Meridian's MQA Codec: how quickly will Naim adopt
Posted by: Iver van de Zand on 21 December 2014
the new MQA Codec, developed by Meridian, is apparantly revolutionary. Various media report it might be one of the game changers in digital sound quality. Very interested to knwo how quickly Naim will adopt MQA
iver
Hmm, if it's revolutionary, there will be no apparence about it.
I am not sure the industry wants another proprietry format..even if it has specific advantages.. Let's see .. But I suspect if it it is not standardised or endorsed/backed by the AES I would be doubtful of main stream take up.
Simon
It is being said that the 4 big producers of musicalbums (i.e. sonY, EMI) that make 70% of the market, will adopt MQA. if that's the case, I believe there is no other choice than adopting, not ?
iver
Warner owns Deezer, the big 4 and Merlin own about 20% of Spotify. In fact with the exception of Apple/Beats and YouTube Music Key most of the services have some form of big 5 shareholding.
If the labels want to push MQA then they have can use their influence over the streaming companies. If that happens then hifi manufacturer will have no choice but to get on board, in the same way everyone eventually made CD players. The difference being the timeline would likely be compressed.
All that being said if the biggest retailer of music becomes the biggest streamer of music, then their position on MQA would be highly relevant.
On a purely personal note I'd like to know if the Meridian in my car will get an upgrade!
Hey Guys, some more relevant info here: http://www.stereophile.com/con...ns-mqa#comments-link
Other than MQA is proprietry and is licencable, so any support for consumer will have a licence cost somewhere that will need paying for
Very much looking forward to it in the future, to be honest. Won't quite be overnight of course.
I think it is the streaming service providers (and their customers) who have most to gain here, as it allows them to distribute higher res from identical/existing bandwidth, and possibly current res with less bandwidth.
If SSP's benefit, so will the labels, hence they will back it. Also, from reading the Stereophile piece it seems to be backwards compatible somehow (though I wasn't clear if that was just regarding resolution 'decoding', or the ability to playback generally without any new s/ware etc. More info/understanding required :-)
Anyhow its not like SACD, which needed completely new hardware as well as media, and therefore proved to be an overpriced niche, albeit a wonderful one. My prediction for this is near universal adoption, and the beginning of the end for PCM at least regards internet streaming......
The question is wrong. Hardware support means nothing.
When will we see music released in MQA format?
An MQA music file uses PCM, and it's backward-compatible. A product without the necessary MQA decoding will read the core code and, it's claimed, will deliver CD-quality sound.
MQA can be delivered inside any lossless container, e.g. Apple Lossless, FLAC or WAV.
Read more at http://www.whathifi.com/news/m...#ip35UHsdywhGmvSl.99
Streaming providers make use of shared caches provided by commodity content delivery networks. These CDNs don't just steam music and are agnostic about the format of the data being received or transmitted. The cost of cloud based server hardware gained is very marginal at best.
The trend at the consumer level is for bandwidth to increase.
Struggling to see the benefit.
Jude
Hi Jude,
I don't think the idea is to reduce storage requirements (which as you say are low cost anyway), it's to reduce streaming bandwidth requirements.
You're right that for many consumers the trend is of increasing bandwidth, but for many more (for example where I live) the trend is opposite. That's because subscriber uptake is faster than the infra roll-out to support it.
I see this more as a means of loss-less compression, in practice, than just another format for the sake of it.
However, strange as it seems, there is talk of step gains in perceived audio quality - even compared to the original 'unadulterated' file. Hard to understand how that could be, and time will tell if its true.....
Hi Jude,
I don't think the idea is to reduce storage requirements (which as you say are low cost anyway), it's to reduce streaming bandwidth requirements.
You're right that for many consumers the trend is of increasing bandwidth, but for many more (for example where I live) the trend is opposite. That's because subscriber uptake is faster than the infra roll-out to support it.
I see this more as a means of loss-less compression, in practice, than just another format for the sake of it.
However, strange as it seems, there is talk of step gains in perceived audio quality - even compared to the original 'unadulterated' file. Hard to understand how that could be, and time will tell if its true.....
Hi,
I was wasn't meaning storage specifically, rather about what a CDN has to gain (or lose).
Not sure how many regions in the globe are experiencing the issue you mention and how of the global music consuming population represented by this situation. If it is a significant amount and is regionalised, an option could be use specifi CDNs in that region. Of course, the record labels and SSPs need to start the ball rolling.
Seem's a stretch (no pun intended) to increase quality and increase compression at the same time
Jude
I think it is the streaming service providers (and their customers) who have most to gain here, as it allows them to distribute higher res from identical/existing bandwidth, and possibly current res with less bandwidth.
If SSP's benefit, so will the labels, hence they will back it. Also, from reading the Stereophile piece it seems to be backwards compatible somehow (though I wasn't clear if that was just regarding resolution 'decoding', or the ability to playback generally without any new s/ware etc. More info/understanding required :-)
Anyhow its not like SACD, which needed completely new hardware as well as media, and therefore proved to be an overpriced niche, albeit a wonderful one. My prediction for this is near universal adoption, and the beginning of the end for PCM at least regards internet streaming......
As far as I am aware no one has yet offered PCM for Internet streaming as a service... so do we not need a beginning first before we can have an end.. Surely?
Yes Simon, I guess my terminology got a bit mixed up, but what I meant was the base/source files that are used by the streaming companies ;-) Currently these would be mp3 with Spotify, presumably wav/aiff etc for Tidal, Qobux and so on. I was trying to find a term to cover all, and not sure what it would be.....
Very clever piece of thinking. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the hearing.