Schiit Audio Talks MQA

[jhwalker]

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

 

Well, duh. Their Loki was *only* capable of DSD and you had to have a PCM DAC as well to play 95% of existing content - they intentionally crippled it. No wonder it didn't sell.

[MikeJazz]

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.

 

Well, I heard Meridian Explorer 1 and the sound was so lackluster that It's not hard to imagine version 2 being better...imho my geek out easily outperforms explorer 1.

 

One think that bothers me is why MQA is not being transparently tested on SOTA DAC's...

[esldude]

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

 

Yes you are right. And I knew this. Should have answered better in the first place. Because that is one big, big complaint I have with it. I like to use DRC and you couldn't do that with MQA. If MQA makes more difference for the good than DRC then it would truly be revolutionary tech.

[mansr]

Yes you are right. And I knew this. Should have answered better in the first place. Because that is one big, big complaint I have with it. I like to use DRC and you couldn't do that with MQA. If MQA makes more difference for the good than DRC then it would truly be revolutionary tech.

There's no way it could though, unless you have a studio-quality listening room.

[Jud]

There's no way it could though, unless you have a studio-quality listening room.

 

I'm not sure how many studios have good sound.

[esldude]

I'm not sure how many studios have good sound.

 

Ask Mitchco that question.

[esldude]

There's no way it could though, unless you have a studio-quality listening room.

 

What about my Sony Studio quality Professional headphones. Or my friend's AKG 240 Studio quality headphones????

[mansr]

What about my Sony Studio quality Professional headphones. Or my friend's AKG 240 Studio quality headphones????

I'm not really a headphone fan, but I imagine even the best would benefit from some DSP correction. Transducers are tricky things.

[Priaptor]

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.

 

I got the humor and thought it was funny and hence why I quoted you as a new entry into the audiophile vernacular.

[firedog]

I'm not really a headphone fan, but I imagine even the best would benefit from some DSP correction. Transducers are tricky things.

 

I actually have a a pair of headphones with DSP (via playback software that accompanies the HP) correction for the anomalies caused by the structure of the headphones themselves. It does improve the sound. If you think about it, all headphones will have some issues that could use DSP correction.

[miguelito]

Yes you are right. And I knew this. Should have answered better in the first place. Because that is one big, big complaint I have with it. I like to use DRC and you couldn't do that with MQA. If MQA makes more difference for the good than DRC then it would truly be revolutionary tech.

Nevermind that room effects far outweigh many of the subtle improvements that "deblurring" could have.

[Melvin]

This announcement/proclamation from Schiit is interesting and rather timely. For the past few weeks my Bifrost Multibit has been on DAC duty (sounding wonderful) paired with my Bluesound Node 2. Tomorrow, Bluesound is supposed to release a firmware update enabling MQA for their entire line of products. Should be fun if I can find some familiar MQA'd music to listen to.

[crenca]

This announcement/proclamation from Schiit is interesting and rather timely. For the past few weeks my Bifrost Multibit has been on DAC duty (sounding wonderful) paired with my Bluesound Node 2. Tomorrow, Bluesound is supposed to release a firmware update enabling MQA for their entire line of products. Should be fun if I can find some familiar MQA'd music to listen to.

 

It would be interesting as Darko and others are reporting hearing significant improvements with MQA encoded music through non-MQA dacs such as your Bitfrost...

[crenca]

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.

 

esldude, do you have a link to that paper?

[Melvin]

It would be interesting as Darko and others are reporting hearing significant improvements with MQA encoded music through non-MQA dacs such as your Bitfrost...

 

I'll be doing some comparative MQA listening over the next few days with the Node 2 on-board DAC, the BiMBy, and the Qute EX. A quick listen last night made me want to sit down and really pay attention. The on-board DAC should be impacted the greatest because it is now MQA "corrected" although limited to 24/192.

[esldude]

esldude, do you have a link to that paper?

 

You can get the paper from the AES. Some of the info has been revealed by those who are AES members. It has been discussed in a couple of threads here maybe a year ago. Here is the AES link.

 

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conventions/?ID=416

 

The part about the origami process is covered in Meridian patents and has been discussed by Miska and others here on CA.