MQA vs HiRez: an apples-to-apples comparison

[fas42]

Deliberately didn't read through the thread before listening - and still haven't done so ... first thoughts, where's the treble?!! First track listened to was a bit dim; OK, the other one will be better - but it was worse! Uh oh, it's an audiophile track - none of that nasty, treble stuff around here, thanks!

 

So, the winner will be, the one that squeezes a bit more life from the events captured ...

[fas42]

Had a second listen, to confirm impressions ... sample C wins by default, because D is dead and buried, as far as sparkle is concerned - so, HiRez is a complete failure for conveying those subtle high frequencies, if these samples were examples of doing that.

 

Now, to look at what's going on in the waveform ...

 

 

[fas42]

So, is something going on in the time domain, in the posted waveforms, that's easy to see ... you betcha!

 

 

Okay, this is left channel only, of C vs D, where C has been aligned with D by removing samples from the beginning of C - the timing is at the top. Both have been upsampled to 352800 to improve aligning accuracy, and to see what's going on - and the key thing is that brickwall equalisation has been applied, you're only seeing the content above 10k in the above, all below 10k is attenuated near 120dB.

 

Note: the amplitudes have not been amplified to make this clearer, the levels at the left are the actual volume, compared to full scale of 1.

[fas42]

9 hours ago, manisandher said:

 

Just to be clear, the difference is below -180dB right up to 44.1 kHz... correct? For analysis, this may need to be taken into account, but for subjective listening, it's totally irrelevant... correct?

 

Bloody Audacity. I'm going to insist on my money back!

 

Mani.

 

It's trivially easy to visually pick differences between C and D waveforms in the moments where there is high treble content - in the order of only 20dB or so down from the level of the waveform - the one I posted is the "worst" spot. Meaning, it's going to be obviously heard. If someone is not sensitive to variations in the quality of the treble, or has it highly attenuated in their rig, then it may be much harder for them to hear this, of course.

 

Audacity has settings which allow one to precisely select how dither is applied in operations - including none. I've done some experiments to test whether the program maintains precision under extreme amplification and attenuation, and conversion operations, and am happy with the results.

 

[fas42]

Not having read through this thread in a consistent way, I'm now confused as to whether C and D truly represent, with MQA, and without MQA - or something else again. Do we have any sort of agreement on what type of apples were in the pie - before doing any further appraisal?

[fas42]

We still seem to be discussing whether Audacity messes things up by arbitrarily adding dither - so this is from the manual, https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/dither.html. Does anyone wish to dispute anything stated there, or suggest that the methods used are inadequate?

[fas42]

It's interesting to see how MQA works in the flesh ... on the basic laptop setup I use it adds a bit of enlivening punch to audiophile recordings, which tend to be very 'dead' - so MQA sometimes wins. I suspect on recordings that have plenty of dynamics as part of the mix MQA will add nothing, or make it worse.

[fas42]

5 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

I'm confused. You said you didn't have a DAC and only listen to CDs. How are you listening to MQA releases?

 

People have posted files that supposedly are the "unfolded" versions. As in this thread. Of the tiny amount of this material I've heard, just over the laptop sound system, I've gone both ways on which is "best".

[fas42]

Idea of what?

[fas42]

Hmmm ... the one clear takeway from this MQA mess is that hardly anyone knows what's going on - so I'm in good company there. I'm attempting to get some idea of what this bit of nonsense is doing, fiddling with the sound, and use those snippets which are readily available which purport to demonstrate the difference in the sound - I have zero interest in paying money for the privilege.

 

As

@mansr

 points out, MQA is Yet Another DSP fiddle - up to the user whether they want to pay constantly for use of such.

 

BTW, the CA editor is a nutter job - just trying to get the mansr tag in the last paragraph to take in the last paragraph was a fight - why can't people get software to work better ...

[fas42]

Peter, it's trivially easy to hear the differences, as many have stated, even on a "pathetic" laptop - that is, assuming that we are listening to what MQA is doing. The waveform is different, visually obviously so - case closed ...

[fas42]

8 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Just type "@" and then the first letters of his handle and a list of candidates appears. The more letters you type, the shorter the list becomes.

 

Yes, that's how it normally, and should work - but this time I could not get the cursor to leave the selected tag. It refused to move to where it should, type Enter, Space, what's the magic keystroke it's decided it needs ...? Trouble is, programmers assume what people do, and if you deviate the tiniest fraction from that scenario, all bets are off ... you have to train the user, .

[fas42]

If I want to experience a solid dose of power rock, I use this,

 

 

The usual heavy metal sounds rather twee to me; it's all about posturing, and very little of value in the bite of the music itself, I find.

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I love this album:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Communion

 

Just has a quick listen on YouTube of some tracks - echos of Yes, Deep Purple, and other good stuff - a big ?