MQA or CD

[GroeneLeeuw]

DSD/SACD are basically pointless though, especially given the limited titles available....

Open for discussion.
In my opinion there are plenty titles- 1000s- although not as many as CD or FLAC, I recognise.
Personally, the biggest problem is that most of the titles is not something I´d buy as not my taste.

Still, DSD/SACD are proper technical solutions and actual improvement on what existed before.
MQA never was any of that.

 

[koshka]

Its such a shame when people who have never heard a full MQA setup slag it off as I have always believed in what I hear not what somebody else tells me.
Heard MQA of Beatles Let it Bleed and it was lovely.
Heard MQA of Pink Floyd Wish you Were Here and it was nothing special.

 

[Al ears]

Its such a shame when people who have never heard a full MQA setup slag it off as I have always believed in what I hear not what somebody else tells me.
Heard MQA of Beatles Let it Bleed and it was lovely.
Heard MQA of Pink Floyd Wish you Were Here and it was nothing special.

Like SACD not enough uptake by the majors in the industry to enable it to become the format of the day.
And it was designed to solve a problem that didn't exist.....
Most manufacturers saw that.

 

[record_spot]

Its such a shame when people who have never heard a full MQA setup slag it off as I have always believed in what I hear not what somebody else tells me.
Heard MQA of Beatles Let it Bleed and it was lovely.
Heard MQA of Pink Floyd Wish you Were Here and it was nothing special.

I've had two MQA capable DACs.

The first was an Audioquest Dragonfly that unfolded the MQA data. My current one is the Cambridge 200M DAC.

The AQ one was sold on ages ago, the Cambridge is excellent though I don't use it for MQA at all.

I tried MQA a number of times with a wide range of music. I thought Bob Stuart's claims bordered on the faintly ridiculous at times. I found the work that the likes of Archimago and others did in deconstructing MQA to expose what it really is deeply valuable to an audio community that routinely gets ripped off.

MQA? DOA. See also Qrono.

 

[koshka]

A friend has a PS Audio system with large hi end JBL speakers. His system plays SACD and I have heard direct comparisons with plain CD and yes SACD can be more enjoyable to listen to.
I can't play SACD as I can only afford the bottom of the range Luxman CD player but if I could afford the next model up with i think is £8000 I would buy it and look out for SACD's.
I have tried SHM CD's and thought there might be an improvement but wasn't sure so decided on forgetting about them.
I have tried a couple of Blu-Spec2 CD's and yes these do sound better than standard CD but I have only tried 2.
All these additional "formats" including MQA are great fun and I love having them around to make music more interesting to listen to but I also enjoy plain old CD and LP.
I have a couple of thousand CD's and about 1500 LP's as I just love music.
I play them all without concern about what format it's in.
There is lots of weird stuff in HiFi which makes it a fun hobby.
Mains fuses that sound different - Mains cables, USB and Ethernet cables that sound different.
If you think it sounds better then don't listen to the opinionated people online and just believe in yourself.
Just ignore the stupid priced stuff and have fun.

 

[ToppingSMSL]

Its such a shame when people who have never heard a full MQA setup slag it off as I have always believed in what I hear not what somebody else tells me.
Heard MQA of Beatles Let it Bleed and it was lovely.
Heard MQA of Pink Floyd Wish you Were Here and it was nothing special.

Crikey. MQA introduces distortions. Measuarable distortions. Just because you like a particular album mastering that happens to be encoded with MQA doesnt mean MQA is responsible for it sounding nice!

 

[Al ears]

Crikey. MQA introduces distortions. Measuarable distortions. Just because you like a particular album mastering that happens to be encoded with MQA doesnt mean MQA is responsible for it sounding nice!

Not too sure where distortion was mentioned

 

[koshka]

There are no distortions on my stereo - presume you read this somewhere and just believed it.

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

There are no distortions on my stereo - presume you read this somewhere and just believed it.

It'll be the only one in the world, then.

 

[koshka]

Sorry I will not accept this nonsense response.
I bet you haven't ever heard a full MQA system through a decent stereo and if you did you would probably deny how it sounded because of your prejudice?
I am currently at my sons house in Canada listening to music on a system of Majico Speakers driven by a Pilium amplifier using Roon to stream from stored files, Tidal and Qobuz. Total cost of the system is about $150.000.
Roon gives you the opportunity to compare tracks from the same album. There are several people here and only two interested in HiFi yet they can all hear that MQA files give a more enjoyable reproduction of the music against a 16/44 stream from Tidal or Qobuz.
It's the nicest sounding system I have ever heard in 50 years of listening to music of all types. The Pilium amplifiers sound amazing .
At home I have a Luxman CD player and an Innuos Zenith streamer and the Luxman plays native MQA CD's and the Innuos plays MQA files.
So you are saying that Luxman didn't know what they were doing when they included full MQA CD playback in their players despite the additional cost of implementation.
They are a major manufacturer with an outstanding reputation so why do it?
People who have listened to music at my house including most of my friends and family think the MQA files and MQA CD's sound better than standard CD.
Some couldn't hear any difference or just didn't care.
You are claiming the ones that heard a difference are all mad despite them having no interest in HiFi and therefore no prejudice in what they here.
We are all enjoying the music and you just missing out but that's your choice.

 

[Jasonovich]

MQA or CD, if it pulls your bell who am I to argue?
In my own humble opinion, SACD/DSD captures the essence of the music BETTER. 😊

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

Sorry I will not accept this nonsense response.
I bet you haven't ever heard a full MQA system through a decent stereo and if you did you would probably deny how it sounded because of your prejudice?

Let's not get personal - no system is completely without distortion is all I mean - it's in the stats. And there's definitely no such thing as a perfect loudspeaker.

(And it's probably worth pointing out that two things that are unlikely to endear you to the membership are suggesting that if they disagree with you it's because they've never heard a decent system , and/or implying that because you've spent a lot of cash that your opinion is therefore more worthwhile.)

 

[Revolutions]

This thread made me realised I don’t actually know what MQA is or does

A quick read & can see it’s the got all the elements needed for hifi nerds to coalesce around opposing views 🍿

 

[Vincent Kars]

MQA is a technology to transmit high-res recordings with a substantial reduced bandwidth. That is the reason why Tidal used it.
Assuming a 24 bit / 96 kHz recording, it is down-sampled to 48 kHz. This will half the size so the claim is correct.
Downsampling to 48 kHz of course removes the entire 24-48 kHz audio band (Shannon-Nyquist).
To avoid this, MQA uses what they call Audio Origami. This 24-48 part is folded and stored below bit 17. Hence it is preserved.
By using the bits below bit 17, the dynamic rangen is reduced from 24 bit to 17 bit, only 1 bit better than CD quality.
Obvious, MQA is a lossy codec sacrificing dynamic range in favor of frequency range.

On playback you can do
- Nothing. It simply plays, you won't hear the 17-24 bit part. Pretty clever job.
- Expand in software. The Origami will be unfolded, restoring the 24-48 range. Effectively you are listening to a 17 bit / 96 kHz recording.
-Expand in hardware. The same as the soft ware plus setting the DAC to use minimum phase filters. This was the reason manufacturers like Ayre refused to buy a license because they already used minimum phase filters in their products.

It is pretty hard to make bit 17 or lower audible. You must have a playback chain with a noise floor better than 102 dB. Most power amps are noisier. So although MQA is lossy, the change to hear this losses are low.

 

[Jasonovich]

MQA is a technology to transmit high-res recordings with a substantial reduced bandwidth. That is the reason why Tidal used it.
Assuming a 24 bit / 96 kHz recording, it is down-sampled to 48 kHz. This will half the size so the claim is correct.
Downsampling to 48 kHz of course removes the entire 24-48 kHz audio band (Shannon-Nyquist).
To avoid this, MQA uses what they call Audio Origami. This 24-48 part is folded and stored below bit 17. Hence it is preserved.
By using the bits below bit 17, the dynamic rangen is reduced from 24 bit to 17 bit, only 1 bit better than CD quality.
Obvious, MQA is a lossy codec sacrificing dynamic range in favor of frequency range.

On playback you can do
- Nothing. It simply plays, you won't hear the 17-24 bit part. Pretty clever job.
- Expand in software. The Origami will be unfolded, restoring the 24-48 range. Effectively you are listening to a 17 bit / 96 kHz recording.
-Expand in hardware. The same as the soft ware plus setting the DAC to use minimum phase filters. This was the reason manufacturers like Ayre refused to buy a license because they already used minimum phase filters in their products.

It is pretty hard to make bit 17 or lower audible. You must have a playback chain with a noise floor better than 102 dB. Most power amps are noisier. So although MQA is lossy, the change to hear this losses are low.

I go with my gut, Vincent you have the science, always nice to introduce a balance to the argument.

 

[koshka]

I would love to fully explore SACD as my friend loves his PS Audio SACD system and I have been impressed when I have listened to it.
When I asked Ken Kessler at the audio jumble what he thought of SACD he recommended I give it a try.
Anybody got a Luxman D10X for £5000 as I also need MQA CD playback?

 

[Al ears]

I would love to fully explore SACD as my friend loves his PS Audio SACD system and I have been impressed when I have listened to it.
When I asked Ken Kessler at the audio jumble what he thought of SACD he recommended I give it a try.
Anybody got a Luxman D10X for £5000 as I also need MQA CD playback?

Oh yes, I am sure plenty have.....
Unfortunately they cannot advertise them here.... ;
🙂

 

[ToppingSMSL]

There are no distortions on my stereo - presume you read this somewhere and just believed it.

Just watch this:

View: https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc?si=paajEl_Mc3tjOzwZ

 

[nopiano]

Just watch this:

View: https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc?si=paajEl_Mc3tjOzwZ

MQA has had opposing views (as hinted at above) for several years, and has been done to death here and elsewhere.

I’m in the “it’s a solution looking for a problem” camp. This grieves me as Bob Stuart designed some of the best gear decades ago - look at Meridian through the ages. But this seemed like a pension funding wheeze for him that has largely vanished from view, whatever the merits.

 

[Al ears]

MQA has had opposing views (as hinted at above) for several years, and has been done to death here and elsewhere.

I’m in the “it’s a solution looking for a problem” camp. This grieves me as Bob Stuart designed some of the best gear decades ago - look at Meridian through the ages. But this seemed like a pension funding wheeze for him that has largely vanished from view, whatever the merits.

Hear, hear!

 

[Jasonovich]

MQA has had opposing views (as hinted at above) for several years, and has been done to death here and elsewhere.

I’m in the “it’s a solution looking for a problem” camp. This grieves me as Bob Stuart designed some of the best gear decades ago - look at Meridian through the ages. But this seemed like a pension funding wheeze for him that has largely vanished from view, whatever the merits.

I don't see the point of MQA, it's DNA is based on compression. I don't understand it's purpose or validity?
It isn't for me to criticize, if you have this in your setup and it hits the spot for you, please enjoy.

20 years ago, MP3's made sense because affordable large storage wasn't ubiquitous back in the day. Now you can buy SSD or USB drives in excessive of one TB relatively cheaply, so why do we need compression that's likely to degrade the sound?

I'm of the opinion there's too much diversification in the audio format industry. If only they stick to PCM (Flac, Wave) and DSD (SACD) and let the others die off.

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

Given that audio files are (I would assume) small in comparison with video, and we all expect to be able to stream in at least HD without issue, is there actually any need to compress in 2026?

 

[Vincent Kars]

No.
In fact at the time each and everybody was video conferencing due to Corona, they asked Netflix & Co to throttle their bandwidth.
Nobody aske Tidal & Co to do the same.
Indeed MQA was a solution to a problem we didn't have.