I’m afraid MQA offers no guarantees about how well something is mastered. Now that would be worthh getting excited about.
That is true, MQA has no effect on the content (Nor should it IMHO). That’s up to the artist and producers.
If a recording is just bad, (Too Hot, overly impressed etc) MQA won’t change that, it will just be the best ‘Bad’ your likely to get.
MQA is an End To End delivery system that is Authenticated and the Music I listen so far has sounded bloody lovely.
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Have you tried the Beyonce and Bruno Mars albums yet? They’re fair representations of badly compressed mainstream output that have been given the MQA treatment.
Not really my thing but perhaps I should through the Explorer 2.
Most of my recent listening has been undecoded but I was really impressed with The Monkeys. Again not my main style, but it takes me back and it just sounds so fresh and lively. Tambourines sound like they should. ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ is a cracker of the genre.
I love SW’s remasters of the Tull catalog. I’m listening to hi-res audio through my Oppo HA-2 (not SE) and Oppo PM-3 headphones.
You should try HQPlayer as a Roon endpoint, and compare the upsampling to DSD by HQP to the partial unfolding of the Tidal app. I think you will be as impressed by HQPlayer as I am.
By choosing which filter HQP uses, you can make Ian move forward or back in the mix, as well as Martin moving even further left or right. You can soften the overall sound, or you can put a hard edge on Martin’s guitar lead in Minstrel In The Gallery that makes it sound like you’re barricade in the pit while they play.
Don’t get me wrong – the TIDAL desktop app unfolding sounds really, really good, and if you use HQPlayer to upsample TIDAL MQA files in Roon to 24/192 or even just 24/96 PCM, you will get results very much like you did, comparing 24/96 FLACs in Roon to TIDAL’s partial MQA unfolding.
True, I really like Iron Maiden’s music but their recent masters are just brickwalled/compressed crap, especially Dance of Death. MQA didn’t fix that obviously because they probably went to the release master they decided to go with instead of a true remaster.
I just downloaded HQPlayer a couple of days ago and I’m fiddling with it. I do find it makes the music smoother but I haven’t noticed the details you mentioned. In some cases, I find the music loses a bit of impact. I’ve tried using the poly-sinc and the poly-sinc-shrt-mp filters and tried a few of the noise modulators but mostly stick with the Adaptive 7th order one. All of this forced upsampled to DSD256 to Oppo HA-2SE. What filters are you using?
At any rate, I do find HQPlayer improves the undecoded MQA from Tidal a bit compared to just playing it straight to the DAC from Roon.
Try the 24/96 versions off the DVD-A of Cross-Eyed Mary, Mother Goose and Minstrel In The Gallery. Some quick examples:
With sinc/NS9/192/PCM, I get the sensation of being a few rows back in the audience. Ian’s flute on C-EM seems close to the same plane as the rest of the band. Ian starts MG towards the front, but by the second stanza has stepped back towards the rest of the band. On MITG, Martins’ acoustic guitar is well right of center, and Ian is about even front-to-back with the harmony vocal on the left.
When I switch to poly-sinc-short-mp/DSD7+256fs/Auto/SDM, I immediately move right up to the front of the stage. The flute on C-EM is slightly forward of the band. On MG, Ian starts in front and stays there. Martin’s acoustic guitar on MITG is now almost to my right shoulder, and the harmony vocal has moved towards my left shoulder. It’s almost uncomfortable. Ian stays close and directly in front of me. When’s Martin’s electric takes over, the edge is much harder and sharper than when using something like sinc/NS9/192/PCM.
In general, I find that as the oversampling rate goes down, from DSD256 to DSD64 to PCM 192, the soundstage narrows right-to-left and flattens front-to-back.
I don’t know the science behind what I hear or how the filters interact with my own aural physiology. (Insert old fart joke here.) For all I know it’s some kind of pre-determination or placebo effect. But I’d never used different filters and noise shapers anywhere, nor had I used HQPlayer before last week. I had no idea what to expect. But this soundstage expansion and contraction, with different instruments and vocals moving to different spots was noticeable to me right from the very start.
Cheers,
Jeff
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Wow, I will try these! Thanks for the great notes.
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Just noticed this. Some of you that listen to MQA tracks might want to participate in Archimago’s blind test.
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Definitely going to give that a go at some point…
I’m reviving this thread because while I found the technical debates about MQA interesting (for a while) those discussions have devolved into an endless rant between opposing camps with no new technical insights. At any rate, I’m also interested in the community’s listening impressions (with all of its inherent subjectivities) and surprised and saddened this isn’t the dominant discussion as it should hopefully guide us to try different album versions and find more enjoyable musical experiences…
Since I last posted on this thread I’ve done a few minor upgrades to my sound setup including purchasing a Woo Audio WA7 Fireflies DAC/Amp (2nd gen with tube power supply) and Sennheiser HD-58X and HD-6XX headphones. I listen with Roon and no DSP through a wireless endpoint. I recognize this isn’t the most resolving system out there but it works for me!
This weekend I’ve been listening to this:
It is a fantastic collection. Some of the earlier tracks are recorded in mono but beginning with track #16 “I See Your Face Before Me” you get that warm, high quality stereo from the late 50s early 60s. In this case, the recordings come from the famous Rudy Van Gelder’s studio.
I did some casual comparisons between the Tidal MQA streams and the corresponding Qobuz 24/192 kHz version. I think it’s reasonably safe to assume these are the same masters as it is a new release and the credits match. To my ears and in my system I once again can’t detect any differences between them. In both, the quality is excellent. I hear the instruments very clearly, Coltrane’s sax is full and rich and never overbearing. The cymbals and rhythm from the drums is well mixed and expansive. The bass has impact. I don’t sense any distortions. The overall feel is very pleasing.
I would be interested in the listening impressions of others. Please, in the spirit of the thread, keep your discussions to the music, your gear and signal path and how it sounds to you.
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I have just listened to Track 16 on this album via Tidal MQA Meridian 218 and DSP 5200SE speakers.
That is a beautiful recording for sure, it sounds like the musicians are perfectly set up in the room to me.
Not sure about the bowed double bass solo in how it works with the piece (It jarred me a bit in context of the tune) but wow! It did sound real with plenty of texture.
I haven’t done any comparisons and I won’t bother because this sounded so good here, there is no point. It’s as good a recording as you will ever hear IMHO.
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I have listened to the 192k HD version so far. I will be making a comparison, I just need to sit down when I have the time.
I’ve listened the Track #16 both in 24/96 hires and 24/96 MQA first unfold via Audirvana.
I never heard this song before and this is my first time hearing a John Coltrane song.
To my trained ears, the first thing I notice was the bass.
Subjective take - The bass of MQA version for me is closer to a real bass compared to hires.
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