MQA is Vaporware

[mansr]

3 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

"Completely disabled" gives the wrong impression. There is no "bug" with the Mytek DACs. You can easily switch off Mytek's MQA reconstruction filter with the on-screen menu.

Yes, the MQA decoder can be disabled in the menu. With that setting, MQA files are played without decoding, as they would be on any non-MQA DAC. This is what I call completely disabled.

 

Do you expect people to delve into the menus and change this setting depending on what they happen to be playing?

[Norton]

4 hours ago, rwdvis said:

 

 

You may be able to fool some but I have zero doubt you have some connection to MQA, the industry, or even CA directly.  Your continued defense of MQA and constant responses to critics is odd.  Too odd.  Now you’re baiting and trying to set up some of the most vocal critics in order to silence and eliminate with this “what positive contributions” nonsense.  You’re attempting to set a narrative to give Chris some seeming justification for banning, or at least silencing.  Your tactic is to bait, anger, misdirect and raise suspicion to get a reaction and then Chris steps in with the “recently banned critic X made no positive contribution to the site and our wonderful hobby” line.

 

You’re using the same tactic as Chris was regarding MQA.  Which is/was, faux-neutrality and constant “friendly” advice on how to conduct oneself when critiquing MQA (ie., don’t say too many bad things about MQA, or else).  You’re also trying to redirect critics to some other topics.  You’d rather the critics spend their time in other areas of the site, obviously, so less time is spent on examining and critiquing MQA.  Odd.  Why is it that someone who claims to have little knowledge of, connection with, or interest in MQA be so concerned with what others do with their time regarding MQA?  For someone who claims to have “no particular knowledge of or connection with MQA” you seem to be awfully concerned with those who examine and critique it.

 

For those who feel the need to jump in and tell me I’m off the mark, read this particular line carefully and actually think for a minute, and then conclude.  It should be clear.

 

“I’m sure you wouldn't want anyone to think, mistakenly, that  you only came  onto this site to slag  off MQA.”

 

You are a fool wrapped up in your little boys' war about an audio format.

 

You joined in July of this year, have posted 19 times, all but 3 in criticism of MQA and you think my activity is suspicious!

By contrast I joined in 2010, have over a 1000 posts, the vast majority having nothing to do with MQA

 

I've noticed a trend for new members to join in the last 18 months who post promiscuously in criticism of MQA but otherwise show little interest in Computer Audio or participating more generally in this community.  I actually care about this site as a community for the positive advancement of Computer Audio, rather than to serve personal agendas and vendettas, so I find this development concerning.

 

But as you care so much about bona fides:

 

1. I have never worked for in any capacity, nor had any form of business or professional relationship with any individual or organisation involved in any way with the recorded music or audio industries or related journalism;

 

2. 1. I do not know, socially, anyone involved in any way with the recorded music or audio industries or related  journalism;

 

3. I don't stream music, don't own a MQA compatible  DAC (despite spending over $2k on a DAC in the last month), or any MQA downloads.  I have never heard MQA replay.

 

As a challenge to you, Rt66indierock and anyone else joining in the last  18 months and posting mainly in criticism of MQA, can I respectfully ask you to confirm the same?  

 

If you are not prepared to confirm #1 then you should be making your connection to the industry clear on this site, so we can understand where you are coming from, and of course using your real name.

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Yes, the MQA decoder can be disabled in the menu. With that setting, MQA files are played without decoding, as they would be on any non-MQA DAC. This is what I call completely disabled.

 

Do you expect people to delve into the menus and change this setting depending on what they happen to be playing?

 

This is a real issue with the Mytek Brooklyn. When MQA is not disabled, it sounds worse than an Asus Essence STX II card.
Even tried to improve the Mytek with a linear supply, but nothing could cure the sound except disabling MQA.

The older mytek dac's including Stereo 192 and Manhattan mk1 don't suffer from these issues.

I personally know one distributor who has both the Manhattan mk1 and mk2 and returned mk2 as it sounded harsh and digital. So he favors the mk1, a product not touched by Bob Stuart thus not crippled. We had the mk2 on a trade show and everybody was complaining about the unnatural sound. Last year we had the same system with mk1 and it won best of show in Brussels. Day 2 we removed the mk2 and put a 7k € DAC from a competitor in the system, and nobody complained.

With another manufacturer who recently added MQA, it will be an optional board. Don't want MQA? Don't order it with the board. Without MQA the input & output I2S lines which are going to the MQA module, are bypassed by jumpers.

So MQA can't mess with his DAC design. I explicitly asked this manufacturer to guarantee MQA would not touch his existing products.

This is a major issue with those brands now bringing out MQA versions of existing products: they risk sounding worse when non-MQA material is played. A conspiracy theory: to make the difference with MQA bigger. Supporting evidence: the patent has deliberate crippling mentioned:

https://www.google.com/patents/US20160005411

 

If MQA is the new world order of streaming, they sure must want to make non-MQA worse.

[Shadders]

32 minutes ago, Norton said:

 

You are a fool wrapped up in your little boys' war about an audio format.

 

You joined in July of this year, have posted 19 times, all but 3 in criticism of MQA and you think my activity is suspicious!

By contrast I joined in 2010, have over a 1000 posts, the vast majority having nothing to do with MQA

 

I've noticed a trend for new members to join in the last 18 months who post promiscuously in criticism of MQA but otherwise show little interest in Computer Audio or participating more generally in this community.  I actually care about this site as a community for the positive advancement of Computer Audio, rather than to serve personal agendas and vendettas, so I find this development concerning.

 

But as you care so much about bona fides:

 

1. I have never worked for in any capacity, nor had any form of business or professional relationship with any individual or organisation involved in any way with the recorded music or audio industries or related journalism;

 

2. 1. I do not know, socially, anyone involved in any way with the recorded music or audio industries or related  journalism;

 

3. I don't stream music, don't own a MQA compatible  DAC (despite spending over $2k on a DAC in the last month), or any MQA downloads.  I have never heard MQA replay.

 

As a challenge to you, Rt66indierock and anyone else joining in the last  18 months and posting mainly in criticism of MQA, can I respectfully ask you to confirm the same?  

 

If you are not prepared to confirm #1 then you should be making your connection to the industry clear on this site, so we can understand where you are coming from, and of course using your real name.

Hi,

I can confirm that as per your answers to 1, 2, 3, that i do not work in the audio industry etc., nor have i heard MQA.

 

For me, i was expecting MQA to be a solution to a known current problem in audio (as of 2014 when first reported), but the revelation is that it is a scam. I am very disappointed, that Meridian has produced such a format. I expected more of such a well regarded British audio engineering company.

 

I use this site to learn about MQA, and the capability of the people posting here greatly exceeds any other hifi site i have visited, and it seems from the analysis of said people, MQA claims cannot be trusted. I have read some other statements such as from the Benchmark, Linn etc., and from that i formed a basic understanding of both technically and strategically of what MQA is. I then joined this site to further my engineering knowledge regarding MQA, which helps my interest in DSP.

 

I welcome all views, although i may disagree in some areas, we all have a voice and a new slant on what MQA could mean for the audio industry and consumers.

 

I have not read any negative reviews of MQA in the hifi press, even though i subscribe to a few magazines in the UK. The lack of critical analysis by such publications is of a concern. I expect more from such publications.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[Norton]

42 minutes ago, Shadders said:

 

For me, i was expecting MQA to be a solution to a known current problem in audio (as of 2014 when first reported), but the revelation is that it is a scam. I am very disappointed, that Meridian has produced such a format. I expected more of such a well regarded British audio engineering company.

 

 

 

People may disagree as to the merits of MQA, but only a very few would actually call it a scam, which I interpret to mean a deliberate act of criminal deception.(I'm sure though one or two will be along to that effect shortly) 

 

I'm interested though that you condemn it so strongly seemingly based purely on what you have read on this site, without even hearing it.  That just confirms my concerns about the uses to which this site is now being applied.  I've never heard it, but I note that at least some who have seem to  think it has some merit.

 

If it interests you, why not listen and then come back with your impressions?

[Norton]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

 

Do you expect people to delve into the menus and change this setting depending on what they happen to be playing?

 

Is that such a big deal, really?  Every DAC  I've owned in recent years has required me to go into a menu to change input, filter etc. It's hardly laying the foundation  of world audio domination.

[Shadders]

40 minutes ago, Norton said:

 

People may disagree as to the merits of MQA, but only a very few would actually call it a scam, which I interpret to mean a deliberate act of criminal deception.(I'm sure though one or two will be along to that effect shortly) 

 

I'm interested though that you condemn it so strongly seemingly based purely on what you have read on this site, without even hearing it.  That just confirms my concerns about the uses to which this site is now being applied.  I've never heard it, but I note that at least some who have seem to  think it has some merit.

 

If it interests you, why not listen and then come back with your impressions?

Hi,

Any entity that states falsehoods with regards to the system they have created, with a view to extract money from every part of the audio chain, is a scammer.

The engineering analysis by people on this site shows that MQA claims are false. Try to focus on the engineering analysis and conclusion, rather than your disagreement with the analysis without countering the engineering conclusions. If you do not agree with the analysis, provide your own which confirms MQA is correct.

Does the problem that MQA states that is solved, actually exist ?. The analysis in these threads shows that it does not exist with current recording technology.

 

What about old recordings - they state that they correct the "temporal blur". Temporal blur is dispersion (an engineering term). Dispersion occurs on transmission lines - due to the different frequencies either being attenuated or delayed compared to other frequencies. A perfect rectangular pulse will be stretched, and rounded off. You can never recover the perfect pulse - only approximate it with or without the addition of "guessed" higher frequency information - it will still have curved edges etc. So how can MQA recover the temporal blur in audio, if every track that makes up a song undergoes different temporal blurs ? It cannot. Maybe, the added information is harmonics as per Brian Lucey statement that harmonics exist in MQA tracks ?. We will never know due to the NDA. Maybe this is why people like it - even order harmonics.

 

Then there are the aliasing filters - very poor design.

 

The disagreement with MQA is simply engineering analysis - so i do not see why it is an issue for you. This site is a forum - people are using it exactly the way it was intended to be used. Again, if you disagree with the points, engineering or otherwise, then provide your alternative analysis.

 

For your last statement - i am interested in the technical analysis - so hearing MQA is not something i am interested in. If you can follow the engineering arguments, you will understand how pernicious MQA is.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[FredericV]

On 12/29/2017 at 1:50 AM, Rt66indierock said:

 

I'm looking at marketing literature and noticing the MQA is moved down the marketing points. Meridian seems to going back to their other filters in their marketing it is noticeable in Europe especially in home theater where MQA has made a big push in the United States. 

While going through the ISE 2018 brochures, I looked into the "ISE2018 Education Schedule Professional Development" catalog which lists all the training sessions you can follow at ISE. These are organised by Cedia and Avixa.

There's a CEDIA session by Meridian which takes 90 minutes and costs 140 € for non-members non-early bird, and members early bird signup still pay 75 €.

 

To my big surprise, also no word about MQA in Tuesday's session Feb 6th. The speaker is a sales consultant for Meridian.

"This course will educate attendees on the difference between standard and high resolution audio, the available audio formats, sources, and the home technology demands in using them".

 

[crenca]

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38064-mqa-a-clever-stealth-drm-trojan/

[Norton]

3 hours ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

Any entity that states falsehoods with regards to the system they have created, with a view to extract money from every part of the audio chain, is a scammer.

The engineering analysis by people on this site shows that MQA claims are false. Try to focus on the engineering analysis and conclusion, rather than your disagreement with the analysis without countering the engineering conclusions. If you do not agree with the analysis, provide your own which confirms MQA is correct.

Does the problem that MQA states that is solved, actually exist ?. The analysis in these threads shows that it does not exist with current recording technology.

 

What about old recordings - they state that they correct the "temporal blur". Temporal blur is dispersion (an engineering term). Dispersion occurs on transmission lines - due to the different frequencies either being attenuated or delayed compared to other frequencies. A perfect rectangular pulse will be stretched, and rounded off. You can never recover the perfect pulse - only approximate it with or without the addition of "guessed" higher frequency information - it will still have curved edges etc. So how can MQA recover the temporal blur in audio, if every track that makes up a song undergoes different temporal blurs ? It cannot. Maybe, the added information is harmonics as per Brian Lucey statement that harmonics exist in MQA tracks ?. We will never know due to the NDA. Maybe this is why people like it - even order harmonics.

 

Then there are the aliasing filters - very poor design.

 

The disagreement with MQA is simply engineering analysis - so i do not see why it is an issue for you. This site is a forum - people are using it exactly the way it was intended to be used. Again, if you disagree with the points, engineering or otherwise, then provide your alternative analysis.

 

For your last statement - i am interested in the technical analysis - so hearing MQA is not something i am interested in. If you can follow the engineering arguments, you will understand how pernicious MQA is.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

As I say, I'm not particularly  interested in MQA.    You indicated however that you were interested in MQA, until apparently you read the comments on this site.  I think that's sad.  If it was me I'd certainly take these comments on board, but make my own mind up by listening, which is after all, the object of audio.

[Shadders]

20 minutes ago, Norton said:

As I say, I'm not particularly  interested in MQA.    You indicated however that you were interested in MQA, until apparently you read the comments on this site.  I think that's sad.  If it was me I'd certainly take these comments on board, but make my own mind up by listening, which is after all, the object of audio.

Hi,

I stated that i am only interested in MQA technical aspects, and was aware that it was not what it purported to be before i visited this site, but visited this site to gain extra technical information.

As an example, if something sounds great - has even order harmonics added, implements some extra phase processing similar to QSound to give the illusion of 3D, wide soundstage etc., then i would want to know that all i am hearing is an effect, and not the claimed "as the mastering/recording engineer/artist heard it".

Think about it, MQA claims lossless, yet offers less than 16bit or less than 24bit presentations. How can this be if it is lossless. So it has to be lossy, contrary to the MQA claims. This is simple logic. So how can it be what the mastering/recording engineer/artist heard, if it is lossy ?

Too many contradictions and false statements.

Regards,

Shadders.

[RichardSF]

9 hours ago, Shadders said:

Think about it, MQA claims lossless, yet offers less than 16bit or less than 24bit presentations. How can this be if it is lossless. So it has to be lossy, contrary to the MQA claims.

 

MQA does not claim to be lossless. When questioned about it, Bob Stuart dances around and tries to deflect the question by offering an "alternative meaning" for the word.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/ca/ca-academy/A-Comprehensive-Q-A-With-MQA-s-Bob-Stuart/

(scroll down and search for "LOSSLESSNESS")

 

[Shadders]

3 hours ago, RichardSF said:

 

MQA does not claim to be lossless. When questioned about it, Bob Stuart dances around and tries to deflect the question by offering an "alternative meaning" for the word.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/ca/ca-academy/A-Comprehensive-Q-A-With-MQA-s-Bob-Stuart/

(scroll down and search for "LOSSLESSNESS")

 

Hi,

If you check the MQA web site, it never discusses whether the codec or lossy or not (i could not find it).

What it does state is "MP3 files deliver just 10% of the original studio recording. MQA captures 100% of the performance".

It is a play on words leading you to believe that it is lossless.

Regards,

Shadders.

[Miska]

We have all heard the "lossless from human perception point of view" claim in context of MP3 and AAC encoding...

 

To me, the sound is not lossless, when I compare to the original hires.

 

Now the funny part with MQA is the difficulty it creates for device manufacturers because the decoder has a delay in detecting the MQA encoded content which in turn creates extra difficulty dealing with switching between MQA setup and non-MQA setup regarding digital filters and playback pipeline. This is especially clear from Stereophile's January issue in test of Aurender A10, where everything always goes through MQA code, including their filter to avoid nasty effects when switching between the configurations during playback:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/aurender-a10-network-music-playerserver-measurements

Which in turn results in bad technical performance due to the MQA's filter...

 

While Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital does switch between the configurations when MQA decoder detects MQA/non-MQA stream and has the funny side-effects as a result. Elsewhere people seem to be complaining about this.

 

So using MQA-equipped hardware is not so rosy, except when you use those in DSD-mode where the MQA things are bypassed because MQA doesn't understand about DSD...

[Miska]

7 minutes ago, Shadders said:

If you check the MQA web site, it never discusses whether the codec or lossy or not (i could not find it).

What it does state is "MP3 files deliver just 10% of the original studio recording. MQA captures 100% of the performance".

It is a play on words leading you to believe that it is lossless.

 

It would be interesting to see the mathematical formula that is used as a basis for those numbers.

 

[mansr]

13 minutes ago, Shadders said:

If you check the MQA web site, it never discusses whether the codec or lossy or not (i could not find it).

The word "lossless" was used by Stuart himself until about a year ago. I suspect they switched to more oblique language after people started pointing out that it was not, in fact, lossless.

[FredericV]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

Now the funny part with MQA is the difficulty it creates for device manufacturers because the decoder has a delay in detecting the MQA encoded content which in turn creates extra difficulty dealing with switching between MQA setup and non-MQA setup regarding digital filters and playback pipeline. This is especially clear from Stereophile's January issue in test of Aurender A10, where everything always goes through MQA code, including their filter to avoid nasty effects when switching between the configurations during playback:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/aurender-a10-network-music-playerserver-measurements

Which in turn results in bad technical performance due to the MQA's filter...

 

On the Mytek Brooklyn, when seeking inside an MQA file, the MQA light goes out for a fraction of a second before it detects MQA again. As MQA's markers are a repeating pattern as dicovered by @mansr, it indeed needs a small amount of data. Much like video needs keyframes for seeking.

But there are no pops or clicks, but the Brooklyn is always upsampling with MQA's leaky filter unless MQA is completely turned off.

When seeking a lot in random positions with MQA files and switching to the non-MQA version fast, the Brooklyn was at some point crashing and making strange noises. Mytek told me they had a firmware to fix this. I had to power cycle the thing.

This probably explains why there is no change in sound when the dac is still gathering data to enable MQA decoding with MQA files:

- for an MQA file without having enough data to decode MQA, they still use the same leaky upsampling filter
- the undecoded ~ 16 bits of resolution is enough

- so only some extra lossy HF spectrum, dithering and one of the 32 filters is added once MQA decoding kicks in

Long time ago I used to do sox tests where we would downsample 24/96 to 16/44.1 and upsample it again to 24/96 via foobar, and I could change the preset in realtime. Nobody could actually notice when I changed the DSP recipes in realtime. There were no pops or clicks. This was on a very expensive vitus set with a the time ceramic Marten speakers.

So when playing an MQA file, the first fraction of the song is the non-MQA version.

I wonder how non-overscampling DAC's with R2R like Metrum and MSB implement this change. I would not want my R2R dac to always use MQA's leaky upsampling filtern and I want to be sure it can be turned of.

The selling feature of R2R is that no upsampling or oversampling is active. But when MQA infects these dacs, what happens?

 

Quote

While Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital does switch between the configurations when MQA decoder detects MQA/non-MQA stream and has the funny side-effects as a result. Elsewhere people seem to be complaining about this.

 

So using MQA-equipped hardware is not so rosy, except when you use those in DSD-mode where the MQA things are bypassed because MQA doesn't understand about DSD...

Can you elaborate on the side effects? Do they hear pops and clicks?

[Miska]

55 minutes ago, FredericV said:

But there are no pops or clicks, but the Brooklyn is always upsampling with MQA's leaky filter unless MQA is completely turned off.

 

That's the same with Aurender, although it seemingly cannot be turned off... They do that to avoid the gaps/pops when switching filters, which happens a little after the track has started. With software decoding such behavior is easier to avoid. But MQA specifically doesn't seem to like software decoding, they can sell more licenses with hardware approach.

 

I've also seens some manufacturer comments that MQA's code is bad quality, causing some extra trouble.

 

55 minutes ago, FredericV said:

Can you elaborate on the side effects? Do they hear pops and clicks?

 

There's a short pause/snap when the DAC switches to/from MQA decoding.

[FredericV]

42 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

That's the same with Aurender, although it seemingly cannot be turned off... They do that to avoid the gaps/pops when switching filters, which happens a little after the track has started. With software decoding such behavior is easier to avoid. But MQA specifically doesn't seem to like software decoding, they can sell more licenses with hardware approach.

 

Software upsampling if ever enabled in Aurender, would mainly be based on the available resampling libraries supported by the 6 years old MPD 0.17.0 version as used, which is based on libsamplerate (= secret rabbit code). The highest quality that libsamplerate provides does not fly with older atom / celeron CPU's as used inside my N100H. So "best sinc" is impossible on these low power platforms.

MPD 0.19 offers to use the more efficient sox library, but MPD 0.19 is C++ based so backporting those changes to 0.17 will be a pain. SOX can also do minimum phase and leaky filters.

So it makes sense that they leave this to the DAC in the A10.

 

Quote

 

I've also seens some manufacturer comments that MQA's code is bad quality, causing some extra trouble.

That would not surprise me.
 

Quote

 

There's a short pause/snap when the DAC switches to/from MQA decoding.

 

Good to know. The alternative is to always upsample, but then regular PCM is also going through the leaky mqa upsample filter.

So there is no win-win implementation.

[Rt66indierock]

On 12/29/2017 at 11:08 PM, Norton said:

 

You joined this site in August 2016 and have already amassed 549 posts, by a rough estimate over 80% of which concern  MQA.  I may be wrong, but I've never noticed you seeking or offering advice or opinions  on OSs, replay software, servers, DACs etc like other members do, or making much contribution  to the music threads for example.  But you have created more than one overtly negative thread about MQA, including the offer of cash to other members to debunk articles about MQA prior to publication.

 

Your posts frequently include quite deliberate hints at possible industry connections, yet you always stop short of fully explaining these.  To quote just the most recent example, I would have thought that someone whose "contributions to computer audio are hidden behind NDAs" should, under rules made clear by Chris in other cases, declare their connection to the industry and their true identity.  Or maybe you're just an ordinary joe with delusions of grandeur: " When we get past MQA you will see a positive thing I'm doing for the audio industry."?

 

You are clearly on an anti-MQA crusade, constantly trying to make even the most tangental facts fit your chosen  narrative.  That in itself is OK (I have no particular knowledge of or connection with MQA),  but for me your  contributions to this site would be better received if I felt more certain as to your relationship to the industry and ultimate motivation.

 

 

 

 

 

Norton,

In your country I would be the equivalent of the managing partner of a chartered accounting firm. My final career jump caused me to move about 2,500 miles west. I currently derive no revenue from high end audio, studios, and less than 1% from artists which are mostly classical. When I was in Washington DC we had artists, studios and computer industry people and companies as clients. I grew up in the Silicon Forest and signed my first NDA when I was nineteen in the broadcasting industry and many more in the computer industry after that partly because I’m good at testing things.

 

I didn’t know a single person alive in high end audio until T.H.E. Show in Irvine California in the middle of 2016. I know a lot people now and casually interact with a larger number of people. But those aren’t industry connections until I get revenue from them.

 

I have no delusions grandeur I heard eight people say similar things about how to market audio to millennials and I’m going to help organize these thoughts. Something that is a lot easier to do when you are not affiliated with any companies considered high end audio vendors.

 

Ultimate motivation is simple. MQA does not and will not put money in artists and studios pockets so the format has no value.

[Norton]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Norton,

In your country I would be the equivalent of the managing partner of a chartered accounting firm. My final career jump caused me to move about 2,500 miles west. I currently derive no revenue from high end audio, studios, and less than 1% from artists which are mostly classical. When I was in Washington DC we had artists, studios and computer industry people and companies as clients. I grew up in the Silicon Forest and signed my first NDA when I was nineteen in the broadcasting industry and many more in the computer industry after that partly because I’m good at testing things.

 

I didn’t know a single person alive in high end audio until T.H.E. Show in Irvine California in the middle of 2016. I know a lot people now and casually interact with a larger number of people. But those aren’t industry connections until I get revenue from them.

 

I have no delusions grandeur I heard eight people say similar things about how to market audio to millennials and I’m going to help organize these thoughts. Something that is a lot easier to do when you are not affiliated with any companies considered high end audio vendors.

 

Ultimate motivation is simple. MQA does not and will not put money in artists and studios pockets so the format has no value.

 

Thankyou for this  full and frank account. I genuinely appreciate it and will consider your posts in a more positive light as a result.  

 

I had already surmised that your industry connections were most likely to centre on financial matters surrounding artists and studios; but noting your last sentence, is this the full extent of  your motivation for  campaigning against MQA?  I'd feel even more well disposed to your arguments if I felt they were also being made with the audiophile interest at heart.

[synn]

On 12/21/2017 at 8:39 PM, Ralf11 said:

 

Were the 3 tracks all from the same 'album'?

 

It's possible that some other album sounds better with MQA

 

but...  why bother is the issue

 

 

I had mentioned previously that it was the same demo track from the 2L downloads .

[ARQuint]

On 12/29/2017 at 4:00 PM, Rt66indierock said:

 

There was an update to the A-10 on December 14. My sonic evaluation was with the latest update.

 

No telling I haven't talked with Andrew about it.

 

Why can't both TAS and Stereophile be wrong?

 

The Aurender Conductor software update of mid-December (2.9.1) has a "switch" to disable the upsampling filter that's required to correctly render MQA  content. Below is what the option in the Aurender settings looks like.

 

Aurender told me that they did listening tests and felt that the filter benefited all content—having it did not represent a mistake or, to use their word when I last communicated with the company, a "shortcoming". As I see it, the idea that MQA-decoded files were given an artificial advantage because they were compared to non-MQA files that had been sullied by the application of the upsampling filter doesn't hold up. It's farfetched to believe that Aurender would intentionally degrade the sound of non-MQA content to give MQA a leg up—they know that the great bulk of listening that an A10 owner will be doing will be to non-MQA files.

 

Still, in response to the concerns raised by JA's reports and others, the  2.9.1 Conductor software update allows the upsampling filter to be defeated. I think this was a sensible decision. The A10's MQA-decoding capability is really not a critical feature of this excellent product and won't be a make-or-break factor in a consumer's decision to purchase one.

 

Thank you for the chance to comment on this confusing issue.

 

Andrew Quint

Senior Writer

The Absolute Sound

[Shadders]

38 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

 

The Aurender Conductor software update of mid-December (2.9.1) has a "switch" to disable the upsampling filter that's required to correctly render MQA  content. Below is what the option in the Aurender settings looks like.

 

Aurender told me that they did listening tests and felt that the filter benefited all content—having it did not represent a mistake or, to use their word when I last communicated with the company, a "shortcoming". As I see it, the idea that MQA-decoded files were given an artificial advantage because they were compared to non-MQA files that had been sullied by the application of the upsampling filter doesn't hold up. It's farfetched to believe that Aurender would intentionally degrade the sound of non-MQA content to give MQA a leg up—they know that the great bulk of listening that an A10 owner will be doing will be to non-MQA files.

 

Still, in response to the concerns raised by JA's reports and others, the  2.9.1 Conductor software update allows the upsampling filter to be defeated. I think this was a sensible decision. The A10's MQA-decoding capability is really not a critical feature of this excellent product and won't be a make-or-break factor in a consumer's decision to purchase one.

 

Thank you for the chance to comment on this confusing issue.

 

Andrew Quint

Senior Writer

The Absolute Sound

Hi,

Is this not about the owner of the equipment having a "choice" ?

Surely it is up to the owner/user of the equipment to decide that they do, or do not want the MQA filters in the path on non-MQA material.

Or, alternatively, maybe the customer prefers to NOT have the MQA filter in the path permanently, as this is subjective, and Aurender should not be deciding for the customer what is their preferred subjective sound.

Regards,

Shadders.

[ARQuint]

Agreed. I do think Aurender did the right thing in their software update. An expensive component, especially one in this category of products, ought to offer as much flexibility to the listener as possible and, to their credit, the company recognized this.