MQA Blind Test Summary & Summary Comments...

[mansr]

48 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Obviously you aren't a Meridian MQA engineer so you have no idea what MQA does.

Ever heard of something called reverse engineering?

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Let's face facts, straight up: no one is going to stream hi-rez audio on a commercial basis.

Qobuz does.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, GUTB said:

From a subjective listening standpoint, I listened to several MQA products, including the Explorer 2, DFR and Node 2 -- it was only after listening to the Red after it's MQA update and with certain tracks was I shocked by how much better the MQA version was. Just software unfolding didn't make much a difference; it was only after experiencing "real" MQA with tracks that seemed to truly benefit from the process was I able to admit to myself that MQA is real and is worth pursing a central feature of my setup.

You know, we've reverse engineered the "rendering" on the Dragonfly completely. It's simple filters, nothing else.

[mansr]

11 hours ago, jabbr said:

DSD is two things.

1) a data format both SACD ISO and DSF as well as DFF files,  as well as the proprietary SACD format

2) SDM which is the native format of 99% of DAC chips. Streaming DSD, converted from PCM has traction.

 

SACD as a physical format has not gotten traction. MQA, being closed like SACD, is another SACD. Like PCM, DACs will convert MQA streams to SDM and it  is highly unlikely to get traction as a native DAC format.

You are confused.

• DSD: a trademark name for 1-bit digital audio
• SDM: a method for shaping quantisation noise

SDM is not a data format.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, jabbr said:

In in any case the salient point is that MQA is not native, rather converted *by* SDM to the DACs internal format.

MQA is a compressed format that decodes to PCM, just like MP3 and AAC. It doesn't make sense to compare it alongside DSD, PWM, or any other low-level encoding.