My new article series on MQA.

I'd love to have the experiences and opinions of some of the industry professional mastering (and re-mastering) engineers presented in this thread (or a fresh thread).

1) Have they had any experience with MQA as a listener?
2) Have they had any experience with MQA as part of their work?
3) If 1 or 2 above is yes, describe/rate the experience.
4) Do they feel their jobs may be threatened by MQA adoption?

I'd also love to hear our host's take on MQA as well..........

 

What new neuroscience studies? The knowledge that the time domain is extremely important in binarual human hearing for determining spatial orientation, depth and other issues related directly to sound propagation and music performance is positively ancient. For a fact, foundational time domain engineering done in the ‘60s and ‘70s forms the basis for the astonishingly accurate clocks that have been in use in ADC/DAC systems since the ‘80s. Bob Stuart has discovered anything new, nor is there any audible problem in existing digitized music at 16/44 or higher with respect to timing errors, pre- or post-ringing. Stuart and company are claiming to fix problems that no one can hear in the first place.

Since you’ve raised the issue of cable makers, I can’t resist pointing out that much like some of the high-end speaker wire makers who claim that their cables combat skin effect (that doesn’t exist as a problem at audio frequencies or home-length or even concert hall-length wiring runs - it’s an issue for high bandwidth transmission up in the 100kHz+ range and only over mutimile-plus distances), Stuart claims to be ‘fixing’ pre- and post-ringing that are on the order of -120 db below a system noise floor and/or up in the ultrasonic and undetectable by anything but the high-end test equipment. The audiophile cable marketers and Stuart’s MQA minions both promote solutions for problems that humans can’t hear at anything close to audio/music frequencies, and that effectively don’t even exist at audio/music frequencies.

Time domain studies in the ‘50s laid the original groundwork for, as noted above, engineers in the ‘60s and ‘70s who only a few years afterward ensured that extremely fine timing accuracy was embedded in ADC/DAC systems. There is no problem to solve. ADC/DAC clocks have only gotten even better since. Stuart has nothing new to offer. To me, that means MQA has a suspiciously different axe to grind.

 

I agree that many forum posters could use a dose of good old humility instead of being so defensive or aggressive in impugning the intelligence, integrity, experience, and/or knowledge of others. Sure, commercial considerations can bias opinions, aka conflict of interest. On the other hand, commercial or industry interest doesn't completely rule out information, ideas, or products worthy of consideration. Profit is sort of a bottom-line motivator for product development and "innovation" but there are genuine music-lovers and audio enthusiasts at work to improve things on the technological side too. I tend to agree that 2-channel audio looks like a mature technology, but there are incremental improvements still being made. And, many in the audio industry will admit that the best in music reproduction still falls short of live acoustic events and performances in some ways. All in my humble opinion, of course.

 

BTW, I believe that Bob Stuart is no longer connected to Meridian but is now solely at the MQA spinoff.

 

Thanks but sorry that you are leaving.

 

And the hole keeps getting deeper. I'm not sure if it is possible to get oneself out of a hole this deep...

 

Wouldn't Spotify, Amazon and Google have to offer higher definition streaming first? They don't now. Are you suggesting that MQA will get them to? They could offer 16/44 flac now if they wanted to. Why don't they?

 

Well, there's love. But it's illegal to charge for it.

 

At numerous points in this thread, you've predicted a future embarrassingly rich in MQA titles.

A respectful question: In roughly how many months or years would you accept that this prediction had not materialized?
In other words: If this thread is still going on in, say, two years - - and someone points out that there are hardly more MQA titles at the start of 2020 than there were at the start of 2018, would you be willing to say at that point "My prediction was wrong and I no longer expect a bounty of titles"? Or would you say "These things take time. Let's see how the situation stands in 2022"?

 

Can you please post one of these "new" neuroscience studies? Would like to read about it.

Thanks!

 

Has Tidal ever published the number of paid HiFi subscribers they have?

 

Engadget, last month:

Tidal may only have enough cash left to last six months

 

How about Tidal HiFi though, which offers MQA.

 

I think the concern is that there will ONLY be MQA titles, or crappy 128k streams. A lot of people are happy with lossless FLAC without any trickeration and would hate to see it go.

 

Good point.There SHOULD be more Rock/Pop titles available by now (on more than one streaming service) but it hasn’t happened.As Yogi would have said “Deja Vu all over again”.

 

Math.

 

Regarding mass market acceptance, momentum and whatnot, my previous question was never answered.

Do Denon/Marantz have a receiver or amp that incorporates MQA in their onboard DACs? If not, why not? And what are their plans?

 

Also, pardon my ignorance, but why can't the proprietary MQA filter be implemented in playback software along with the "unfolding"? Why can it only be done in a DAC? It's all software, right?

 

Perhaps MQA has its own trade secret math.

It's possible!

 

Finally, I thought that one of the MQA promised claims was provenance of the file from studio master to playback. The little light on your DAC is supposed to assure you that the file is pristine and not mucked with. (The "master" and "quality" and "authenticated" parts.)

Now we're being told that MQA can be applied to anything in a batch process and it will "improve" the sound. Despite being a lossy format with secret sauce voodoo that can only be applied by proprietary licensed DACs. Presumably this would apply to brickwalled MP3 remasters and "mastered for itunes" titles?

So much for provenance.

 

Alternate math.

 

Maybe they should license it to NASA!

 

Math can’t reduced to numbers, you know.

 

Many aspects of mathematics have nothing to do with numbers.

 

Well, they do say the musical goodness is "unfolded". Maybe it's a topological operation?