MQA at CES

[sdolezalek]

It's the usual apodizing filter stuff that Meridian has been doing for a while and also available in HQPlayer and some other places too. They just do it only up to 96 kHz while I go straight to the delta-sigma modulator output rate, minimum of 2.8 MHz and up to 24.576 MHz with current DACs on market.

 

Doing analysis of the ADC just confirms that it works as expected, but I've used the ADC and DAC chip datasheets as well as real world tests as basis for my filter design. I just don't care nor have huge marketing machinery to make such normal engineering stuff sound larger than life, my marketing budget is whopping 0€ (I don't go to shows like CES either, I rather use the money for R&D hardware instead).

 

Jussi: Based on what I was hearing in listening to MQA that makes complete sense and also explains why I actually prefer my HQPlayer upsampled content of existing recordings over some of the MQA versions of those same recordings. But I have also heard new recordings they did themselves (controlling the entire A/D and D/A process and incorporating MQA) that sounded stunningly good. Is that because in those cases they can do a more precise matching of their apodizing filter through the ADC and DAC process? Would it be something like setting up specific HQPlayer settings for each recording based not only on matching my DAC's chip but also what was in the original ADC?

[sdolezalek]

While I don't have the knowledge to do such a thing it doesn't in principle seem beyond doing. I don't believe you could get a result equivalent to actually having used modern better equipment with good filtering, but an improvement seems conceivable. Yet again, it would be rather trivial if as good as advertised to do a before and after demo which everyone would hear and recognize the benefits. Why would you not do such an impressive demo rather than the apples and oranges demos they have done so far?

 

Dennis: As I said in my question to Jussi above, they may be able to improve some of the old recordings by analyzing the signature of the ADC and then trying to put some compensating filters into the resampling process, but, the improvement should be marginal compared to what you get if you can exactly match the filtering on a brand new recording. In all likelihood (as Jud has also suggested) Meridian is fixing some issues, but also introducing some new ones, in retrospectively adding MQA to old material. Letting us hear that side by side would make it more likely to be able to identify those tradeoffs.

 

I think the real benefit of MQA will be in brand new recordings that implement the process cleanly on both ends (although then I wish they had gone all the way up to 352/384 in their upsampling). But you can't get recording studios to adopt MQA at the front end unless it is very broadly distributed on the user side, so they are trying to also convince us that it can improve already existing content streamed to us over Tidal and others (which it might, but perhaps not as much as us using the right filtering settings in HQPlayer on the same source material) as a way to increase the number of manufacturers that embed MQA in their end-user hardware/software.

 

My guess is that they also made some tradeoffs to satisfy a broader consumer base that those of us using fairly high powered computers to implement HQPlayer resampling/filtering would not make, but that might have been difficult to implement as broadly as Meridian wants to distribute this technology.

[sdolezalek]

In reading this thread I'm surprised that the audio industry can make any technological progress at all. The amount of hostility being expressed about a format that no one here has been able to test using the necessary equipment to hear its potential benefits is amazing.

 

It's ok to speculate about how Meridian is doing what they are doing (as Miska, elsdude, testererr and others have done), but why attack a group of little companies like Meridian, Tidal or Roon that have, by and large, been focused on producing great products for us as consumers? This isn't Apple, Google or Sony or some other behemoth with giant market share trying to force something on us.

 

I can only assume that it is Meridian's marketing approach for MQA that has brought out this level of hostility. I'm glad we weren't this hostile as Damien, Miska, John Swenson, Jesus and others were giving us their new software and hardware to try and comment on. Maybe this is more like JRiver, who also seems to have brought out a lot of negativity and hostility, but also engaged directly with this community and thus may have spurred it on.

 

In the end, until we can really test MQA files played on MQA enabled DACs in our own home versus our current favorite formats and equipment, I think most of the posts here say more about us, and our hostility toward new technology, than it does about Meridian. For a crowd that is supposed to represent the leading edge of technology in the audio industry we (or at least a lot of us) seem amazingly hostile to new thinking or approaches.

[sdolezalek]

I'm tempted to explain my personal view on the matter. It is not about technology, it is about media and infrastructure. ...

 

MQA is quite a bit like SACD, which could be produced only at designated Sony factories, which you couldn't rip and on a non-licensed/approved device you could only access the CD quality layer. DVD-A with the MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) was very much similar, mandatory for DVD-A and HD DVD players and you cannot rip it (unlike PCM if publisher chose to use it instead).

 

What if one day MQA goes out of fashion and new DACs don't include the decoder anymore? You are left with files that you cannot use to full extent...

 

Streaming services are little bit less concern, because you may not worry as much about how to access the content and what you need to use in order to access the content. Or you may...

 

Miska: I completely agree with your analogy. MQA is very much like SACD and I too would much prefer to have a collection of digital DSD files rather than my collection of SACD discs that I have to keep a special player for. But that didn't stop me from buying those SACDs at the time; because they did sound better than the same music on CD. My guess the same may well be true for MQA, except this time I may be smart enough not to buy encoded files that could become obsolete.

 

BUT, if MQA through Tidal/Roon sounds as much better than regular 16/44 files as SACD sounded better than CDs, then I will enjoy listening to MQA content through Tidal/Roon (particularly if all I need is software and not a new DAC to do so.)

[sdolezalek]

Thanks for this. It gives me something to mull over, and I get the basics behind what you've outlined. But Stuart specifically mentions speakers and headphones, and I really have trouble grasping that particular aspect of all this. My speakers sound pretty good now, but they'd somehow sound better if they could reproduce frequencies of up to 45kHz, well beyond what I can hear?

 

—David

 

The other part of this to think about (and it has come up before in another thread here somewhere) is that the same filtering that is being applied in your DAC (and that upsampling through HQPlayer and others plus application of more sophisticated filters can make sound better) may also be applied in and by other equipment (largely in order to avoid damage to speakers and electronics from out of bandwidth signal) but those filters may have similar effects (i.e. pre and post ringing and time shifts) within the hearing bandwidth, implying that having a string of equipment all capable of handling materials out towards 45kHz and using gentle slope filters as a result, could produce audible benefits well within the 20-20kHz range.