Is MQA good enough to get Analog Guys to enjoy it? Or still cause Digital Fatigue?
- Thread starter caesar
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Good question. Actually, can I piggyback on this and ask if there's any reason why MQA should be better than current hi-res? Have I misunderstood, or is MQA not just a (lossy) way of wrapping up higher-res in a CD-esque bit rate and word length?
I have my answer to this. I have been saying that even 16/44.1 sounded "good enough for me" and had someone from one of the other forums over the other day, who thought I was crazy, but after he heard my streaming Tidal via an Aurender into the Select DAC via usb, he understood and agreed.
Does streaming Tidal sound as good as Tape or Vinyl? Of course NOT, IF you compare it to the same criteria as vinyl or tape sound. I doubt if digital will ever sound like vinyl or tape. And it doesn't matter whether it's 16/44.1, MQA or DSD, it still does not sound like vinyl or tape. If you ONLY love vinyl or tape sound and have a closed mind towards digital you will NEVER like it.
On the other hand if you love vinyl and tape, but are open to listening to digital then as I have personally experienced even non MQA, 16/44.1 streaming Tidal TOTALLY satisfies me and actually gives me more overall music pleasure that vinyl or tape. It just works for me and the digital sound is different, yes, but it's a sound that allows me to become totally involved in the music and that's what I care about, NOT if it sounds like vinyl or tape, which again IT DOES NOT.
I am of the opinion that a great recording streamed over 16/44.1 is going to sound better than a mediocre original recording that has been MQA'd (HW or SW unfolded) or DSD. BUT I am using the MSB Select DAC to make these declarations, so take it for what it's worth.
Does streaming Tidal sound as good as Tape or Vinyl? Of course NOT, IF you compare it to the same criteria as vinyl or tape sound. I doubt if digital will ever sound like vinyl or tape. And it doesn't matter whether it's 16/44.1, MQA or DSD, it still does not sound like vinyl or tape. If you ONLY love vinyl or tape sound and have a closed mind towards digital you will NEVER like it.
On the other hand if you love vinyl and tape, but are open to listening to digital then as I have personally experienced even non MQA, 16/44.1 streaming Tidal TOTALLY satisfies me and actually gives me more overall music pleasure that vinyl or tape. It just works for me and the digital sound is different, yes, but it's a sound that allows me to become totally involved in the music and that's what I care about, NOT if it sounds like vinyl or tape, which again IT DOES NOT.
I am of the opinion that a great recording streamed over 16/44.1 is going to sound better than a mediocre original recording that has been MQA'd (HW or SW unfolded) or DSD. BUT I am using the MSB Select DAC to make these declarations, so take it for what it's worth.
Very well said.
I listen to hours and hours of digital, most of it Tidal at 16/44.1 and if that is supposed to cause fatigue, I must have anti-fatigue DNA in me.
Very well said.
Very funny
Maybe we have the same anit-fatigue gene.....that explains all of this tape, vinyl, digital stuff....it's all DNA related
my question would be can MQA compete with optimized HQ Player? only because to my ears optimized HQ Player seems to really take digital somewhere much closer to analog.
as the tuning proceeds finding the ideal settings for HQ Player I'm hearing things in long term references I've never heard. Sunday a friend who is very sensitive to a digital signature commented how much less digital it sounded. and this guy is hard core analog and a tube guy to boot. and HQ Player is dsd compatible.
at some point I would like to hear MQA in my system and compare it to what I'm getting from HQ Player.
not that MGA might not be competitive, but I would be skeptical, and MQ Player is essentially free and out there for anyone to use, no rights fees, or hardware changes to dacs and associated costs. as opposed to the dark side of MQA as some are suggesting.
as the tuning proceeds finding the ideal settings for HQ Player I'm hearing things in long term references I've never heard. Sunday a friend who is very sensitive to a digital signature commented how much less digital it sounded. and this guy is hard core analog and a tube guy to boot. and HQ Player is dsd compatible.
at some point I would like to hear MQA in my system and compare it to what I'm getting from HQ Player.
not that MGA might not be competitive, but I would be skeptical, and MQ Player is essentially free and out there for anyone to use, no rights fees, or hardware changes to dacs and associated costs. as opposed to the dark side of MQA as some are suggesting.
Hi Mike, I have had good success with HQ Player. However, I don't know what the optimized version is. Is it a separate product or do you have a specific set of settings that you use to optimize HQP? If so, can you share? One issue I have with HQP is the myriad of possible settings. Thanks, Larry
It has a conjugate filter which is supposed to back out the anti-aliasing filter that was used when the music was originally digitized. Their tools leave breadcrumbs in there for the decoder to perform this function.
Very well said.
For me, this is the final frontier of digital. Totally fatigue free listening. I've obtained what I consider to be excellent sound from digital via my much tweaked homebrew DAC. Instruments and vocals often, but not consistently, sound recognizably like the real thing. However, even with that level of subjective performace I still find long term fatigue settles in on most playback sessions in a way it does not with vinyl. Perhaps, this is due to the generally greater dynamic range of digital. It's not due to a higher volume playback level with digital, as, for reasons to lengthy to eleborate on here, I listen to digital at a modest volume.
The onset of the fatigue I experience is much more subtle than it was from digital years ago. It doesn't really register as overt fatigue at first. I first become distracted or bored with the playback. It's a little weird, the sound slowly progresses from outstanding in it's clarity and alive-ness to sounding distracting, to sounding boring and then tiring as I continue listening. The tiring stage is when it becomes evident that fatigue has set in. Experimentation informs me that interpolation filter implementation plays a significant role. Which, perhaps not so coincidentally, is where MQA seeks to come in. However, I've not yet auditioned MQA.
My experience may certainly be due to digital gremlins remaining in my particular system. For one thing, I don't yet have special jitter reduction applied.
hi Larry,
I'm using the SGM music server, which is a no-holds-bared server designed around HQ Player. it has over-the-top pieces and has been painstakingly assembled to cater to HQ Player. think of HQ Player as the engine driving the ship. it's also compatible with Roon and Tidal, which I have. I'm not using MQA.
no other commercial product I know of uses HQ Player. all the other commercial servers are 'bit-perfect' direct.
the question becomes does one think digital needs fixing? if you do, then HQ Player or MQA both do that in their own ways.
Howdy Mike, one thing that I would say is that each person that answers any of these questions is "probably" coming with a different perspective. The final result as you know is the entire system's recipe. For one person they might love MQA or CD streaming or ???, but that has a LOT to do with their entire system, not necessarily just the digital formats being played.
fully agree Bob. if you are living with mainly streaming and playing lots of new music that way, then MQA has maybe more relative value than if you are a files from the server kind of guy. MQA has little help for the files listener.
but on the issue of just performance I lean toward what HQ Player does. but with unlimited hardware choices it's hard to isolate things to just HQ Player or MQA.
That's what I'm trying to establish with my question, really. I still haven't got a solid sense of whether that's true or not.
I've never even heard a MQA non streamed file, so I have no idea, but from my perspective MQA is all about streaming....or at least to me it is.
It seems quite apparent that the primary performance objective of MQA is the time-domain optimization of the digital channel. Such optimization takes an holistic approach, including both record/mastering and playback ends of the chain. While time-domain optimization is more easily done via plain high-rez PCM, there isn't an standardized industry requirement for it. As I understand it, full MQA requires a specified time-domain optimization.
I heard a non-streamed MQA file at a demo last summer, but the A-B with the same track on standard redbook sounded like a completely different mix/master. It's pretty difficult to assess superiority of a system if you're basically dealing with a different recording (I don't *know* that that was the case, but I strongly suspect) so I'm struggling to tell whether this is an "advance" in recording and playback, or just a rejigging to give a subjectively different presentation. Now, I stress that I'm coming from a position of ignorance here, so if my cynicism is misplaced then great. I'd love it to be a step forward for streaming AND in absolute sonic terms.
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