Meridian's mysterious MQA site.

[Don Hills]

I think it will easily make its way onto CDs and discs: the way the encoding works is transparent to a non-MQA decoder, so it's not a big deal for an end-user to buy MQA-enabled CDs, with or without MQA-enabled equipment.

 

Non MQA-enabled equipment will fall-back transparently without any additional modifications to normal CD playback. That's one of the beauties of it because otherwise, adoption could be stifled - many people are reluctant to change.

 

No, it's not transparent. It'll fall back to 13 bit resolution. The lowest 3 bits contain a lossy compressed version of the sound below the 13th bit and above 44.1 KHz. The information in the lowest 3 bits is compressed, so if you turn up the volume on a non-MQA capable player on a silent track you'll hear a steady hiss (white noise). It'll probably only matter with extremely dynamic music - it certainly won't be noticed on the average hypercompressed modern CD release.

[YashN]

Makes sense Dan, based on what they've published so far. I guess this has to be communicated properly by Meridian or else some people may not like it. Some wrongly still think of it as a new MP3...

 

Is the hiss something somebody heard or it's technically what should be heard?

[Boris75]

It'll probably only matter with extremely dynamic music - it certainly won't be noticed on the average hypercompressed modern CD release.

 

Thanks. This sounds like an issue. Thirteen bits of resolution are not enough for well-recorded classical music.

[Don Hills]

... Is the hiss something somebody heard or it's technically what should be heard?

 

According to the patent description, it's what should be heard. You'd still have to crank up the volume a fair bit, 13 bits is a 78 dB range. There are likely some classical recordings out there where the hiss might be audible with the hall noise.

[esldude]

According to the patent description, it's what should be heard. You'd still have to crank up the volume a fair bit, 13 bits is a 78 dB range. There are likely some classical recordings out there where the hiss might be audible with the hall noise.

 

Well, part of what they are doing is subtractive dither. They have added in anti-phase some of the lower 3 of the 16 bits so that when mixed with the upper 13 bits you get something like TPDF dithered result for 16 bits. Should be good to 15 actual bits of resolution and something close to 16 bits considering the noise shaping.

 

Of course I wonder how that will play out in use. If a DAC has poor low level linearity the dithering won't function quite as desired. As most DACs are sigma-delta it likely won't matter since those don't suffer low level linearity issues like old ladder DACs.

[Don Hills]

Ah yes, thanks. I forgot about that part... Memory is the second thing to go with age. I forget what the first one was.

 

Have you seen this? Q&A with Bob Stuart.

CES 2015 Q&A (final) | Meridian - Systems | The Hitchhikers Guide To Meridian

[DanSmedra]

The latest. https://www.meridian-audio.com/news-events/another-huge-milestone-for-mqa/

 

Understandably, Meridian touts an "MQA-enabled Meridian music system" as the end point for their MQA file format streamed via TIDAL. Initially, Meridian didn't make MQA appear so 'wholistic'. Time will tell. Sony has been working on its own propriety end-to-end audio technology (DSD 5.6MHz hi-res) for streaming studio quality audio. May the best company win!

 

IMO, any technology which requires changing out all existing audio components, to achieve incremental improvement, is likely not to survive. Most audiophiles would be willing to purchase an upgraded DAC, but beyond that, the fall out would seem rather severe.

[Fokus]

MQA is very clever and utterly useless. It will go the same way as HDCD.

[Tony Lauck]

The entire subject of "lossless" is potentially confusing and when it is used in conjunction with marketing speak, doubly so. The very meaning of "loss" implies a relative measurement. What did you have, now what is left, the difference being what you lost. By this standard, none of the digital formats are lossless, compared to analog. A FLAC encoding of a WAV file is lossless, when comparing the FLAC to the WAV, and this can be proven by reconstituting the original samples that were in the WAV. However, the FLAC file is not lossless compared to the original analog signal from which the WAV file was taken.

 

If the bit rate is given, then it is possible to improve the signal quality by clever techniques, which is what Stewart is doing. However, the bit rate is not given, it is constantly increasing as computing and communication technology advances. This technique might have had value 15 years ago, but today it strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. Do not be confused and think that you are paying for bits when you buy a high resolution download. You are paying more money to the store and record label. These people are simply practicing price discrimination. Very little of the money involved is going to pay for increased server and bandwidth costs required by the bits that Meridian might possibly eliminate.

[Boris75]

A FLAC encoding of a WAV file is lossless, when comparing the FLAC to the WAV, and this can be proven by reconstituting the original samples that were in the WAV.

 

This is the definition of lossless. With respect to this definition, MQA is lossy: it does not permit reconstituting the original WAV stream bit-for-bit.