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

[PeterSt]

18 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

what's your point? is it supposed to become better once degraded to MQA? For a while in this thread I don't dig what you and, ie, Peter are inferring ;

 

Oh, now I have done it ?

1. I only participated the test;

2. I always explicitly claim that no MQA will be better than Hires (did you read that ? it is at least one time in this thread alone);

3. This Hires s*cks for sound which I can't help and which coincidentally is what about everybody agrees with.

 

So what is it what I was inferring, please ? 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

5 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Oh, now I have done it ?

1. I only participated the test;

2. I always explicitly claim that no MQA will be better than Hires (did you read that ? it is at least one time in this thread alone);

3. This Hires s*cks for sound which I can't help and which coincidentally is what about everybody agrees with.

 

So what is it what I was inferring, please ? 

1. scores were 10/10/5 (RB) so not everybody agrees with the hires sucking for sound

2. Reading your writings such as:

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

"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."

I was under the impression that you infer there's a hidden variable/mythical Master from which a naughty Hires and a mighty MQA would have been derived while my bet is that the RB and the MQA are derived, are technical downgrades, of the hires. I bet so for the studio in which this 2017 album has been recorded is known and offers 24/96 recording as standard. Why the heck would the 24/96 hires come from/actually be anything but the 24/96 studio output?

That suggests an alternative outcome to promoting downgrading techniques (MQA, RB): stressing that better recording/mixing is required with hires and that mastering should not be overlooked for the reason why you prefer even the RB to the hires might come from the slight touch of mastering that the choice of dithering route implies

[Rexp]

19 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

I see you did not get the samples right, just voted for mqa; are you concerned with your hearing? good thing with loss in HF is that it doesn't really make older folks at odds in a concert hall https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e4c9/b3222f26472f6ba12e7fea900c2edb10c14c.pdf

 

Nope, I agreed with Peter on the order and got it 100% correct. 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

20 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Nope, I agreed with Peter on the order and got it 100% correct. 

where is this world going ? we don't know whom or what to trust anymore, not even Mani's published results then

[Rexp]

Lol. The thing is i didn't think any sounded great and picked c as the best of a bad bunch. 

[Rexp]

On 10/28/2018 at 10:28 PM, manisandher said:

 

The track was Anouar Brahem - Blue Maqams - Opening Day (MQA on Tidal: https://tidal.com/track/79927158).

 

Mani.

Streamed direct from Tidal, it sounds much better to me 16/44 or 24/48. The second track 'La nuit' lulled me to sleep last night (in a good way). 

[sapporo]

The test results are statistically insignificant.

The conditions varied (reproduction chains).

Samples contaminated.

In most such tests done the right way the perceived

sound quality differences come mostly from 

Fletcher-Munson.

[manisandher]

26 minutes ago, sapporo said:

Samples contaminated.

 

Where's your evidence for this?

[sapporo]

Didn’t you write that one sample can possibly be uprezed hi resolution?

[Rexp]

On 11/1/2018 at 2:27 AM, pkane2001 said:

 

Or maybe everyone is so used to iTunes/lossy that it has become the ultimate reference and nothing else sounds as good.

Or maybe AAC is filtering out some objectionable noise in the original? Slightly off topic but how about a plot of AAC v FLAC v MQA (using Tidal) for the track in this thread. 

[manisandher]

15 minutes ago, sapporo said:

Didn’t you write that one sample can possibly be uprezed hi resolution?

 

No.

[sapporo]

So I got the ECM track story here wrong, apologies. There is an issue of the master originals though.

Eg. to make an MQA track from archives the analogue tape must be digitized anew. The ADC encoder will be different,

the notorious "deblurring" algorithm introduces new elements, and often something else is going on. Eg. The Doors Best,

Jim Morrison's voice ("Riders") sounds like a totally different mix. This cannot be just a redigitizing of a stereo master. Most likely 

new digital masters are created for at least some of the MQA reissues. But there is no info on whether an analogue

stereo master was used in the process or a multitrack. In the latter case it effectively results in a new master. The same problem

can exist for hi-res reissues. To compare "apples to apples" it is necessary to be 100% sure that the "mother master mix" is the same.

Like in the www.2L.no test bench tracks. 

 

[manisandher]

12 minutes ago, sapporo said:

To compare "apples to apples" it is necessary to be 100% sure that the "mother master mix" is the same.

 

Agreed.

 

Analysis (which anyone can do with the right tools) shows that the three samples in this thread are from the same master. For example:

 

On 10/26/2018 at 8:57 AM, esldude said:

I would agree they seem to be the same master having examined them some.  

 

I am '100% sure that the "mother master mix" is the same'.

 

Mani.

[Miska]

I just don't understand what people see/hear in ECM's productions. Nothing I would want to, for any reason...

 

[AudioArchon]

@ Mani - Many thanks for setting this up!  What a fun way to test.  I thought your music selection was a fantastic test track to highlight differences.

 

for me...it went in order of preference:

B

A

C

 

Thanks again and cheers!

Mike

 

 

[sandyk]

23 minutes ago, AudioArchon said:

@ Mani - Many thanks for setting this up!  What a fun way to test.  I thought your music selection was a fantastic test track to highlight differences.

 

for me...it went in order of preference:

B

A

C

 

Thanks again and cheers!

Mike

 

 

 

As did my preferences.

[Rexp]

8 hours ago, Miska said:

I just don't understand what people see/hear in ECM's productions. Nothing I would want to, for any reason...

 

Try this recording by same artist, has more life to it:

"The Astounding Eyes Of Rita" by Anouar Brahem http://tidal.com/album/14338143

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

I just don't understand what people see/hear in ECM's productions. Nothing I would want to, for any reason...

 

Lexicon reverb maybe.... As of the music, Jarrett & al apart, I've been impressed by the Danish string quartet playing Shostakovich and Beethoven

[manisandher]

1 hour ago, Rexp said:

Try this recording by same artist, has more life to it:

"The Astounding Eyes Of Rita" by Anouar Brahem http://tidal.com/album/14338143

 

 

From a purely technical POV, the two albums have very similar dynamics. Here's a comparison of the track used in this thread vs. one from the album you mentioned:

 

Opening Day:

 

The Astounding Eyes of Rita:

 

The LRA is a good representation of the music track dynamics, and they're identical in both cases. But of course, our ears might hear things differently.

 

Mani.

[sapporo]

It is a nice relaxing thread and thanks to the OP for initiating  it. On  a similar note, here is an interview with a mastering engineer and his opinions about MQA. Obviously it is one side of the barricade.

http://fairhedon.com/2017/11/05/an-interview-with-mastering-engineer-brian-lucey/

[Rt66indierock]

39 minutes ago, sapporo said:

It is a nice relaxing thread and thanks to the OP for initiating  it. On  a similar note, here is an interview with a mastering engineer and his opinions about MQA. Obviously it is one side of the barricade.

http://fairhedon.com/2017/11/05/an-interview-with-mastering-engineer-brian-lucey/

 

The opposition to MQA started with recording and mastering engineers in 2914. MQA is not something they talk about much anymore.

 

MQA is a non-starter as far as cash flow to artists and studio people.

[look&listen]

2 hours ago, sapporo said:

It is a nice relaxing thread and thanks to the OP for initiating  it. On  a similar note, here is an interview with a mastering engineer and his opinions about MQA. Obviously it is one side of the barricade.

http://fairhedon.com/2017/11/05/an-interview-with-mastering-engineer-brian-lucey/

 

Remember banned troll 'Brinkman Ship'? Probably same guy, so consider source. 

[Rt66indierock]

55 minutes ago, look&listen said:

 

Remember banned troll 'Brinkman Ship'? Probably same guy, so consider source. 

 

55 minutes ago, look&listen said:

 

Remember banned troll 'Brinkman Ship'? Probably same guy, so consider source. 

 

Brian got himself banned in a compression argument. He was approached to be West Coast Representative for MQA  in 2014. 

 

He is an outspoken friend who opposed MQA from the start.

[austinpop]

@manisandher - I seem to have lost the plot here. 

 

Have you and Peter concluded that ALL hi-res content is flawed, and we should all just go back to Redbook and be happy? Or are you saying that only in the context of the 3 samples you've distributed? Or...

 

Confused, I am.

[manisandher]

17 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Or are you saying that only in the context of the 3 samples you've distributed?

 

Rajiv, with regards to the hires used in this thread, I'm happy with Miska's possible explanation for its extended HF content, namely:

 

On 11/1/2018 at 7:36 AM, Miska said:

Yes, likely [signal up to 96 kHz] is, with that kind of mic setup. Not the instrument itself after you have released the string, but the sound of nails hitting the strings can produce fairly sharp transients which you would see as horizontal lines in your vertical flowing spectrogram.

 

22 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Have you and Peter concluded that ALL hi-res content is flawed, and we should all just go back to Redbook and be happy?

 

I've not been able to draw any conclusion about whether all hires content is flawed or not. A lot of hires spectra do look odd though.

 

I've spent the last couple of days listening to hires vs. redbook I have from the same master, and can only say that I'm generally totally fine with the sound of the redbook. But I'm using PeterSt's software player and DAC, which have been specifically designed to optimise redbook (though not at the expense of hires).

 

Right now, I have no desire to pursue hires any further.

 

HTH.

 

Mani.