MQA

I’m quite surprised by the lack of discussion here about MQA as there is so much angst about it in other Hifi circles. 

So contentious is it that Sonore (as I understand it) decided it best not to annoy customers or potential customers by adding it as an option. 

Stereophile seem to be in an existential crisis about it, moving from championing it to cautioning that it may be to the detriment of recorded music ????. 

The “discussions” can be very heated with very little light therein. 

Any opinions about its quality, desirability or dangers?

.sjb

I expressed the view on the forum when MQA was first becoming a topic at all, that it's basically a lossy high-res format.  I didn't, and don't, think it serves any purpose, and defeats the object of buying hi-res at all.  You can stream hi-res PCM from Qobuz in lossless FLAC already, and while some may not have the bandwidth for that, the obvious compromise to me is lossless FLAC in 16/44.1, its pretty good and don't think it really needs improving.  High-res in general is overrated in my view, and if the master is identical, personally I don't detect any notable difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192.  

I think part of the issue is that people seek to re-purchase some of their favourite albums in the latest high-res format.  The problem is, while one may hear a massive difference, as some have reported, the whole thing has been re-mixed too.  I remember a thread I started on the topic getting into a debate about the benefits of high-res where someone used the Norah Jones - Come Away With Me album as example, claiming the difference between the original CD and the 24/192 was 'night and day'.  They were not so wrong, but it has very little to do with the high-res element, and the same remaster in 16/44.1 also sounds equally different; it's been remastered and re-mixed.  Same with the latest Led Zeppelin re-masters, and arguably other mixes sound better.  If we could get more masters at any resolution better optimized for high-end gear, the overall effect would be way superior to improvements offered by any High-res format vs CD level resolution.

Sloop John B posted:

I’m quite surprised by the lack of discussion here about MQA as there is so much angst about it in other Hifi circles. 

So contentious is it that Sonore (as I understand it) decided it best not to annoy customers or potential customers by adding it as an option. 

Stereophile seem to be in an existential crisis about it, moving from championing it to cautioning that it may be to the detriment of recorded music ????. 

The “discussions” can be very heated with very little light therein. 

Any opinions about its quality, desirability or dangers?

.sjb

There have been several discussions on this forum over the past year or so. In essence my understanding is that it is a lossy format and its reconstruction may or does produce artifacts, that may raffect perceived sound quality depending on system and ears. And that is when fully ‘unfolded’, part done by the renderer and part by DAC, the latter very much limiting choice of DAC. Only partly unfolded, or not at all, presumably having greater lack of fidelity. 

But as with some other fodelity changes, it is possible that some people may actually like the effect on the sound, much as some people like the effect of ground plane RF modulation in DACs, and indeed Some people have been complementary of MQA even with only partially unfolded use.

Personally I just don’t see the point of MQA to the music listener, as even if perfect, its benefit is only when online streaming with a connection that has borderline data transmission rate for  ithe streaming of hi res files - large enough capacity and high res would stream OK uncompressed, and much lower would limit MQA. For anyone with no interest in online streaming of hi res files, prefering to purchase and simply download once for then playing at will, MQA offers nothing as the difference in possible speed is immaterial.

Of course, there is a benefit to online streaming providers, as they could get away with a lower bandwidth for their internet connections - presumably it is aimed more at asaving their costs - but not a saving effectively passed on to the listener, because the listener will have had to invest in MQA capability...  

That is how I see it, anyway.

I listened to a Bluenode demonstration of MQA at a show last year. For each track they demoed a 320k MP3, a 16/44.1 Rip and an MQA encoding. In each case the MP3 was audibly compressed. In one case I felt the MQA was superior to the CD rip, a sole piano piece was neutral and for most I felt the MQA was good, but sounded slightly processed.  ( I struggle to describe, it seemed to me like a much better MP3, so certain areas of the frequency range enhanced at the expense of others, but sounding good in all cases unlike MP3 and nowhere near as processed as MP3.) It wasn't something that made me think I wanted a player which supported it. Note that is purely my view.

Hi Sloop,

I agree, the debates elsewhere get extraordinarily heated and bad tempered.

My personal position has changed from being open to listen and decide to being worried that open formats (wav/flac) may be assaulted by a closed one (MQA) ans so am happy to forgo the dubious pleasure of 'testing' the format and just be grateful for the excellent sound-quality I get from Qobuz.

M

Although I heard the Bluenode demos, which had access to limited amounts of MQA material, as Tidal Masters was only just in Private access.

i yesterday had the pleasure of siting in front of my mates Meridian 8000’s Ruby Anniversary Editions (top end Meridian kit) and listening to plenty of MQA tracks, comparing them to HiRes FLAC, DSD versions of many albums I know well.

So this was full MQA conversion in the ID41 cards in the 808, so not just the first unfold, but the complete MQA path from Master encoding to Speaker. This was locally stored MQA versions, as well as Tidal served versions, from 44.1k to 96k & 192k versions.

Done right, breathtaking. Transient response, dynamics, sound stage separation all better, sharper, focused.

Was also nice, with an alpha Roon version with addition symbols in the Album browser.

Looking forward to first unfold in the Roon Core, passed through the UPnP Bridged into my NDS, to see how it compares.

Simon

guess its the best it can do when its meridian so that the reference.

It does seem that mqa has a battle on its hands  . listening to first unfold on tidal it did seem to improve some albums  .Dac products do seem to be slow to add it.

audio1946 posted:

guess its the best it can do when its meridian so that the reference.

It does seem that mqa has a battle on its hands  . listening to first unfold on tidal it did seem to improve some albums  .Dac products do seem to be slow to add it.

Interesting that a lossy compressed file only partially ‘unfolded’ can sound better (though I did note in my earlier post that some people felt that to be the case, as some do with other altered sound). But better than what? I.e Is that better than the hi res locally stored file? Better than standard 16/44 locally stored file? Better than 16/44 non MQA online streaming? And for any of these, is it the same mastered version?

Simon,

My concern is that once fully deployed it would be open to the industry to withdraw standard 44.1/16 and only have the MQA version. Then the industry could change the first unfold being 9624 to 44.1/16, leaving unfolded streams as low quality mp3. This won't effect me, as I have a large library of music, but a few years down the line the industry will have succeeded in withdrawing the ability to buy music, just pay and stream. I appreciate that you can make cogent arguments that this is perfectly acceptable, but somehow it doesn't feel right to me.

M

If the music industry tried that, I think a lot of people would just buy S/Pdif audio interfaces for computers and record the S/Pdif stream to a storage medium as FLAC or WAVE files!

No, what I think the music industry, namely the labels, wants to do is sell you your entire content to you again, but in a different format.

It got away with doing this from LP to CD, it sort of tried with SACD & DVDA, has potentially has it again with MQA, plus reselling you LPs again. However this only works with those who want to ‘own’ a copy or have the medium physically delivered to them, but for many subscription services are the future, and MQA gives them the ability to sell higher value packages while not having to try and stream upto 24/192 from their servers. So the wholesale & retail product costs more but the cost of delivery is the same, so the label, distributor and service provider do better, and a license fee to MQA of course.

my 10c anyway - if it sounds better then why not enjoy it!

simes_pep posted:

No, what I think the music industry, namely the labels, wants to do is sell you your entire content to you again, but in a different format.

It got away with doing this from LP to CD, it sort of tried with SACD & DVDA, has potentially has it again with MQA, plus reselling you LPs again. However this only works with those who want to ‘own’ a copy or have the medium physically delivered to them, but for many subscription services are the future, and MQA gives them the ability to sell higher value packages while not having to try and stream upto 24/192 from their servers. So the wholesale & retail product costs more but the cost of delivery is the same, so the label, distributor and service provider do better, and a license fee to MQA of course.

my 10c anyway - if it sounds better then why not enjoy it!

I’m not so sure about that - people I know didn’t generally re-buy their vinyl in CD, but maintained two collections, only later buying key things again once vinyl copies had deteriorated too far or were damaged in some way. As for SACD and DVDA, those passed most people by. With ripping of CDs and even vinyl to ‘electronic’ files longevity can be assured, and even less reason to re-buy.

As for subscription streaming services, I wonder if there is a mentality thing there, maybe akin to buying vs renting a home, though perhaps it depends most on whether you view the music you like as something you want to be able to listen to many times in perpetuity, when continually paying for it and risk of non-availability don’t make much sense, or whether it is more of a transient thing, where you may listen several times now but not be interested in doing so in the future, when purchasing and storing make less sense. I am the former kind of person.

I know of many that when wholesale from LP to CD, as it was positioned as ‘Music forever’ etc. and today the drop in CDs or even music downloads, whether iTunes, Digital7, Amazon etc is in favour of Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music where subscribers don’t need to download and store anything, everything is just there as a service. “Why bother ripping those CDs and storing them, when you can listen to them all, anywhere, anytime.”

With MQA, the likes of Tidal can charge their HiFi subscription for lossless and Masters, so the streaming services will cater for those of us that won’t touch Spotify, Apple Music etc. as compressed lossy streams. And oh yes, if you want Master Quality to download, here it all is at $ per Album.

Remember HiRes FLAC/DSD is still only consumed by very few of the mass market. The music industry hopes/believes that MQA is the new mass market mover.

Is there any evidence that the music industry itself is backing MQA? There’s been precious little indication of late that they have any interest in anything other than low fi...

(reposted due to nonsensical iPad typo)

There are a number of labels that are converting their back catalogues and release as MQA.

This includes Warner Music Group, Sony Music and Universal Music Group.

There is a posting on the Meridian Unplugged forum, with a spreadsheet here https://docs.google.com/spread...fwiRQKmTAA/htmlview#

and here as a CSV spreadsheet http://www.meridianunplugged.c...wnloads/MQA_List.csv

This has identified 10,550 albums which are MQA encoded items, which are 8,891 albums, 315 EPs & 1,345 singles.

i think that is evidence I’d buy in from the Music industry to a format, didn’t you agree?

Then see www.mqa.co.uk for playback partners.

Simon

They could release their back catalogs in DSD or highres flac as well without MQA.  They have to touch their master tapes/ recordings again and do re-processing for MQA. So IF they must do that anyway, they could do it in a free format and sell it. 

Hmm, if it does indeed take off it will mean good profit for Meridian ...and negative for all DAC manufacturers who don’t kow tow. These interestingly would appear to include Naim, also Chord and Linn, all of which are conspicuous by their absence from the list of “partners”, which I assume (though Indo not know for certain) is because they see the negative effect on sound quality in absolute terms.

But you only need support in the DAC for the full conversion as it gives the DAC profile, the 1st unfold will hopefully come in Roon, within the Roon Core, so once bridged to the Naim Player, the full Roon experience with MQA decoding playback is possible and see how it all sounds.

MQA is now separate from Meridian, but obviously there is a multi-year R&D investment to pay back, through license fees. This is not an Open Source project but fully commercial, so software development  is for not for free.

simes_pep posted:

But you only need support in the DAC for the full conversion as it gives the DAC profile, the 1st unfold will hopefully come in Roon, within the Roon Core, so once bridged to the Naim Player, the full Roon experience with MQA decoding playback is possible and see how it all sounds.

Yes, but IIUC without the full unfold you don’t get back to the original master quality that is the whole point of MQA. (And this is ignoring the fact that even the fully unfolded file is not a perfect copy - again to the best of my understanding.)

i suppose the the falling sales of music will be the issue  . the streaming subscription market will take over and charge extra for MQA. i have over 3500 cd ripped, the number of new music  cd purchased has slowed down, except for the cheap boxsets etc . so iam really bothered about MQA.cant really see it as a major player

audio1946 posted:

i suppose the the falling sales of music will be the issue  . the streaming subscription market will take over and charge extra for MQA. i have over 3500 cd ripped, the number of new music  cd purchased has slowed down, except for the cheap boxsets etc . so iam really bothered about MQA.cant really see it as a major player

 

With sufficient music to play 10 albums a day for a year without repeating anything at least you can consider a reducing availability of new music to be rather trivial!

The problem may be a significant one for those only just starting out, if they find themselves forced into paying heavily for subscription, especially at a time when mortgaged up to the eyeballs - I remember a time when I struggled to afford an album a month (already having a system), but at least without a subscription I could happily keep playing a range of music I had built up in my collection. Also, will the music available today still be available to play in 10, 20, 30 years time and more? I still very regularly play music from my very earliest days of listening, 40-50 years ago.

I do not wish the new system success if the intent is to replace purchaseable music.

I doubt sound quality is the reason the likes of Linn,Naim and Chord have not bought into MQA yet  they all offer Spotify after all. More likely down to having to license the technology to use it from a competitve manufacturer. 

SimonPeterArnold posted:

 ...More likely down to having to license the technology to use it from a competitve manufacturer. 

I doubt that's too much of an issue.  After all, the same thing did not prevent Naim from jumping through all the licensing hoops to offer a DVD-Audio player (ironically MLP came from the same "competitive manufacturer").

Innocent Bystander posted:

Hmm, if it does indeed take off it will mean good profit for Meridian ...and negative for all DAC manufacturers who don’t kow tow. These interestingly would appear to include Naim, also Chord and Linn, all of which are conspicuous by their absence from the list of “partners”, which I assume (though Indo not know for certain) is because they see the negative effect on sound quality in absolute terms.

I honestly doubt it will ever become more than an idle curiosity for a few die hards and meridian customers. I just can’t see that there is a demand for processed lossy hidef.. we already have acoustic masking lossy (which is a different sort of lossy to MQA) and for those that care about quality we have PCM or Vinyl.

Now there might be some interest from streaming sites when they upgrade to ‘hidef’ and from what I have heard, and I don’t know whether it’s true or not, the audio watermarking is achieved differently with the MQA processed file, so may indeed sound better than a regular water marked ‘mangled’ file from the likes of Tidal and Qobuz etc. I tend to use CD or CD rips so fortunately am not plagued by this 

Simon

When I spoke with some of the developers at Naim, one of the main reasons I was told they have currently disregarded MQA, is because the lack of maturity over the coding of the MQA drivers, and there was concern that the drivers as currently coded and published/distributed  were just too inefficient/immature  and not suitable for Naim where they take software optimaztion and software control in the audio chain very seriously.. however if this changed at some point in the future then it might be revisited. There certainly appeared to be no ‘idealogical’ objection to MQA per se... after all the streamers support a variety of lossy codecs already.