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MQA is Vaporware


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21 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Been keeping my eyes open for a CHEAP cloud based backup for my whole collection. Ideas?

Western Digital Mycloud are NAS units with there own cloud.  No charge.  Just purchase the NAS unit and you have your cloud.  I bought a 4TB unit for just under $200.

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Just now, mansr said:

Not much help if your house burns down though.

So true:o

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  • 1 month later...

Listening to MQA reminds me of when the band I was in recorded a 3 track demo in 1989.  What we played in the studio live was one sound.  At the mixing board (better) was another.  What we ended up with on analog tape was far superior to the CD that was created from this.  Back then we didn't care we, we just wanted a CD version to show our friends.

 

Some of the MQA stuff reminds me of this.  A lot of CD versions never capture the true sound of what it sounded like while recording, tape and vinyl seems to be better at this.  At times, I feel all I've been doing is trying to improve a flawed sound ie. better transport, better DAC, upsampling so on.  MQA is taking a step to correct this (right or wrong).  

For me that different sound (MQA) is what it should have sounded like originally (at the mixing board), like what I heard while in the studio not what we ended up with on CD.  Many people will not like the sound they hear because they've been trying to improve a sound (CD's since the 80's) that was terrible to begin with.  This is what there familiar with.

 

I do wish you could get the original version MQA'd but with the opportunity to do whatever DSP you want with it, upsample, room correction ect.   DRM would be another issue to deal with.

 

Just my 2 cents, not all MQA sounds great either.  But you have to compare MQA and any other version with no DSP what so ever to give it a fair chance.

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  • 5 weeks later...
4 hours ago, PeterSt said:

About the being of this thread : So it is July; how many MQA albums are on Tidal now, you reckon ?

On Roon's site there's an active spread sheet with all the MQA albums. I think it's around 470. I might be way off. 

Computer setup - Roon/Qobuz - PS Audio P5 Regenerator - HIFI Rose 250A Streamer - Emotiva XPA-2 Harbeth P3ESR XD - Rel  R-528 Sub

Comfy Chair - Schitt Jotunheim - Meze Audio Empyrean w/Mitch Barnett's Accurate Sound FilterSet

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6 hours ago, ShawnC said:

On Roon's site there's an active spread sheet with all the MQA albums. I think it's around 470. I might be way off. 

It's more like 2700.  I was only off by a few 1000. 

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6 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

 

All very acceptable if your goal is "sounds good to me", not so much if your interested in High Fidelity.

What?

 

 

 

 

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29 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Is there some part of High Fidelity you don't understand?

After that quote, all of it. 

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So then, what is the definition of High Fidelity.  Lets start there, is it accuracy within measurements? How about price, I hope not.  Is it accuracy within the playback chain.  Does someone have a list of Companies that make only High Fidelity products?  That would save everyone here some time.  Plus we would all have the same sounding system. Your room may cause the High Fidelity products to sound like shit but at least you have the right components to start with.

 

I think the choice of words gets confusing.  I have a 2 channel stereo setup and a multi channel set up.  It sounds great to me.  My friends love it and they bring over there source material to listen through it.  So its nice but I guess not High Fidelity.  That's ok with me. 

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Comfy Chair - Schitt Jotunheim - Meze Audio Empyrean w/Mitch Barnett's Accurate Sound FilterSet

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  • 1 month later...
15 minutes ago, Oddio said:

I ask those questions in pursuit of the truth. They are important questions to anyone who is actually trying to figure out if MQA is beneficial to sound quality or not.

 

If MQA is worthless, that's fine with me, but responses like "oh my" and "meet Bob Stuart's newest shill" don't really make any meaningful, logical points and lead me to believe I signed up for a bad forum.

So I see you've met mansr.  He's a computer wizard and has decoded MQA files.  As you can tell, he doesn't like what MQA does.

 

There are a lot of threads about MQA, so read them all  (most just repeat themselves)

 

You can use the ignore button if you wish,  but many members here, even if you don't agree with them, have valuable input to learn from.

 

If the only thing MQA did was get a better master to listen too, then I'm fine with that.  Don't worry I'm a shill to, I enjoy what I hear from MQA most of the time.

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Universal has dumped a bunch of MQA albums on Tidal this last week or so.  Some even are listed as 24/96 or 24/192 in the title.  For instance Rush's Fly by Night 24/96 or self titled Rush 24/192.  Don't know how many were released.  On the Roon site, the Tidal MAQ release thread, still has the spreadsheet at around 2700 albums.  This has been stagnant for a few months. 

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2 hours ago, mansr said:

And this is why Chris maintains his strained "neutral" stance. If he took sides against the industry, he'd lose this early access to coming developments. Without access to insiders, any publication is dead.

I guess you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  Have you said anything meaningful this week.  Just like your LinkedIn page states, one of your skills is trolling.

 

You do make things entertaining around here.  You have so much talent and knowledge , I wish you would share more of this. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

NAD is using it's BluOs wireless streaming technology to bring MQA to it's updated receivers.  Bluesound is NAD sister company, so this makes sense.  I was just looking at the 758v3 to replace my current receiver but this isn't a reason why.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I thought MQA was supposed to be a one container contains everything.  Many of those albums in that spreadsheet are 44, 48, 96, 192 versions of the same thing.  This makes it seem like they did a MQA version from a 44 Master (whatever that means), another from 48, 96 so on and so. Talk about trying to make a buck someday on this.

 

I could possibly see 2 Masters made from every album. One at 96 and one at 192 or any variation within the multiples/division of those numbers (which ever is the highest. 384/768).  That's is even if all those versions were made to begin with.  But I still thought it was this magic container with all versions that can be unfolded with the right software/hardware, DAC and filters.

Computer setup - Roon/Qobuz - PS Audio P5 Regenerator - HIFI Rose 250A Streamer - Emotiva XPA-2 Harbeth P3ESR XD - Rel  R-528 Sub

Comfy Chair - Schitt Jotunheim - Meze Audio Empyrean w/Mitch Barnett's Accurate Sound FilterSet

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  • 3 months later...
Just now, rickca said:

I agree, that train left the station a long time ago.  You don't think MQA needs to generate consumer demand?

If I asked 100 people where I work what format they were listening to music on there headphones via streaming/or file based,  I can almost guarantee you that none of them will know what I'm talking about.  They just want access.  These are mostly young individuals who listen to headphones all day at work.  I've talked with a lot of them about this subject and no one has heard of MQA let alone DSD or even Hi Res.  DRM is not an issue, since they don't care to own anything. Hi res to them is uncompressed music, regular CDs.  Now this is just a small sample and I could be or probably am completely wrong about the masses.

 

When I found this site 8 years ago I never heard of DSD, I knew of SACD but wasn't aware that this was tied to it.  Yet I'm the guy all my friends and family come to for audio and video advice, go figure.

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Comfy Chair - Schitt Jotunheim - Meze Audio Empyrean w/Mitch Barnett's Accurate Sound FilterSet

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  • 1 month later...
2 hours ago, mansr said:

Can we put a Scottish twist on that?

Thinking Sean Connery

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  • 4 weeks later...

Next live event are airplanes taking off at Heathrow.  It's just like your there.

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  • 1 month later...
2 hours ago, miguelito said:

Well muons are leptons...

Don't forget to tip your waitress 

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2 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Errr... I have no idea what your point is... But being against post-truth, I felt the need to clarify that leptons are the family consisting of a charged particle with spin 1/2 and it's sister particle with no charge. There are three such particles (so far!): electrons, muons, and taus, and their corresponding neutrinos.

 

Drawing an analogy, PCM is like the electron, and MQA is it's neutrino: it wants to be everywhere but really has no mass or charge by itself save for the PR around it.

Sorry, it was a compliment.  I should have just said Ha.  Don't forget to tip your waitress is a phrase used when comedians tell a joke that many may not get.

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  • 1 year later...
5 hours ago, esldude said:

Have no idea about Sirius or how many people it reaches.  They get my prize for worst compressed audio.  It quickly gives me a headache on talk channels.  Music is truly a terrible experience.  As someone who likes music if my choices are silence or music via Sirius, give me silence PLEASE.

I agree, worst quality. Content is fine. I still wouldn’t pay for it. 

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  • 3 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...
20 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

I disagree with your take on Roon. As a Roon customer, I think it is state of the art in playback and cataloging. I have never experienced any effort to convince me that I "need" MQA, Tidal, or Qobuz. I maintain a large local library and it works perfectly for my needs. Roon is 100% a hifi product not different than a tube preamp or a stand alone DAC, it never was intended for the "masses" and there never was an attempt to "convince" anybody.

 

Please note I was a MAJOR Roon skeptic when first introduced, and I thought was a fly by night hipster product. I was wrong. 

 

Any way, i really doubt Roon users give a damn about MQA unless they only listen to Tidal.

 

 

I agree although lifetime membership just went up to $699 with the new software release today.

Computer setup - Roon/Qobuz - PS Audio P5 Regenerator - HIFI Rose 250A Streamer - Emotiva XPA-2 Harbeth P3ESR XD - Rel  R-528 Sub

Comfy Chair - Schitt Jotunheim - Meze Audio Empyrean w/Mitch Barnett's Accurate Sound FilterSet

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