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MQA is Vaporware


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8 hours ago, Confused said:

These are fine, as long as you do not try to fold and unfold them three times.

 You will end up lighting them more than once. I mean THC at 37%, 4 puffs and you are out. Maybe mQa will ship a case with every mQa DAC. It might be the only way to really enjoy it.

Current:  Daphile on an AMD A10-9500 with 16 GB RAM

DAC - TEAC UD-501 DAC 

Pre-amp - Rotel RC-1590

Amplification - Benchmark AHB2 amplifier

Speakers - Revel M126Be with 2 REL 7/ti subwoofers

Cables - Tara Labs RSC Reference and Blue Jean Cable Balanced Interconnects

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8 hours ago, JoshM said:

After some experimenting, I found that the MQA dropouts occurred because I have an Ideon USB isolator between my Mac Mini and DACs. When I removed the isolator, the dropouts stopped.

 

Sorry, I think this says more about USB "isolators" than it does about MQA. However, at least USB gadgets are easy to avoid and don't try to extract pennies from every musical transaction.

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3 minutes ago, Daccord said:

 

Sorry, I think this says more about USB "isolators" than it does about MQA. However, at least USB gadgets are easy to avoid and don't try to extract pennies from every musical transaction.

But if everything accept MQA works through the isolator, that suggests to me that MQA and the isolator don't mix. Not sure which one to blame, but I won't make assumptions or judgements. 

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

But if everything accept MQA works through the isolator, that suggests to me that MQA and the isolator don't mix. Not sure which one to blame, but I won't make assumptions or judgements. 


Propably the isolator is not fully compliant with USB standards (or the combination of the isolator with his cables) and is messing with bits which will confuse the mQa decoder.

I once had something very similar with an iFI USB power plant and a dual USB cable from another brand: with regular PCM there would be not so subtle dropouts, but with their own dual cable it would not occur.

From this perspective mQa works as designed. I actually keep a Mytek in stock for this purpose. It's an easy tool to visually confirm bitperfect output of music servers.

Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist

Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing.

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10 hours ago, Mayfair said:

I was looking forward to Nina Simone: The Montreux Years, too.  Because of what I think is its uncertain provenance and uncertain authenticity as a unMQA-ed FLAC download, (who said MQA is irony-proof?), I looked elsewhere and discovered that Qobuz has the July 1976 Montreux concert (plus a couple of bonus highlights from her July 1987 Montreux concert) as a 16-bit 44.1 kHz download released in 2011. 

https://www.qobuz.com/fr-fr/album/live-at-montreux-1976-nina-simone/yfu4dl6vmqw4a

 

So I bought it.  It's not only a great concert, it also sounds great IMHO.

 

Qobuz does not seem to have any MQA signalling, I tested it yesterday 

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1 hour ago, GoldenOne said:

Just got Topping D90 and D90SE in to test, both of them MQA versions.

On D90 it is using the MQA renderer upsampling filter for all content. Filter selection does nothing.....

image.thumb.png.688b8dd55dacb928779eeae5004c49d5.png

Will check D90SE in a sec

A shocking revelation but it doesn’t surprise me their are quite a few ESS chipset DAC’s that possibly do this, I have a Project S2 ESS DAC which was confirmed by the developer switches out when non MQA sources are sent infact it’s noticeable in the millisecond gap you can here between tracks when they are mixed in playlists 

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1 hour ago, GoldenOne said:

Update: D90SE does not exhibit the same behaviour (I imagine because ESS' MQA integration allows for getting around the gapless issue but just a guess)

VIdeo of D90 issue:
 

 

 

My recollection is that unless the DAC's particular firmware specifically permits, once MQA filtering has been used for any track in a listening session, it will be used for all further tracks in that session, no matter what the listener selects.  See if what you're finding with the D90 at least might be due to this "precedence effect."

 

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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3 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

Just got Topping D90 and D90SE in to test, both of them MQA versions.

On D90 it is using the MQA renderer upsampling filter for all content. Filter selection does nothing.....

image.thumb.png.688b8dd55dacb928779eeae5004c49d5.png

Will check D90SE in a sec


Does this mean the D90 is broken (by design) from a technical point of view?

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38 minutes ago, GoldenOne said:

Depends how you'd define 'broken'.
Many would argue that the MQA renderer filter is problematic.

But there is no 'perfect' filter.

The main issue is that there is no choice to opt out of the MQA filter, or to use a proper filter that actually has decent attenuation by 22.05khz, and the device is presented as if you do have that option, even though you do not.


If the D90 applies a special filter (mqa) for material which is conventional lpcm, the design is flawed, broken. Should the panther be playing golf or be headless?

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2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

My recollection is that unless the DAC's particular firmware specifically permits, once MQA filtering has been used for any track in a listening session, it will be used for all further tracks in that session, no matter what the listener selects.  See if what you're finding with the D90 at least might be due to this "precedence effect."

 


🤮

Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems AudiophileStyleStickerWhite2.0.png AudiophileStyleStickerWhite7.1.4.png

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4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:


🤮

Now think about what that means for the comparative listening sessions where reviewers heard tracks produced for that filtering, then listened to tracks not produced for that filtering, through what they thought were different filters.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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On 6/28/2021 at 12:31 PM, JoshM said:

 

I hope one of our tech sluths can figure out of the Qobuz and HDT files are MQA-free. 
 

This is a release I was really looking forward to…

 

AS I see it, if they mastered (ruined) the entire project with MQA they could then convert it into any format they wanted but the damage would already be done. It could be a FLAC file with no MQA except in the mastering.

No electron left behind.

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1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:


🤮

Oh dear, over done it on the Marijuana Quality Authenticated cakes again?

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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On 6/28/2021 at 9:04 AM, Mayfair said:

Does anyone know whether there is actually a non-MQA version of Nina Simone's Montreux Years?  

 

I captured the output of the Qobuz version of track 1, and it looks like MQA, with a band of noise above 16 kHz, so very possibly not. Ignore the extra at the end of the track, it continued to track 2 before I stopped it.  

 

If they did their "white glove" treatment of it, then it might be ok. 

 

1954824117_ScreenShot2021-07-01at13_12_26.thumb.png.c09bc641c3fd09e0a13ba3d59586fbbd.png

 

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3 hours ago, Currawong said:

 

I captured the output of the Qobuz version of track 1, and it looks like MQA, with a band of noise above 16 kHz, so very possibly not. Ignore the extra at the end of the track, it continued to track 2 before I stopped it.  

 

If they did their "white glove" treatment of it, then it might be ok. 

 

1954824117_ScreenShot2021-07-01at13_12_26.thumb.png.c09bc641c3fd09e0a13ba3d59586fbbd.png

 

Interesting, does anyone have a tidal account to see if their is a true mQa version to stream under its master catergory ? 

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