MQA is Vaporware

[church_mouse]

53 minutes ago, Norton said:

 

You may be correct from a theoretical point of view, but that's no practical use to today's listener.

 

To repeat my previous question, other than Tidal/MQA, who is actually offering 96 kHz classical music streaming today?  I looked at Qobuz for example, as far as I can see from their site, the implication at least is that anything beyond RBCD is only offered as a purchased download.

 

 

 

 That is not quite correct - Qobuz offers the Sublime+ package which gives Hi-Res 24-bit FLAC/ up to 192kHz streaming.

 

I do not have that package, so I cannot comment on how well it streams in practice.

[church_mouse]

knickerhawk's recent postings of his experience of MQA via his Bluesound set up intrigued me enough for me finally to use the offer of a 3 month free trial of Tidal which came with Audirvana 3.  I have been a Qobuz Sublime subscriber for about 18 months, though I tend to use it for testing out music before I buy it from somewhere.

 

knickerhawk's postings were sufficiently enthusiastic about the improvement in sound he heard using MQA that it made me feel it was time I gave MQA a shot, though limited to the software unfolding only offered by Audirvana - my DAC is a non-MQA Mytek Manhattan 1.

 

For my listening, I tried to compare files I own with MQA matches on Tidal.  That was far from easy as it seems that very little of my music is yet available in MQA – identical masters, who knows?  After 5 albums (Max Richter – Vivaldi Four Seasons Recomposed, Talk Talk – Colour of Spring, Tori Amos - Unrepentant Geraldines, Fleetwood Mac – Tusk Remastered, Kraftwerk - 3-D Catalogue), the jury was in.

 

The result of my listening (both through speakers and headphones) was, to my surprise, the reverse of knickerhawk's experience.  In every instance, the MQA album sounded worse to my ears, in my set up.  A generalised conclusion is that I found MQA to be strangely overblown in the bass, splashy and harsh in the top, with a narrow, up-front presentation and a loss of detail.  Listening to the MQA versions became quite tiring and unenjoyable. (I even tried some non-MQA music through the Audirvana/Tidal interface to ensure what I was hearing was not due to the Tidal streaming process itself).

 

Obviously, this is an entirely personal assessment, based solely on my own listening to MQA in my set up, with my ears.  (If I had any expectation bias, I think it was to expect to hear an improvement with MQA, knickerhawk's comments being so positive.)

 

NOTE - My set up is very basic – Mac-mini feeding Manhattan via Firewire, feeding AVI DM5 active speakers, or a Stax SR 404 Signature + SRM 006tII headphone set up, or a pair of Oppo PM3 via the Manhattan's headphone amp.  Audirvana is configured to upsample only 44.1 by multiples of 2 (effectively to 176.4 due to the Apple Firewire limit) using the SoX converter. My music is held on a NAS.

[church_mouse]

4 minutes ago, knickerhawk said:

 

Thanks, church_mouse, for sharing your experience. I hope you're not forever pissed at me now.    We have some overlapping taste. I'm a Max Richter fan and like the Four Seasons album he did, so I'll go give that one a try and report back. Of course, this boils down to some mix of personal preference and system. YMMV as they say, and I respect that and applaud you for trying and sharing. One thing I will note is that your description of the signature of the MQA sound is not that different from what I'm experiencing as well. However, what is coming across to you as "splashy" and "harsh" and too "up-front" etc. is coming across to me as revealing and actually presenting more detail. The structure of our responses, so to speak, don't seem too far off, though. Thanks again, and sorry for getting your hopes up for a personal improvement.

 Your postings were helpful - they encouraged me to try something. 

 

The "sound signature" of MQA I was hearing reminded me of a Naim\Neat system I used to have - one evening, after getting back from listening to a concert at Birmingham Symphony Hall I decided the upfront, grab you where it hurts sound I had was no longer for me - an expensive epiphany!

[church_mouse]

1 minute ago, firedog said:

That's a basic system?

High end DAC and good powered speakers...?

I guess I used "basic" because I used to have a quite expensive Naim separates system with large separate power supplies, so reducing the number of boxes right down does seem "basic". 

[church_mouse]

4 hours ago, DMelby said:

I have been following this debate for some time with interest.  I have to say I am not an engineer, and cannot follow the arguments for and against MQA to the detail as many that have posted.  I am simply a music lover since my twenties, and lover of the best sound reproduction that I can experience.  Experiencing the emotional power of music reproduced well gives me great joy, and is why I am in this hobby and dedicate significant time and resources.  It does make me sad somewhat to see the bitterness of this debate. I would hope we all just want the same thing. There are certainly high stakes on all sides of this debate.  I will not weigh in, as my opinion in the technical and business matters is well inferior to many others in this community.

I would though like to simply add one listeners experience with MQA as streamed by Tidal compared to my best method ripped CDs (off topic - but yes there are methods to get significantly better sound from a ripped CD then just ripping with DBpoweramp).

Over the last 3 months I have listened to dozens of songs directly comparing my ripped version to the Tidal MQA (fully unfolded) version.  I am using equipment capable of very fine reproduction (Berkeley Reference DAC MQA, Aurender W20 with MQA, Woo Audio WA33, Focal utopia headphones...)

Mind you these are just my listening experiences and your experiences may vary based on equipment and preferences.  MQA may be the best thing for other reasons, but this is just the contribution of one listener to the community experience with sound quality.  I was really excited about MQA based on the good reviews from folks in the past whose reviews I have used to explore new audio equipment.

In total I would sum up the differences across the board as: the MQA tracks were louder.  The MQA tracks did not reveal any new information not present on the CD.  Subtle information deep within the recording (such as the sound of a keys being pushed on a trumpet  or musicians taking a breath) were more easily heard with the CD rips.  Harmonics were richer on the CD rips.  The MQA versions lost  delicacy across the audio spectrum of everything heard, almost like it was compressed or distorted. The CD rips sound like the musician is live with me in the room. The MQA versions had a somewhat harsh tone in the upper range which in my experience often represents digital noise of some sort.  So, to my disappointment, I found I preferred well done CD rips by a large margin to Tidal streamed MQA tracks.  I honestly was hoping that MQA would sound spectacular, as CD ripping can be time consuming.  I will say though that TIdal streamed MQA does sound better than regular streamed tracks - so it may have some use in the streaming sector.  But it does not seem to me to be the best in sound quality available (even with CDs at a lower resolution compared to the unfolded MQA tracks).

 

Your MQA listening experience mirrors mine. Though you expressed it far better than I could.

[church_mouse]

1 hour ago, Norton said:

 It strikes me though that, in your listening report, you are as much comparing Tidal streaming  vs replay from local storage as you are comparing MQA with RBCD.  Much as I value Tidal, it’s immediately obvious to me that the SQ is not as good as from local file replay.  A better comparison would be MQA vs 16/44 within Tidal, or indeed to put your experience in context by also comparing your local CD Rip  with the 16/44 Tidal version.

2

 

I can't speak for DMelby but, although the point you make about local v streaming is valid in part, in my instance some of my testings were Tidal MQA v Qobuz 16/44, with both through Audirvana (so first unfold only).  I still preferred the non-MQA version. Of course, it could be that Qobuz streaming sounds better than Tidal through Audirvana - I have never specifically tested for that.

 

I have read Miguelito's reports of some MQA albums sounding better (albeit, possibly not because of the MQA process per se) but, to my ageing ears, MQA does something to the sound which DMelby described very well.

 

I can't test any longer because I cancelled my Tidal subscription in favour of Qobuz.

[church_mouse]

MQA - you might hear what it does, you might not; you might like it, you might not.

 

Why on earth would any consumer orientated music/audiophile magazine, site or forum want to promote enthusiastically a closed, proprietary music format when the true tag-line is "There is a chance you might notice something and perhaps even like it"?

[church_mouse]

After my Sunday morning review of this week’s postings, I have had a revelation.

 

All those tests to see if HI Res and fully decoded and upsampled MQA could be distinguished, which seemed to have resulted in a bit of a “meh” conclusion, have been going about it erroneously.

 

Mr Dudley, in his review of the non-MQA Naim streamer, has shown me the truth.  To really hear the beauty of MQA (which I was unable to do playing MQA through Audirvana’s unfolding) one needs to play a completely folded, bit reduced version.

 

Later today, I am going to try some other experiments, such as stuffing little bits of cotton wool in my ears, to see if further reducing the information getting to my ears enhances the sound even more.

[church_mouse]

For the non-experts, like me, is this suggesting that if we want to start screwing up our music then get the MQA version. However, if you want to complete the job make sure you get an MQA Dac too?

 

Kind of a ‘‘double whammy‘‘.

[church_mouse]

People, I think you are treating Fx Studio unfairly, and this is why:

When I tested MQA vs FLAC in the past, invariably I preferred the FLAC version but both versions were capable of producing a decent soundstage on my lowly equipment.

Fx Studio appears to have invested in a very expensive PA system which he believes makes MQA sound wonderful but, in his own words, where the FLAC "sound collapses around the speakers down to 2D".  

But wait...MQA is a dead technology. FLAC lives on. 

It seems to me that what we actually have here is a plea from a music listener on how to rescue a very expensive sound system which only sounds decent with a failed audio format. 

I am sure there are many of you on this site who have the goodness in heart to help out poor Fx Studio with a few tips!

[church_mouse]

@FX Studio

Let me get this clear: in support of your contention that MQA is not dead you state "Millions downloaded already so never going away". Yet, just a few posts earlier you accepted that the downloads were illegal and that "I am certainly not advocating for it at all".

Are you are now advocating the use of illegal downloads, or do you accept that legally those "millions downloaded already" are not available?

 

I doubt I am the only one who sees the irony in arguing that the future of MQA - the "authenticated by the artist" format - relies upon the music being pirated?