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Stereophile Series on MQA Technology


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54 minutes ago, NOMBEDES said:

 

SOTA does not necessarily mean better components inside the box, it means building your component out of a solid block of metal, that milling cost money.

 

On the other hand:  

 

You should read how the $45K Pass phono amp (the X phono amp cost more than the $38K pre amp!) is constructed......they buff the insides of the wire holes in the high temperature ceramic composite circuit boards..etc etc..that cost money also.  Not $45K worth of course, but still.  (DAGOGO:  Pass Laboratories Xs Phono - Technical background by Wayne Colburn, Designer)

 

High-End doesn't necessarily mean better components inside the box, nor better performance (see D'agostino).

 

I didn't know what SOTA meant so I looked it up:

 

state-of-the-art adjective [usually ADJECTIVE noun]

If you describe something as state-of-the-art, you mean that it is the best available because it has been made using the most modern techniques and technology.

collinsdictionary.com

 

and a better one:

 

State of the art (sometimes cutting edge) refers to the highest level of general development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field achieved at a particular time. It also refers to such a level of development reached at any particular time as a result of the common methodologies employed at the time.

The term has been used since 1910, and has become both a common term in advertising and marketing, and a legally significant phrase with respect to both patent law and tort liability.

In advertising, the phrase is often used to convey that a product is made with the best possible technology, but it has been noted that "the term 'state of the art' requires little proof on the part of advertisers", as it is considered mere puffery.

en.wikipedia.org

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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1 hour ago, GUTB said:

 

What does s/n have to do with anything?

You said that

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

A D’Agostino Momentum is vastly superior to a Vidar

 

Vastly superior in which way, fit an finish?

(I had to look up Vidar)

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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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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I've just run through Sphile's Dan D'Agostino Momentum monoblock power amplifier Measurements

 
The performance is low-fi at best and the first unit blew up during testing...
What a pile of expensive rubbish.
The comments that ensue are hilarious and shouldn't be missed.
 
Sorry for the off-topic.

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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Did not you all read our beloved founders post?   It is on page 4 of the home screen.  All of you Schitt haters should read his article.  You do not have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a high performance system.

 

.The Disruption Continues At Schiit Audio

 
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In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake ~ Sayre's Law

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This one is even worse: Dan D'Agostino Progression Mono monoblock power amplifier Measurements

 
And it also had "problems" that required a second sample to be tested...
Then JA wraps up with one of his gems:
 

The Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Progression Mono is a powerful amplifier indeed, and the measured performance of the second sample does suggest that the first sample I received had somehow suffered during its travels. I was still puzzled by what appeared to be crossover distortion. However, it is fair to note that the Progression Mono measured very similarly to Dan D'Agostino's more expensive Momentum monoblock, which Michael Fremer very favorably reviewed in February 2013 and which I declared to be "well-engineered."—John Atkinson

 

Is this for real?

Do people still read Stereophile?

What a pathetic joke...

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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6 hours ago, barrows said:

Right now manufacturers are being pressured by customers to implement MQA; because they read in the journals about MQA's "amazing sound quality".  I do not know the exact licensing fees charged by MQA to add it to one's hardware (and if I did it would probably be under NDA) but I do know that the cost is significant.  This means DAC prices go up to add MQA or DAC performance goes down in other areas to save cost in order to have enough BOM room for the additional cost of MQA.

I would rather not have to pay more for a feature I will never use.

 

This reminds me of the current tax "reform". Only instead of transferring wealth from the middle class to the 1%, MQA transfers $$ from the consumer to Bob Stuart.

 

I guess I might already own my last DAC (luckily it's a good one!) - I just hope we can still buy PCM in the future.

Roon ROCK (Roon 1.7; NUC7i3) > Ayre QB-9 Twenty > Ayre AX-5 Twenty > Thiel CS2.4SE (crossovers rebuilt with Clarity CSA and Multicap RTX caps, Mills MRA-12 resistors; ERSE and Jantzen coils; Cardas binding posts and hookup wire); Cardas and OEM power cables, interconnects, and speaker cables

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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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16 hours ago, GUTB said:

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.

 

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

 

Plz explain your take on the economics of MQA.

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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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9 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

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

 

"Better" as in more "mu$ical"? Ca-ching...

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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1 hour ago, FredericV said:

Interesting comment:

https://www.stereophile.com/comment/570532#comment-570532

 

 

So this one:

image.thumb.png.616ae0b5af2b9754aebd483272304f03.png
 


https://www.ayre.com/white_papers/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf

image.thumb.png.f63250c677b94afe7f77b6e8e4f45fc2.png

 

And this was in early 2009.

 

Interesting, recently Charles Hansen was underlining the importance of the analogue stage, saying that it accounted more to the overall sound than any other aspect.

 

On 01/09/2017 at 11:44 PM, Charles Hansen said:

Just about everything affect the sound of an audio product, but when it comes to DACs, I would rank (in order or sonic importance the general categories as follows:

 

1) The analog circuitry - 99.9% of all DACs are designed by digital engineers who don't know enough about analog.

 

And yet that QX-5 isn't exactly a stellar performer:

 

917ayre.AQX5fig09.jpg

Ayre QX-5 Twenty, DAC mode, spectrum of 50Hz sinewave,

DC–1kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms

(left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale)

 

917ayre.AQX5fig11.jpg

Ayre QX-5 Twenty, Music filter, DAC mode, HF intermodulation spectrum,
DC–30kHz, 19+20kHz at 0dBFS into 600 ohms, 44.1kHz data
(left channel blue, right red; linear frequency scale)
 
In the case of the QX-5 the analogue output stage accounts for a lot of the sound as it's hardly "transparent".

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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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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