I’m not interested in any bashing of MQA. I know it’s controversial and I’m fine with that. I don’t care about MQA and in general I believe, that anything more than 48/24 is inaudible and not worth stressing about. CD’s were sufficient for my needs before the Internet and still is. That’s where I stand and please don’t try to convince me to argue about highres vs Redbook. Thanks
I’m currently subscribing to Qobuz and Tidal Hifi Master (or whatever their high res plan is called, but the hifi plan would probably be just fine too). Some times I find different versions of albums, that are not identical on both services. I like to have a huge library, and as long Apple Music is not supported in Roon, I’m using Q and T. Anyway. When I look at the signal path of some MQA files, I first have a 44.1 file, and then it turns into a 88.2 file. What is the benefit of that? My DAC does not support MQA, but I can select to use the Core to do some MQA folding/rendering magic. If I turn the option on, I can see the sample rate double on my DAC. Should I enable the option? And if yes why? MQA seems very confusing to me, and what are all the steps with folding and unfolding and rendering good for? I’m very eager to learn what it all does.
I’m a bit confused here. You say you don’t care about MQA, that Redbook is totally fine for you and you don’t buy into hi-res. Based on that, the answer to your questions is obvious: there’s absolutely no benefit in turning on MQA, as all the “magic” is inaudible at best, if not detrimental to the original quality. I see no need to open this can of worms yet again.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
3
Instead of talking about it here, which usually turns out to be counterproductive, why not read one of the many articles about it that are on the Web. There’s a Wikipedia page. Ars Technica did a deep dive back in 2017:
M: Going back to the source. That might be the original recordings/production, or something else… but an effort should be taken to get something that isn’t just a reencoding of the last encoding.
Q: This is all the stuff you don’t care about and where most of the debate is.
A: This is a bit of data encoded inside the stream (supposedly below the noise floor) that can be used to detect if the stream was altered from the encoding to the point where you got it. This feature is not available in most (if any) formats and is often referred to as Provenance. It can inform you of alterations between the encoding into MQA, all the way to your DAC chip. Think of it as “an authenticatable bit-perfect”. There is usually some misunderstanding here, due to how marketing communicates about where provenance ends. Some like to think it means going back to the production of the audio, but in reality, it can’t go further back than the encode.
Thank you for the link. I’m normally a bit vary about “tech news” from 2017, but the first paragraph states that [MQA is a new digital music format, designed to deliver high-resolution sound at a much reduced bitrate, typically close to that of regular CD]. I guess that means less strain on your internet connection when streaming? The only reason for compressing data is to manage it easier I presume. Is that one of the main reasons one should care about MQA? I mean it’s 2023 now, and my wifi is over 500Mb/s and hardwired ethernet is over 1Gb/s and I don’t see any bottlenecks in my system any time soon regarding streaming. 192/24 requires a 10Mb/s - in theory.
What is your mobile speed and data cap? That seems to be where most of the compression benefits come into play. Streaming higher than cd quality information at the cost of CD quality.
As you’ve already pointed out you don’t care about high Res there is only one potential benefit:
MQA argue they have fixed “pre-ringing” artifacts found in other formats, according to them MQA should sound more natural.
Doing listening tests is the easiest way to determine if you think MQA has some benefit to you.
About bandwidth, it’s easy to forget about the rest of the world that doesn’t have gigabit home broadband connections, or 5G connectivity on their phones. But, even if you were to chalk that up to being “behind”, please consider other areas where low bandwidth may be interesting. For example, low-power wireless connectivity (bluetooth or others for example) to headphones.
There is another side to MQA’s bandwidth savings. By being PCM compatible and “small”, it can be a huge saving in egress bandwidth costs to streaming services.
Now you are going down the Q rabbit hole!
~400Mbps and no cap (Verizon 5G in the NYC area). But again, this is not where the real benefit of MQA compression shines.
This is true but doesn’t benefit end users, especially as Tidal is currently charging twice their competition for their cheaper to stream format.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
10
Why? You say you’re good with Redbook. Just play that. If it’s just technical curiosity, there are better places to read about that.
M: Would be nice if the recordings were from the master tapes, but the little we know seems to indicate that massive quantities of available MQA streams were just batch-converted from the existing PCM Redbook files. Some highly-publicized exceptions to that do exist.
Q: Again, controversial.
A: As Danny pointed out, there’s a checksum which proves that the bits are unchanged from the original sources used in the encoding. Whatever they were – see M.
TIDAL does not get MQA for free. They are a paying customer, and during the process of becoming one, it’s a feature that helps offset the licensing fees that would hopefully “bring the users”.
Agreed, just pointing out that while it is cheaper to stream, it doesn’t benefit end users through a lower subscription cost. That only benefits Tidal.
It seems that even the lower tier 44.1/16 Tidal plan is being played back as MQA in some cases.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
16
Nope. Roon Core can do the “first unfold” of the MQA “origami”. Whether or not that’s a good thing, and what it means – you’ll do better on other fora.
It sure does That’s also one of the reasons I don’t get excited over MQA, but I like to have the different versions of an album available. I’m trying Tidal for a few months, to see if it’s actually a big deal with both Q and T. If not, I’m only sticking with my one year plan Qobuz subscription.
Roon Core can do the first (and most substantial) part of the MQA decoding. So can the MQA-capable DAC. There is no difference here, except that Roon can do it for your non-MQA DAC.
Your DAC can do the second (and least substantial) part of the MQA decoding, and Roon can not. No software-only product can. They don’t license the technology to us, and they will go far as to make claims that because it’s tied to various processes inside the DAC chip and surrounding processes, it doesn’t make sense to do so. Some DACs can only do this part of the MQA decoding, like the Audioquest Dragonfly, which means that they need software to do the first part.
Roon will do one neat trick that your DAC most likely can not. Roon can take the special MQA information for the second part of the MQA decoding, extract it and set it aside. Then it can do the first part of the decoding, apply some DSP to the higher bitrate data, and then reapply that information it set aside before sending it to your DAC. You DAC can then do the second part of the decode, while still getting the benefit of the DSP. Normally, DSP would be destructive to the second part of the decode.
I should note that I’m trying hard to be bipartisan here. My personal opinion may be known to parties reading, but I would hope that you can’t tell what my position is from this thread.
Sounds very cumbersome. So if I’m not getting all hyped about MQA in the first place, would you recommend that I should not bother tinkering with any MQA settings in Roon?
I presume the Roon forum is a good place to start.
That’s also one of the reasons I don’t get excited over MQA, but I like to have the different versions of an album available. I’m trying Tidal for a few months, to see if it’s actually a big deal with both Q and T. If not, I’m only sticking with my one year plan Qobuz subscription.