when is Naim going to update streamers for MQA?

Bill Allen posted:

While the new Uniti line offers a way to tie in my hi-end stereo system to the MuSo and whole house network, there is no easy path to hook up my tube phono amp.  Even I don't want to purchase an additional phono amp for the rare times I would steam analog from this location. Without a MQA solution we are talking yet another add on box or worse ... computer audio.

(Merrily joining in the pile-on without malice...) 

King Size's reply captures my main thinking on this state-of-the-format discussion: full fat red book streaming (intranet or internet) is tiny in comparison to lossy; the bright future being considered for hiRes (which out in the mainstream means red book, not 24/96 or higher as it usually does here) has certainly not arrived. 

But I'm also unsure about this apparent "one box" limitation of the (old and) new Uniti line: there is no built in turntable (nor an internal MM or MC stage)... but so what? You would be adding a second box (a turntable) to enable vinyl no matter what. And if you do, choosing the one with built in preamp/riaa filter might make sense, or going upmarket with something nicer and a pre might be your preference. Either way, though, Naim has covered you off, since multi-room streaming of whatever you put into the analog inputs is now a (built in) feature. This deserves accolades not hollow derision...and it's certainly forward and backward looking. The Janus of home connectivity perhaps?

The creeping note of pessimism and chest beating about what isn't available is harshing my afternoon off... Mark Knopfler to the rescue (FLAC rip from red book streamed from my basement NAS)! 

Regards alan

Bill Allen posted:

I can't image Naim not including MQA decoding with their new line of "Uniti" components, in fact the name itself would be hypocritical without its inclusion.  With HiRes streaming becoming mainstream, I would hope they would include enough foresight and processing power to handle any software adaptable format that may come down the pipe.

While its easy to predict "mainstream" ownership of music becoming a relic of the past with on demand and streaming taking over ... just like it did with video. Coming into focus inside my crystal ball is HiRes radio stations ... both online and terrestrial. With just the smallest amount of imagination sources of revenue abound in all directions. A good thing in a capitalistic world if progress is to take root. 

---

While there was indeed reason to be pessimistic given 20 years of stagnation in the record industry, there's finally a glimmer of hope for a new business model rising from the ashes. With MQA being just one step on a long road to recovery for the recording industry. 

 

Hi Bill,

At this time we have no plans to include MQA support on the new Uniti platform.

We have looked (and listened) to MQA on numerous occasions with the guys from MQA having been down here to Salisbury towers but at this time it is still on the "being looked at" list - I'm not at liiberty to discuss further the reasons behind that or get involved in the various theories (including the licensing model of MQA) that have been put forward in this thread however the underlying hardware does have the ability to implement MQA support on should we decide to do so.

Phil

Phil,

This is disappointing news, this wait and see decision will parallel my own regarding the product line. I have been streaming Tidal MQA Master files for 2 months now and they are clearly superior sounding to the Tidal HiFi streams on every system I have tried it on. I cannot in good faith offer an all-in-one product that doesn't support the future of HiRes streaming. Couple that with the lack of a built in Phono amp (option) and it becomes a tough sell at its price point to people not familiar with the brand name here in the U.S.  While the MuSu brought excellent market penetration and brand recognition I don't feel the new Uniti line goes far enough to bridge past, present, and future. A missed opportunity IMO. 

Why are people selling highres downloads for more than the un-lossed equivalent? Is it a scam?

I am also amused by the idea that it is somehow Naim's fault that turntable manufacturers don't include a phono stage built into their own product.

Bananahead posted:

Why are people selling highres downloads for more than the un-lossed equivalent? Is it a scam?

It might be just me, but what are you trying to ask here?

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Bananahead posted:

Why are people selling highres downloads for more than the un-lossed equivalent? Is it a scam?

It might be just me, but what are you trying to ask here?

There tends to be a strange hierarchy in prices. Lossy MP3 being cheaper than WAV/FLAC(24/96) being cheaper than lossy MQA. I know which way my credit card votes.  

Oh I see, I was not aware there is any sort of premium for MQA compared to regular lossless hires. I agree if there was a premium it would be bizarre, but clearly some people must be willing to pay it.

There is no premium for MQA over standard FLAC on Tidal.  It is simply part of the Tidal Hi-Fi subscription.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Oh I see, I was not aware there is any sort of premium for MQA compared to regular lossless hires. I agree if there was a premium it would be bizarre, but clearly some people must be willing to pay it.

Absolutely. Just have a look on highresaudio and there is a difference.

Thank you for the response Phil. I just wanted to hear Naim's postion from the 'horse's mouth' as it were. 

I am not ashamed to say I use Muso and Muso QBs as multi-room devices and they do sound really good in my opinion.

I wish you aĺl well. 

As far as I can tell, the number of MQA offerings on Tidal has not changed much, if at all, since the flurries of the first few days, and am still awaiting Audirvana's Version 3.0 which is supposed to unwrap MQA to level 2. All very quiet on the Western Front.

Bananahead posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Bananahead posted:

Why are people selling highres downloads for more than the un-lossed equivalent? Is it a scam?

It might be just me, but what are you trying to ask here?

There tends to be a strange hierarchy in prices. Lossy MP3 being cheaper than WAV/FLAC(24/96) being cheaper than lossy MQA. I know which way my credit card votes.  

I think that one thing a lot of people miss - and this cropped up a lot of times at Bristol - is that MQA is a lossy format ... I know that they're not hiding this fact but it does seem that it's just not being realized. I was trying to explain file formats to someone on the Friday on the stand and referred to MQA as "think of it a bit like a hi-res capable MP3" and they swore blind that MQA was lossless.

Phil

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I know it's a technicality but Spotify does NOT use MP3 because of apparently licensing costs, they instead use the Ogg Vorbis codec and container which is open source  and licence free and apparently better suited to streaming.. though I am not quite sure why... and of course despite this and being worlds largest streamer are yet to make a penny in profit...

Probably why both Apple Music and Google Play sound better, as far as lossy streams go.

Dafydd Lorryman posted:

Thank you for the response Phil. I just wanted to hear Naim's postion from the 'horse's mouth' as it were. 

I am not ashamed to say I use Muso and Muso QBs as multi-room devices and they do sound really good in my opinion.

I wish you aĺl well. 

At least I got classed as the mouth.

Thanks for the best wishes - we're actually really happy with how the new Uniti range sound. The Nova is the best sounding of the three of course but for me the one that impresses me most is the Atom as, given it's the bottom of the range, it really sings its heart out in my opinion!

Phil

manicm posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I know it's a technicality but Spotify does NOT use MP3 because of apparently licensing costs, they instead use the Ogg Vorbis codec and container which is open source  and licence free and apparently better suited to streaming.. though I am not quite sure why... and of course despite this and being worlds largest streamer are yet to make a penny in profit...

Probably why both Apple Music and Google Play sound better, as far as lossy streams go.

I would assume that Apple Music doesn't use MP3 either, but that it would use AAC.

King Size posted:

manicm posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I know it's a technicality but Spotify does NOT use MP3 because of apparently licensing costs, they instead use the Ogg Vorbis codec and container which is open source  and licence free and apparently better suited to streaming.. though I am not quite sure why... and of course despite this and being worlds largest streamer are yet to make a penny in profit...

Probably why both Apple Music and Google Play sound better, as far as lossy streams go.

I would assume that Apple Music doesn't use MP3 either, but that it would use AAC.

Probably, but it and Google Play do sound better. Play uses MP3 320k.

Phil Harris posted:

Bananahead posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Bananahead posted:

Why are people selling highres downloads for more than the un-lossed equivalent? Is it a scam?

It might be just me, but what are you trying to ask here?

There tends to be a strange hierarchy in prices. Lossy MP3 being cheaper than WAV/FLAC(24/96) being cheaper than lossy MQA. I know which way my credit card votes.  

I think that one thing a lot of people miss - and this cropped up a lot of times at Bristol - is that MQA is a lossy format ... I know that they're not hiding this fact but it does seem that it's just not being realized. I was trying to explain file formats to someone on the Friday on the stand and referred to MQA as "think of it a bit like a hi-res capable MP3" and they swore blind that MQA was lossless.

Phil

I guess the confusion comes from all the marketing and with terms like 'master authenticity' etc . It would however appear quite different from the subtractive psychoacoustic 'analogue' masking techniques of MP3, AAC etc, but MQA takes advantage of the normally avoided side effects of  digital sampling processes  to compress data... technically from what I understand the 'lossyness' is more through the additive nature of the reconstructed aliases ie the addition of artefacts or digital noise added into the reconstructed previously decimated (compressed) digital signal... Where it surely must be very similar to MP3 and similar, other than data size reduction, is the increased degeneration of the signal over multiple encodings... where as with lossless there is no signal change at all (exc added dither)

But, to be fair it's not all bad, hidef PCM  often has digital noise as well, and some of it added in the form of digital dither that effectively applies across the sample rate frequency spectrum.  This is wasteful and inefficient for lossless compression processes like FLAC. The removal of this outside the audible frequencies  won't detract from the original signal  and allow better compression and signal encoding efficiency, and again from my understanding MQA achieves this....

I also think that part of the confusion arises from lack of clarity on the notion of lossy vs lossless relative to what?! It is clearly lossy relative to 24/192 (and possibly 24/96) but it is not clear that it is lossy relative to 16/44 (and as I read it, it looks "complete" in a "triangle" that includes this region but "selectively incomplete" in two "rectangles" outside). That it sounds like "relative to the original studio masters you should be craving" is where it goes really off the rails for me  

I think hype / marketing language is probably necessary when bringing something emerging to the existing marketplace, but not very useful to those trying to understand what that (indispensable! amazing! life changing! master quality!) something is or how it works. I agree with S-i-S on that score, going further only to include "lossless" "lossy" and "hiRes" in that lexicon of ambiguity. 

Regards alan

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I guess the confusion comes from all the marketing and with terms like 'master authenticity' etc . It would however appear quite different from the subtractive psychoacoustic 'analogue' masking techniques of MP3, AAC etc, but MQA takes advantage of the normally avoided side effects of  digital sampling processes  to compress data... technically from what I understand the 'lossyness' is more through the additive nature of the reconstructed aliases ie the addition of artefacts or digital noise added into the reconstructed previously decimated (compressed) digital signal... Where it surely must be very similar to MP3 and similar, other than data size reduction, is the increased degeneration of the signal over multiple encodings... where as with lossless there is no signal change at all (exc added dither)

But, to be fair it's not all bad, hidef PCM  often has digital noise as well, and some of it added in the form of digital dither that effectively applies across the sample rate frequency spectrum.  This is wasteful and inefficient for lossless compression processes like FLAC. The removal of this outside the audible frequencies  won't detract from the original signal  and allow better compression and signal encoding efficiency, and again from my understanding MQA achieves this....

Hi Simon,

I agree completely that MP3 and MQA use completely different methods to achieve their final results however the specific analogy was used to illustrate that what you get out isn't what you put in - in the same was as what you get out when decoding an MP3 isn't what you put in to the original encoder - not as part of an in depth discussion on how specific audio formats are encoded.

Phil

Phil, indeed.. i really was quite bemused to see some are actually selling MQA lossy at a premium over true hires lossless... i guess there are some gullible people out there...

Oh where do we go from here ... MQA is coming  ... 30,000 tracks and counting. http://www.whathifi.com/tidalmasters/review

Last night in a single blind controlled environment on my $200K+ system MQA master streams were preferred 3 to 1 vs CD rips streamed from my NAS.  It safe to say even I was surprised by these results, I would have bet money that quality CD rips would have sounded better then current MQA streams. All you bit counters can go take a hike because I don't care to hear your argument about how my experiment was not properly set up and only a double blind test gives true unbiased results. Fact is, it was a royal pain in my butt for just to set a single blind test. Obviously one with an ulterior motive could skew results in one direction or another. Sorry that's just not me, I deal in ultra hi-end audio. Later in the evening we went on to listen to native HiRes audio streams and a whole crop of the new 45 speed LP's that have suddenly hit the market. After that onslaught of quality, nobody ... and I mean nobody, wanted to go back and hear any MQA or CD streams. Enough said!

Tech niggles aside the MQA train has already left the station, even in its infancy MQA sounds superior to any other steaming technology, and I have proven results that it gives CD rips a run for their money. As a player I understand and am willing to give Naim time to sort out and implement this MQA technology.  But as a potential dealer it's frustrating my marketing plans to open a new brick & motor store to bridge the current audio divide.  

That said, I am still extremely impressed with the look, feel, and sound quality of the new Uniti line I heard at RMAF & CES. At the bare minimum one these units will be doing double/triple duty at my house ... with or without MQA. 

I got a Nova on my brain!

Bill Allen posted:

Oh where do we go from here ... MQA is coming  ... 30,000 tracks and counting. http://www.whathifi.com/tidalmasters/review

Last night in a single blind controlled environment on my $200K+ system MQA master streams were preferred 3 to 1 vs CD rips streamed from my NAS.  It safe to say even I was surprised by these results, I would have bet money that quality CD rips would have sounded better then current MQA streams. All you bit counters can go take a hike because I don't care to hear your argument about how my experiment was not properly set up and only a double blind test gives true unbiased results. Fact is, it was a royal pain in my butt for just to set a single blind test. Obviously one with an ulterior motive could skew results in one direction or another. Sorry that's just not me, I deal in ultra hi-end audio. Later in the evening we went on to listen to native HiRes audio streams and a whole crop of the new 45 speed LP's that have suddenly hit the market. After that onslaught of quality, nobody ... and I mean nobody, wanted to go back and hear any MQA or CD streams. Enough said!

Tech niggles aside the MQA train has already left the station, even in its infancy MQA sounds superior to any other steaming technology, and I have proven results that it gives CD rips a run for their money. As a player I understand and am willing to give Naim time to sort out and implement this MQA technology.  But as a potential dealer it's frustrating my marketing plans to open a new brick & motor store to bridge the current audio divide.  

That said, I am still extremely impressed with the look, feel, and sound quality of the new Uniti line I heard at RMAF & CES. At the bare minimum one these units will be doing double/triple duty at my house ... with or without MQA. 

I got a Nova on my brain!

Please publish your data for proper forum peer review.

Yea ... I'll get right on that!

In the interim, setup and run a test for yourself. 

Bill Allen posted:

Yea ... I'll get right on that!

In the interim, setup and run a test for yourself. 

I have.  I found it rather artificial and exceedingly "digital" sounding, especially in comparison to DSD & good ol' 24/192.  I'll pass on MQA.

Here's my take: https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...23#69145069636033423