MQA is bad for music

this reinforces what I've said in a number of other posts - the digital arena is still immature.

All the technical stuff is probably irrelevant too - it will be like VHS vs Betamax and other technology "battles" - the winner will be determined by marketing power

Allan

Allan Milne posted:

 

this reinforces what I've said in a number of other posts - the digital arena is still immature.

 

All the technical stuff is probably irrelevant too - it will be like VHS vs Betamax and other technology "battles" - the winner will be determined by marketing power

 

Allan

Ha! Ha! You took the words right out of my mouth. No matter what we think there will always be Betamax events. As to the MQA issue, I am as sceptical as anyone else about something that may need a hardware decoder at the receiving end. The idea that I have just spent a shedload of money on the latest amp that will not work effectively with the 'best' musical offerings or will compromise the DAC which actually personalises our buying choices makes me very fearful. Having a modem (for that is what it would be) before the amp or preamp at the very least troubles my minimalist tastes.

Hi Andarkian,

Simple:  Buy HiRes (24/192) LPCM downloads, better than 24/96 MQA and you can use whatever DAC optimisation your preferred DAC supplier uses.

Huge posted:

Hi Andarkian,

Simple:  Buy HiRes (24/192) LPCM downloads, better than 24/96 MQA and you can use whatever DAC optimisation your preferred DAC supplier uses.

Thanks Huge,

In terms of this uncertain moment of musical packaging it is a case of caveat emptor. As I am inherently lazy, if you like, in my pursuit of ultimate sonic perfection, I am hanging on Tidal's coat tails for most of my output at the moment. Being able to jump in and hear allegedly higher quality offerings of older, long term favourites can be both very pleasurable and severely disappointing depending on the original quality of recording.

Paying up to £17 or higher for a 192 kb severe disappointment is not a permanent investment I am about to make at my age. I already have enough CDs and LPs tucked away all over the house, which, of course, includes one mono  LP, two stereo LPs, and several CD versions of the White Album. I can understand the attraction of permanent ownership but it has a cost, a storage problem and the risk that you might dislike what you have just bought. 

When I can squeeze my next speaker 'investment' (sorely needed) past SWMBO I will of course change all sorts of opinions and prejudices. All part of the great HiFi debate and game, which reminds me the Bristol Show is next weekend. Can't wait! ����

And in other news, Universal has followed suit with Warner Bros...

Next comes Sony Records ...

Then all the HiRes streaming naysayers can eat their Weetabix without milk. 

[@mention:22262699346003119], I am not sure where you get slicing and dicing from. MQA compressive encoding is a world away from MP3 psychoacoustic masking.. quite different. The MQA process takes advantage of  that seemingly many of us are not sensitive to unharmonic aliasing errors when handled in a particular way.. that is the clever bit in my opinion.. other than that the  concept appears to take advantage of  standard digital signal mathematics in terms of decimation, oversampling and filtering.

All the the talk of 'pure musical' content is marketing mumbo jumbo... (IMO)

Now its it true that in non lossy hidef PCM there is a huge amount of unnecessary information, not least the dithering around the higher spectrum content... this can mean the amount of redundant information in say 192/24 is significant (this is bad news for streaming over the internet) ... now this is essentially removed with MQA through  non low pass filter decimation and subsequent oversampling and reconstruction, but at the expense of adding unharmonic aliases Ito the audio, that Meridian rely on us peeps not finding objectionable. Now the MQA encoding can be tuned to include higher definition, but at the expense of increased aliasing distortion.. it's a pay off one takes when one I suspect one created the the MQA encoding or the called 'master'. But it is this reduction  of the wasted dither and ultrasonic pitch information in the  pass band that gives the ability of MQA to compress, but still provide the essential timing information between sampled sound.. albeit at the 'cost' of added frequency distortion.

Dont get me wrong, it's all very clever, but just like MP3, AAC and no doubt future lossy codecs that will get smarter and smarter, there is no such thing as a free lunch... and signal theory entropy ultimately becomes the limiting factor if we are not to lose information.

Allan Milne posted:

 

this reinforces what I've said in a number of other posts - the digital arena is still immature.

 

All the technical stuff is probably irrelevant too - it will be like VHS vs Betamax and other technology "battles" - the winner will be determined by marketing power

 

Allan

Digital audio is an exceedingly mature discipline, join the AES if you want to learn more outside of a consumer marketing context... however what we are seeing is normal healthy innovation just like as with any living technology, and in this case it's innovation in high drfinition compression and lossy reconstruction.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

[@mention:22262699346003119], I am not sure where you get slicing and dicing from. MQA compressive encoding is a world away from MP3 psychoacoustic masking.. quite different. The MQA process takes advantage of  that seemingly many of us are not sensitive to unharmonic aliasing errors when handled in a particular way.. that is the clever bit in my opinion.. other than that the  concept appears to take advantage of  standard digital signal mathematics in terms of decimation, oversampling and filtering.

All the the talk of 'pure musical' content is marketing mumbo jumbo... (IMO)

Now its it true that in non lossy hidef PCM there is a huge amount of unnecessary information, not least the dithering around the higher spectrum content... this can mean the amount of redundant information in say 192/24 is significant (this is bad news for streaming over the internet) ... now this is essentially removed with MQA through  non low pass filter decimation and subsequent oversampling and reconstruction, but at the expense of adding unharmonic aliases Ito the audio, that Meridian rely on us peeps not finding objectionable. Now the MQA encoding can be tuned to include higher definition, but at the expense of increased aliasing distortion.. it's a pay off one takes when one I suspect one created the the MQA encoding or the called 'master'. But it is this reduction  of the wasted dither and ultrasonic pitch information in the  pass band that gives the ability of MQA to compress, but still provide the essential timing information between sampled sound.. albeit at the 'cost' of added frequency distortion.

Dont get me wrong, it's all very clever, but just like MP3, AAC and no doubt future lossy codecs that will get smarter and smarter, there is no such thing as a free lunch... and signal theory entropy ultimately becomes the limiting factor if we are not to lose information.

Simon,

I am not trying to make the case for MQA as if it is the absolute solution to all our problems, just trying to sort fact from fiction. There is clearly a whole scientific discussion to be had as to how digital recording should be translated into analogue reality. In theory streaming frees us from the 'tyranny' of the CD but it has simply started a whole new format war. MQA may be a new licensing prison or it may be a great HiFi solution, let's just reserve judgement. 

My new Devialet 250 is exposing so many issues am not sure where to start, and at least some of them may be the Devialet 250 itself. The detail it presents may or may not be to my ultimate taste. Can of worms.