MQA at CES

[tallica1]

Thank you Ted b for your expert knowledge on this subject but I believe there is more to the story. Auralic was prepared with MQA firmware streamer upgrade which Auralic already encoded with their streamer. Now just for the record I am a new Auralic Vega owner. I don't own a streamer at this moment and not in a rush either. But something is off with MQA.

[firedog]

After reading computer audiophile newest article detail about MQA it confirms my already suspicions about MERIDIAN vs AURALIC who embarrassed AURALIC and the truth will come out sooner then you think. STILL NOBODY can answer the question what an MQA approved DAC or streamer really is!!!??

Please advise.

 

Computer Audiophile - CES 2016 Wrap-up

 

Really? You're the secret CEO/spokesman for Auralic with knowledge and authority to tell us they were embarassed...? Not!

[orgel]

…I believe there is more to the story. Auralic was prepared with MQA firmware streamer upgrade which Auralic already encoded with their streamer. Now just for the record I am a new Auralic Vega owner. I don't own a streamer at this moment and not in a rush either. But something is off with MQA.

 

My guess is the problem was that Auralic and MQA were on the same page when it came to Auralic's DAC-less streamers but that things went pear-shaped because Auralic was trying to say the Aries Mini (which includes a DAC) was MQA kosher (or halal, or whatever they call it).

 

--David

[tallica1]

Additionally all the hoopla about MQA at CES 2016 are hand picked demos to show off MQA strengths!

At first I believed all the hype but reading very smart peoples intelligent viewpoint have made me more neutral towards negative.

What filters are we really speaking about which makes a MQA DAC Certified? Why do you need filters for MQA? Makes no sense.

 

Great Analogy blog comments I just read:

 

"if you own a Ferrari, you are not looking for wheels that allow you to take the narrow bicycle path or MQA"

 

so what are the negatives that meridian fails to mention ?

[jeffmudrick]

Additionally all the hoopla about MQA at CES 2016 are hand picked demos to show off MQA strengths!

At first I believed all the hype but reading very smart peoples intelligent viewpoint have made me more neutral towards negative.

What filters are we really speaking about which makes a MQA DAC Certified? Why do you need filters for MQA? Makes no sense.

 

Great Analogy blog comments I just read:

 

"if you own a Ferrari, you are not looking for wheels that allow you to take the narrow bicycle path or MQA"

 

so what are the negatives that meridian fails to mention ?

 

What makes no sense?? Does processing "perfectly good digital" with HQ player or using an upsampling/DSP DAC somehow have more inherent validity in terms of SQ? or getting good quality music to more people? Not necessarily in my view. All this criticism from people who have done exactly zero hours of critical listening to decoded MQA. While I accept as valid the concerns about undecoded MQA, talking about engineers/producers lIke Alan Silverman and the guys from 2L and Wilson Audio like they're part of a dollar sucking conspiracy, or dupes in Bob Stuart's quest for world domination strikes me as just plain dumb. And yet we (not me) are OK with $500 usb cables and $1000 power cords. There's really some cuckoo stuff on these pages.

[crenca]

...There's really some cuckoo stuff on these pages.

 

Yea, but the signal to noise ratio around here it real good compared to many other blogs.

 

twisting tallica1 post into something, I wonder about the "Ferrari on the bicycle path" and MQA in the sense in that I wonder if it is not solution for past recordings and perhaps present recordings done without enough sample rate. Is it necessary going forward in that the problems it solves can be solved in other ways, ones that don't have the downside(s) of MQA?

[ted_b]

Thank you Ted b for your expert knowledge on this subject but I believe there is more to the story. Auralic was prepared with MQA firmware streamer upgrade which Auralic already encoded with their streamer.

 

Um...that is exactly what I said. In what way is there more to the story? Auralic was told not to release MQA cuz late into the cycle MQA realized they didn't have all the issues resolved (like the one I mentioned several times about general dac sample rate compatibility). Auralic had the MQA stuff ready very quickly; they are a smart company with a dozen developers. I don't think one should read any more into it, unless gossip and hearsay is your thing. Or is Auralic telling you something we should know; something they didn't tell me when I spoke with them last week at CES?

[Jud]

What makes no sense?? Does processing "perfectly good digital" with HQ player or using an upsampling/DSP DAC somehow have more inherent validity in terms of SQ? or getting good quality music to more people? Not necessarily in my view.

 

Well yeah, it actually does in the case of HQPlayer (and some other software) and some DACs. Not rocket science, the differences in frequency and time domain response and fidelity are readily measurable. To what extent the measured differences make an audible difference is always a question, but the measured differences are not in favor of MQA.

 

All this criticism from people who have done exactly zero hours of critical listening to decoded MQA. While I accept as valid the concerns about undecoded MQA, talking about engineers/producers lIke Alan Silverman and the guys from 2L and Wilson Audio like they're part of a dollar sucking conspiracy, or dupes in Bob Stuart's quest for world domination strikes me as just plain dumb.

 

I agree the conspiracy theories can get outlandish. Meridian just isn't big enough to dominate through market leverage, whatever its intent, and I doubt its intent is anything like malevolent. I figure they want, putting it as simply as possible, to persuade people they can put 24/96 sound in 16/44.1 packages. Maybe they'll succeed, maybe they won't. As you mention, folks seem (understandably) to be less concerned about whether they'll succeed in their main goal than whether undecoded MQA will muck things up for people who don't want to bother getting MQA-certified hardware or software.

[jeffmudrick]

Jud the measures differences are for undecoded MQA which while not irrelevant are only central for those we have already decided not to take advantage of software or hardware decoding. Skepticism is one thing, "wishing it would die" before evaluating its benefits is another.

[miguelito]

I asked Xuanqian Wang (Auralic CEO) what happens if the downstream dac can't handle the decoded file's sample rate. In the normal purchased download world, the user would either downsample or just not buy the file...in Tidal world that is a bit different and requires someone in the chain to do some downsampling, an effort not usually associated with streamers.

I know the Aries is able to transcode DSD to PCM if the DAC does not handle DSD. I would expect the Aries to transcode a higher PCM file to the max PCM rate if the DAC does not handle it - I seem to recall I checked that.

 

In the MQA case, I presume one binary is used - provided by MQA the company - so if that binary does not have the ability to downsample then it won't work with DACs that don't handle the output rate. You could in principle pipe the output of the MQA decoder through a downsampler, but now the code gets more complicated.

[esldude]

You guys should read the AES paper below from a bit over a year ago. Only 16 pages, and 3.5 pages are references. Pictures and graphs so really not that much reading. It describes the why, how and other particulars of how this works.

 

Some of these wonderings will just disappear. Like the sample rate issue.

 

http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20160114/17501.pdf

 

Still doesn't answer how Meridian plans to handle this upon their botched rollout. But at least some of the areas of contention will be clarified with some real facts about MQA.

[mansr]

You guys should read the AES paper below from a bit over a year ago. Only 16 pages, and 3.5 pages are references. Pictures and graphs so really not that much reading. It describes the why, how and other particulars of how this works.

 

Some of these wonderings will just disappear. Like the sample rate issue.

 

http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20160114/17501.pdf

 

Still doesn't answer how Meridian plans to handle this upon their botched rollout. But at least some of the areas of contention will be clarified with some real facts about MQA.

 

That file doesn't exist.

[esldude]

That file doesn't exist.

 

When I just clicked on it, just now, it was still there.

 

The short 2 page version I linked yesterday has gone missing. Anyway here is an attachment.

MQA AES paper.pdf

[davidbeinct]

When I just clicked on it, just now, it was still there.

 

I get a 404 error as well. I'll try at home.

[esldude]

I get a 404 error as well. I'll try at home.

 

I added it as an attachment to my prior post. Maybe you can get the attachment.

[goldsdad]

That file doesn't exist.

 

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/download.cfm/17501.pdf?ID=17501

[Jud]

Jud the measures differences are for undecoded MQA which while not irrelevant are only central for those we have already decided not to take advantage of software or hardware decoding. Skepticism is one thing, "wishing it would die" before evaluating its benefits is another.

 

Miska has shown not only that undecoded MQA may impact the sound of RedBook, but also that he is able to do what MQA does (specific types of filtering at D/A stage and sometimes A/D stage) better in equal or less file space than MQA does.

[jeffmudrick]

Miska has shown not only that undecoded MQA may impact the sound of RedBook, but also that he is able to do what MQA does (specific types of filtering at D/A stage and sometimes A/D stage) better in equal or less file space than MQA does.

 

To the extent that's true (and I'm skeptical that enough is known) that's swell for those who enjoy dealing with complexities of HQ Player/XXhighend et al and file based audio generally. MQA and its partners' goal of simplifying the delivery of CD+/Hirez and achieving wide distribution thereof through streaming for me stands as something of value nonetheless.

[R1200CL]

Until the "master" is an MQA file. Don't think it can't or won't happen. Record companies don't actually behave like you are assuming and make a big effort to keep some pristine "master" version around. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

 

No different than basterdized versions (say with heavy volume compression) becoming the "master"- and after this happens no other version seems to exist anymore. Yes it does happen.

 

I think the updated? FAQ in MQA HomePage may answer this. Maybe you native English should have a look, and see if things are a bit more clear about how the studio / master encoding can be done. As there are at least more than one option.

 

Also I was thinking of copy all those FAQs and add into a blog here.

(And add all the unanswerd qustions maybe as well).

[R1200CL]

Ringing.

(Stolen from Squeezebox forum)

[ted_b]

I know the Aries is able to transcode DSD to PCM if the DAC does not handle DSD. I would expect the Aries to transcode a higher PCM file to the max PCM rate if the DAC does not handle it - I seem to recall I checked that.

 

 

 

Nope, otherwise he wouldn't have agreed with me. The Aries will only to DSD-to-PCM (once DoP is turned off in settings) at a 24/352.8k sample rate, so to do that a DAC needs to play 24/352.8k...a sample rate that doesn't affect my question to him (which was 24/92 or below..hence my question).

[Teresa]

...And yet we (not me) are OK with $500 usb cables and $1000 power cords. There's really some cuckoo stuff on these pages.

 

I think it is only a very small number of posters who want and can actually afford to buy $500 USB cables and $1000 power cords. I like many others tend to purchase affordable cables, in my case at or close to entry level. But just because I don't want or can't afford something does not mean I feel it is right to belittle the wealthy audiophile who does by calling their stuff cuckoo.

 

In my case I use an inexpensive Dynex USB cable, stock power cords, Monster Cable Powerline 2 Plus speaker cable with banana plugs which cost about $80 for the pair and mostly $25 interconnects.

 

Since Sony’s “Perfect Sound Forever” ads for the then new CD format in 1983, I have learned to be very skeptical of everything.

 

The critical listening to decoded MQA will happen when the DACs are available in the near future, until then almost everything else is just guessing.

 

However, Miska's findings that MQA music files played undecoded sound and measure worse than 16/44.1kHz, shows a real problem with backwards compatibility IMHO.

[R1200CL]

Today I read

Perception is not reality | DAR__KO

which led me furter to

Garbage In, Garbage Out | DAR__KO

 

"Since the dawn of digital music, the audiophile community has been largely focused onplayback, constantly arguing over sample rates, formats, and so forth, when in reality, the real focus should be onproduction, since a record’s fidelity has more to do with the choices made in the studio than what format it is ultimately delivered in. The fact is all recordings have a certain intrinsicproduction valueto them, and if that value is very low to begin with, it makes no difference whether you play it back as MP3s, high-res FLAC, or even vinyl.

 

It’s also why I’m not big into Pono or high-res audio in general. Not because I don’t think there aren’t any real audible benefits to be had with higher sampling rates, but because it fails to address the real problem facing fidelity in popular music today vis-à-vis its production. No format can fix the fact that Adele’s recently released 25 is a DR5 compressed nightmare. In other words, garbage in, garbage out."

 

A interesting perspective to the discussion here and Miska and other measurements made. If MQA realy get access to the original masters and possible before "destroyd" by DRC, hopfully things are looking good.

 

Maybe we should be more interested in where and how MQA is applied and encoded.

 

Tidal Hi-Fi sounds much better than most of my CD's. Could some of the answer be that they actually have access to the masters. Now if Tidal also will change from 16 to 24 bit in full master quality at the same price I'm playing today, I can't see the drawback. Whatever Miska proves

[R1200CL]

How do you understand this HSM module ?

Hyper Secure Module.

I can't see other purpose than some sort of DRM. But only for the MQA decoding part. So maybe not a big deal.

 

MQA | For content providers

Under FAQ

[R1200CL]

Future versions of Chrome will have Chromecast support built-in | 9to5Google

 

Can anyone test with Crome + PC + Tidal Hi-Hi ?