Ultimate HQCD (UHQCD) - new CD format, King Crimson on UHQCD and more

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by toilet_doctor, Aug 10, 2016.

  1. Audiophilehi

    Audiophilehi Forum Resident

    toilet_doctor likes this.
  2. sram16

    sram16 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    especially since MQA is lossy
     
    chilinvilin likes this.
  3. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I think so, because of UPC number 7033662095612. I'll confirm, when it arrives.
     
  4. Audiophilehi

    Audiophilehi Forum Resident

    Thanks!
     
  5. I believe it is going by this Discogs listing. Trolling the net, it mostly appears available at a few UK retailers. I am more interested because it's also a SACD.

    Radka Toneff / Steve Dobrogosz - Fairytales

    As for the good doctor's eBay link, MovieMars always fulfills by UPC, which appears correct in this case. They don't "personalize" their eBay listings with pictures or detailed listing info.
     
  6. Audiophilehi

    Audiophilehi Forum Resident

    I took the chance and ordered it. For the price it was worth taking a chance.
     
  7. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    At the moment this is a full range of Hybrid SACD for half the price, but maybe someday I'll be able to listen to it in MQA too.
     
  8. Agree, with hybrid SACD is all that’s needed IMHO. I have no interest in this title personally, but if I had my way, the SACD layer would be present on every MQA release but I’d still have no use for the redbook layer. I’m considering (discussing) the merits of MQA because I’m forced to with the lack of SHM-SACD titles being released, and I want more from these titles so it’s MQA or bust.
     
  9. Sentient Six

    Sentient Six Forum Resident

    Location:
    Annandale, NJ USA
    Did anyone get the Police - Synchronicity version yet? Interested if it is any better than the 2013 DSD
     
    Shvartze Shabbos likes this.
  10. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Did you buy MQA-CD, MQA-UHQCD or Hybrid SACD/MQA-CD
    Do you know what is it?
    Did you try MQA files.
    What gear did you use?
    Did you read this thread?

    Please come here, when you will be able to answer to these questions and report your experience.
     
    Lucca90, Linger63 and swintonlion like this.
  11. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    No, we concentrate mainly on the titles with a new transfer:

    9 Titles with 2018 "Latest DSD Master" (flat transfer)

    Eric Clapton 461 Ocean Boulevard
    Traffic John Barleycorn Must Die
    Free Fire and Water
    The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
    (partially 2014/18)
    The Beach Boys The Endless Summer (partially 2014/18)
    The Velvet Underground & Nico S/T
    The Allman Brothers Brothers and Sisters
    Steely Dan Royal Scam
    Steely Dan Aja

    Please check Post #641 (List of Titles) and 647, Page 26.
     
  12. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    It is so easy to drop a couple negative words world-wide these days about new technology.
    It's lossy, what this people are talking about, 37 pages...
    Much harder to verify and get to the bottom of the subject.

    How Lossy MQA Is?


    "Lossiness of MQA is beside the point."
    (Jim Austin)




    Who is this Jim Austin, anyway?
    Jim Austin is a music enthusiast, an audiophile, a writer, en editor (14 years with Science magazine) and Ph.D., a scientist who graduated from the University of North Carolina with master's degrees in Physics.
    Jim decided to explore MQA inside-out and publish the series of articles about his experience:

    "My goal for this series of articles, of which this is the first, is to subject MQA to a fair and thorough vetting—not as an expert, but as a science and technical writer. My role is not to make absolute judgments, but to do the hard work, struggling through dense technical articles, pestering people with questions, evaluating evidence in consultation with experts, and assembling what I learn into something coherent and accessible. I'll present the evidence, and people can then decide for themselves.
    This is a complex business, with far too much to look into all at once with any sort of rigor. So I'll take on the issues one at a time, beginning here with an aspect of MQA's time-domain behavior: its decoder/renderer's impulse response.
    "

    "Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), the audio codec from industry veterans Bob Stuart and Peter Craven, rests on two pillars: improved time-domain behavior, which is said to improve sound quality and what MQA Ltd. calls "audio origami," which yields reduced file size (for downloads) and data rate (for streaming).
    In MQA Tested Part 1 I took a first peek at those time-domain issues.
    In MQA In Part 2 I take a first look at the second pillar: MQA's approach to data-rate reduction.
    In particular, I'll consider critics' claims that MQA is a "lossy" codec
    ."

    However, before reading his entire article with diagrams and explanations,
    I will explain why MQA is "lossy" on two fingers:


    Lossy MQA Explaned
    (by toilet_doctor, July 30, 2018)

    MQA is lossy on a purpose.
    To tell more:
    They designed it lossy to sound better, as strange as it seems.

    1. Hi-Res PCM file was compressed to standard resolution 16 bit/44.1kHz that it can be stored to save a lot of space or simply placed on the reg. CD. They named it "folding" due to the stages of this complex process, depending on the frequency range in each stage.

    2. Entire spectrum of the frequency consists of valuable music data and unwanted noise (mostly in higher frequency range). They designed the algorithm of the decompression/"unfolding" back to Hi-Res the way that it can lose the noise and keep the musical data in more clear state - they named this process "debluring".
    That's what MQA "Lossyness" is all about.

    3. In addition, not only MQA clears musical data from this unwanted noise, it also eliminates distortions added during the AD and DA conversion process by the equipment itself.
    Also, MQA improves time-domain issue.


    Jim Austin tested this lossiness matter and come to conclusion: the loss is inaudible.

    "Is MQA lossy? Yes, but that's not really the right question. That is my conclusion after reading widely about it, and talking and corresponding with experts, including MQA's Bob Steart and digital engineers who don't support MQA.
    At worst, lossy is a cudgel—a scare word intended to evoke associations with MP3 and a negative emotional response.
    At best, framing the issue as one of lossy vs. lossless largely misses the point
    ."
    ...

    "To sum up the losiness issue: In its folding and unfolding, MQA distinguishes between music-correlated data and noise, tries hard to retain the music-correlated data, but sensibly worries much less about preserving the noise bit by bit. This allows MQA to achieve their goal of preserving the benefits of high-resolution data without the burden of large, weighty swaths of pointless noise."

    It is a nice article. I was surprised to read such things about MQA, for example:

    "In that handful of recordings mentioned above, however, there is that tiny bit of musically relevant information present at such high frequencies. If it's there, we'd like to keep it. How does MQA deal with it? I believe it's largely preserved... The MQA encoder can detect "spectral components above 48kHz," and has "several strategies" for dealing with it, including choosing from among more than 2000 encapsulation algorithms. The encoder will choose the option that will "allow the decoder to most accurately reproduce the signal 'envelope' and slew-rate."

    "At this point I would love to show you what an MQA-decoded file looks like, point out all its nuances, and tell you what they mean. But I've recorded and analyzed dozens of MQA files, and have noticed few patterns. I've likely encountered most of MQA's 2000+ encapsulation algorithms: Every MQA file seems to do things in a different way, diverging from the apparent non-MQA source in many different ways, and sometimes not at all. Every time I thought was getting a handle on some aspect of MQA, I'd look at another file and find that it didn't conform to my theory."
    ...
    In the end, he concluded:
    "Earlier, I wrote that the lossiness/losslessness question is beside the point. Here's what I was getting at. There certainly are differences in the MQA version of this recording, and the changes due to the MQA encoding/decoding seem to indicate some loss of resolution, even if it isn't audible. And yet, whatever the cause of the differences between the DXD and MQA versions—whether the results of origami or of some other change wrought during encoding—well, we already knew that. We already knew that MQA changes the music. MQA's goal is to make music sound better, and you can't make music sound better without changing how it sounds. Lossiness is beside the point.

    How, then, should we evaluate MQA? The next step would be to confirm that it indeed offers superior time-domain behavior, which will require cooperation from Bob Stuart and the MQA team.
    The next step after that would be to get a fix on MQA's sound in some rigorous way—something beyond casual subjective observations.
    Then we can start to weigh, with analysis and careful listening, any frequency-domain degradation against time-domain improvement.
    Finally, we need to decide whether MQA is good or bad for music. We audiophiles probably won't get to decide MQA's fate, but we do get to have an opinion."—Jim Austin


    MQA Tested Part 2: Into the Fold
     
    Lucca90 likes this.
  13. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Thank you for this a really nice video, Plan9. I have to watch it again a few times... I think.
    Sometimes people called MQA lossless, because the loss is inaudible.
    Please read Post #938.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2018
  14. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I think, we don't need to upgrade from DSD with the same 2013 transfer.
    However, some guys, who bought it, said:

    The Police Synchronicity MQA UHQCD

    Reviews:
    Great Sounding Product 5*
    One word comes to mind after listening to this Police cd, WOW!!! The sound of the disc will blow you away and it's music to the ears !!!
    (2018/07/18 Peter J USA)

    (Oppo 205 Experience - this guy posted the same review for The Police and Dire Strait S/T)
    It works 5*
    I’m in shock. It works. Quality excellent, better than lossless hi-res files. I listened to Oppo 205. Great musical impressions.
    (2018/06/22 P. Niezbecki Poland)
     
  15. toilet_doctor

    toilet_doctor "Rockin' chair's got me" Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I have only one problem: I don't know how to charge them.
     
  16. formu_la

    formu_la I'm not a robot

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Do they have a separate layer with red book? How do you listen in compact disc mode, on a different player?
    Thanks.
     
  17. art

    art Senior Member

    Location:
    520
    There are not two layers. Used different players, all of which I know well. Wrote about it in an earlier post .
     
  18. formu_la

    formu_la I'm not a robot

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    How can they be played in CD resolution if MQA "eats" 3 bits?
     
    sunspot42 and chilinvilin like this.
  19. Plenty of rubbish for you to check out in my ignore file. Have at at! :D
     
  20. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues

    toilet_doctor likes this.
  21. Plan9

    Plan9 Mastering Engineer

    Location:
    Toulouse, France
    The MQA unfolding info is contained in 3bit inside the 16bit format.
     
  22. formu_la

    formu_la I'm not a robot

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    I understand, but the Red Book is compromised then? Is it allowed by the standard to use 16 bits for anything other than audio?
    Just want to clarify : I am not interested in MQA, just want to hear full CD resolution
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2018
    sunspot42 likes this.
  23. Plan9

    Plan9 Mastering Engineer

    Location:
    Toulouse, France
    As long as there is 16bit data on a CD, it doesn't matter what it is. The player doesn't know what's audio or not, it will just try to play it as audio. Have you tried playing the undecoded audio out of a 5.1 DTS-CD? It's just very loud white noise until it's decoded.
    MQA is the same principle as HDCD, but instead of using the 1 Least Significant Bit to contain the encoding, it uses the 3 LSBs as the encoding is more complex. The other difference is that when played undecoded these 3 LSBs are rendered as dither to avoid "contaminating" too much of the real musical information contained in the remaining 13bits. At least that's what I have gathered in various articles about the process and the best I can try to describe it in layman's terms.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2018
  24. formu_la

    formu_la I'm not a robot

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Well, that sucks because I've bought two of these, and they are en route.
     

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