MQA - Meridian Quality Authenticated

Isn't it "Master Quality Authenticated"? Each time I see this kind of stuff run up the flag pole I can only feel more vindicated for having stuck (four years ago) with my commitment to physical media.

 “Music lovers need no longer be shortchanged; finally we can all hear exactly what the musicians recorded."

"No format in history has ever given us the full, intricate detail of a live performance."

Yadda, yadda, yadda ....

I guess many of us physical media users seem content to accept the shortcomings and get on with listening. Some streamers seem to hold out hope that Perceval has stumbled upon the Holy Grail and the ultimate replay encoding has been realized. Even if MQA is truly better, the audiophile market is small and likely diminishing, so its a big uphill battle.

I have heard it in Munich and was impressed about what it did to the music. However one has to always see it in it's own environment and not in the tweaked show environment to see what it really can bring.

The ability to be more efficient about streaming, is for instance less interesting for me. I am just interested in the potential positive impact on the sound quality.

Joerand, I hear you and share your thoughts.. I will be genuinely surprised if MQA becomes relevant to other than a small subset of audiophiles. The marketing hyperbole associated with MQA makes me suspicious.. and yes technically I can see benefit in matched construction and reconstruction filters...but in the real world will this make much difference? Also I just can't see the demand for lossy hidef.. To me if you are in the market for hidef, you will want rreal hidef.. especially as our understanding of what's makes hidef special is evolving and has evolved further since the MQA lossy algorithms were defined. But I am expecting the Meridian marketing machine to step up a few more gears yet...

Simon

Very good discussion of MQA at Archimago's Musings audio blog - worth checking out if you have an interest in this.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Joerand, I hear you and share your thoughts.. I will be genuinely surprised if MQA becomes relevant to other than a small subset of audiophiles. The marketing hyperbole associated with MQA makes me suspicious.. and yes technically I can see benefit in matched construction and reconstruction filters...but in the real world will this make much difference? Also I just can't see the demand for lossy hidef.. To me if you are in the market for hidef, you will want rreal hidef.. especially as our understanding of what's makes hidef special is evolving and has evolved further since the MQA lossy algorithms were defined. But I am expecting the Meridian marketing machine to step up a few more gears yet...

Simon

 

Hi Simon,

I quite agree re your comment on real hidef and I have to say (to my ears) a well mastered Hi res Flac or wav file knocks the socks off a well mastered CD of the same album.

However, my limited (non technical) understanding of MQA was that it offers better quality sound than the "CD" quality that the likes of Tidal use, but in a smaller (compressed) package to enable more reliable streaming.

If this is the case then that would work well for me as I am very much enjoying my tidal subscription, through my 272, and if this were to improve the sound quality without leading to dropouts I would welcome it.

There may well me other technology out there that could do this in a better way - but to you other point- they probably don't have the marketing power of Meridian.

All of the above aside, I'm assuming every file will come with a Ferrari logo on it, which will definitely be an indication that it's great quality 

Barry Diament on this forum did say that 192/24 is as good a the studio live feed of mikes, he cannot hear any difference.

Anyway It is always to bring innovation to digital audio, like Naim did with the NDAC and NDS, Chord did with their Hugo and Dave DAC range, and now Meridian with their MQA, but I hope it comes soon.

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