CA takes aim at MQA

caesar

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The computer audiophile geek has been marketing the berkeley reference dac as the best dac extant for the longest time. The latest version of that dac has mqa functionality. All he needs to do is listen for himself.
 

awsmone

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Apr 6, 2014
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The computer audiophile geek has been marketing the berkeley reference dac as the best dac extant for the longest time. The latest version of that dac has mqa functionality. All he needs to do is listen for himself.

That’s interesting but the article is discussing software and firmware not hardware actually
 

caesar

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That’s interesting but the article is discussing software and firmware not hardware actually

Thanks. I'll try reading it again... But I find that you put engineers in the room, and they will argue until they are blue in the face - with no clear resolution.

I would like to have actual numbers of whether Tidal users prefer the title with an "M" to it vs. the non-MQA title...Let the free market decide whether it makes sense to convert every music file to MQA and whether to record all future music in MQA....
 

Al M.

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Thanks, awsmone, for posting this. I have read and followed the discussion the last few days. After the first series of bravos and kudos the comment section becomes really interesting, with lots of experts who clearly know what they are talking about. One of them reverse engineered the MQA filters and showed IIRC that the magical "unfolding" is nothing more than oversampling.

As Computer Audiophile said in his editorial comments preceding the article:

"Editor's note 3: The technical assertions made in this article have been thoroughly checked by independent engineers, both in and out of the audio industry. To the best of our knowledge everything technical in this article is factually correct and may be duplicated at any time by anyone with the requisite skills." (End Quote.)

It is clear to me more than ever that MQA is a scam that wants digital rights management to take over the industry and collect fees. It is also clear after the technical analysis that people preferring MQA do so not because of higher fidelity to the original (the "temporal deblurring" is also nonsense because the MQA filters themselves introduce greater timing errors), but because they like the euphonic distortions.

Interestingly MQA Ltd. who were asked for a technical response to the article declined to do so. Obviously the technical analysis cannot be countered and is devastating to MQA. Too bad that Bob Stuart has sunk to the lows he did. He used to be one of those who actually drove digital forward in the olden days. I owned and enjoyed his Meridian 208 and Meridian 602/606 players back in the early Nineties.

MQA will die, but it cannot die fast enough. It is a disservice to High Fidelity.

***

BTW, it is also worthwhile reading the links in Archimago's article, for example, the one where he performs an in-depth analysis of the timing problems of MQA.
 

dalethorn

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Thanks, awsmone, for posting this. I have read and followed the discussion the last few days. After the first series of bravos and kudos the comment section becomes really interesting, with lots of experts who clearly know what they are talking about. One of them reverse engineered the MQA filters and showed IIRC that the magical "unfolding" is nothing more than oversampling. As Computer Audiophile said in his editorial comments preceding the article: "Editor's note 3: The technical assertions made in this article have been thoroughly checked by independent engineers, both in and out of the audio industry. To the best of our knowledge everything technical in this article is factually correct and may be duplicated at any time by anyone with the requisite skills." (End Quote.) It is clear to me more than ever that MQA is a scam that wants digital rights management to take over the industry and collect fees. It is also clear after the technical analysis that people preferring MQA do so not because of higher fidelity to the original (the "temporal deblurring" is also nonsense because the MQA filters themselves introduce greater timing errors), but because they like the euphonic distortions. Interestingly MQA Ltd. who were asked for a technical response to the article declined to do so. Obviously the technical analysis cannot be countered and is devastating to MQA. Too bad that Bob Stuart has sunk to the lows he did. He used to be one of those who actually drove digital forward in the olden days. I owned and enjoyed his Meridian 208 and Meridian 602/606 players back in the early Nineties. MQA will die, but it cannot die fast enough. It is a disservice to High Fidelity. BTW, it is also worthwhile reading the links in Archimago's article, for example, the one where he performs an in-depth analysis of the timing problems of MQA.

I can't defend MQA on any of those technical claims, and in fact I wouldn't defend it in light of concerns about putting proprietary code into my music files. But when it comes to the sound and any claims that "MQA sounds worse", I ask for a simple example -name an album available as a download in MQA and non-MQA that sounds worse in MQA, and I will buy them and test them. That's simple enough, now where are the examples?
 

dalethorn

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So noted.

This is a fascinating topic, which in a weird way (to me) is analogous to the vinyl craze. I spent years and $$$$ on vinyl, and have no desire to get back in. At my own expense in money and time, that is. But if someone were to gift me with a complete modern system including some 200-gram audiophile LP's, and set it up for me, I would explore it just to have a listen and see for myself.

I had no interest in MQA at all, and I understood all of the pitfalls, but when the controversy heated up, I was curious -just curious. The odd thing though was there's all these charts and graphs and tests that illustrate the technicals behind this thing, yet when it comes to the actual hearing, nobody seems to have the examples I asked for.

So if anyone can recommend an album that's available in MQA and non-MQA masterings on the common download sites that I have access to - an album that they believe sounds worse in MQA, I'd like to explore that. You see, we have lots of people debunking the notion that MQA sounds better, but nobody debunking the debunkers. We need the latter to validate the actual sound.
 

Al M.

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This is a fascinating topic, which in a weird way (to me) is analogous to the vinyl craze. I spent years and $$$$ on vinyl, and have no desire to get back in. At my own expense in money and time, that is. But if someone were to gift me with a complete modern system including some 200-gram audiophile LP's, and set it up for me, I would explore it just to have a listen and see for myself.

I had no interest in MQA at all, and I understood all of the pitfalls, but when the controversy heated up, I was curious -just curious. The odd thing though was there's all these charts and graphs and tests that illustrate the technicals behind this thing, yet when it comes to the actual hearing, nobody seems to have the examples I asked for.

So if anyone can recommend an album that's available in MQA and non-MQA masterings on the common download sites that I have access to - an album that they believe sounds worse in MQA, I'd like to explore that. You see, we have lots of people debunking the notion that MQA sounds better, but nobody debunking the debunkers. We need the latter to validate the actual sound.

If you go through the comment section there, they give examples, for both better and worse sound.

But again, this is not about if MQA is better. It is not. Technically it cannot be, as the article and the work by others shows. Even if something sounds better in MQA it may just be a better mastering. Or it may be a euphonic distortion that is to the listener's liking.

For example, a number of people have reported that MQA is more forward sounding, and some may like that. But that has been shown to likely be the result of aliasing noise artifacts, which suppress low-level spatial information that would push images back in the soundfield where appropriate. Interestingly, a more forward sound may also be perceived to be louder. And it is known that people often prefer playback just by virtue of it being louder, even if it so just by a little bit (hence the importance of measured level matching during comparisons).
 
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Joe Whip

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Shouldn’t the MQA folks be able to debunk the debunkers as you say, if there was anything to MQA as they claim? If you enjoy what you hear, have at it.
 

Al M.

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Shouldn’t the MQA folks be able to debunk the debunkers as you say, if there was anything to MQA as they claim? If you enjoy what you hear, have at it.

I am glad that the folks at Schiit, who produce the DAC that we both have, did not fall for MQA. They gave their reasons:

http://www.schiit.com/news/news/why-we-wont-be-supporting-mqa

Here are my own thoughts on Schiit and MQA (first post):

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?23760-Schiit-Yggdrasil-DAC-and-MQA

Fortunately others, including Ayre, Benchmark and Playback Designs, have said NO to MQA as well.
 

dalethorn

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If you go through the comment section there, they give examples, for both better and worse sound. But again, this is not about if MQA is better. It is not. Technically it cannot be, as the article and the work by others shows. Even if something sounds better in MQA it may just be a better mastering. Or it may be a euphonic distortion that is to the listener's liking. For example, a number of people have reported that MQA is more forward sounding, and some may like that. But that has been shown to likely be the result of aliasing artifacts, which suppress low-level spatial information that would push images back in the soundfield where appropriate. Interestingly, a more forward sound may also be perceived to be louder. And it is known that people often prefer playback just by virtue of it being louder, even if it so just by a little bit (hence the importance of measured level matching during comparisons).

If the purpose for MQA was to stream more efficiently and to have smaller high-res files for whatever reason, is that still a valid concern? I have no idea about the streaming, but I wouldn't think smaller high-res file sizes is any concern at all today.

So then if customers have no particular need for MQA, especially given that the prices I see are higher for (ostensibly) worse files, are they buying them because of a magic 'MQA' label? What am I missing?

I've heard one angle on this, that there's a fear that record labels who produce high-res downloads will start MQA'ing their masters in ever-greater numbers as time goes on, and somewhere in the future not only will the promise of better sound be lost, but the freedom to back up files ad infinitum could be lost as well. Is that the greater worry?
 

Al M.

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If the purpose for MQA was to stream more efficiently and to have smaller high-res files for whatever reason, is that still a valid concern? I have no idea about the streaming, but I wouldn't think smaller high-res file sizes is any concern at all today.

Indeed. File size should be of lesser and lesser concern as internet speed increases. MQA is a solution in search of a problem.

So then if customers have no particular need for MQA, especially given that the prices I see are higher for (ostensibly) worse files, are they buying them because of a magic 'MQA' label? What am I missing?

I don't think you are missing anything.

I've heard one angle on this, that there's a fear that record labels who produce high-res downloads will start MQA'ing their masters in ever-greater numbers as time goes on, and somewhere in the future not only will the promise of better sound be lost, but the freedom to back up files ad infinitum could be lost as well. Is that the greater worry?

Yes, the worry is that access to the original data/resolution will be lost, and that we have data depending on digital filters (minimum phase) that not everyone wants and which introduce their own timing artifacts (the default preferred fliter is usually linear phase).
 

dalethorn

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Shouldn’t the MQA folks be able to debunk the debunkers as you say, if there was anything to MQA as they claim? If you enjoy what you hear, have at it.

One person here suggested going through a contentious "comment section" on another site to try to find examples of what users suggest are inferior MQA masterings. I'd much prefer to have suggestions here, starting with the worst examples. I can't afford to buy 100 albums in two versions each, but if someone who is really against MQA has an example or two, that would be a good start.
 

Al M.

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One person here suggested going through a contentious "comment section" on another site to try to find examples of what users suggest are inferior MQA masterings. I'd much prefer to have suggestions here, starting with the worst examples. I can't afford to buy 100 albums in two versions each, but if someone who is really against MQA has an example or two, that would be a good start.

From page 5 on the thread:

Miguelito thinks that Keith Jarrett's Koeln Concert sounds a bit fuller on MQA vs. the 24/96 version from HDTracks, but he doesn't know if that's on the original recording or an artifact. He thinks that the MQA version of Morrissey's "Viva Hate" doesn't sound any different, and the MQA version of INXS "Kick" sounds worse than the Redbook.
 

dalethorn

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Indeed. File size should be of lesser and lesser concern as internet speed increases. MQA is a solution in search of a problem.

I don't think you are missing anything.

Yes, the worry is that access to the original data/resolution will be lost, and that we have data depending on digital filters (minimum phase) that not everyone wants and which introduce their own timing artifacts (the default preferred fliter is usually linear phase)

So the bottom line seems to be, don't worry about it? The tech guys will battle it out with the RIAA or IEEE or AES or whomever, while the rest of us play music? Or is this a call to audiophiles everywhere to get some activism going and protest this MQA thing? The reason I ask isn't because of the facts - we have more facts than the average audiophile wants to try to digest. The reason I ask is because the angst and anger seems to be drowning out the thoughtful debate, at least in some places.
 

dalethorn

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From page 5 on the thread: Miguelito thinks that Keith Jarrett's Koeln Concert sounds a bit fuller on MQA vs. the 24/96 version from HDTracks, but he doesn't know if that's on the original recording or an artifact. He thinks that the MQA version of Morrissey's "Viva Hate" doesn't sound any different, and the MQA version of INXS "Kick" sounds worse than the Redbook.

I see. One person here or elsewhere suggested this was pointing more toward the specific masterings than the presence (or not) of MQA. In that case, there's no reason for me to duplicate those efforts. I was looking for a trend that had the great majority of MQA releases sounding "not as good" as the high-res PCM files.

OTOH, playing Devil's Advocate, I can imagine the MQA mastering engineers working extra hard to make their masters better, to fool people into thinking it's because they're MQA masters. I wonder....
 

astrotoy

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The computer audiophile geek has been marketing the berkeley reference dac as the best dac extant for the longest time. The latest version of that dac has mqa functionality. All he needs to do is listen for himself.

Caesar, I do object to you using the word "marketing." Chris Connaker reviewed the Berkeley Reference DAC and came to his conclusion. He is not marketing the Berkeley Reference DAC in any way. No commercial or other relationship with the company.

Larry
 

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