WHY IT’S DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MQA ALBUMS AND MQA HAVE LARGER IMPACT ON SOME MUSIC!
By Anders “String” Strengberg
Hi @David_Martin
It’s like @Henry_McLeod is writing pretty much.
But it’s also a great difference between the MQA albums from the 50’s, 60’s. Especially the albums from the 70’s and 80’s, some from the 90’s!
Why it’s that?
They have been recorded on 2” tapes and mixed down on 1/2”-1/4” Analog master-tape’s! Also been mastering on 1/2”-1/4” tapes!
On the 90’s started the big studios using digital recording machine’s, also mixing and mastering on digital tapes, and for the CDs they made glass masters, on the vinyl they made like before!
But the Vinyl albums started to sound different, because the Mastering come from digital Mastering tapes!
On the 90’s had also the digital mixing console made their entry, in the studio’s!
(Important! When “well the real professional Mastering Engineer’s is mastering music, for a Cd they make it in 16/44.1. But when they doing it for a Vinyl so are we making it in 24/48-88.2”!!! And everything under 200HZ is mixed/mastered in Mono! Why? Because the Turntable pickup needle don’t shall jump out of the songs small tracks)!
Did you know that?
The same thing is why, some Vinyl LP not have 33 rpm speed but 45 rpm!
A Studio version of a REVOX B-77 1/4” Real To Real Tape Machine’s, have 7.5” and 15”! A Vinyl Album with 45 rpm sounds much better than a 33 rpm!
So a B-77 rolling on 15” sounds a lot better than, if it’s running on 7.5”.
The reason why I mention this on a discussion about MQA!
If you run the Master Tape Machine, is because the tapes are quite expensive. As well are the 2” recording tapes how also have a slower and faster speed!
A 1/4” Master Tape is around 30 minutes, on 7.5 speed and 15 minutes on 15” speed! It’s the same thing with the 2” recording tapes!
So you can recording around 3-4 songs of course depending on how long the songs are, but twice as many if you recording and mixing down on the slower speed! But it will be on the cost of the sound!
Unfortunately is a lot of Albums made on the slower speed, they sounded crap when they made them!
So if they are made to MQA, so does they still sound like crap against the ones who have been recorded and mixed on the high speed!
I haven’t meet any Mastering Engineer who, can do much about it!
So there you have another Huge Factor, why some MQA Music Sounds Better or Different!
(For woes who’s interested! So did I use around 3 of the 1/4” tapes to mix down on and 3 of the 2” recording tapes, to a Album! I was blessed to work in a huge and great studio, it got two 1/4” Master Tape Machine’s!
So when I listen to the mix with headphones, so there wasn’t any dropouts.
Made I a listening copy on the other machine (zero losing in quality)!
Why, wonder you maybe, because a tape and tape machine is built on magnetic so you can recording on the tapes! Exactly as the cassette tape machine you had at home and in the car! I’m sure that you have been trough the tape sound like the high register, losing the edge and the tape have just been a mess right?
So I only played the master tape one time, so it was perfectly, when I took it to the Mastering Studio! The copy I made could be played, stopped, pause and rewind forward/back over and over again by myself or the band members “especially the guitar player/players who just wanted to hear their solos, over and over again” and I could leave them take a nap…without being worried about the Master!
So listen to Led Zeppelin Remastered versions, Fleetwood Mac Rumors and Deep Purple Made In Japan (live) on MQA.
And compare them with Albums from the later part of the 90’s and newer on MQA! So will you hear a big difference on the sound!
So my conclusion is:
MQA Albums is made of Master Tapes of there different kinds of quality and some of the Masters, are Analog some Digital! The Analog Masters is in different shape but they can be restored (the Tapes have to lay in a owe at special temperature up to a week, because the magnetic recording surface has started to losses from the Tapes, unfortunately can’t all be restored. They who can have to be played over to new and better Tapes). Sadly have some Analog Master Tape been transferred to Digital, that’s also change the sound. So it’s a quite lots of different kinds of factors who’s, depending on how the MQA Albums becomes in the sounds!
I don’t have any degree in MQA, I have only worked as a studio producer/engineer and mastering engineer for 40th years.
So I have heard that happens to a Albums sounds when it’s been transferred, from it’s original Analog Master Tape to Digital it’s losing the sound, it going from the warm acoustic dynamic sound to a cold flat sound!
I’m sure that not every single MQA Album, regarding the ones who is made from the Analog Master is made from it and it’s the ones, that we are not like the sound or the MQA format of!
It’s different if it’s a Digital Master from the beginning, because it’s different to mix a Digital Albums as well as it’s to Mastering!
So it’s shouldn’t sound different to make MQA Albums from a Digital Master!
When the got the human faults, because we all make mistakes, right?
So how good/great studio producers and engineers, make Albums with a sound they want to have on Albums, but it’s not wrong just because we don’t like the sound and it’s also a factor the Album becomes sounding different on MQA some of whose badly sounding Albums, becomes sounding better and some even worse!
I don’t know!
But one thing does I know it’s that I LOVE MQA.
Love & Respect