MQA disappointing

Which MQA DAC did you use, if you don’t mind me asking?

I thought Bob had walked away from Meridian.

PS Audio DS Sr. with Bridge II

As all the pointless discussion continues I had a listen the Yes, Roundabout in MQA and it sounds astonishing… especialy the Harmonics at the beginning and mid track. The complex layers are teased out beautifully… Not disappointed at all…

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Are you unable to hear that Buble uses auto-tune?

I hear it constantly on all his work.

If you haven’t noticed that then perhaps your hearing acuity and/or setup isn’t really capable of easily distinguishing distortion of MQA.

8 posts were merged into an existing topic: Auto-tune is a total debacle; prove me wrong

If you constantly hear auto-tune on all of Bublé’s albums, you’ve got a serious problem…

It’s true that most of his albums don’t sound very good. His newest record is an exception, though.

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Nobody’s capable of “easily” hearing that (MQA “distortion”). You admitted that yourself more than once. Or should I say “had to admit”…?

Are you sure there’s a technical explanation why this “unnatural distortion” is particularly obvious to you in cover songs you dislike?:thinking:

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Of course MQA has many claims, they even said it is lossless when it was later found out to be lossy. This put them in some credibility doubts. (Don’t blame them it’s all about marketing)

MQA emphasised on time domain correction means these filters are leaky allowing aliasing, noise and distortion to reflected back to audio range. Do you want your music tinted with all these or you want to listen to the original Hi-Res masters?

If you like to listen to effects of these abnormalities which some described a bit like ‘analog’, good harmonics sounding etc, then it is a personal preference. Just like some like solid state vs vacuum tube amps. The thing is, this is all about marketing and trying to get you on board. In the end of the day, you can’t take every words they said, do you own research!

I think you need to prove this first.

Second, I was talking about the clarity of, and the overall impact of the sound.

I just compared the Tidal MQA Version of Roundabout and the 2015 Remaster in 24/96kHz from the BluRay. The hires sounds clearer to me, the MQA sounds more “meaty”, like a dish with a flavor enhancer. I’m not saying the MQA sounds bad at all, the tonality fits the music well. It does sound like a different master though.

@Chrislayeruk You always say that CD sounds like it has something missing and that MQA sounds better. This would actually not be a surprise, as a 24/48kHz MQA file contains more information bits than a 16/44.1kHz CD.
Have you ever compared MQA to the same hires master?

I have a few, but life is too short to hunt down files just to compare. I like to just listen to music and not spoil my music by over listening to individual tracks.
It’s interesting that John Darko covered this point when he was sent files to asses MQA.
He was pleased he did not listen normally to most of the music sent to him as he didn’t wish to destroy the pleasure of his beloved music. One Steely Dan Album was the exception…

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I think that’s what is fundamental here - listening to the music.
IMO if you like the sound of MQA, that’s great. Listening and enjoying the music is what this game is all about. Nothing more.
There are vinyl diehards out there, and also people who still think CD is alive & kicking :wink: MQA is just another way to enjoy your music.

The music industry has changed fundamentally over the last few years, and will continue to change. Streaming is the future, and purchased downloads are on the wane. CD is on its last legs, and the ‘vinyl revival’ is just a flash-in-the-pan.
Streaming music is a growth industry. People ‘consume’ music differently these days compared to yesteryear, and people want to stream. Period. And this especially applies to millennials, and the younger generations, who think that everything begins and ends with their smartphones :roll_eyes:
Who exactly is going to expend mobile bandwidth and data in downloading a 1GB+ 24/96 file to their smartphone, to listen to it on the 0746 to London Euston? Hardly anyone. However, give them the option of MQA, with it’s small file sizes and the claim of ‘better than CD’ quality, and you’ll have takers.

It could be that MQA isn’t ‘meant’ for me and my generation at all? I’m quite happy with my ‘big stereo’ and lossless file collection on a 3TB drive. But the future generations will be as happy streaming as we are owning, and I think that’s MQA’s ‘killer app’. Streaming. And anything that gets the younger generations interesting in listening to quality music streams, rather than heavily-compressed MP3, gets my thumbs-up! :+1:

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This has been hammered, over and over and over.

On the LMS forums some years ago, someone exhaustively Audiodiffmaker’d FLAC vs. WAV vs. Wireless vs. Wired and every time got a null result.

Audiodiffmaker’s null point is around -90dB down which is so many more orders of magnitude more sensitive than the human ear to be not even close.

Unpacking FLAC is such a trivial exercise as to never be mentioned again. Remember for instance than Squeezebox was doing this on device 14 years ago with CPUs of such low computational power that you’d probably find them in smart kettles these days.

It is a total non-issue.

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But not too short to spend time typing the same thing repeatedly into this thread.

I am NOT back in this thread, as it long ago ceased to offer any new information or logically useful argument. I was just lurking to see if anything new has been said. No.

But this quote just goes to show that effectively Chris is trolling everyone else here. He’s not going to back his position up with anything approaching data, or fact, or even bothering to do a quasi-scientific listening comparison that would still count as listening to music.

Instead, just continue to repeat that he likes how his system sounds.

Chris, we all like how our system sounds. You don’t need to say that every 5 posts.

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I don’t believe that for a second…:wink::joy:

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Thanks for the insults, I have as much right to be here and re state my position as you have. I can enjoy music and browse the forum/web as I go easily enough. In fact I enjoy doing so. Believe it or not, I also enjoy joining in on the debate. So, less of the insults, I hope we all enjoy music in the end.

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“Insults”. LOL

Perhaps everyone could stop saying things like “There’s nothing new in the thread”; “I’m leaving the thread”; I’m not posting in the thread anyomore", only to pop back and add something inane to that effect.

You’re all doing it. Can you not see the hypocrisy? You either post in the thread, or you don’t.

Channel Mr. Pacino and stop flouncing.

Hi Chris - this was not intended as an insult, as in calling someone dumb, or anything like that. And yes of course you have the right to post here.

But if you are going to just repeat the same statement over and over, that MQA sounds better than anything else on your system, and that really is all you say, it is not much to ask whether you’ve actually compared the same master across formats.

Then you say “life is too short” like you don’t have time to even put any mild scientific rigor behind your statements. You’ve asked others who post anti-MQA positions whether they’ve actually listened to it. I think it’s fair for the same to be asked of you on the other side.

That is why I feel it’s a form of trolling. It’s intended to generate further argument without pushing forward in any substantive way.

I just call it like I see it. 2 years ago when I first used Roon I think one of your posts was the first I ever read. I don’t think the forum would be the same without your contributions. I do not want to insult you. But if your main argument is that MQA sounds better, then it is simply not too much to ask whether you’ve even done any casual comparisons of the same master across formats.

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Chris is just saying that in his opinion MQA sounds good in his system, and he enjoys it. That’s all he has to or needs to say.
And to be honest, by focusing on how MQA sounds, his posts carry a hell of a lot more credibility than the quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo being posted by others on the thread.
Good one Chris! Enjoy! :grinning:

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