Popular Post GUTB Posted December 29, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 29, 2020 10 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said: Well said, either GUTB has poor reading comprehension, or hasn't read much of anything at all, either here or in Archimago's blog which also covered this topic and has never been rebutted in any way. I responded to a comment that nothing MQA claims to do can't be done by a non-proprietary format. You and other responded saying that MQA is lying. I suggest that I'm not the one with a reading comprehension problem. As for Archimago's hobby horse, I'll get around to see what he's been up to. Maybe I'll give him a detailed response and see what he comes up with this time. KeenObserver and MikeyFresh 2 Link to comment
GUTB Posted December 30, 2020 Share Posted December 30, 2020 20 hours ago, firedog said: You are really being funny now, even though I know you don't mean to be. I suggest you view the video of Chris' attempt to make a balanced presentation about MQA in front of an audience. The MQA people and their audio press lackeys simply interrupted, shouted him down, pounded tables, engaged in ad-hominem attacks instead of countering what was being presented. That's what you do when you have an economic motive to protect a product that is based on lies, and can't stand up to any kind of factual analysis/presentation. If you have real confidence in what you are selling, you don't mind the truth. Bob & Co. have been asked for five years in various places to factually counter the technical claims of people such as Archimago, Miska, Mansr, etc. - and have never done so. There's a reason for that - they can't. Auralic - they discovered that an actual MQA license meant MQA interference in the workings of their equipment/ecosystem, and decided to forgo the pleasure. They didn't want MQA dictating to them their customers listening experience. Wow, thanks for posting this. I heard about this event and missed it I didn't know there was a recording. It's funny as soon as Archimago's slide comes up they immediately try to get Chris to admit that Archimago is "just a guy on the Internet". I'll watch the rest of this later. Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted December 30, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 30, 2020 42 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said: Funny? That's not funny, that's a highly defensive and unprofessional reaction, and one that attempts to change the narrative while simultaneously refusing to address the slide presented. A panicked attempt to alter the topic of conversation. They showed their true colors right there. Admit? You make that sound like there was some sort of guilt or wrongdoing. I think you mean they stated something rather obvious, and tried to attach inappropriate conjecture or innuendo as to the actual validity or conclusions that can be drawn. As Chris stated above, notice how they can't or won't address the actual content being presented, no use of actual rebuttal or straight out refuting the verifiable facts. Jbara's behavior is particularly pathetic, he's supposed to be a fucking CEO publicly representing a brand/product? Any CEO I've ever met or observed came far better prepared, and far more informed and thus able to represent their brand or product's efficacy. That's why CEOs tend to be smart and well compensated, they are able to think on the fly and remain professional and composed, grace under pressure. Evidently Jbara's job function is much different, and really just amounts to leveraging his past ties to Warner Music Group. GUTB your playbook with regard to this thread is not dissimilar to that of Lee Scoggins, all this time later, the same BS is getting regurgitated all over again. Even though you wanna be "influencers" have displayed a very weak game, the same themes seem to resurface and the same "change the subject" game plan employed despite the past abject failure of such. Well, Archimago is in fact a guy on the Internet just like you and I. They were attacking his credentials and thereby throw his findings into doubt. It was in fact aggressive and unprofessional. If some guy on the Internet puts out some analysis, the correct strategy is to debunk the work by exposing process flaws and/or comparing it with your own analysis. Then the two parties can go back and forth and generally a conclusion can be reached even if one side refuses to admit defeat. MikeyFresh and botrytis 2 Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted January 1, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 1, 2021 BTW, I posted my latest MQA-CD test in the other thread "favorite MQA albums". botrytis and MikeyFresh 2 Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted January 4, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 4, 2021 How many of you guys tested DXD vs MQA? I noticed that 2L has those in their sample page so I gave them a listen. DXD vs MQA vs MQA-CD. DXD: Exceptionally good sound. Anyone who has DACs which are capable of this sample rate (352/24) should try it. Not many labels, really only a few audiophile labels have the machines for it. MQA: Claimed by 2L on the page to be "original resolution" meaning if that's true it should sound the same as the DXD. MQA-CD: Not claimed to be "original resolution". The difference is that it's MQA in a 44/16 stream. So, first I played the DXD track. As mentioned, exceptionally good. A very open sense of separation and definition of harmonics, ads to the sense of reality. Next up, MQA 44/24, or "original resolution". Oh. Not good! It sounded high-res, but there was definite closing in of the air between instruments, more "flat", harmonics less defined. I was shaking my head. Definitely not "original resolution"... ...but wait, I made a mistake. I had accidently opened the MQA-CD version. They are both labelled the same except for the difference in bit-depth and I had accidently opened 44/16. Okay, let's try 44/24. Alright, this was more like it. In fact, I tried hard to to grasp differences in the sound. The MQA 44/24 "original resolution" I believe has a bit less harmonic resolution which seemed evident on strings and the tapping of drum sticks. It's as if the MQA stripped some of the harmonics as noise. If I wasn't listening critically with my TH900 headphones I'm not sure I'd have picked it up, perhaps as something slightly "off" compared to the DXD. But they really do sound very similar. I'm not sure if there was the "forward" presentation effect present in other MQA albums. Going back to the MQA-CD version (44/16) I was able to validate that yes, there was a definite loss of overall resolution, more akin to what I'd consider 96kHz -- a little bit more open, a little bit more air between instruments compared to CD. So from this experience I don't know if pursuing MQA-CD is worth while if higher resolution versions are available for download. It's still up there with SACD as being the best available physical music format. MikeyFresh and yahooboy 2 Link to comment
GUTB Posted January 5, 2021 Share Posted January 5, 2021 9 hours ago, lucretius said: I downloaded all the 2L test files and set up each performance in Roon like this: I am not able to reliably discern an audible difference among the formats. That’s interesting. To me the difference between MQA and DXD was minor, but the difference between DXD and MQA-CD was pretty significant. My system for this test was my custom audio PC, Mytek Liberty + linear power supply, Mjolnir 2, TH900 with balanced cables. What were you listening with? Link to comment
GUTB Posted January 6, 2021 Share Posted January 6, 2021 11 hours ago, lucretius said: @GUTB Re the Joseph Haydn; String Quartet In D -- DXD vs MQA-CD. Still not hearing a difference. If you are hearing a difference with this performance or others from the test bench, if you could, would you please note the time stamp where such differences are obvious and I will try to zero in on that. Thanks. Right from the beginning you should hear a greater dynamic presence or "pop" from the piano on the DXD. Drumstick taps sound more "present", there's an overall sense of dullness in the MQA-CD vs DXD. Pay attention to the bass starting at 1:55 in the DXD you should hear deeper into it making it seem more present / real. Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted January 14, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 14, 2021 Just a note. I listened to the Schiit live Q&A session today and heard that the new Schiit CD transport is going to have a USB output capable of connecting to USB DACs. That's big, it's the only transport capable AFAIK that can do this, and there's no digital interface that I know of that offers SPDIF-to-USB functionality. That means MQA-CD is opened up to a much larger pool of MQA DACs. bambadoo, MikeyFresh, lucretius and 3 others 6 Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted January 14, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 14, 2021 2 hours ago, KeenObserver said: That is truly a monumental event in world history! That is truly a paradigm shift of unspeakable magnitude! The world now has access to 13 bit CD's! High resolution CDs. MikeyFresh, Teresa and botrytis 2 1 Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted February 6, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted February 6, 2021 So, ESS released a new chip a little while ago, the 9068AS. This part is unique as it is the first DS-style DAC chip which has MQA unfolding built into the silicon. The Gustard DAC-X16 was the first product on the market to use this chip for $500 -- so I just had to pick one up. After a day of burn-in I sat down to test it out...and found that is wasn't detecting MQA-CD from the coax input. Reading the spec sheet for the chip it says that it unfolds "decoded MQA streams"...meaning that it doesn't decode them. It needs a first decode stage first, and as usual with these Chinese DACs that's on the copy-pasted XMOS controller. Very disappointing, I was hoping this would be a good alternative for getting MQA on all the inputs except for a few products that do it right like Mytek DACs. Anyway, maybe the on-silicon unfolding performs substantially better than doing it externally off-die? I'll have to test this, stay tuned for my findings. yahooboy and MikeyFresh 2 Link to comment
GUTB Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 7 hours ago, JoshM said: I’m not sure whether here or the comments on @Archimago’s article is the best place to ask this, but is there a definitive answer on if and how resolution is compromised on MQA CDs if one doesn’t allow any “unfolding”? My understanding from the rest of this thread is that MQA-CDs are effectively 15/44.1, with that last bit being used for the MQA gobbledygook. So if one doesn’t unfold it, is the compromise just the loss of potential dynamic range by sacrificing the 16th bit? Or is the MQA encoding process doing some deeper damage? I ask because I’m disturbed that quite a few very good masterings now exist only on MQA-CDs. In the past, I suspect they would’ve been issued in dual Redbook/SACD formats. It's not gobbledygook but rather a functional compression scheme. From my own testing MQA-CDs played back in a non-MQA system are indistinguishable from regular CDs (using the MQA test CDs) in casual listening. I haven't performed a detailed listening comparison so there may be mild artifacts. I'm actually not sure if it's just the least significant bit dedicated to MQA data. Using a MQA-CD capable system (in my case, a Mytek Liberty and a regular CD transport connected via SPDIF) the quality improvement is on the level of a 96 kHz master, and significantly inferior to high-rate DSD and DXD masters. Bear in mind that all (most?) of these MQA-CDs are coming out of Japan and being mastered onto UHQCD media. In testing UHQCD (again using a sampler pack to compare UHQCD vs regular CD with the same tracks) I found there was a mild but noticeable improvement to lower frequency definition, something you normally don't get with MQA so it's not as simple as saying MQA-CD is just like a 96 kHz PCM or a low-rate DSD (SACD). It's been a long time since I listened to SACD so I can't honestly say that MQA-CD is the best physical digital format currently. R1200CL and yahooboy 1 1 Link to comment
GUTB Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 14 minutes ago, botrytis said: I have found the UHQCD's to be hit and miss really. And why put a lossy compression up against CD. If I had wanted a lossy system, instead of CD's, well MP3 is the way to go AND I don't have to have specialized software/hardware for it. Do you see how stupid the idea is? It's true that MQA is lossy, but it seems that they've successfully identified what can be lost and still maintain high resolution audio. With MQA-CD specifically there does appear to be a loss of definition vs higher bitrate masters (176-384), so if it's a choice between MQA-CD and DXD or high-rate DSD than MQA-CD would be the last choice. However, high-rate DSD and DXD (or 176-192) don't have physical media (I wonder why?). So if you want physical digital media, and a lot of audiophiles (especially in Japan) do, there's 2 choices currently: SACD and MQA-CD. SACD isn't lossy, but it's stuck with a lot of noise close to the audio band which requires an aggressive filter. It's not optimal for DSD, which really takes off at DSD-256. With MQA-CD, it seems to result in lossless-like performance up to 96 kHz. I also consider SACD to be somewhere around the 96 kHz level....but DSD isn't directly comparable that way so in some cases it provide great results that can't be matched by any PCM, certainly not on a CD format. Another thing. I'm not really sold on the benifit of the time-domain correction. There is absolutely something happening to the sound which some of you guys say you don't like. Personally I don't mind it, but it doesn't make things sound more analog if I were to compare to my vinyl. So, if it's an analog master than SACD is still probably the best physical format. However. These huge libraries owned by the labels can be batch-converted to MQA, they can be just as easily pumped out in MQA-CD. It's turning out that for many titles on physical media MQA-CD is going to be the only high-res format available. yahooboy 1 Link to comment
GUTB Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 1 minute ago, botrytis said: Sorry, I don't wand BS and company determining FOR ME what is important or not. Until they show HOW they determined what is and is not important, I don't want it. MP3 - one can determine what is being thrown away because the protocol is an open book. With MQA there IS NO TIME CORRECTION. That is one of the big fallacies. If anything it makes it worse. How was it determined that there was no time correction? yahooboy and MikeyFresh 1 1 Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted September 30, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted September 30, 2022 Aren't you guys concerned that you're letting yourselves get robbed from superior audio by continuing to pursue this anti-MQA stance? At this point it seems certain that it's here to stay -- certainly longer than HDCD for example. I haven't been evaluating MQA seriously for over year now since I've been exploring other components but I feel I'm getting ready to come back in. Pierre LeMonf, Currawong, Allan F and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted September 30, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted September 30, 2022 2 hours ago, Rt66indierock said: You should probably go over the the Steve Hoffman forum and join the metldown over Mobile Fidelity. Or get into cassettes. I've questioned the expertise and listening abilty of every person I've met who likes MQA. Maybe someday I can question yours in person too. But for now it is too little too late for your little games. ....what happened with Mobile Fidelity? Rt66indierock and DuckToller 2 Link to comment
GUTB Posted October 2, 2022 Share Posted October 2, 2022 Oh, I really did start page 1000. Maybe you guys should take that as a sign from up on high? I didn't know MoFi got into trouble. Hmm. My commentary: claiming your source is analog when in reality it's digital is simply lying -- false advertising. I do understand why they felt the need to lie; no studio is going to let these precocious masters get worn out doing many plays so MoFi "cheated" and used DSD. The fact is, DSD is just an analog signal being carried in a digital one. If the equipment is good and the engineers are talented, than to me, DSD is essentially no different from the master tape. As long as they are doing their EQs in the analog domain -- or whatever perfect lossless intermediate format these high end mixing boards use -- than it could be said that the end result is analog. All of that context and explanation won't fit into a marketing blurb so they just decided to lie about it. As for MQA-CD I've put that experiment on hold for now. I'm waiting patiently for Schiit's CD transport with it's USB controller. That will open up a huge range of MQA DACs; most MQA DACs use a software decoder installed onto the XMOS USB controller chip -- meaning you'll only get MQA processing on USB. With that opening up you can match it with very high-performance DACs. Link to comment
GUTB Posted October 2, 2022 Share Posted October 2, 2022 13 minutes ago, Confused said: As the artist intended, perhaps? I mean....yes? I assume that, by default, those who put anything other than what the intended into their master recordings. MQA's superior time domain processing. MikeyFresh 1 Link to comment
GUTB Posted April 12, 2023 Share Posted April 12, 2023 ASR is as far away from science as I am from the Moon. Also, it appears that MQA is here to stay. I don't know how Tidal's finances work but they've survived all these years so far. It's become easy to find audiophile albums encoded in MQA. All the big Chinese manufacturers support MQA now. Many of the big Western names -- maybe around half? -- also supports MQA. The biggest DS chip manufacturer, ESS, also have products with MQA built in (ie, 9068, 9280). A big part of MQA's success has to be the Tidal and major publisher deals along with those automated MQA encoding tools. I read that the newer tools utilize AI for automatic encoding. MikeyFresh 1 Link to comment
GUTB Posted April 12, 2023 Share Posted April 12, 2023 2 minutes ago, Archimago said: Really??? You heard today that Tidal's planning to go lossless hi-res soon with no more "unfolding", right? I certainly want Tidal to survive. I won't be holding my breath, but the Tidal comments are at least encouraging so far. I hadn't heard. Certainly interesting I'll be sure to follow developments on that. I'd definitely be interested in testing MQA vs lossless hi-res directly from Tidal. Link to comment
Popular Post GUTB Posted April 16, 2023 Popular Post Share Posted April 16, 2023 Well, it's sad that technology is taking a step back, but ultimately as an audiophile it's acceptable as long as I can get access to the hi-res versions of the huge amount of MQA albums. Will Tidal's new owners be dumping hi-res altogether? Will the labels at least sell their existing MQA libraries via other channels? If Tidal no longer offers hi-res then I'll have to bid them farewell. Thankfully I didn't heavily use Tidal's playlists and I feel sorry for those who curated large MQA playlists. If Tidal can offer all (or most) of the titles in hi-res than I'll stay. But, the main value of the technology to the industry was to deliver hi-res quality in a much lower bandwidth package; if Tidal Master was not financially viable I don't know how delivering FLACs at much higher bandwidth would make sense financially. This is a definite area of concern. The vast majority of modern music is hyper-boosted, compressed garbage anyway regardless of MQA or being hi-res so I shouldn't go off the deep-end here. But still, there were plenty of quality albums being produced NOT from audiophile labels. Even if 96kHz master copies aren't that much better vs 44.1, as audiophiles that small improvement is still desirable. botrytis, Skirmash and MikeyFresh 3 Link to comment
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