Schiit Audio Talks MQA

[Jud]

I meant the format itself.

 

Is High-Resolution Music Dead? | AudioStream

 

Schiitting on MQA | DAR__KO

 

See my response at #25. It's just a file of bits as opposed to a bitstream. The important question in both cases to me is not "Can I turn this back into the original file?" The original file is a bunch of bits I can't hear. The important question to me is "Once converted to analog, will this be relatively undistorted and thus worth listening to?"

[JoeWhip]

It is my understanding after reading all of the interviews that MQA can be fully implemented in a software player but that they have decided not to implement it in this manner at least initially, IMHO to spur the sales of DACS. Not the right approach IMHO, especially given the few files available in it. If MQA takes off, Schiit will add it. Given the paucity of titles now and in the foreseeable future, I can wait to see how things shake out.

[Priaptor]

Well folks, I can't speak to the SQ of MQA but we can now add another audiophile term to our vernacular; "UNFOLDED", whatever that means:

 

"The entire space of the recording opened up, unfolded?, into a more realistic-sounding space; more relaxed, more air, greater ease" from the Audiostream review.

 

I guess time will tell if MQA "UNFOLDS" better than other formats.

[christopher3393]

off topic: not to nitpick, but unfold, in its second and third senses, seems fine to me:

 

1.open or spread out from a folded position.

"he unfolded the map and laid it out on the table"

synonyms: open out, spread out, flatten, straighten out, unroll, unfurl

"May unfolded the map"

2.reveal or disclose (thoughts or information).

"Miss Eva unfolded her secret exploits to Mattie"

3.(of information or a sequence of events) be revealed or disclosed.

"there was a fascinating scene unfolding before me"

synonyms: develop, evolve, happen, take place, occur, transpire, progress, play out

"I watched the events unfold"

 

Overall, I don't think Michael's review makes a very compelling case for MQA, but this is still a somewhat preliminary review stage. It will take time to "unfold".

[Tintinabulum]

I think you need to control the DAC for full MQA, not sure if software alone will do that. In terms of content, I thought Warner Brothers just said they would be using it?

[Dev]

The important question to me is "Once converted to analog, will this be relatively undistorted and thus worth listening to?"

 

Why is this even a question ? Isn't the sole purpose of MQA to do exactly that and sound better ? Or to put it another way, why would one spend more money on a close form system just to find out that their 44.1KHz sounds better ?

[Jud]

Why is this even a question ? Isn't the sole purpose of MQA to do exactly that and sound better ? Or to put it another way, why would one spend more money on a close form system just to find out that their 44.1KHz sounds better ?

 

It is the express purpose of MQA and many other things in audio. Should we believe them all, or try to learn if they are true?

[Dev]

It is the express purpose of MQA and many other things in audio. Should we believe them all, or try to learn if they are true?

 

Unlike other things is Audio, the MQA is something very different. Its not like a tweak that works for some and doesn’t work for others. Its not a speaker that sounds marvelous in a one room and horrible in others. Its about fundamentally changing the technology in digital audio (with closed proprietary systems which is something to ponder as well) for the better. If its not doing that, then what is it that its doing ? I would be very reluctant and cautious to learn later (and after spending money in getting a MQA certified DAC), that all their claims are untrue :)

[hornytoad]

Never heard MQA and I could care less unless we see a decent volume of available titles . Would have to be way more than the available DSD titles .

 

I completely agree with Schiit's arguments and they are being transparent

 

If you want a MQA capable dac , look elsewhere .

[Don Hills]

If "listening" were the criteria they would have adopted DSD a long time ago.

...

 

They did a DSD DAC along with their PCM DACs. It was a resounding sales failure.

[hornytoad]

They did a DSD DAC along with their PCM DACs. It was a resounding sales failure.

 

Yep it took them forever to unload the crap .

[master]

See my response at #25. It's just a file of bits as opposed to a bitstream. The important question in both cases to me is not "Can I turn this back into the original file?" The original file is a bunch of bits I can't hear. The important question to me is "Once converted to analog, will this be relatively undistorted and thus worth listening to?"

 

Well as they say "the proof is in the pudding" and this one is taking a long time in coming.

 

But using the right filters and players you could make it sound right and in that case it wouldn't really matter. That might be a limitation though with MQA, as the Bug wouldn't even decode it. From my understanding they aren't going to let any s/w even do the decoding or any manipulation, its all going to be limited to the h/w and the DACs, which while I agree are excellent still don't afford the fine control or manual filters and settings of players like the Bug and HQPlayer (which I've not used).

 

Personally to me simply being a closed format (DRM or not) means I won't be buying the media. I have about 50 LPs and over 2500 CDs and the good thing about them is being able to copy them, convert them to multiple formats, stream them in home in high res/lossless, stream them out of home both lossless and lossy (contingent on the b/w), even having multiple folks accessing and listening to them at the same time, plus a lot more... all of this took me ages to figure out, configure, and I'm still tweaking, but that's the good thing about it... the ability to tweak and change and being able to upscale, downscale, etc.

 

I understand one can do the same with MQA too and without MQA certified h/w, but it will be limited to Redbook, which begs the question why buy MQA at all and why not buy Redbook? The real question though is what can one do even with compliant MQA h/w? Still waiting to eat the pudding.

 

PS: I heard MQA on a Meridian Explorer2 and honestly couldn't hear anything different, but then again its music from 2L that I'm not familiar with or you could say the equipment wasn't resolving enough. The real pudding I'd need to eat would be Dire Straits and the twang of Mark Knopfler hitting the chords, or Santana, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Macklemore, etc. music I'm really familiar with and then being able to tell yes MQA is better or not.

 

They did a DSD DAC along with their PCM DACs. It was a resounding sales failure.

 

Hey, I'm aware of the Schiit Loki. My statement was in reference to them dropping the format entirely and not adopting it.

[Carbo]

I don't think we need any closed proprietary systems. That is the largest problem. Everything has to be licensed through them. No thanks.

[mourip]

If "listening" were the criteria they would have adopted DSD a long time ago.

 

Wow. Interesting personal bias. Have you actually listened to their equipment?

 

I think Schiit products can safely be separated out from Sony based upon sound quality.

 

In my system Redbook via their Iggy sounds better than DSD ever did via my Vega and their is a ton more to listen to. DSD is a very limited niche market with few "legendary" recorded performances. This view I will acknowledge as personal preference.

 

I have not heard MQA yet...

[master]

Wow. Interesting personal bias. Have you actually listened to their equipment?

 

I think Schiit products can safely be separated out from Sony based upon sound quality.

 

In my system Redbook via their Iggy sounds better than DSD ever did via my Vega and their is a ton more to listen to. DSD is a very limited niche market with few "legendary" recorded performances. This view I will acknowledge as personal preference.

 

I have not heard MQA yet...

 

FYI... I'm a Schiit fanboy. I've 3 of their products.

 

Maybe what I said (in the previous posts) came out wrong... it was only trying to explain their marketing model.

 

And no I don't do DSD and probably will never do MQA either. I'm perfectly happy with Redbook and if I wanted more (I don't) I'd go LP hunting.

[mourip]

FYI... I'm a Schiit fanboy. I've 3 of their products.

 

Maybe what I said (in the previous posts) came out wrong... it was only trying to explain their marketing model.

 

And no I don't do DSD and probably will never do MQA either. I'm perfectly happy with Redbook and if I wanted more (I don't) I'd go LP hunting.

 

Thanks. Sorry if I came on a bit strong...

 

They certainly are not shy about expressing their views. Luckily they make great products.

 

I would like to see them take a try at AES67 ethernet.

[esldude]

One of the interesting things about MQA is the background and implementation.

 

Stewart et al, did the blind testing that was presented to the AES about hearing the time smear of filtering. They used exceptionally high quality gear with bandwidth all the way through even at the speakers of more than 40 khz. Trained a group of listeners specifically to hear the very kind of problem caused by conventional filters at lower bandwidth vs the better time performance of their own high quality 192 khz recordings. Then did this test carefully with extremely sharp, smeary filtering beyond what is the norm for CD and 48 khz. The result with these exceptional circumstances and trained listeners was as a group they were correct in identifying the time smeared vs the better version 56% of the time. With the number of test runs done this is at a 5% confidence level. Still, how big and obvious and audible is something you detect 56% of the time and miss 44 % of the time. And with great gear, conditions and following special training?

 

Yet we now have regular folks like the in the Audiostream article and other demos saying they hear all the good benefits of fixing time smear. MQA is meant to authenticate you have done that, and reduce the file size needed to do so. Something in blind testing almost beyond mattering yet marketed as a big boon to quality audio.

 

And on the other hand, don't worry, if you have non_MQA gear it will play back as 16 bit files which actually give 15 bit performance due to the origami process. And Bob thinks it isn't important. So we drop from 16 bit to 15 bit for his using MQA folding in which isn't an impact on sound quality. While if you unfold and decode we get these wonderful audible benefits which would have to be of far smaller absolute difference than losing the LSB in a 16 bit file. Nice way to have it both ways. Also sounds like a con game all the way around if you ask me.

 

Oh and it isn't DRM (just licensing). If Bob and folks are really so anti-self serving and don't want any DRM I suggest the following. Determine your total cost to develop and bring to fruit MQA. Ask that licensing and such be done until 400% of that amount has been brought in to those guys. 400% return on investments seems plenty good. Then from the time that amount has been met, make it open source and free for everyone to use. So they get an incentive for the development, and the question of it becoming like DRM slipped in on us becomes a non-issue.

[Lighthouse]

If "listening" were the criteria they would have adopted DSD a long time ago.

 

Their manufacturing, marketing, etc. simply follows the Pareto principle, go with the 80%-90% and not the 10%-20%, just the same as McDonald's and Walmart.

 

There is a market for the 10%-20% and even for the 1%-2% with the likes of dCS and MSB too.

 

While they don't make anything that resembles a price of BMW, they do make stuffs that cost couple of thousands bucks.

 

That said, those 80~90% are usually ones that are easily satisfied by 30 bucks bluetooth speakers in the first place, Audiophile itself is already super niche. For those getting dCS and MSB is like 0.01% rather than 1% from those who can afford it.

 

Back on topic, we really do not need anymore proprietary format really.

[Miska]

As no surprise to anybody, I can also tell that HQPlayer won't have MQA decoder either...

 

Something like MPEG-4 SLS support could be added though.

[master]

While they don't make anything that resembles a price of BMW, they do make stuffs that cost couple of thousands bucks.

 

I'd think a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or a Bugatti is a better analogy.

 

That said, those 80~90% are usually ones that are easily satisfied by 30 bucks bluetooth speakers in the first place, Audiophile itself is already super niche. For those getting dCS and MSB is like 0.01% rather than 1% from those who can afford it.

 

That's not a bad thing though. I know one person with a dCS. If it were left to the likes of MSB, dCS and Total DAC, audiophiles would be a dead species by the next generation.

 

I've myself convinced 8 folks to buy a Schiit... and that's a good thing because all of them now know what better music sounds like and everyone has either upgraded or will eventually upgrade to better/more expensive DACs, even non Schiit's. To my knowledge Schiit shipped over 50K last year. That's a good thing for the entire audiophile industry I'd say than someone selling the best ever DAC for $90,000 and selling it to 1 or 6 folks on the entire planet.

 

Back on topic, we really do not need anymore proprietary format really.

 

Agreed.

[master]

One of the interesting things about MQA is the background and implementation.

 

Stewart et al, did the blind testing that was presented to the AES about hearing the time smear of filtering. They used exceptionally high quality gear with bandwidth all the way through even at the speakers of more than 40 khz. Trained a group of listeners specifically to hear the very kind of problem caused by conventional filters at lower bandwidth vs the better time performance of their own high quality 192 khz recordings. Then did this test carefully with extremely sharp, smeary filtering beyond what is the norm for CD and 48 khz. The result with these exceptional circumstances and trained listeners was as a group they were correct in identifying the time smeared vs the better version 56% of the time. With the number of test runs done this is at a 5% confidence level. Still, how big and obvious and audible is something you detect 56% of the time and miss 44 % of the time. And with great gear, conditions and following special training?

 

Yet we now have regular folks like the in the Audiostream article and other demos saying they hear all the good benefits of fixing time smear. MQA is meant to authenticate you have done that, and reduce the file size needed to do so. Something in blind testing almost beyond mattering yet marketed as a big boon to quality audio.

 

And on the other hand, don't worry, if you have non_MQA gear it will play back as 16 bit files which actually give 15 bit performance due to the origami process. And Bob thinks it isn't important. So we drop from 16 bit to 15 bit for his using MQA folding in which isn't an impact on sound quality. While if you unfold and decode we get these wonderful audible benefits which would have to be of far smaller absolute difference than losing the LSB in a 16 bit file. Nice way to have it both ways. Also sounds like a con game all the way around if you ask me.

 

Oh and it isn't DRM (just licensing). If Bob and folks are really so anti-self serving and don't want any DRM I suggest the following. Determine your total cost to develop and bring to fruit MQA. Ask that licensing and such be done until 400% of that amount has been brought in to those guys. 400% return on investments seems plenty good. Then from the time that amount has been met, make it open source and free for everyone to use. So they get an incentive for the development, and the question of it becoming like DRM slipped in on us becomes a non-issue.

 

I wasn't aware on the Redbook being truncated. Everywhere I've read the reviews have been Redbook will sound the same or actually even better on non-MQA h/w. Guess that's a lot of ignorant folks who don't know any better... or maybe we cannot really hear the difference between 15 and 16 bits, in which case it would argue against the need for increased bits in high res music.

 

So I guess that's folks wanting to continue buying their audio CDs need to make sure its only Redbook and not encoded with MQA.

[james45974]

I wasn't aware on the Redbook being truncated. Everywhere I've read the reviews have been Redbook will sound the same or actually even better on non-MQA h/w. Guess that's a lot of ignorant folks who don't know any better... or maybe we cannot really hear the difference between 15 and 16 bits, in which case it would argue against the need for increased bits in high res music.

 

So I guess that's folks wanting to continue buying their audio CDs need to make sure its only Redbook and not encoded with MQA.

 

Doesn't digital volume control truncate also? Using an MAQ file without decoding the MQA part with digital volume control doesn't sound like a great option.

[esldude]

Doesn't digital volume control truncate also? Using an MAQ file without decoding the MQA part with digital volume control doesn't sound like a great option.

No good digital volume controls don't truncate.

[mansr]

No good digital volume controls don't truncate.

But they alter the samples (obviously), and that makes them incompatible with MQA.

[Michael Lavorgna]

Well folks, I can't speak to the SQ of MQA but we can now add another audiophile term to our vernacular; "UNFOLDED", whatever that means:

 

"The entire space of the recording opened up, unfolded?, into a more realistic-sounding space; more relaxed, more air, greater ease" from the Audiostream review.

 

I guess time will tell if MQA "UNFOLDS" better than other formats.

 

MQA refers to the encoding process as "audio origami". "Unfolded" was a play on those words, perhaps a too subtle play ;-) I added the ? as a kind of joke, again apparently a too subtle joke.

 

Thanks for reading.