Any one with experience of MQA CD

This is a discussion forum for topics specifically about high-fidelity stereo audio. It is most definitely not a platform designed for the exchange of wholly verifiable and reproducible science-based examinations of manufacturer, distributor and developer technical claims. If you think otherwise, you’re in the wrong forum and you’re not considering the forum guidelines.

Of course your approach and attitude is otherwise valid. But you’re asserting both things in a context in which they’re unsupportable because at least one developer and producer making certain claims refuse or havn’t gotten around to supplying crucial information that would enable some of us to do the kind of comparison sessions you and I and others favor most.

I’ll provide only the results of listening sessions, not technical disassembly and analysis of individual music files. No false information; no disinformation. But, call it what you want. Basically, according to what you’ve written in your last few posts, you should avoid reading my comparison post when it goes up.

 

Oh, I plan on it. Too damned old to waste time like that.

 

I admire your persistence and your absolute and unwavering adherence to a specific principle. I think they’re completely misplaced in this non-science-based discussion forum, but I admire them.

 

And one increasingly gets the impression that that information isn't on the way soon. Or ever. Apparently it's in the best interests of The Suits involved to dodge-n-deflect scrutiny, and just allow MQA to steamroll along unimpeded until it's the de facto monopoly music delivery system. And presume the scrutiny will fade away as the masses grab at The Shiny New Convenience. It has a light!

Hmmm, where have I seen this behavior before?

 

Revealing the source isn't in the best interest of MQA and those wishing to sell MQA music. As long as the issue is still open and in doubt they can point to a fault in the test methodology, equipment, room acoustic, the weight of the coconut tied to sparrow's legs and the tester IQ as the reason why the test results were not favorable.

So in my opinion, which is basically worthless most of the time, you are taking the right approach: If MQA & co claims that their stuff sound better than let the proof be in the proverbial pudding and get Agitater to find a group of people with too much free time on their hands, let them have some good time together and if an MQA CD fails to impress them then the burden of proof about the origin of each should fall on the shoulders of MQA. By the way, IIRC MQA themselves never restricted their claim of being better than CD to specific releases, so a blanket claim merit a subjective test.

 

I find it mildly amusing that MQA celebrate the “authentication” all the way back to the master but aren’t open about which master they have used.

 

Don't forget about the dither noise added when the file is down converted to 13 or 17 bits.

 

My theory is the Authorised refers to DRM, which hasn't been turned on yet but would work as crippleware by turning off the ability of the DAC to unfold the compressed audio.

When activated the authentication will leave the listener with less than cd quality sound in a high rez container unless more fees are paid.

As usual, this is just my opinion.

 

I think we all made the same mistake. The "A" in MQA does stands for authentication but it's just for he payment transaction for the MQA product and has nothing to do with source authentication.

That's basically a very simple thing to do and in 99% of the cases dealing with bank transfers, paypal or, more logically credit cards, the authentication is done automatically and by an independent financial group which can be trusted. I'm just confused why it's claimed to be such a revolutionary concept, after all I do remember my parents using credit cards as far back as the late 60's.

 

Side questions - how much do the M, Q, and A aspects of the product matter from a trade description perspective? Where if at all would definitions come in to it?

 

They can't be. They get what they're given.

 

Wasn’t part of the authentication part supposed to refer to MQA’s ability to undo linearity/distortion errors in the ADCs and DACs used higher up the chain. That aspect of MQA seems to have been ignored in all the recent articles I’ve read and indeed by the record companies who have just converted their files en masse with no regard to the ADCs and DACs that created them.

 

Exactly. But if they are only being given whatever masters happen to be lying around that process isn’t happening and the original concept of authenticated isn’t as originally presented.

 

The diagram above may not necessarily apply to Uni Japan's UHQCD-MQA discs though. There is no high frequency content on those, it appears...

 

McIntosh - and maybe some others - have passed on MQA. Brinkman Ship started a THREAD a few weeks ago and this was quoted in the first post in the thread, taken from a McIntosh product review:

"The C52’s DAC will accept PCM sample rates of 16, 24, and 32 bits, 32kHz–384kHz; DSD64, DSD128, and DSD256; and DXD 352.8kHz and DXD 384kHz. About the only standard digital format the C52 doesn’t support is Master Quality Authenticated (MQA, about which McIntosh’s engineers prefer to take a wait-and-see position, finding the format too lossy, with distortion that doesn’t meet the company’s high standards)."

 

Authentication means that the proprietary bitstream is encrypted, using a signing certificate only Meridian and its security partner can issue. This prevents others from creating compatible streams without paying licensing fees via technological measures. Nobody else can turn on the blue light. Also, decryption playback hardware likewise needs a decryption key and fee (although this may eventually be cracked like every other failed DRM - you have to give the user the key in order to unlock the box.)

It takes more of the unencrypted audio away from users of CDs, which I'm sure record companies like.

Authentication has nothing to do with the "undoing the temporal blurring of the original recording", direct from the original masters, or other hocus pocus that they've started removing from marketing, as audiophiles with working BS detectors have unraveled this ploy.

 

Boom. Hit nail on head 100%.

 

I find the term "temporal blurring" an interesting phrase when it comes to MQA and its ever-changing benefits. A more appropriate term would be "temporal misdirection".

 

But apparently not too old to waste time w/ irrelevant side-tracks...

 

Hang on a second. Here's the post that began this thread:

The entire question posed by the OP is, do MQA CDs sound better than regular CDs? This is not a question about mastering - it's a question about whether the MQA process, which requires a "specific DAC" and costs "extra" money, is worth it - whether or not MQA makes CDs "sound better."

If you compare an MQA CD of an album with a regular CD of an album, you can only address the OP's question if you are listening to CDs with the same base mastering. If you're listening to different masterings and you hear a difference, then you can't tell whether or not the difference is from MQA vs non-MQA, or from the different masterings, or both.

And so @Carl Swanson is 100% correct and is not engaging in an "irrelevant side track" as @JimW claims. Rather, he's speaking directly and centrally to the topic of this thread.

Now, my understanding is that this inaugural run of MQA CDs includes a couple of low-priced samplers - and that those samplers are two-disc sets, with one disc being an MQA CD and the other being a regular CD. If - as is likely but not certain - both discs are identical mastering-wise except for the MQA encoding on one of them, then listening to both of those would be a great way to compare.

Even then, however, it would be beneficial to listen to both of them with and without MQA filtering turned on at the DAC, because part of MQA is the filters it triggers DACs to use in the final "render" of the signal - and some DACs apparently keep MQA's filters on even when playing back non-MQA content.

Regardless, though, there's nothing "objectivist" or at all out of keeping with this forum simply to point out that you can't compare different digital encoding methods properly if you're listening to two different masterings. The audible effects of different masterings is the main reason this forum exists, after all!

 

It's usually referred to as stubbornness or pig-headedness, but thanks.

 

Thank you for addressing the cogent point of my comments.

 

@tmtomh it is possible that the labels are unwilling to release the best mastering/source unless it is in MQA. Therefore, the question is not whether the MQA version is better than the CD version of the same mastered album. Rather, which currently-available product, the MQA CD or the regular CD, is better for the same album. In that case, @Agitater 's comparison will be very helpful because some people only want the best commercially available copy that can be purchased, and could care less if that best copy is MQA CD, regular CD, vinyl, etc.

 

When it's known that's it's impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison- since there has been no info given on the masters MQA-cd's use, it's seem very irrelevant to me. YMMV. To say that Agitater's results are meaningless when that sort of comparison is the best we can do at this time is just nonsense imo.

As an old boss used to say, "Any complaint w/o a suggestion of how to do it better is just bitchin'."

 

"The best we can do" is misleading here because it implies that comparing an MQA and non-MQA CD with different (or unknown) mastering will get us part of the way to understanding if MQA sounds different/better. But that's not true. It's of absolutely zero probative value to compare them without knowing if the mastering is the same.

As for a suggestion for how to do it better, refer to my prior comment, which you quoted from: The new MQA CDs have one or more samplers that include MQA and non-MQA discs of what are purported to be otherwise identical music/mastering. So anyone interested in comparing should get one of those samplers - that's my suggestion. Done and done,