a CD player. My Oppo 105 with Modwright upgrades does not give same level of detail that my Rega P7 brings if I play 2 sources: one being a hi-res file that is used to make the a record, and I compare both.

Many of the best albums being reproduced lately that are wowing people are being sourced from high-res transfers from the original tapes, and the hi res files (if done properly) can be all that the original tapes were (sans aging degradation) in my opinion. The problem is that they are using DACs that cost upwards of $250K to make those files and when I play those files back on my lowly Oppo 105 they are not as sharp as they come through on the vinyl on my Rega P7 TT. So obviously the problem is with my playback and not the hi-res files (i originally thought it was impossible for the hi-res files used to make the LP to not sound better but I have since figured out the reason). The beauty of having high quality hi-res transfers for vinyl is that each new pressing will be as high quality as the first, unlike in the past where everything after the first pressing is to some extent, a lesser quality version.

With respect to MQA, Analog Planet's story on it was so over the top that I was about to buy stock in it. If it turns out to be a big washout with MQA, I'm going to have lost a lot more faith in AP!

 

This is the truth. Even if my ears aren't what they used to be, my hi-res files sound significantly better than my CDs. No question. The only caveat is that this discussion is source dependent.

 

I'm a big fan of Hi Res music but the problem is that the only requirement for selling music today is that its quality need to be just good enough to do the job. Most of the music released in the last decade, even by world class artists such as Adele (e.g. her album 21) can barely be qualified as technically acceptable. Another group, quite successful but much less so than Adele is London Grammar and the recording of their latest album is dreadful. When world class artists can't be bothered to issue well mastered albums that use red book CD to its full potential, it doesn't matter if they release them as 192/24 or as MQA because that's not were the problem is.

I'm sorry but I don't buy the claim that the players needed to unveil the qualities of Hi Res are still very expensive (or rare). That might have been true 7 or 5 years ago, today they are a commodity.

 

It's a fact though. Like I said, you will still hear benefits of hi res but it takes a really fine DAC to get the detail that they are rendering on their equipment. For lesser produced music I guess it wouldn't matter but I have confirmed it to be true for better quality recordings.

 

I doubt it. Can you please tell us what is, in your opinion, the threshold. Which player model have you identified as the lowest speced or cheapest below it no difference between RBCD and Hi Res can be discerned and what qualities or features will be missing below this point?

 

Don't forget, the mastering's need to be identical as well

 

You sure are fond of throwing your ignorance around.

 

Hello,
you are right. Practically all the music released today does not utilize red book CD to it's full potential, neither dynamics wise nor frequency wise.
So why bother with hi-rez when there's no recordings available that need it.

Problems lie not in equipment nor hi-res, but they lie in the recording and mastering studios. As long as they turn out technically inferior recordings, there is no need to think about "better audio formats".

 

That is a straw man argument. There is no such thing as a CD recording that uses CD to its full potential. And then if somehow a recording manages to exceed that CD threshold, only then could high-res have any potential benefit. That is an ignorant view of digital. And a faulty argument against high-res.

Even modern compressed recordings with limited dynamics can benefit from high-res. I've heard examples myself where the high-res version of a modern compressed recording sounds better than the CD version. Same mastering for both.

 

I can't answer that question unfortunately but I can certainly hear the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit with the Oppo BDP-105 . If you doubt the very basics of audiophile equipment why are you bothering to discuss it? If you just doubt that there is better sound quality with a $250K DAC over a $1,200 one there's nothing more to discuss.

 

Has anyone ever compiled a list of music that redbook CD was unable to properly record? I heard a rumor that the 1812 overture was really the only culprit, and that was because of the 160+ decibel cannons.

Are there any other unrecordable songs on CD?

 

Depends on what we mean. We could also say that nothing is properly recorded with 16/44.

 

Can't begin to countenance the number of pots being thrown here.

(High end ones obvs.)

 

I like hi-res files...they sound great and my JRiver server is full of them.

But I don't have to hear MQA to not want it because of those three other letters: DRM.
You think labels are doing you a favor by backing the format?

 

Yes, and it's audiopile knowledge, nothing ever beats a vinyl record.
So to speak, vinyl smokes every hi-res.

 

IMHO everyone on this thread should read this paper published by the journal of the AES, if they haven't done so already:

http://www.drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

In a controlled scientific experiment, using quality equipment and with experienced listeners, the participants could not reliably (greater chance than guessing) distinguish between SACD and SACD downsampled to CD resolution. The only audible difference was a lower noise floor for SACD when played back at very high volume.

I buy SACDs as well as CDs but I do this to access the superior mastering on releases by MoFi, etc. that aren't available on the standard CD.