I think it’s quite obvious that MQA = Skynet.
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Yep it’s a mess but at least there is some hope of this not being a complete debacle. How both Auralic and MQA cannot be aware of something that seems so straightforward as this until the last moment is mind boggling.
What is now much clearer is that some “integration” between each DAC and the MQA decoder is required to get the full benefits of MQA (if they prove to be real of course.)
I have been thinking that if the integration is as simple as the decoder needing to know some basic things about the DAC (like native sample rate or similar) then that could be user setup input to a computer software decoder and you would get the full MQA benefits.
However if the decoder and DAC need to talk to each other real time or have some sort of more sophisticated interaction then we will be short of the full MQA but hopefully we will still get significant benefits.
Given this mess I suspect it will be a while before we get the answers we are looking for.
Please forgive me for going a little OT, but my curiosity is killing me…
Let’s assume for a moment that none of this happened, that Auralic supported a firmware implementation of MQA, and that the sonic benefits proved to be the best thing since sliced bread. Cool. Now what are you going to play on it?
Where’s the music?
Sure, Tidal is supposed to be working on streaming MQA. But - unless I’m misunderstanding something - you can’t just take some old Redbook CD and put an MQA wrapper around it and get any benefit. You have to re-encode the original master with MQA. And I’ve seen no MQA titles available, and precious few published intentions of releasing MQA encoded material. So Tidal can have the best MQA streaming capability ever, but without titles to play, it’s vapor.
Please correct me if I’m off base. Would love to be wrong about this.
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my thoughts exactly… it’s about the music and what will be available in properly MQA encoded and not fast tracked 24bit files put in the MQA wrapper… I think it will be many, many, many years until any type of large catalog will ever be available.
MQA includes “beautification” - that is signal processing that is intended to improve the sound even of redbook content by removing artifacts created in the file. This beautification is best when the recording chain, including ADC, is known.
The demo I heard had one such case: a 24/192 and the MQAd version of the same file and the latter was markedly better. Of course this was Meridian’s choice file, not sure how much benefit you can get in the general case.
Ahh… I stand corrected. Thank you. So can we pull this thread a bit further, and see what it unravels?
I know I’m straying into conjecture here, but is the assumption then that Tidal might take an initiative to wrap their existing redbook titles with an MQA wrapper to get this lesser beautification benefit? If so, that sounds like the “minimal SQ benefit” scenario, as I would not expect Tidal to have info on the recording chain of titles, nor undertake the immense effort of encoding it if they did.
Then that gets us to the labels themselves - the producer/owners of the titles. Presumably they’d have that knowledge, which if encoded into MQA with recording chain info and re-sold, would be the “medium SQ benefit” scenario. BUT if they still had the masters, they’d likely find the most marketable re-releases to be those with the recording chain info encoded AND re-encoded from the original master. That - of course - would be the “maximum SQ benefit” scenario.
Did I get that right?
I have no idea if you’re right.
My expectations are:
1- MQA is able to beautify without knowing full provenace by fixing some known common ADC issues
2- TIDAL will likely stream redbook in MQA regardless - maybe it’s more compressed tham FLAC? I don’t know
3- TIDAL will stream limited higher res content in MQA
Where I think the scheme falls over is if MQA Limited decides only hardware decoding is allowed in an effort to milk MQA revenues. I get the impression this is what happened at CES. They will have to understand the format is a failure if this is a condition.
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I 100% percent agree with this.
Miguel (and Mystic) did you see this posted on Auralic’s Facebook page and quoted a couple of on this forum as well?
[quote=Xuanqian Wang](Correction to previous posting RE: MQA, written by someone not at CES.)
During CES, MQA discovered that wireless high-resolution Music Streamers without built-in DACs (i.e., AURALiC’s ARIES, ARIES LE & ARIES MINI) require a slightly different implementation of its technology.
MQA has not yet completed finalizing the definitive version of the technology; no MQA partner has yet to receive the actual final version of this emerging technology, which will be downloadable to any product in the very near future.) Because of this, AURALiC’s original plan to include TIDAL/MQA capability in the v3.0 firmware being issued today will not occur.
Xuanqian Wang, President & CEO[/quote]
Hi @Carl… Yes I did see their FB post and thought the line above that I quoted was very interesting and kinda telling that they haven’t finalized their software yet… it’s a wait and see approach, I guess.
Steve, Miguel,
Just to be clear MQA is not a wrapper. It is embedded into the underlying PCM that can be delivered in any standard lossless PCM wrapper (ie FLAC, WAV, etc). This is why an MQA encoded file can be read and replayed by any existing equipment that can play PCM files. Not dissimilar to HDCDs in that respect.
I’m not sure that encoding existing Redbook CDs would be a huge benefit to Tidal from a bandwidth perspective.
Yeah, thanks for the clarification. I’ve watched the videos, so was aware, but not sure what else to call it. Re-endcoding?
Yes that’s clear, MQA encoded pcm gets delivered in a flac format - and understand this doesn’t matter either since it’s the pcm that is modified with the encoding etc…
Let’s sum up so far:
- MQA failed in giving a comprehensive explanation of what it is technically. Ongoing discussion from a lot of people with good knowledge proof this.
- MQA realized weeks after public knowing that Auralic needs to hold back its already finished solution at the CES 2016.
- MQA does not explain to users how much content and from which labels will be re-encoded and can be delivered (be it download or streaming).
- MQA leaves even Roon in an uncertain situation after months of publication.
- MQA is one of the worst product launches I can think of in terms of credibility with respect to all surrounding stakeholders.
I don’t think this all has been done intentionally to get publicity, it rather shows unbelievable unprofessionalism in all business areas except maybe in the technical one - which still has to be proven, and outside the Meridian’s hardware world.
Eager to learn how and if this ever transitions into a new and better audio world what it claims to be and what a lot of us hoped it will be. For the moment my lust on MQA passed on to a minimum.
What a mess!
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Well said.
This post should get the most likes ever on the Roon forum 
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Thanks!
Although I would prefer to get a like’s record on a more positive topic. But hope dies last. 
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+1 on that too.
Before I have not listened to MQA in my environment, I don’t care that it’s not supported or not officially approved by MQA on the Aries.
We’ll see, if it is worth a supreme when we can compare it to our existing high res files. I actually don’t expect a revolution that justifies this hype.
Wow.
Well I for one cannot agree with any of this.
(disclaimer - I have nothing to do with Meridian although I am an owner of some of their equipment)
I know as little about MQA as is clearly the case with many other posters here.
What I do believe however is that Bob Stuart and his team at Meridian (the MQA side now separated as we know) are a small company of c100 people based in Huntingdon, UK. Bob and his team have developed a truly revolutionary concept of bringing a higher class of audio to all grades of audio consumer addressing innumerable issues and formats in the process of so doing.
This has been widely described as one of, if not the most important development in audio in recent memory by sages of far greater knowledge of the industry than I.
Again, this is a small company trying to foist on a world of furious competitive and copyright interests from recording studios, major record labels, distribution channels, innumerable equipment suppliers both in recording and reproduction all the way through to the might of global leviathans such as Apple, Google and Amazon.
That this should yield endless complexity (sic delays) should be of no surprise, though of course disappointing for us all.
I would say one thing though, if anyone can do this, Bob Stuart and his team are the ones who can, they have form remember … DVD Audio and MLP originating from a small company in Huntingdon,UK to form a global standard.
I suspect the one issue regarding DACs and Auralic is precisely the issue that the fully decoded stream should not be available externally unencrypted from a piece of hardware for licensing reasons, that’s not so much revenue to MQA necessarily but likely agreements with the recording and distribution industry.
With 20:20 hindsight no doubt it could have been handled better but with all the players involved it is one hell of an achievement to have got this far. It seems we are on the cusp, just not 100% there yet. Everything suggests things will move apace this year. A little more patience required.
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