Article: MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[miguelito]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

Miguelito, there is a bit over-spill from that Roon thread (posted above).  Not sure if multiroom was mentioned - perhaps that is it!?   In any case I think Roon shut down that thread as they are apt to do.  I guess they don't want to play Hot and Cold 

I follow dCS because I am a customer. I have never read/heard anything even remotely close to what you're suggesting frankly.

 

dCS worked closely with MQA Ltd - not Roon - to implement MQA in their DACs (currently only Rossini, which I have). Perhaps this is the source of confusion?

[miguelito]

@crenca

 

You said dCS/Roon, not MQA/Roon.

 

It is true that MQA/Roon are working together on the MQA implementation is Roon, and it could possibly be more feature rich than Audirvana's or TIDAL App's for example (hence the NDA Danny is talking about).

 

It is also true that dCS/MQA worked together on the MQA implementation for dCS.

 

You seem to be implying that:

 

dCS/MQA * MQA/Roon = dCS/Roon

 

But that is not true.

 

(Sorry I could not help it...)

[miguelito]

@crenca Oh please give it up! You make absolutely no sense - and implied that dCS did not care to tell customers the truth.

 

Read what you wrote sweetie. You speculated that dCS and Roon where working on some magic together, and that dCS was not being forthright with their customers about it. There is absolutely no basis for your speculation! Lunacy!

 

Seriously.

[miguelito]

15 minutes ago, crenca said:

Yep relationships matter.  When it comes to MQA these relationships seem to matter a lot.  My sweetie @miguelito seems to be a bit upset at me for being a little naughty, but it's not like mqa has some sort of moral high ground ?

I'm just pointing out that you're making completely baseless and defamatory  claims. You could in principle make baseless claims. Defamation however is not ok.

[miguelito]

7 minutes ago, mansr said:

The compression part of MQA, by the looks of it, is just that. Any differences heard are more likely the result of prior processing specifically intended to alter the sound.

Exactly. MeQA.

[miguelito]

5 hours ago, Archimago said:

MO, if we just focused on a 1st unfold as done by the software Tidal decoder to 88.2/96kHz is all that's needed with these files. The rest of it is just for show.

It's just for hardware licensing, lighting the blue light, etc.

 

5 hours ago, Archimago said:

For example, the silly "original sampling rate" claim is just further upsampling so the DAC can show big numbers on the display like "352.8kHz" to wow those who are impressionable ?.

It's actually deceiptful to the extreme: It is just a choice of upsampling filter - most DACs (all except NOS) will upsample to their max rate (in the 44/48 famlies) regardless. So when MQA says "original sample rate 192" it really JUST means I am gonna choose some filter in the set available for "original sample rate 192" but it will still be the DAC upsampling to it's max. All PR to force DAC makers to pay a licensing fee. 

 

I am perfectly fine paying for IP. I am not fine paying for BS.

[miguelito]

14 hours ago, mansr said:

It's not even that. The same set of filters are used regardless of the indicated original rate.

I thought that for 88/96 "original rate" there was only one filter vs 32 for higher, no?

[miguelito]

On 12/22/2018 at 7:46 AM, firedog said:

Objective answer: you need to find a way of comparing to decide for yourself.

In addition,  a few things you should take into account:

1) MQA source masters may not be the same as another master you have access to, even on Tidal. Thus whatever difference you hear may be  mostly to do to the different masters and not MQA. 

Very important point and I agree - most cases where there is a notable difference it is due to remastering. I don’t know this for a fact, but I would bet this is the case as I would classify MQA releases as those that sound a little “different” (sometimes not different at all) vs a few that sound a lot better (very few).

 

On 12/22/2018 at 7:46 AM, firedog said:

2) Many think that to get most of the “benefit” or “difference” wrought by MQA you really only need the “first unfold” and not the full process in the DAC. You can get the first unfold from some playback software, but AFAIK, none of the playback softwares with the first unfold are free, other than the Tidal  PC app.

I would agree with this.

 

On 12/22/2018 at 7:46 AM, firedog said:

3) Most MQA DACs implement an easy and inexpensive implementation of MQA that means that even non-MQA files are processed with MQA filters. Only a few expensive ones don’t do this. So that also means when using most of  them you aren’t fairly comparing the MQA and non MQA files. 

My comparisons are with a dCS Rossini + Rossini Master Clock. It implements MQA “properly”.

 

On 12/22/2018 at 7:46 AM, firedog said:

Personal, subjective answer: I don’t hear any real benefit to MQA. A few files sound a bit better, a few a little worse, some the same, and others just different. In terms of sound, certainly no big improvement as claimed by some. And this is without getting into non-sound aspects of MQA and whether we want it or not. 

My impression exactly as well. MQA seems to add some eq to the music most of the time, like adding MSG to food, and at times I enjoy the result. One example I found recently: Joan Baez’s “Joan Baez” album: I purchased the 24/96 from HDTracks, but I still think the MQA version on TIDAL has a slight edge in the color of her voice, IMSTME (In My System To My Ears).

 

On 12/22/2018 at 7:46 AM, firedog said:

So my advice would be to get the best most suitable DAC you can, and don’t worry about MQA. That will make more of a positive difference to your results than whether the DAC does MQA or not. 

I completely agree. Getting a DAC that doesn’t wing it by making all filters the MQA filters (when MQA is enabled) will cost you dearly and frankly for no great reasons. First unfold is all you need and that can be done in Roon or Audirvana or the TIDAL native app.

 

I wish MQA had never showed up! What a waste of time.

[miguelito]

3 minutes ago, miguelito said:

My impression exactly as well. MQA seems to add some eq to the music most of the time, like adding MSG to food, and at times I enjoy the result. One example I found recently: Joan Baez’s “Joan Baez” album: I purchased the 24/96 from HDTracks, but I still think the MQA version on TIDAL has a slight edge in the color of her voice, IMSTME (In My System To My Ears).

BTW... I wish someone would figure out what this “MSG” eq is and create a filter to apply it to standard files. My impression after a lot of listening is that it is a fairly standardized filter they are applying, not something that’s tailored to each file.

[miguelito]

7 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

Nor correcting for each specific ADC's supposed flaws, eh?

?????????

 

What a load of BS!

[miguelito]

11 hours ago, miguelito said:

?????????

 

What a load of BS!

That was meant to be laughter... Meant “What a load of BS from BS”

[miguelito]

On 12/29/2018 at 6:34 PM, Sfellows331 said:

Excellent article (read it first today) but one thing absent that I would like to have seen, if just briefly, regarding the sound quality of compressed MQA is what do the artists think of their work being played back in MQA? If a singer says that MQA presents a more accurate representation of her music and conveys the emotion better than an uncompressed file, is she "wrong" and her opinion too subjective? Without input from the artists themselves, discussions of MQA sound quality are perhaps missing the point. 

This is all such bull... Do you really think that the artist is sitting there doing A/B and saying “Yeah the MQA version is better”? For one, the MQA version is created in post processing and apparently by a specialized MQA team - just so noone runs a delta function through the encoder and records the result! There is so much debunkable bull in the whole thing I just don’t know where to start!