MQA, worth it?

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daveh75

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Where do you live?

We are at least 50 years away from that in the UK.


Not even remotely true

Between Virgin Media rolling out DOCSIS 3.1 on it's network, BT/Openreach's Full Fibre buildout now at just over 4m homes and the various full fibre 'altnets' that have popped up over the last few years, just over 39% of UK homes now have access to Gigabit capable services
 

daveh75

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As for internet in the UK, i'm on the Openreach G.Fast FTTP Fibre network, so (although asyncronous) i'm getting 900mbps/150mbps (Down/Up) from BT.

G.Fast and FTTP are two entirely different technologies.

G.Fast is a hybrid fibre/copper technology that's really just an extension/evolution of VDSL/FTTC and therefore only offers maximum speeds of 330/50Mbps, and at very short distances from the cabinet, with the speed dropping off fairly sharply over distance

FTTP being full fibre is capable of Gigabit and beyond
 
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Audioisnobiggie

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So, the plan is for people to pay twice as much for their subscriptions and have to buy new gear with an extra chip in it that makes it sound like it wasn't there, because it will sound like it's playing high rez versions that make your dog want to kill whoever's playing, so that Jay-z can save money on bandwidth by not even having to use any more.
 
My Luxman cd player is MQA capable but I’ve not tried it out yet. It will play MQA discs as well as digital files via usb. I got a freebie disc when I bought the player but have nothing to compare it to.
Not sure if MQA will go the same way as sacd. As they are charging quite a lot for the CDs.
 

Audioisnobiggie

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Why are there mqa discs? Were discs not big enough to fit everything on, yet? Blu ray discs are at 100gb right now, it would be nice if they tried filling those with 1 album. I don't get why people don't just release things at the highest existing bitrate, and if people's gear doesn't support it, it just plays at their max.
 
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manicm

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So, the plan is for people to pay twice as much for their subscriptions and have to buy new gear with an extra chip in it that makes it sound like it wasn't there, because it will sound like it's playing high rez versions that make your dog want to kill whoever's playing, so that Jay-z can save money on bandwidth by not even having to use any more.

If you're buying new, many new DACs and streamers are MQA compatible.
 

Audioisnobiggie

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If you're buying new, many new DACs and streamers are MQA compatible.
And remember that this extra chip, even if it miraculously performs so well that you can't even tell you needed it, is on top of already paying double so that he saves money on bandwidth, you only need to buy new gear that has to have it to make your feature you're already paying double for work. He should introduce a plan where he charges double again and makes you buy 2 chip gear to save even more bandwidth without even having to use more.
If there ever is a chip that can invisibly save bandwidth but only for audio (since they're talking about hiding the data inside the data), it will belong on the transport, not the dac.
 
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Sixtyten

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Not sure if MQA will go the same way as sacd. As they are charging quite a lot for the CDs.

Not really comparable though. SACD is a high resolution lossless format which (arguably) provides the highest quality digital recordings available, and offers the possibility of multichannel surround.

MQA is a lossy format which provides quality comparable to mp3, but it will make a light come on certain dacs.
 

Audioisnobiggie

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' MQA is a lossy format which provides quality comparable to mp3, but it will make a light come on certain dacs.'
That's why I'm going to sell forehead chip implants to the audio world telling them it will make things sound like the original. MQA is designed to be snake oil. This is why some people get into the content streaming business, you get to save as much on streaming it as you want.
 
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manicm

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Not really comparable though. SACD is a high resolution lossless format which (arguably) provides the highest quality digital recordings available, and offers the possibility of multichannel surround.

MQA is a lossy format which provides quality comparable to mp3, but it will make a light come on certain dacs.

You clearly and evidently don't understand MQA at all. Its quality is way above MP3.
 

Audioisnobiggie

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I'm all ears to hearing how MQA works. and how it's better than mp3. The floor is yours
Actually, mp3 will sound better. MQA is a noise chip that makes your gear say that tracks are higher rez than what is being sent. mp3's just strip away parts of the original, and don't introduce noise. Jay-z wants you to pay double and buy new gear with an extra chip first, without him having to send any more data, then talk about how much better MQA tracks are compared to the same unadultered high rez tracks anywhere else. I'm going to sell gear with an MQA noise removing chip. It will make people hear the original high rez tracks unaltered, by making them go to qobuz instead, and it will only cost them $9.99 extra per month to me for the service.
 
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Actually, mp3 will sound better. MQA is a noise chip that makes your gear say that tracks are higher rez than what is being sent. mp3's just strip away parts of the original, and don't introduce noise. Jay-z wants you to pay double and buy new gear with an extra chip first, without him having to send any more data, then talk about how much better MQA tracks are compared to the same unadultered high rez tracks anywhere else. I'm going to sell gear with an MQA noise removing chip. It will make people hear the original high rez tracks unaltered, by making them go to qobuz instead, and it will only cost them $9.99 extra per month to me for the service.
i think you need to do more homework and be very careful what you post on this forum.
 

Audioisnobiggie

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i think you need to do more homework and be very careful what you post on this forum.
I've been put in my place. I'll just have to sit here listening to Jay-z tell us what everyone wants everyone to be, with artificial noise introduced for twice as much, even though I won't trade all my gear in for crack, as it's his job is to be getting at.
Maybe I'll get into the entertainment business so that I can become a drug dealer. Then I could tell everyone I have lots of devices for cheap, then when they find out what life's like without me, and get some more gear, get them to trade 'em back again. I guess the thing you have to work out, if entertainers have to be drug dealers, is how to get them to give them the money they would have spent on the gear straight to you for drugs, because you won't get as much for it. Which must be why Jay-z had to become an entertainer, his stuff wasn't good enough in the first place.
 
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Gray

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I've been put in my place. I'll just have to sit here listening to Jay-z tell us what everyone wants everyone to be, with artificial noise introduced for twice as much, even though I won't trade all my gear in for crack, as it's his job is to be getting at.
Maybe I'll get into the entertainment business so that I can become a drug dealer. Then I could tell everyone I have lots of devices for cheap, then when they find out what life's like without me, and get some more gear, get them to trade 'em back again. I guess the thing you have to work out, if entertainers have to be drug dealers, is how to get them to give them the money they would have spent on the gear straight to you for drugs, because you won't get as much for it. Which must be why Jay-z had to become an entertainer, his stuff wasn't good enough in the first place.
I don't think Jay-z is the only one on drugs 🤨
 

Audioisnobiggie

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Next, we need the best used audio salesmen to become rappers.
Oh man, they're gonna need the people who are the best at doing drugs to handle the recruiting. I don't know what Jay-z's brother's problem was.
 
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manicm

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Actually, mp3 will sound better. MQA is a noise chip that makes your gear say that tracks are higher rez than what is being sent. mp3's just strip away parts of the original, and don't introduce noise. Jay-z wants you to pay double and buy new gear with an extra chip first, without him having to send any more data, then talk about how much better MQA tracks are compared to the same unadultered high rez tracks anywhere else. I'm going to sell gear with an MQA noise removing chip. It will make people hear the original high rez tracks unaltered, by making them go to qobuz instead, and it will only cost them $9.99 extra per month to me for the service.

I won't argue about MQA's commercial interests, but to call MQA a noise chip reveals you haven't really read anything, and hires actually does contain ultra high frequency noise. So is it better to strip away bits from listenable frequencies as you seem to suggest? MQA is not simply noise removal, as much as I won't pretend I understand the technology completely, but from what I do know, you're into error correction territory 😅
 

record_spot

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MQA is pretty much a product for a problem that needed solving a decade ago or more ago when bandwidth was still waiting to take off, people didn't generally have large data allowances, and smartphones were still in their infancy. I've had an unlimited data plan for 12 years now and MQA's reduced file size folding/unfolding "origami" offers me nothing.

That said, I've a DAC that takes care of all the MQA gubbins and I thought, seeing as it was there, that I should try out a few albums again. I've done this before, but I thought it'd be fun to try out again on the new one. So, Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust", David Byrne's "American Utopia" concert (damn if he hasn't gone and turned out the other best concert film ever made) and Motorhead's "Bad Magic".

Quite the mix! One of the things MQA trumpets is how you get what the artist and studio intended you to hear. Quite how they managed that with Bowie I'll never know. Seeing as they used the recent remaster, I'm not completely sure they do either. But that's another strapline that MQA would like us to believe that's bit the dust. They get what the labels want them to have. Anybody thinking they're getting some specially mastered version's kidding themselves.

In the past I've bought Fleetwood Mac's Mirage album, Led Zeppelin's second album and a couple of others. You can't really go wrong with the Fleetwood Mac album, it's a well recorded piece, so you'd have to go some to end up with a turkey. See also David Byrne's wonderful American Utopia. It's a stellar recording, so the MQA version's not going to sound any worse, but it's got little wriggle room to go out and sound better without applying filtering.

And that's the thing - MQA - in some cases - sounds good, not because of MQA, but because of work that's been done previously by mastering engineers and bands in years gone by. MQA picks up the fruits of others' labours.

The video above is excellent, but do also check out Archimago's work on MQA. MQA pretty much tinker with filtering, have little control on the provenance on the titles they get, but on the bright side, you do get a nice blue light.

Not a dragon to chase I feel.
 

Audioisnobiggie

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Oh wait, now I get it. Yeah, Master Quality Authenticated does sound like it's better than high res.
You're the grass roots movement if you double the sample rate and simply call it higher res.
I'm coming out with a Righteous Fury chip to put after MQA chips that delete the higher frequencies. Then tell Jay-z people will pay double again to have to have it, still without him having to use more than the minimum bandwidth.
 
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Audioisnobiggie

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If you buy gear with the chip so that people don't have to use more bandwidth on you, and then play their own higher resolution files from their drive, does it actually sound worse, now that everything at least passively passes through an extra chip first? People who were serious about how things sound besides what you call it will probably be wondering.
Maybe MQA should be telling people they need a whole new equally important part of their systems, that sits before their dac's, that is complicated and difficult to understand how it works, so that people who think cable purity sounds stupid and buy the new complex piece get to be the only ones allowed to hear a difference if they pay double but don't deserve more bandwidth.
 
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Audioisnobiggie

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Why can't you use software that will compress your files above 44.1 into MQA, so that you can save space on your hard drives? You're wasting space if they're not all 44.1 MQA FLAC sized files. And why is his 44.1 streaming still 44.1, can't they Master Quality Authenticate 44.1 files into 22khz streams?
I downgraded to the 44.1 only plan, but at least I didn't buy the chip, suckers.
 

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