Hi-Res Audio Streaming On The Way - How Many Of Us Couldl Miss Out Because Of Lack of MQA Or Similar Technology Capable DAC's?

[Miska]

MQA licensing prices will just increase costs for all parties involved without actually helping anything.

[Nikhil]

Best way is to avoid services using DRM methods, that will drive the market to stay away from such. MQA is essentially a DRM method, but marketed with sound quality claims.

 

If I would have to choose, MPEG-4 Audio SLS is much better choice. It is an open standard technology, standardized by ISO/IEC standardization organization and not controlled by a single small company like MQA. MPEG-4 Audio SLS can also be decoded in software, so it doesn't require any changes to your DAC hardware or firmware, so it'll work with any current hardware.

 

+1

 

MQA is a scam. Just amazed at how much traction it has got so far.

[Hauser]

I'm surprised at the level of enthusiasm considering how few have heard MQA. Has there been any published content? There also appears to be little real Hi-res content for streaming to the general public. If there is no profit in streaming current Res, a more limited market will be far less viable. Probably more future in squeezing out Red book potential.

 

Martin

[miguelito]

The article in the link below just appeared in my mailbox from Electronic House. It points out the clear fact that Hi Res streaming is on the way and who is behind it. The key point is "A number of data packing technologies are being developed that can support the streaming of hi-res music files to consumers in a more efficient manner, including MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) and MPEG 4 Audio SLS.".

 

My concern is that a lot of us have invested serious money in current DAC technology, and almost none seem MQA capable, and there is virtually no chance of an available/logical/workable upgrade path for the rest. I don't know about MPEG 4 Audio SLS, but I suspect the same issue may be true.

 

I would appreciate the perspective of those amongst us that have greater technological insight into this, and how serious the problem may be. I know I certainly cannot abandon my DAC, given it's cost and purchase a new one simply for this reason. And yes, streaming Hi Res may be the equivalent of the golden goose in the audiophile world if it's done right.

 

JC

 

 

Hi-Res Music Initiative Now Includes Streaming Services - EH Network

I'll consider this when MQA becomes a bit more widely available on a streaming platform. So far there's nothing.

[miguelito]

I'm surprised at the level of enthusiasm considering how few have heard MQA. Has there been any published content? There also appears to be little real Hi-res content for streaming to the general public. If there is no profit in streaming current Res, a more limited market will be far less viable. Probably more future in squeezing out Red book potential.

 

Martin

I listened to MQA in March 2015 at Meridian in NYC. I liked what I heard. Whether this was due to proper remastering, deblurring, or MQA beautification in general I don't know, but what was played sounded better in MQA format than the other format played.

 

Yes there is some content, maybe 10 albums out from 2L.

 

To my knowledge no one has done a real A/B test - for example listening to many well-mastered albums in their original and MQA forms. I read of an MQA version of Kind Of Blue which would be an interesting comparison - I also read the MQA version sounds great.

[Musicophile]

I'm still struggling to understand what real customer problem MQA is trying to solve.

 

Highres streaming in up to 24/192 works great on Qobuz (if you have purchased the album in that format), so beyond some rather fuzzy "authentication" process and royalties for Meridian I really don't see the point.

 

I just see it as yet another Betamax, HDCD or LaserDisc.

[Wang Xuanqian]

That is a challenge. Spotify is said to be looking at getting into Video as a way to cover their streaming music losses.

Spotify's Financial Results Reinforce How Broken the Music Business Is - Fortune

 

If MQA can be decoded in software only, as Auralic has proposed, than no new DACs will be needed.

That is the most likely way forward for MQA. Putting aside, of course, the fact that some don't care for it's sound.

 

Unfortunately it is not correct.

 

AURALiC has done a live demo during CES for MQA on ARIES and ARIES MINI. It is however after MQA realized that ARIES does not have any DAC built-in and ARIES MINI has a digital output in parallel connection of its DAC I2S signal, they pulled it back immediately. MQA believe the MQA process is end to end and the DAC has to be optimized for MQA playback, so any digital output of fully decoded signal is unacceptable. The Bluesound MQA implement must be something different, the digital output is not full MQA decoded as I heard from someone whom own the unit that it only work up to 96K.

 

AURALiC has wasted a lot of money for the expensive 2016 CES promote something which has been integrated (after spend some money on software engineer hours) but the feature will probably never be able to release to public. Future more, because of NDA contract between AURALiC and MQA, the team is not even been able to give a proper explanation.

[Albrecht]

The article in the link below just appeared in my mailbox from Electronic House. It points out the clear fact that Hi Res streaming is on the way and who is behind it. The key point is "A number of data packing technologies are being developed that can support the streaming of hi-res music files to consumers in a more efficient manner, including MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) and MPEG 4 Audio SLS.".

 

My concern is that a lot of us have invested serious money in current DAC technology, and almost none seem MQA capable, and there is virtually no chance of an available/logical/workable upgrade path for the rest. I don't know about MPEG 4 Audio SLS, but I suspect the same issue may be true.

 

I would appreciate the perspective of those amongst us that have greater technological insight into this, and how serious the problem may be. I know I certainly cannot abandon my DAC, given it's cost and purchase a new one simply for this reason. And yes, streaming Hi Res may be the equivalent of the golden goose in the audiophile world if it's done right.

 

JC

 

 

Hi-Res Music Initiative Now Includes Streaming Services - EH Network

 

 

Hi,

No offense, and not to be too melodramatic, - but....

 

Who says that MQA is better or even sounds good compared to one's own music?

 

Is the assumption that everyone wants to listen to other people's music on other people's computers over the Internet?

 

Is it definitely the case that streaming music over the Internet will be embraced by enough people to make it viable & sustainable?

[miguelito]

If MQA can be decoded in software only, as Auralic has proposed, than no new DACs will be needed. That is the most likely way forward for MQA. Putting aside, of course, the fact that some don't care for it's sound.

For CES 2016 (January of this year) Auralic had MQA working on the Aries - fully decoding in software to a standard PCM stream. If I recall correctly, the demo was MQA over TIDAL decoded in software to a standard DAC.

 

MQA (the company) suddenly decided - at the outset of the show - that they would not allow this and Auralic's demo was scratched.

 

My view of this:

 

1. They have a reasonable claim that DAC profiling is key to ultimate sound. However, this is nonsense. Consider that profiling is allowed by chipset, so from the analog stage onwards there are many other more important factors (analog stage, amps, speakers, room.

 

2. IMO, they are only doing this to reap more royalties from DAC/chip manufacturers.

 

3. Since no software-based decoding to a standard PCM is allowed, it is impossible to implement any DSP methodology such as Dirac.

 

4. I have the impression that the reason this is not yet in TIDAL is that TIDAL would like to allow for software decoding in order to make MQA a reasonable feature claim - why would you embark on the work required to make MQA a reality if you tell people they'd have to buy a special DAC to use it?

 

In my opinion, if MQA does not change their policies it is DOA.

[mansr]

I'm still struggling to understand what real customer problem MQA is trying to solve.

 

Highres streaming in up to 24/192 works great on Qobuz (if you have purchased the album in that format), so beyond some rather fuzzy "authentication" process and royalties for Meridian I really don't see the point.

 

I'm pretty sure that is the precisely point, Bob Stuart's bluster notwithstanding.

[rchunter]

Not really interested in it or streaming in general even though I own a DAC that is supposed to have MQA support. I prefer buying my music and streaming from my own server. I signed up for spotify a few months back to try it out but cancelled after a month.

[miguelito]

I'm pretty sure that is the precisely point, Bob Stuart's bluster notwithstanding.

I think we are being a bit cynical here - as much as I dislike the licensing tactics, I think there's something to MQA. In my humble opinion:

 

A- Positives:

1. MQA sets a culture and assurance of careful mastering from the source

2. Deblurring of the ADC process

3. DAC profiling for lesser quality DACs will make them sound better

 

B- Negatives:

1. MQA size is actually bigger that the CD-equivalent FLAC (by a factor of 2x or so?)

2. Requires special hardware

3. Cannot use DSP - so no Dirac for example

 

C- BS claims that truly irritate me:

1. Small size - not so, bigger than 16/44 FLAC even if you encoded a 16/44 source AFAIK

2. Authenticated - really? Rihanna sat there and said "Yeah the distortion in this file is as crappy as I intended it to be"? NO artist, and very likely no producer will bother!!!

3. Lossless - nope (but I don't care - just don't tell me what it is not!)

4. Profiling of the entire recording chain - would make sense except not all microphones, venues, cables, mic preamps, etc are necessarily the same in a recording, it would only work for very simple direct mic'ed recordings - the level of BS is just truly staggering and takes credibility away big time.

[jhwalker]

I think we are being a bit cynical here - as much as I dislike the licensing tactics, I think there's something to MQA. In my humble opinion:

 

A- Positives:

1. MQA sets a culture and assurance of careful mastering from the source

2. Deblurring of the ADC process

3. DAC profiling for lesser quality DACs will make them sound better

 

B- Negatives:

1. MQA size is actually bigger that the CD-equivalent FLAC (by a factor of 2x or so?)

2. Requires special hardware

3. Cannot use DSP - so no Dirac for example

 

C- BS claims that truly irritate me:

1. Small size - not so, bigger than 16/44 FLAC even if you encoded a 16/44 source AFAIK

2. Authenticated - really? Rihanna sat there and said "Yeah the distortion in this file is as crappy as I intended it to be"? NO artist, and very likely no producer will bother!!!

3. Lossless - nope (but I don't care - just don't tell me what it is not!)

 

A comment on size - they never claimed it was smaller than 16/44. It does allow, though, streaming high-resolution (e.g., 24/192) content in *much* smaller sizes than now current (e.g., approximately 24/48 in size). The downside is that normal "Redbook" files will actually be a bit larger than now - it's only the high-resolution content that picks up the benefit of the smaller file size.

[miguelito]

A comment on size - they never claimed it was smaller than 16/44. It does allow, though, streaming high-resolution (e.g., 24/192) content in *much* smaller sizes than now current (e.g., approximately 24/48 in size). The downside is that normal "Redbook" files will actually be a bit larger than now - it's only the high-resolution content that picks up the benefit of the smaller file size.

It is exactly 24/48 or 24/44. Most content would be de-blurred 16/44 digital masters so you would be effectively adding 8 bits of noise to it (which being noise does not compress well). So the majority of content will likely end up bigger, sounding probably as good as on-the-fly upsampling with A+ or HQP, with very little else to show for the extra cost of streaming more data.

[bmoura]

Hi,

No offense, and not to be too melodramatic, - but....

 

Who says that MQA is better or even sounds good compared to one's own music?

 

That is the key question. At the MQA demo I attended, the MQA music I heard sounded worse than the music files of the same tracks that I own and play on a lower cost system at home.

[mansr]

I think we are being a bit cynical here - as much as I dislike the licensing tactics, I think there's something to MQA. In my humble opinion:

 

A- Positives:

1. MQA sets a culture and assurance of careful mastering from the source

2. Deblurring of the ADC process

3. DAC profiling for lesser quality DACs will make them sound better

 

B- Negatives:

1. MQA size is actually bigger that the CD-equivalent FLAC (by a factor of 2x or so?)

2. Requires special hardware

3. Cannot use DSP - so no Dirac for example

 

C- BS claims that truly irritate me:

1. Small size - not so, bigger than 16/44 FLAC even if you encoded a 16/44 source AFAIK

2. Authenticated - really? Rihanna sat there and said "Yeah the distortion in this file is as crappy as I intended it to be"? NO artist, and very likely no producer will bother!!!

3. Lossless - nope (but I don't care - just don't tell me what it is not!)

4. Profiling of the entire recording chain - would make sense except not all microphones, venues, cables, mic preamps, etc are necessarily the same in a recording, it would only work for very simple direct mic'ed recordings - the level of BS is just truly staggering and takes credibility away big time.

 

Every single verifiable claim they've made so far has turned out to be bullshit. Why should I believe any of the as yet unverifiable things they say? They have also failed to establish that there even is a problem that needs solving in the first place (other than their profits not being as large as they'd like them). I may be a cynic, but I have good reasons for it.

[miguelito]

Every single verifiable claim they've made so far has turned out to be bullshit. Why should I believe any of the as yet unverifiable things they say? They have also failed to establish that there even is a problem that needs solving in the first place (other than their profits not being as large as they'd like them). I may be a cynic, but I have good reasons for it.

Indeed.

[jhwalker]

It is exactly 24/48 or 24/44. Most content would be de-blurred 16/44 digital masters so you would be effectively adding 8 bits of noise to it (which being noise does not compress well). So the majority of content will likely end up bigger, sounding probably as good as on-the-fly upsampling with A+ or HQP, with very little else to show for the extra cost of streaming more data.

 

I have the feeling they started this project when bandwidth / storage was a real issue, and technology caught up with them

 

I'd still like to hear what the "de-blurring" sounds like - I'm not as cynical as some here, and wouldn't be surprised if there were real gains to be had.

[Miska]

I'd still like to hear what the "de-blurring" sounds like - I'm not as cynical as some here, and wouldn't be surprised if there were real gains to be had.

 

You get that by using apodizing upsampling filters at playback time. You don't need something like MQA for it.

[jhwalker]

You get that by using apodizing upsampling filters at playback time. You don't need something like MQA for it.

 

I certainly like what HQPlayer does but are you certain there is nothing to be gained by correcting both for the original ADC and the DAC at playback time; I.e.. can a generic filter do the same thing?

[Jud]

I certainly like what HQPlayer does but are you certain there is nothing to be gained by correcting both for the original ADC and the DAC at playback time; I.e.. can a generic filter do the same thing?

 

If you can feed the dac something it won't upsample, you only have to correct for the ADC. If you use a filter that replaces the filtering effects of the ADC, you don't have to worry about the precise filter used by the ADC.

[duxservit]

I think we are being a bit cynical here - as much as I dislike the licensing tactics, I think there's something to MQA. In my humble opinion:

 

A- Positives:

1. MQA sets a culture and assurance of careful mastering from the source

2. Deblurring of the ADC process

3. DAC profiling for lesser quality DACs will make them sound better

 

B- Negatives:

1. MQA size is actually bigger that the CD-equivalent FLAC (by a factor of 2x or so?)

2. Requires special hardware

3. Cannot use DSP - so no Dirac for example

 

C- BS claims that truly irritate me:

1. Small size - not so, bigger than 16/44 FLAC even if you encoded a 16/44 source AFAIK

2. Authenticated - really? Rihanna sat there and said "Yeah the distortion in this file is as crappy as I intended it to be"? NO artist, and very likely no producer will bother!!!

3. Lossless - nope (but I don't care - just don't tell me what it is not!)

4. Profiling of the entire recording chain - would make sense except not all microphones, venues, cables, mic preamps, etc are necessarily the same in a recording, it would only work for very simple direct mic'ed recordings - the level of BS is just truly staggering and takes credibility away big time.

 

I'd be happy enough if Apple would just do lossless/16bit iTunes.

 

I'm going to sit out this MQA thing.

[tony5229]

Unfortunately it is not correct.

 

AURALiC has done a live demo during CES for MQA on ARIES and ARIES MINI. It is however after MQA realized that ARIES does not have any DAC built-in and ARIES MINI has a digital output in parallel connection of its DAC I2S signal, they pulled it back immediately. MQA believe the MQA process is end to end and the DAC has to be optimized for MQA playback, so any digital output of fully decoded signal is unacceptable. The Bluesound MQA implement must be something different, the digital output is not full MQA decoded as I heard from someone whom own the unit that it only work up to 96K.

 

AURALiC has wasted a lot of money for the expensive 2016 CES promote something which has been integrated (after spend some money on software engineer hours) but the feature will probably never be able to release to public. Future more, because of NDA contract between AURALiC and MQA, the team is not even been able to give a proper explanation.

Thanks for your explanation. i found it strange why there were a number of MQA partners which disappeared since CES 2016 and there was never any explanation. i do understand your difficulty with NDA.

[TubeLover]

Hi,

No offense, and not to be too melodramatic, - but....

 

Who says that MQA is better or even sounds good compared to one's own music?

 

Certainly not me, I was just surprised at how much traction it was getting, and the the Tidal announcement, etc. In fact, my real point was that it had better be truly remarkable to drive people to spend the serious cost of a new DAC, and I found that unlikely given MQA's history to date.

 

JC

[Nikhil]

Unfortunately it is not correct.

 

AURALiC has done a live demo during CES for MQA on ARIES and ARIES MINI. It is however after MQA realized that ARIES does not have any DAC built-in and ARIES MINI has a digital output in parallel connection of its DAC I2S signal, they pulled it back immediately. MQA believe the MQA process is end to end and the DAC has to be optimized for MQA playback, so any digital output of fully decoded signal is unacceptable. The Bluesound MQA implement must be something different, the digital output is not full MQA decoded as I heard from someone whom own the unit that it only work up to 96K.

 

AURALiC has wasted a lot of money for the expensive 2016 CES promote something which has been integrated (after spend some money on software engineer hours) but the feature will probably never be able to release to public. Future more, because of NDA contract between AURALiC and MQA, the team is not even been able to give a proper explanation.

 

For CES 2016 (January of this year) Auralic had MQA working on the Aries - fully decoding in software to a standard PCM stream. If I recall correctly, the demo was MQA over TIDAL decoded in software to a standard DAC.

 

MQA (the company) suddenly decided - at the outset of the show - that they would not allow this and Auralic's demo was scratched.

 

My view of this:

 

1. They have a reasonable claim that DAC profiling is key to ultimate sound. However, this is nonsense. Consider that profiling is allowed by chipset, so from the analog stage onwards there are many other more important factors (analog stage, amps, speakers, room.

 

2. IMO, they are only doing this to reap more royalties from DAC/chip manufacturers.

 

3. Since no software-based decoding to a standard PCM is allowed, it is impossible to implement any DSP methodology such as Dirac.

 

4. I have the impression that the reason this is not yet in TIDAL is that TIDAL would like to allow for software decoding in order to make MQA a reasonable feature claim - why would you embark on the work required to make MQA a reality if you tell people they'd have to buy a special DAC to use it?

 

In my opinion, if MQA does not change their policies it is DOA.

 

 

If Meridien had no problem screwing over Auralic, at a major show no less, I don't think we as end users have any hope.

 

Sure I get the mechanics of their operation but assuming I buy in to the MQA BS - it's just silly that for example one can't just do whatever needs to be done in software rather than in the DAC. What am I going to do with my existing DAC? Do they really think that I am going to buy a new DAC just so I can play MQA files?