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MQA is Vaporware


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53 minutes ago, Currawong said:

 

Myself, and others, have been saying this for years. I think this is where much of the problem lies. If the baseline quality had been this to begin with, I reckon most of the arguments over digital wouldn't have come about in the first place.

 

 

"According to legendary musician and record producer Don Was, now president of Blue Note Records, "what record producers and artists intend for the audience to hear is the first commercially released issue—not some hypothetical master tape or enhanced later version. By that sensible measure, every remastering, reissue, or change in format—whether from 78 to 331?3rpm, mono to stereo, LP to CD, CD to hi-rez, or hi-rez to MQA—is simply a lower-fidelity interpretation of the original. That's why I've never felt comfortable with remasterings."

 

To his arguable discredit, he does make everything he reviews sound like the second coming, and does write in the favour of whatever he is reviewing.  I haven't read his Mytek review, but I am more inclined to think, since I'm a reviewer, they are more afraid of alienating subscribers who DO think MQA is wonderful and complain if they aren't catered to.  If they were really so in bed with manufacturers, they surely wouldn't measure products, especially given that they reveal how "fundamentally broken" NOS DACs are.

 

Maybe their mistake was to take BS at his word (bad pun intended), and now it's like the man who buys a pristine-looking second-hand car, assured by the  supposedly trustworthy salesman that it is in perfect condition, has a crash, and all the bog filler falls out from where the previous owner had done the same thing....

Thanks for that except. I don't really see that as a ding against MQA>

 

And quite honestly that quote from Don Was is total bullshit. i went to school with two musicians who ended up getting signed to major labels. They were thrilled with the final mixes of their work, and were utterly horrified when they heard the mastering done by a big time mastering engineer. They had no recourse as the contracts gave the labels final say in the "first commercially released issue."

 

And the band Maroon 5 complained bitterly about their second album which they claim did not reflect the intention of their mix and against got hosed by the contract. And by the way the producers in all 3 cases also hated the "first commercially available issue".

 

So in fact, there IS a" hypothetical master tape" the artist approved.

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2 minutes ago, Jud said:

My point about "Really? Photos?" is that I'm much less concerned about appearance than about reviewers having some minimal amount of technical chops, or the writing undergoing a technical review before publication.  There's a dearth, at least in what I've seen on newsstands, of any discussion of MQA at the technical level on occasion seen in this forum, and that's a pity.

 

And that's of course what I (agreeing with @John Dyson and others) think is where this thread and others do their best work, when we're given technical info lacking in the magazines. Sniping I can find anywhere; I'm here to learn.

Agree completely. Debating about gear and room photos is too much of a tangent.😎

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10 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

Hands down winner for post of the day!

 

 

You mean it was supposed to receive the white glove treatment, but instead someone put it through the hamburger batch processor in the cloud, and Lee's snazzy "machine learning" didn't yield a perfectly de-blurred sonic result with all of the ADC's flaws now fully compensated for?

Yes, and any one care to take bets whether Gilles Martin "authenticated" MQA slop processing on his 2018 mix and master? 

 

I would say there is an overwhelming chance he had no clue.  In his mind, the Blu-Ray audio and HD downloads both @ 24/96 are the definitive approved versions.

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