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MQA is Vaporware


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9 minutes ago, Fokus said:

And, sadly, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Try telling that to Tiger Woods....:(

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21 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

 

Does it make you all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about how Devialet will implement it, if they do? :P

Oh yes!  So fuzzy that I’d need a thorough deblurring to recover.....

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11 hours ago, Fair Hedon said:

NAMM 2018: PMC partners with Capitol Studios to demo Hi-Res audio

 

"The main technology driver behind Hi-Res Audio is MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), which claims to bring higher quality sound to consumers without sacrificing portability and ease of streaming."

?????

 

Some systems have better portability than others ....

 

PMC.JPG

Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade.  Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones.

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  • 1 month later...

I visited the 'Sound and Vision' show in Bristol, UK yesterday.  This show is organised by Audio-T, who run a chain of UK hifi shops and sponsored by the UK's best-selling hifi rag 'What Hi-Fi'.  I think it is fair to say that this is the UK's most mainstream show, there is a wide range of kit there with a smattering of 'high end', but the majority of demonstrations are at the more affordable to mildly aspirational end of the scale.  One thing is for sure, of all the UK shows, this one is by far the best attended, I was there on a Friday and it was jam-packed with people, a little too busy to be fun to be honest.

 

So what of MQA?  Not that I was checking every stand and display for MQA logos, I did wander around the whole show and visited about 90% of the demo rooms, and not one MQA logo or demo did I see.  Curiously, this was not the case a couple of years ago, when Pioneer had a big room playing MQA demo's and in the 'What Hi-Fi' area they had a guy with a laptop and headphones who was running demonstrations where you could listen to a track of your choice to via MP3 then MQA.  

 

This year the only mention of MQA was in a demonstration of the new Cyrus signature streaming system, DAC and amps.  The guy from Cyrus was introducing each track played with a few words about the music and also stating that they were streaming hi-res via Qobuz.  During each introduction he mentioned that there are alternative ways to stream hi-res such as MQA but why bother with file compression methods when bandwidth is no longer a restriction and increasing all the time anyway.  He made this mini-speech three times when I was in the room, I guess he was doing this all day, and will be doing so all weekend too. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Some interesting references to MQA here, interesting because it is not being used and 24bit is......

 

https://darko.audio/2018/03/highresaudio-com-announce-hra-streaming-service/

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19 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Robert "Scientific Revolution" Harley gives MQA ample coverage in his Munich show report-

 

"MQA Updates


MQA put on a unique demonstration of the technology’s ability to deliver studio-quality sound to listeners via streaming. A live musical performance was streamed in real time to selected exhibitors in Munich’s MOC convention center—in full high-resolution quality. As a small jazz group played in a London recording studio, the stereo mix was converted to digital at 192kHz/24-bit (a bitrate of 9.2Mbs), and then encoded in MQA on the fly. The 1.1Mbs MQA signal was streamed over the Internet to about ten participating exhibitors who had MQA decoders in their exhibit rooms. The streamed MQA signal was “unfolded” to the original 192/24 signal and converted to analog in the MQA-compatible DACs in the rooms of participating exhibitors. I happened to listen to the demo in dCS’s room, decoded by a dCS Rossini and wonderfully reproduced by a pair of Wilson Alexia Series 2 speakers. The whole thing was a bit of a stunt, but nonetheless drove home MQA’s remarkable ability to deliver true high-resolution studio sound quality via streaming services.

In other MQA news, ESS Technology, maker of the popular high-end Sabre DAC chip, announced that it will soon release a DAC chip with integral MQA rendering. This new chip will make it easier and less expensive for manufacturers to include MQA compatibility in their products—no additional DSP required. Note that the ESS chip performs just the second step of MQA decoding, called “rendering”; the signal must first be unfolded to an MQA Core signal, but that unfolding technology is readily available in Tidal, Roon, Amarra, Audirvana, and many other music players. ESS’s announcement has implications far beyond getting MQA in more high-end DACs; this new Sabre chip will bring MQA to other applications including active headphones, smartphones, tabletop systems, and more."

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-2018-munich-high-end-show/

 

Well done MQA.  It’s not that unique though.  The BBC have been doing something similar for a while:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/radio-3-concert-sound

 

I have tried this and can confirm that it works perfectly and sounds good.  Ok, the BBC’s version was “only” 16 / 48 versus MQA’s (claimed) 24bit, but I can confirm the sound quality from the BBC’s efforts were subjectively excellent.  Plus, no special DAC / streamer / encoder required.  The BBC’s efforts were basically a proof of concept and a beta trial.  24bit would be possible.

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  • 2 weeks later...
4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

A screenshot I couldn't resist :~)

 

Screen Shot 2018-06-04 at 2.34.55 PM.png

Yet more Antichrist bashing....

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1 hour ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Our host might get a good laugh at this:

 

One comment from Fremer tirade, said the following-

 

by "reel"

 

"He (Shah) is just another one of those people (including Mr. Computer Audiophile Chris Connaker) out there that simply hate the vinyl resurgent. To them it's going backward in time and technology regardless of sound quality, because they never had a true transcendent sound experience in their lives like we all had."

 

I got a chuckle out of it..
 

And does Mr Computer Audiophile actually hate the vinyl resurgent?  (or should that be vinyl resurgence?)

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24 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I don’t hate it at all. I just think the sound quality of vinyl is vastly overstated when almost all recordings originate on a hard drive. I also think the resurgence is a fad. That’s all. 

Yes, it did seam a very strange thing to actually hate.  We all have our preferences but hate is a very strong word to use in this context I think.

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I notice that at the start (1m 20s) of the What Hi Fi interview Mr Stuart uses the term "Losslessly, analogue losslessly".  Of course, we now know that MQA is not "Lossless" in the traditional sense, that is the original data can be recovered in full from a compressed file without loss.  Maybe "analogue losslessly" was a way for the term "Lossless" to be used without stating MQA is lossless in the accepted sense.  That said, lossless analogue would be most splendid I think, if it existed.

 

As an aside, it is perhaps worth mentioning that What Hi Fi is the one publication in the UK that appears to be generally positive about MQA.  Others such as 'HiFi News and record review' appear to be far more considered in their approach to MQA.  We certainly don't have anything the equivalent of the almost evangelistic US coverage of MQA in the publications this side of the pond. 

 

 

Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade.  Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones.

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  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

MQA Ltd update

 

Peter Craven sold more of his stock in 2017. Craig Kallman CEO of Atlantic Records now owns 55 shares and Herman Siegfried Jorg Mohaupt also now owns 55 shares. Small numbers but Peter has sold 231 shares of his original 880 shares of MQA Ltd stock.

I wonder who has bought the shares?

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5 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

They are in my post.

Not all 231 are accounted for?  Also, for context, does anyone know the value of one share?

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  • 4 months later...
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10 hours ago, Confused said:

Arguably, this is perhaps not the the sensible for thread for promoting MQA enabled products if you are hoping for a positive outcome?

2

Sorry, I screwed up the editing of the above post when half asleep typing on my iPad last night.  What I mean to say was "Arguably, this is perhaps not the most sensible thread to chose for promoting MQA enabled products if you are hoping for a positive outcome?

 

I guess I have just deblurred my own typing?  Epic!

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  • 3 weeks later...

It is the Bristol Hifi Show in the UK next week.  For those not familiar with the UK show scene, the Bristol show is one of the more popular and well-attended shows we have.  The kit on demonstration ranges from the budget end of the market, with a few manufacturers bringing more "high end" offerings.  I think this is why the show is so popular, for many people it offers the chance to go and listen to the kind of kit they might actually buy, whilst at the same time get to listen to some more aspirational equipment.  There are other shows, such as one at Windsor, that are firmly in the "High End" camp.

 

For me, the show can be done as a day trip, but it is a lot of hassle, so I have this annual routine of reviewing the show guide when it appears online, and only going to the show if there is enough on display that interests me.  Reading through the show guide yesterday I noticed that there was not one mention of MQA.  Was this the case in the past, I asked myself?  The website for the show has an archive of old show guides, so I had a look.  Last year, there were a total of three mentions of MQA, from iFi and Bluesound.  From 2017 to 2014, no mention of MQA.  In 2013, MQA was mentioned three times, and only in press listings by What Hifi, who are sponsors of the show, and Hifi Critic.

 

I do not think there is anything statistically significant here, so take this post as just a bit of trivia.  Although taking this at face value, there is not much sign of MQA taking over the world, or even much evidence of MQA gaining a bit of traction.

 

http://www.bristolshow.co.uk/showguide.lasso

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  • 3 weeks later...
7 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Kudos to Jud for inserting an oblique reference to the Sex Pistols.  To my knowledge, none of their back catalog is available in MQA.

Anarchy in the UK

 

 

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On 3/8/2019 at 3:35 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

The Levinson upgrade is roughly $2k in a Lexus. 

 

Businesses are out to make money. The cost gets passed on to the consumer. 

This got me thinking.  If I was looking at a new car, and it had an upgraded audio system with MQA, it might actually put me off a bit.  Maybe off the car itself, maybe off the audio upgrade, that would depend on many things.  So I am thinking that MQA needs to have some kind of positive reputation for it to be worth something to manufacturers.  OK - It is something for the salesman to sell, but there are many ways to add a few buzz words or pseudo-techno babble that would sound impressive during the sales pitch, and other ways of doing this would not have the complexity of MQA or the cost or royalties to MQA.  I'm sure that most customers would just want seamless integration with the music already on their smartphone, rather than trying to work out the benefit of streamed folded and unfolded "hi-res".  Lets put this another way, if a salesman could take a customers phone, and demonstrate how this integrates perfectly with the car's infotainment system, I can see that might help a sale.  If the salesman had to start explaining that MQA is a different file format, from a particular streaming service, I am sure most potential customers would be somewhere between completely uninterested or actually confused and put off.  I just can't see the benefit. 

 

Even as a self-confessed audiophile myself, I use an iPod in my car, which is loaded with ALAC rather than compressed 320 kbs files or similar, but in no way am I bothered about having or needing 24/96 for my car audio.  I just don't get this one.

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This is a snip of the Tidal / MQA email I received this week.  It states "iPhone now supports MQA". 

 

Of course, the iPhone supports the Tidal app, but the iPhone itself, in terms of it's DAC etc, does not.  I would say this is highly misleading?

 

 

image.png.fe615ed540424b36f267bd6cd4b9e2d0.png

Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade.  Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones.

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