Is your Amp (DAC) MQA aware?
I did some digging and found an explanation in another forum which makes the second unfolding seem rather pointless and primarily nothing but a marketing ploy to sell overpriced hardware. I’m certainly not going to lose any sleep over it. It’s another thing to add to the list of reasons that MQA is stupid.
I think you will find you are missing something but that’s ok. You are missing the last piece of the puzzle that finishes the picture…
That’s always been my belief.
The real question is whether that protection, like all other attempts, can be broken?
Kinda my, slightly unethical, reason why I’m hoarding hundreds of gigabytes of downloaded (hi-res) FLACs from all over the web on my Roon server, just in case these streaming services start doing something funky with DRM. Even though I mostly stream everything, I at least have a back up.
As I mentioned before, even without MQA, the two sound different to me, the sibilance is still there.
@Martin_J you might want to get yourself over to the Qobuz black friday sale in that case.
I spent way to much there mostly on 24 bit album’s yesterday and there were still many more I might go back in and buy again.
Some great discounts there.
Regards
Mike
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You would be surprised what difference it makes. I really don’t like mqa at all with just the first unfold But on full MQA hardware it sounds much better and equal for the most part to hires pcm, it rounds of the harshness, without not so and sounds a bit artificial and fatiguing.
I think you are right. Was just now browsing through Friday’s recommended new releases and came across this album:
As you see, advertised as MQA, no version info shown. Looks bad. But, on playback, this is my signal path:
The source shows clearly 16/44.1, and the chain to my not MQA-capable DAC shows ‘lossless’. No first MQA unfold is taking place. So it seems that there are still 16/44.1 flac files for newly released albums available. At least it doesn’t hold as true that all newly released albums are MQA-only.
Blockquote The source shows clearly 16/44.1, and the chain to my not MQA-capable DAC shows ‘lossless’. No first MQA unfold is taking place. So it seems that there are still 16/44.1 flac files for newly released albums available.
This is so confusing. What’s a pain is that much of my listening is on Sonos systems throughout the house, where I actually like the high end “sparkle” of the MQA files more. But on my desktop rig (Decidedly non-MQA Schiit DAC) and main rig (have played with both; right now have a Schiit DAC in there as well, but have used an MQA capable unit as well) I definitely prefer non-MQA content. Ugh. Not a simple sport.
Wow. Thanks for this I just tried it on my system. This is so messed up. Now we’re at a point where we don’t even know what we are streaming!? Everything was fine before, should have left well enough alone.
Do yourself a favor and read the original papers by the MQA designers on the unfold process (including the block form on the MQA website). They’ll give you a better idea of the actual signal processing than the hearsay upon hearsay traded around by audiophiles who don’t have enough DSP background to follow it and who keep quoting each other.
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Qobuz isn’t an option in Canada, I’ve subscribed to Tidal through Roon and it works fine for me.
I actually prefer the MQA tracks to their Redbook counterparts but then have the hardware that does the full unfolding.
Normally I wouldn’t care less about MQA, I think it was a solution to a problem that no longer existed - a means of supposedly streaming high quality music in a smaller file size.
But, with the right hardware, it does seem to sound better than a similar CD version.
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In my region, that album decodes as MQA.
Have you set up streaming quality of your Tidal account in Roon as HiFi, rather than Master?
I already provided a potential explanation of what’s happening when it’s set to HiFi. That’s universal. It isn’t limited to particular Tidal MQA albums.
Well, I don’t believe your explanation holds. Look at this album in my collection of which I knew that Tidal provides exclusively MQA versions. If I playback this MQA stream, having configured my Tidal account as ‘HiFi’, it necessarily plays the MQA stream, and the signal path shows it as such, both as MQA source and in MQA authentication. So when Roon’s signal path shows 16/44.1 as source and does not do any MQA authentication, why should I now assume it is not 16/44.1 Red Book, but a ‘15-bit lossy conversion in FLAC wrapper’?
OK, will try that one shortly. Got to walk the dog right now!
My take on Tidal’s streaming if you configure streaming quality in Roon as HiFi is that it will stream 16/44.1 as long as it is available. If not, it will stream in AAC all the many recordings without available Red Book version, or else in MQA if this is the only version available for a given album. If for a given album there are 16/44.1 and MQA formats available (a common situation), it will stream as 16/44.1
If, on the other hand, you configure your streaming quality as ‘Master’, it will stream MQA as long as it is available for a given album. Only if there is no MQA format available, it will then select 16/44.1 or AAC as streaming format.
I have confidence that Roon’s signal path tells us the truth, as long as there’s no clear evidence to the contrary.
What I have recently noted, though, is that for many albums there is no more ‘available versions’ indication in Roon. In some cases it just shows as ‘Tidal’, and you have to start a playback to know how it will stream. The opacity of available formats is vexing and a step backwards.
As to Tidal dropping 16/44.1 on albums where this format previously was available, this is a possibility which I haven’t experienced yet but which nevertheless seams annoyingly possible. To corroborate this I would have to find in my library albums saved in 16/44.1 format with suddenly unavailable tracks.
This is an example of an album I recently added to my library and where there is no format indication by Roon. I have to play it back to see that it will stream in 16/44.1. I lately seem to experience ever more albums like this which is very annoying.
You are right. I get the same behaviour. Good lord, this is all over the place.