MQA vs HiRez: an apples-to-apples comparison - FINAL

[PeterSt]

I listened one time to each of them. Please notice that I am not familiar to Hires comparisons and that I hardly listen to Hires.

I listened in the sequence B - A - C so my descriptions go like that as well. They are relative to each other.

 

Don't read when you want to apply the test.

 

------------------------------------------------

B.

Piano sounds hazy. In aftermath (after listening to the other two) I added "is lacking" to it.

Highs OK (referring to the "ticking" on the cymbals).

Sounds inside out. Hollow. No proper attack on the nylon strings of the guitar.

Cello doesn't sound right either.

Cymbals at the end not right. Sound dirty (China cymbals).

 

A.

Sounds much clearer which is readily noticeable on the guitar. Lively.

There's more vibrato in the bass (cello ?) audible. OK, in B I didn't hear any of that.

The ride on the cymbals now sound realistic (mind the "ticking" I mentioned at B).

All sounds normal. Piano still sounds confused though. Piano is also less annoyingly (!) present.

In the end this presentation is more "sleepy". At 5 minutes or so I really wanted it to be over. Long winded.

More normal cymbals at the end.

 

C.

More play in the guitar. Individual strokes or two subsequent fingers audible. Catchy !

Again better cymbal rides. Best piano !

Suddenly piano and guitar play together (there's even a small part in the beginning when both play the exact same notes together).

More dynamics in the guitar.

Piano plays well with all. Bass is less disturbingly present.

Best cymbals at the end.

------------------------------------------------

 

To me it is clear that this coincidental sequence went from worst to best. This is a danger in itself because I could have gotten used to matters.

I started with B so I would not be subject to Mani's ideas of pitfalls, if any.

 

With B I was annoyed all over. Logically, to me, this should indicate Hires. The chance would be minimal that the Hires was done well and I don't recall to be annoyed of Redbook ever (or hardly).

 

A surprisingly went from a "much better !" (and seriously different than B) to a falling asleep mode. I don't know why, but I lost interest. I don't think this was because I listened to the song for the second time. The last minute went like "oh, there are these cymbals again, it must be finished now". Because Hires and MQA were determined by the paragraph above here and under here, this should be the Redbook.

 

C, in comparison to A completely woke me up. The "catchy !" I noted tells me that this should be the MQA because it is a property of MQA. I tried to hear grain in the cymbal rides, also in the cymbals at the end, but I did not hear that. So this could be a reason I am wrong. Otoh, I did not hear graininess in the others as well but I also did not put my focus to it (I did with C because I started to get the idea C had to be MQA).

 

------------------------------------------------

 

So B is the strange duck. Anyone would denote that MQA for this reason. It very well can be, if the MQA was executed wrongly.

In aftermath : I don't think that Mani would have put up a failed MQA to begin with. He would have chosen a properly done one. This should definitely rule out B as MQA.

 

A and C are quite alike which is my general consensus about Redbook vs MQA, and then merely to the sense that Redbook is 100% fine with me (and my whole system focuses on it). Apart from a handful exceptions, MQA also sounds fine to me, to the sense it never disturbs. This makes A and C both candidates for MQA as well as Redbook. However, most of the time when I play an MQA for a first time, while I am used to the Redbook all of my life, the MQA is more catching. You get involved more. This with the notice that it is not so that MQA sounds better per se. And because I was right into the music suddenly with C, I'd have to dedicate that the MQA. This leaves A as the Hires.

 

------------------------------------------------

 

Most probably, when I' have chosen an other sequence, the judgment would have been totally different.

My judgment that MQA is C is heavily based and biased towards the catchiness MQA usually implies. This is super dangerous to hang on to.

I never am disturbed by Redbook, though here I was on B, so this is why B is not the Redbook. Super dangerous again. And of course, completely contra-dictionary to what everybody else would claim. I mean, were it about the comparison with Hires;

Hires I am usually disturbed with because, well, they have usually been done wrong. But was that so in this case ? So again super dangerous to hang on to that. 

So why was everything so wrong in B then ? was it because I heard that as the first one ? was it because it is the Redbook and Redbook can't be any good ? was it because it is the MQA and MQA can't be any good ?

 

Why did I hear more "guitar string" resolution in C ? is that because it is the real Hires and MQA would not be able to reproduce that ? was it because it is the Redbook and it articulates more because of less resolution ?

 

Blahblahblahblah. Is there also a prize for having all wrong ?

 

Peter

[PeterSt]

5 minutes ago, esldude said:

You, avta, and I had different results.

 

I didn't know that he counts as well. LOL.

 

From you :

 

Quote

B sounds a bit artificially airy, and soft imaging.  C is missing some low end, and has unnatural hardness on the upper mids.

 

We can well say that we judged this the same. My "bass less disturbingly present" from C would be the same thing, and with some digging in my head one would find that I did not like the bass in any of them. The hardness in the upper mids (in C) would be equivalent to my "string/fingers separation" I readily noticed in C. Now if that 'd be the Redbook, we're all over and done with it. Haha.

 

But it is funny to see that the three who agree (I just read back on all) have very different reasons to bombard the MQA to the letter (A, B, C) what they/we did. Everybody is (obviously ?) negative about it, while I am positive. So the outcome could be disappointing again : maybe a majority picks the proper MQA but for reasons without consensus.

 

I wish the Hires hadn't been there. I mean, it won't go into my mind that MQA will outperform Hires if only the Hires has been done properly.

[PeterSt]

 

 

59 minutes ago, manisandher said:

I think you mean "A as redbook", to be consistent with your detailed description.

 

Yes, of course. Good catch !!

 

5 hours ago, PeterSt said:

This makes A and C both candidates for MQA as well as Redbook. However, most of the time when I play an MQA for a first time, while I am used to the Redbook all of my life, the MQA is more catching. You get involved more. This with the notice that it is not so that MQA sounds better per se. And because I was right into the music suddenly with C, I'd have to dedicate that the MQA. This leaves A as the Hires Redbook.

 

Sorry for this stupid typo-like mistake.

[PeterSt]

Off topic alert (kind of).

 

3 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

what do you mean "only the Hires has been done properly"? It's supposed to be the original master, isn't it ?

 

from :

 

Quote

 it won't go into my mind that MQA will outperform Hires if only the Hires has been done properly.

 

Assumed that the MQA came from the same master, yes, you could say indeed "it's supposed to be the original master" (assumed that the master is not even higher resolution like 192). But the times I saw people randomly come up with a "good hires" where I would agree, is still on a very very low count. This always goes audibly first and checking with spectrogram etc. confirms.

 

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

we can't rule out sponsored bias with obscure MQA age recordings of very poor musical interest

 

Nah, that goes too far (thinking) for me.

 

 

This is still in my playlist from last night. This (to me) shows how superb MQA can be, and how you can be put both feet back on the ground when after that you revert to Redbook again. Mind you, the last two tracks are from Zuma. Never mind from my youth, still a superbly sounding (Redbook) album. But not if you just heard Peace Trail in MQA. And again, this is not about it being Hires originally (which I don't even have). So hearing Zuma right after Peace Trail MQA, is a bummer.

 

[PeterSt]

10 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I provided an analogy with photography a few posts above

 

OK ...

 

6 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

 I'm not a big fan of toning but it happens that, starting with a colour digital photo,  I sometimes go overboard at colour stage because I know I want the final picture to be B&W and weird colours processed through filters often produce richer grey values...

 

I understand. I make something like 10K photos per year myself and do quite some "events" (like festivities). One thing I learned fairly soon from digital : I don't have the time for post processing, so I don't and anticipate on that. It makes the skill more difficult and also more valuable.

 

When the Kodak DCS 14 or whatever was its name came out, I was thrilled. I was thrilled because it lacked an AA filter. "That's the way to go !" was my thinking. But I refrained because of the moire examples in shirts and also in trees and tiled roofs etc. So I never got one.

... Until beginning of this year when I found that a lacking AA filter became hot again, and it's not there in the Sony A7r III I by now own and that a 100% crop at a whopping 42MP really is the best that ever happened to me.

Moire ? I never saw it yet but possibly I avoid it by nature.

 

Mind you please, for me it happened the other way around. First there was NOS DACs in audio, then it would seem that no AA in digital photography would give the similar experience to me as how NOS (no filter anywhere) brought me, then I started developing NOS with filters which don't ring at all (that's AA as such), and then, today, I am back at the photography. Well, I don't know how loud to shout at e.g. you "go for that !!!" because it is visible. No subjectivity at play anywhere.

 

Possibly as the only one I started developing with MQA with all this in mind. It just 100% fits my own ideas about it. So it is not that someone talked me into MQA. Instead I talked myself into it and got it done. But this is also how I am stil 100% neutral on it.

I actually don't care and once in a while run into an MQA and if I am pleased with it, it keeps on playing. If not, I'll find the Redbook counterpart and play that instead. It is only that it never happened yet.

 

PS: with the 100% crop zooming possibilities of such a system camera (at least with mentioned Sony) you can see that even at an aperture of 12+ whatever, you never have more than 1 mm of focus. Also not at 10m distance. Never. Even more so not at 200m and a 400mm zoom. My Canon's (+L) never showed me that. They are one blurry mess (finding out after 20+ years - mweh).

 

Any more photography analogy to deal with ?

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

After all, they claim something like focus reconstruction, don't they? or were they inspired by DxO that qualifies lenses' defaults and correct them in post processing?

 

Haha, good one.

Still, I was thinking along the same lines this morning; How convenient would it be to use (visible) photography as a lead to think similar of audio. Again, I started out with it the other way around (wanted to have the lacking filters in audio to be there in digital photos), so why not. Once you believe in such a thing ... (one can next make up anything around it, which is impossible to check in the first place (because now it is au-di-o)).

 

Maybe we must listen to MQA through a photo lens. 

OK, two.

[PeterSt]

@jabbr, Nice post. I am a bit surprised by this.

Did I miss these kind of posts all the time ? or did I (or @Le Concombre Masqué) perhaps trigger you posting this ?

 

Maybe an avalanche of anti-jabbr posts will now occur, but I like it. Thanks. 

[PeterSt]

48 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I think I dig what you feel : with CD source I'm confident listening will be pleasurable, rounded edges palatable, while I'm not that sure with 192.

 

Maybe it is hard to believe for you, but when I was as far as reading the text above (not a word further) I had my answer ready :

 

Probably my filtering, which is a means of transferring the sound to some other SQ level, is doing something which in Hires has not been done (because it is hires already and the filtering is about reconstruction of the band limited signal as such) ... and now can not be done any more by my filtering.

And then I read on, and you said quite the same (with a very different filter, but alas).

 

Although this is an answer, it is also too far out in my own view. Hires just should sound the best, if the hardware is running at the same frequency everywhere, which is so in my case (I always output at 705600 or 768000, depending on the base).

 

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I read in one of your posts that you suspect that often hires is not the native master;

 

This is not exactly what I am saying. What I mean is : the Hires made available is most often faked. It is not real hires. It is either or upsampled or it is hires done in an awful way (like tape with so much noise that nothing above 12KHz is there anyway *and* denoisers have been applied which only make it (far) worse). Examples of fame which come to mind : King Crimson - In the court of the Crimson King, or Bill Evans with Waltz for Debby. This, while both are of nothing less than superb quality if you only get hold of the correct Redbook (which is quite a task for either, especially the Bill Evans).

An other category would be the wrong downmixes with the good example of Dire Straits - Brother in Arms. I forgot whether it is the DVD or the SACD (but likely the DVD) which just lacks a couple of channels. Hires is OK, but "mix" is obviously failed.

Similar with the pile of existing quadraphonic recordings, like from earlier Grand Funk (yes, that old quadraphony already is). Many, many exist, but AFAIK all with the wrong downmix. Or this :

 

 

I have been working on downmixing some Grand Funk original myself, but it is obviously impossible because the headroom is lacking. So with 4ch we need to get rid of 6dB while no 6dB headroom (which is half of the available digital headroom) is available. Solution : compress it, or leave out two channels. But normally thinking of the former : now you'll have Hires in a way poorer incarnation. Thus, real hires all right, but the original recording which was mastered for stereo, just utilizes the full headroom. You wouldn't see that on the spectrograph readily, but this time on the DR figure. Plus 6dB is really a lot to "compress out".

All DVD 5.1 which is available in Hires Stereo has been subject to this. I think it was at this forum (maybe 8 years ago) that someone who mastered for DVD in some department, always got the order to give that now (IIRC) 9dB of extra headroom but they never did it for various (logical) reasons. And so we ended up with hires DVD 5.1's which utilized all the headroom, never suitable for downmixing again.

 

FYI : I have a huge pile (think 1000++) of whatever so-called downmixes from DVD which I all had prior to the existence of HDTracks. HDTracks, one by one as we are used from them, put these up, spread over many years (but now they ran out on that pile I already had for many years). They were *all* fake (I still have them) and 100% exactly the same as those put up by HDTracks. And notice that I even talked on the phone with the person who created them and admitted they were a quickie, back at the time. They are official though, unlike what I thought at first. They are NOT suitable for MQA, which is why we see different masters for MQA so often.

Or what about the former producer of Turtle Records over here in Holland, who en public thought he was having fun with the audience with his : hahaha hohoho when someone asks to dig up the master tapes I have no time for that, obviously *if* I know where they are in the first place, so we upsample them and the customer is happy. Ha !! 

It's plainly outrageous.

Btw, Chris C. witnessed that too.

 

The one subject to this thread is also doubtful to these eyes. Straight to 48KHz for this track throughout ?? How ? where ? what exactly ?

 

 

 

This is Hires. 06-Bandit from Neil Young - Greendale DVDA (96).

 

1 hour ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I'm puzzled 

In this test

 

So that could be justified.

 

Want to have a fair chance on genuine Hires ? then look at DVDA 192. This won't exist in multi channel (IIRC this just does not fit on the DVD) and not really many of it exist. But those existing are always the real thing that I have seen.

 

Regards,

Peter

 

[PeterSt]

 

Mani, 

@manisandher, thank you for this (again). I am not glad that I had it right, but I am with joy that I had it right for the reasons I gave. They were quite explicit and probably show that I recognize the matter indeed. But really, the Hires among it made it difficult, or at least I thought so in advance. That, in aftermath, I appeared to be right about my observations, only testifies that I really don't like Hires most of the time.

Small addition in an upcoming post.

 

[PeterSt]

2 hours ago, manisandher said:

 

What troubles you about this?

 

Thank you for this.

What troubles me is that there is no decay in the highs (towards the higher frequency). This can't exist.

 

Maybe you forgot to show the end cymbals. Of course you could argue that the ride on the (ride-)cymbal shows ever so much more frequency, but ... 45KHz ? No way. And at this (soft ticking) level ? triple no.

The end cymbals oddly enough show about right to me.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/percussion-frequencies-part-2-cymbals/

 

I did not emphasize anything with n dB and I always compare at this level. So the Greendale I showed - same thing. I never touch the level (in no 10 years of time) thus both are comparable. 

 

Also, I looked into this this morning because if I had to be correct on the how I came to my judgment on the Hires (sounds the worst) then first I had to be correct on it being fake, right ?

 

Peter

 

 

[PeterSt]

9 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I never did get the chance to get the listening done on your samples, but I'll just listen sighted now, and see if I hear the same.

 

Rajiv,

Let someone rename them for you, while taking notes of what was done. Then it is your turn to listen ...

After your writing out of what you think of it, all the A's B's and C's should be changed back accordingly.

[PeterSt]

45 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I own a Pink original Island LP of Court and always marveled at its sound, especially of cymbals,

 

Exactly. With I Talk to The Wind ahead. And man, this is old.

But the one I have as "good" is unknown for its source. Some Torrent, I'm afraid. I was glad I found it anyway, at first only the lousy Hires being available (and MP3) for what I could find.

All the covers of the various versions look the same.

The other day I found an HDCD (Japanese).  So that exists too and that one has a different cover ("moon face"). I don't have it noted as "Nice Stuff" so I guess the other one is still the best.

 

Debby is really difficult (and even ~10 years older of course). This is the combination to watch for :

  

 

Mind the track times. Mind the number of tracks. Mind the sequence of them. Mind the position of the "Riverside" and also mind the yellow square.

DR is 21, but is maybe not reliable because I have it as "Cue File" only (this is one large file, although the tracks can be differentiated by the Cue Sheet).

 

Yes, it is the Stubblebine Hires transfer I objected to. FWIW.

 

[PeterSt]

Odd that people maybe have consensus over B and C sounding very similar;

For me B is the one which is the most different. But I started out with that one, maybe that makes a perceptual difference ?

 

Still, most of this (for me) will be about the fake Hires I somehow can't bear while the first MQA I can't bear yet has to come. Well, sort of on the latter but if I have heard 200 MQA's by now maybe 20 failed on these ears (and I count in all the Led Zeps which are all "off" IMO).

 

So B and C sound similar to many ? that would be logical of course, assumed that both are in the "hires domain". An as logical conclusion could be that if you upsample Redbook (A) the proper way, it starts to sound similar to MQA. Mentioned "proper" is subjective of course, but obviously it is what I am trying to do ...

 

Leaky filter me.

[PeterSt]

@manisandher, did you already put forward your most subjective judgment ?

or maybe :

Can you be honest on how you came to select this particular track (or underlaying album) ? the answer "it looked to be from the same master" is also an answer. 

[PeterSt]

9 minutes ago, manisandher said:

I'm done with all hires.

 

Ah, not so fast ...

 

 

Can anyone make something of this beautiful piece of art ?

@pkane2001, what can your software make of this ?

@esldude, your subjective view, please ?

[PeterSt]

24 minutes ago, esldude said:

Why does this go up to 60 khz?

 

I just show no more. It goes to 96KHz ...

[PeterSt]

9 minutes ago, church_mouse said:

Are my ageing ears so attuned to Redbook that nothing else satisfies?

 

But what does your DAC to to it ? I mean, you could have an NOS DAC with nothing else, or with upsampling/filtering in software, or ...

Or an OS DAC with nothing else or with upsampling/filtering in software.

Or you make DSD of it.

Or ...

 

All these things matter. For example, supposed that Hires was fake indeed and you'd take the 44.1 version of it, and next you'd use a NOS DAC with coincidentally the same upsampling means as was applied to the fake Hires, there wouldn't be a difference, right ?

 

---------------

 

What people might easily forget is the importance of how the hardware runs. Mani can possibly remember how I started out with the DAC and how a prerequisite was that in all circumstances the hardware had to run 100% the same because else we would be dependent on buffer sizes, different current draw for different sampling rates, etc. etc. Because, without notice this was not the case. Most of us (beginning computer audio) guys used a FireFace800 and the higher the Hires the higher the buffer settings had to be. This made comparison apples and oranges ....

And believe it or not, already these 10 years or so ago I set for the "as honest as possible" comparison between Hires and Redbook, so I could be working on Redbook being the best and I explicitly created that DAC which always runs at the same speed. From one came the other and now software had to do upsampling ... (and the DAC had to do nothing, hence Non Oversampling).

 

Example of the importance : People with some knowledge on audio chips will easily tell you that any PCM1704U-K (24 bit PCM R2R) which runs at 705600 (16x Redbook) will not behave at its best because possibly too much to its limits (the datasheet stating 96000 as the max which is abusively anyway, but still ...). But I wouldn't care if all I output runs always at this speed, so things become comparable.

 

This is also how it is so plain wrong to output to 2x even if the MQA is 44.1 (or 48) natively only. See the previous "Mani" thread. How would I even be able to compare with Redbook if FIRST some stupid upsamples it himself (say Roon inspired) so next I wouldn't be able to make my own upsampling of it ? That would not allow to compare Redbook to MQA ...

 

It goes on and on. But the strategy is / has to be very deep or else it is apples and oranges everywhere.

[PeterSt]

24 minutes ago, esldude said:

Why does this go up to 60 khz?

 

My original response said "I just show now more".  The w was a typo which makes all even more confusing. Sorry for that.

So I just show no more.

[PeterSt]

28 minutes ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

If Peter is right, and we've been abused with fake hires in DVDA , SACD,

 

Small correction : I don't think anyone is saying that DVD or DVDA and SACD were filled up with faked Hires - especially I don't say that;

The stereo mixes derived from it, all so often are (faked) - no failed.

 

I read through your link earlier today, especially watching for the decency in it (and I do such thing just because you point it out). But I couldn't really prove to myself that it was sufficiently decent to not have it flawed somewhere along a line. There's also too few time "hires" mentioned in it. Exactly one time and it was not even really a subject.

... Wasn't it ECM with the Watermarking ? maybe we see that ... (I don't think we'd see it like this, so just saying)

 

Please keep in mind that there's a difference between faking and not well-executed. So mind you, this (ECM) one does not look like being upsampled to me (although I too saw the 48KHz spuriae) . But what we see can't exist. It even could be Hires which we also can't see because it is masked by the anomalies (at the very same spots normal higher frequency would be). And a ride cymbal not going beyond 600Hz is also not going to help (which btw I doubt somewhat regarding the square sound of it the more lightly you tick (hit) it, but alas).

Anyway the high frequencies do not decay here while they should. If the spectrograph would extend to 192KHz (for visible area) we would still see energy (which can't exist).

Explain how the cymbals at the end - which Mani did not show - only arrive at this realistic (!) level :

 

 

I know, those cymbals were not loud either, but at least those were cymbals and at a fairly normal level - and not a bit of background ticking on a ride cymbal.

So what I mean to say is : this is not well executed somewhere and although it implies Hires just by the looks of it, it is not Hires for that matter because Hires looks different.

 

But let's say that if we can not agree over this, we should agree that Hires sounds worse than Redbook. Is that a better consensus then ?

Nah ...

 

To be fair with you, yesterday I said "through these eyes" (it does not look like Hires). I know myself and I'll say it in such fashion when I can't be 100% sure. If I am 100% sure I would talk slightly differently ...

 

 

[PeterSt]

6 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Send me the audio file, and I’ll run it through Deltawave. My software doesn’t analyze screen shots from other software

 

LOL!

 

4 hours ago, PeterSt said:

@pkane2001, what can your software make of this ?

 

Was I stupid there or was  !!

[PeterSt]

All right. For some entertainment (and maybe a bit of education) :

 

 

4 hours ago, esldude said:

the banding of dips in the noise floor are what I've seen already.   So what are you making of it?  I've seen ADCs with filtering like that.  Or it could be a resampling artifact.

 

Dennis, perfect answer. And exactly why I posed this one.

 

This is a 24 bit 192 KHz 2ch recording with a pair of measurement microphones and it is drums only (the whole kit). But ... the measurement microphones do not go beyond 22KHz much. For @manisandher, this is the "famous" drum kit recording we (and in the end quite some others) listened to as the most "way beyond normal" recording of drums (at that time with the 12" woofers so not 100% indistinguishable for the kick drum and stomach thing - but at the time also in 16/44.1 fashion (!)). 

 

I myself don't even know what I am seeing exactly, except for the banding, which may be some anomaly in the empty not-so-noisy space ? (Dennis ?)

The great fun of this graph could be that you also see quite nice black areas. I'd need to play it back to know what that is, but most probably this is no-cymbals or cow bells or hi-hats, as when I recorded that I also practiced in-a-gadda-da-vida and this is without cymbals etc. The beginning is just lead in and the end lead out.

As this is mostly about comparing cymbals against reality, all the mere intensified area will be about that.

 

If we look at the part which starts at 440s you can see aliasing around close to 45KHz. I don't know why that this, but the more practiced eye can see it. But it also means that everything circling that 45KHz - this is not only above it but also under it - is "fake". This, while most will judge it as "Hires frequency". So the "fake" (better : failed) starts at 25KHz and goes all the way up to in this case 60KHz because nothing more shows.

Knowing this, we can also tell that it is not only at 440s towards the right side happening like this, but it happens throughout. At least the band close to 45KHz is easily visible throughout. It seems a play on its own and even shows energy (like at 250s or 415s).

All look like real mirrors.

 

More fun it is that because of something failing in the ADC indeed we are triggers by "anomaly all over". This can't be Hires !

 

But it is. A 24 bits and 192 KHz of it.

 

That the microphones coincidentally have limited range is a bit of a bummer for something which is 192KHz capable, but this doesn't mean the signal is suddenly band limited. And this is crucial because it implies that no reconstruction is required. Still it is so that the spectral energy we see might be a disturbing factor somewhere. It is really there you know. It might even do some things because of the pattern (say that each 5KHz upwards there's a gap) and it could cause "oscillation" somewhere.

 

More dangerous is the data dependent anomaly. Look at the 440s and rightward again. The difference in the base frequency can be found in the lower frequencies. So they are louder now (more yellow) and thus suddenly we have a mirror at close to 45 KHz.

Possibly there's just a 5KHz thing going on in the ADC.

 

I hope it is clear that I came up with this example, to show you how difficult it is to judge a file for being Hires or not. I myself would have sworn that this one has been manipulated or is heavily failed otherwise. Still it is a real Hires. But the gear failed.

 

3 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

and now I take the other way position : this ECM hires is not flawed. Maybe I'm too naive

 

So what if I tell you that I made this recording in 2010, but *only yesterday* I found this to be the result. And I only found this because I wanted to show you guys how a genuine Hires should look like.

With this I only want to say : I think I am decently going about with everything. I don't fake, I don't lie and if I make up things it is because I don't know better. BUT we all make mistakes. I do and did too. A very best recording ever, but I did not check in the file itself.

Why would I ?

[PeterSt]

6 minutes ago, manisandher said:

And no wonder MQA sounds strange to some people, if most of it has been derived from 'fake' hires.

 

Hi Mani - Assumed I was right on this one in the first place (but Paul's observation seems to support this), then it is still the first one I saw. This does not mean that I look at them all but as you know XXHighEnd contains the spectrograph feature, so it can be done easily and comfortably. But where ever I looked, it looked fine to me. Of course, an old master tape full with noise which is presented as hires because the digital transfer was to 24/96, also looks fine to me as in "not faked".

 

So I think this has been an accident, but with the notice that the source seems to be new to us. Qobuz.

And I must emphasize again (OK, I did not really, previously) : all what's fake Hires on HDTracks, did not come out as fake MQA at all. And you can bet I tried a few.

 

Anyway, in my view no reason to ditch MQA. And oh, you can ditch it all right, but I wouldn't do it for this reason. This was just an unlucky pick.

I don't think anyone will blame you for it.

 

Peter

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, manisandher said:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_nIJnB5_WspDOMa_-So4LTB-d11b3Qdv

 

I'm not at home right now to check, but IIRC, this has lots of energy going right up to 44.1 kHz (88.2 sample rate), which looks suspicious. I did actually email the label to ask them where all the HF energy was coming from, but never got a reply.

 

(this is 88.2 and please ignore the fact that I display more than 44.1 of frequency range)

 

I see what you mean.

I just listened to it two times and I can't really recognize what this is doing. However, I seem to vaguely see through a. more low energy and b. more "mess" doing this. So for this track what's not doing this : The cymbals, the voice, the (I think) tenor sax. But when it more rumbles with some low frequency something, it's there and it seems also to be encouraged by the what I now call bongos. They may incur for some more squary sound, but it's not that.

It's almost as if I listen to an other track than what this spectrograph is from.

 

Possibly something is just overloading somewhere during the mastering (or mixing). Just too many sounds. Ehm ... a multichannel downmix with this time insufficiently given headroom to do that (like from 4 to 2 requires 6dB extra headroom) ? I have no idea whether that is even possible or how it would look like. Or whether a multichannel exists of this (I suppose you mentioned the artist album title somewhere).

[PeterSt]

8 minutes ago, manisandher said:

Here's the spectrum/spectrograph

 

Mani, more clean is not possible.

IOW, I waited 5 minutes but I think you forgot something to post ...

 

Ahead of things : the 2L recordings do not use any filtering at all - I think they are special at that. But it could also be the difference, when looking at spectrographs of such files.

So show us ... 

 

PS: FWIW : I have always said that the 2L DXD recordings (24/352.8) are the only recordings of which I really have the "this is Hires" sensation.