Stereophile Series on MQA Technology

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Running damage control already? Life is hard for MQA haters.

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The article is going to explore time domain factors — something the usual compliment of non-audiophiles aren’t equipped to deal with.

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11 minutes ago, #Yoda# said:

@GUTB I cannot understand why you still insist on your once stated opinion about MQA, regarding the evidentiary facts from many independent and professional specialists (not only the view, who are posting here). Some of them are presumably better equipped with analyzing tools than your reviewer or your editorial department. On the long term, this persist on "alternative facts" spread by Bob Stuart and MQA will not support the credibility of your magazine, IMO.

 

Why don’t you post your system?

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5 minutes ago, #Yoda# said:

Why should I do? Most members here are doing not as well and it doesn't matter concerning the MQA topic and my posts. But I can assure you, most of my equipment has been reviewed by Stereophile, Audiostream or InnerFidelity very positve and some "Product of the Year". 

 

I think we all know why you don’t.

 

But you’re right, it’s irrelevent.

 

What does matter is the quality of MQA. I just listened to the MQA and non-MQA version of Hotel California 40th annervisary expended edition with the Pro-Ject Pre S2; if you can’t tell the difference I don’t know what to tell you. The MQA version sounds like hi-res, and the non-MQA sounds like Redbook.

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Here’s the deal. Someone got the MQA code off of a Bluesound and has made assumptions and drawn conclusions based on that. Bluesounds suck — I know because I auditioned a Node 2 for a few weeks. MQA implementations are customized for individual DACs, and some implementations are just going to work better than others. The little Pro-Ject box is a vastly superior DAC to the Node 2, and its MQA implemention may also be much better.

 

Also, I never once in my life heard a filter that makes Redbook sound like hi-res. Let’s get real, there’s actual music content being unpacked from it, not just applying a common filter.

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38 minutes ago, mansr said:

I don't blame you.

 

Bandwidth is independent of time resolution.

 

Can you state that definitively? It's widely known that high bandwidth sounds better. Certainly my own high bandwidth amp is the best I've ever heard in my system...not that I can directly test that obviously.

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30 minutes ago, mevdinc said:

Here we go!
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined
 

 

Read it yesterday. Seems just to be a preamble.

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The real reason why Schiit doesn’t implement MQA is because they’re on such tight margins with thier no-questions-asked return policy direct dealer model. They put out cheap gear in large quantities. The reason why they don’t implement DSD seems to just be lack of expertise.

 

Most of the high end is embracing MQA simply because thier clientele are much more demanding than Schiit’s or the standard Chinese shovelware users.

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6 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

This is funny. Your tone towards those manufacturers against MQA, is derisory, similar to you calling people who challenge MQA, as haters. Yet, you are the person hating everyone against MQA.

 

Anyway, how do you know the margins for Schiit are tight. It could be that MQA Ltd are asking exorbitant amounts for implementing MQA, and Schiit choose not to pay that amount as it offers no value.

 

Anyway - if MQA does take off - someone will offer an optical in, and optical out, box that decodes MQA, so all manufacturers have to do is offer an extra optical in, on their box. Before you state that MQA needs to know the DAC IC in the DAC - it doesn't, as others have shown that everyone is treated the same regardless of the DAC manufacturer/IC - no special filtering for the "supposed" dispersion correction.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

Let's be real for half a second -- the real reason why the forums are generally against MQA is because of the cultural death of high-end audio. The interest in and pursuit of high-performance audio is in the pits -- culturally. Every show I've been to has been nothing but graying old and middle aged men. Millenials and gen Z seem to have little or no interest in it. There's older people on this thread but they are more or less just going along with the cultural norms online.

 

So it's "in" to pretend MQA is the enemy. Part in parcel with that is to dismiss quality gains. Anything but actually listen to it because we don't do that anymore in audio apparently.

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1 minute ago, barrows said:

WOW!  I could not have foreseen a more transparent "shill" response for MQA if I imagined it myself.  Schitt is a disruptive and positive force in the audio industry (and no, I have never owned a Schitt product and I am not a Schiit fanboy).

As long as the "powers that be" in audio continue to champion ultra high priced gear, and nonsense like MQA, the industry will actually suffer.  Outsiders look at high end audio gear pricing and just laugh and laugh and they go away never to return.  this approach is killing the industry, as we are not attracting new audiophiles with it.

Schiit should be heralded for what they are doing, forcing companies to take a good look at their performance/value equation, while at the same time allowing  there to be a reasonable gateway product to true high end sounds and doing this while manufacturing in the US, amazing! 

 

Schiit doesn’t disrupt anything. They’re a market force because they appeal to millennial buyers by offering very low prices by offering low-cost products and cutting out the dealer network. A few of Schiit’s multibit DACs may be considered high-end in terms of performance but for the most part their products are firmly entry level.

 

There is a very depressing, self-defeating trend in high-end audio which caters solely to well-off empty nester middle aged men going through their mid-life crisis. High-end gear should be priced accordingly, obviously, but I think everyone agrees mortgaging your home to afford it is totally off the deep end. A D’Agostino Momentum is vastly superior to a Vidar, but 35 times the price better? Obviously, no...not even remotely. If that doesn’t slam the door in the face of a coffin-aparartment-living mellenial I don’t know what does.

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6 minutes ago, semente said:

 

With an S/N ratio of 80dB the Momentum is far from SOTA...not even in the 50s. But, yes, that's high-end.

 

What does s/n have to do with anything?

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The Vidar is the $700 Schiit amp that hums from the speakers.

 

The D’Agostino is so much better than the Vidar that it’s embarrasing to put them in the same sentence. Is the Vidar worth it — sure, if you don’t mind the humming. Is the Momentum worth it — absolutely NOT. Yes the Momentum is a lot better, but 50k for a mono pair is absurdist. In the high end, this isn’t even bad so we can see why the market is culturally dying and people feel the need to espouse bizarre opinions like a Schiit is as good as a Pass, dCS, Esoteric, etc.

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1 hour ago, FredericV said:

Another article in the series:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-1

They must be very desperate to have a paid series written by stereophile to attack the criticasters.

I don't care about their short post-ringing tail. The enforced MQA renderer even with regular PCM makes this dac sound worse than some much more cheaper but excellent dacs. One is the Asus Essence which won EISA awards and exists in standalone and computer version. Sells for a fraction of the brooklyn.

So we tested this PCIe card's analog outs and also ran an ultra expensive SPDIF cable to the brooklyn, and have a second run of analog to a second input of a high-end vitus amp. Then we switch inputs.

The enforced MQA processing was very obvious, and I had members of the Dutch hifi press present, and they did not like the forced MQA processing either. At the time we did not know 100% for sure the MQA decoder was always processing, but we suspected it. Music did not flow naturally through the brooklyn.

Also the Manhattan 2 is not as good as the mk1. mk2 has MQA, mk1 doesn't.

So I now believe MQA is deliberately crippling standard PCM when going through an MQA dac by enforcing it through their leaky renderer. I will never buy an MQA dac again. One distributor even send back his mk2 and continues to play with the mk1 as this distributor also found the mk2 harsh and sterile.

Last year we won best of show with a mytek manhattan mk1 as part of the system, exact same system with mk2 this year and everyone was complaining that it did not sound natural. So after one showday with a lot of complaints. Same system with a Metrum Adagio and Antelope Platinum + 10M clock and nobody complained.

So MQA has successfully crippled DAC's with their forced processing. It's no longer an extra checkbox, but a serious degradation of good products, which have become bad after MQA started to infect these product with their fake highres codec which also tries to fix PCM.

 

Blame Mytek, that's their choice for lazily pumping everything through the MQA module.

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2 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

 

Ok you make an argument about the economics of some hifi-companies business strategy. 

 

Plz explain your take on the economics of MQA.

 

Some people engineered a better way to deliver hi-res content and are selling the technology to the industry?

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What interests me are the comments regarding ringing. The first one seemed like a non-English speaker having a fit. The second one is more eloquent (emphasis added):

 

"It's clear to me that MQA's developers see it as an idealistic venture designed to fix what digital broke....."

What's more, this 'Part 1' is totally wrong. Testing on 5 uS pulses is meaningless nonsense.

 

Is it meaningless? Isn't impulse response testing a standard protocol? It's not the key area of interest in relation to MQA, but it's still interesting for what it's worth. Does this commentator have any basis for calling an impulse response test "meaningless nonsense?"

 

PUT VERY SIMPLY:

ALL 'waves' whatever their shape can be shown to be a build up of sine waves.
What you incorrectly call 'ringing' is the waves building up enough for you to notice, hear, or measure.

if you used a longer pulse you would eventually see the 'square' wave or whatever it happened to be.

 

As far as I can tell, the scope output shows ringing, and we've always called this behavior ringing. Are these commentators just being pedantic, or is our understanding of what ringing is just wrong? Why aren't they pointing this out in every review Stereophile or anyone else does?

 

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35 minutes ago, Fokus said:

There is not a shred of evidence that this so-called ringing, once it appears outside of the audible range, has any impact on perceived sound quality.

 

It is also true that, unless the original signal contained high-level energy at the filter's cut-off point, the ringing as displayed does not appear in the sampled music signal.

 

Impulse response testing is done in digital audio because it is the fastest and simplest method for revealing the nature of the underlying digital filter(s). That is all.

 

No, that is not all ...

 

Impulse response testing is done in consumer digital audio because it is a handy tool for instilling fear and uncertainty in the minds of a techno-illiterate audience.

 

 

 

So what you’re saying is that impulse response testing as commonly performed in reviews is meaningless and only exists to film-flam consumers?

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Measuring tools are insufficient for evaluating subjective sound quality -- which is why real high-end manufacturers design their products via ear. Ayre is a very well-regarded company with a master of the art behind it (sadly passed away, taking a great talent from us). I don't believe there is a single negative thing said about Ayre sound, anywhere, regardless of taste.

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1 hour ago, semente said:

 

The problem with your rationale is the "good sounding" part. Good sounding to whom? It's your opinion, not a universally accepted fact.

 

To a non-audiophile, it’s convenient to focus of measurements because there’s a ton of sub-$100 Chinese shovelware that measures very well. Audiophiles measure with thier ears, and try to understand the relationship between sound and electrical measurements. The reason why something like an Ayre sounds so good is because they were built by the ear of a master craftsman, not from an electrical engineer’s student textbook.

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Wow. Jim Austin is shattering under-informed commentators in the comments section now. Must read.

 

 

CRUNCH!

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2 minutes ago, Indydan said:

 

There are under-informed commentators on both sides of the MQA debate. There are under-informed commentators on every single subject known to humans. I agree 100% with that.

 

But, just because a few under-informed people who are against MQA show their ignorance; it does not mean that everyone who has problems with MQA is wrong or under-informed.

 

Yes, ignorant people who scream loudly and are wrong, hurt the cause and the message. It does not mean everyone else who is on "the same side" is wrong. 

 

Yes, but notice when the usual tiresome crowd of "engineers" who have a very basic student-level understanding of the topic screech at someone with actual experience, because that's the basic operating mode on the forums -- and are now getting brutally shot down. 

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9 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

 

Hires ? what Hires.

 

 

Hotel California 192.

 

 

Hotel California MQA.

 

There is no Hotel California Hires. Not for real, not on DVDA and not via MQA. Also not for @GUTB.

So that is why we shouldn't be interested in Hires. Of course it is only an example. But no 40th Anniversary Edition is going to change this. No MQA either, as we can see.

 

And yet, the MQA version is significantly better than the hifi version...why?

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Just now, Don Hills said:

 

Because you believe it is. That's your preference, you're entitled to it.

 

Do you have a MQA DAC?

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1 minute ago, semente said:

 

Something High End like a ProJect?

 

That's definitely not a high end product.

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14 minutes ago, semente said:

 

What would you recommend? What did/do you use to evaluate MQA?

 

I noticed large improvements with MQA content with both the Pro-Ject S2 and the DragonFly Red.

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19 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Like this?

 

...or this?

 

How would you quantify the quality gap between your headphones and HD650 or 400i? Do you know there are many non-audiophiles who mock the very idea of spending that much money on headphones?