It may not be your ears, but it might very well be the specific hi-fi gear you have in your music replay system.
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As far as MQA, my system is high end with complete unfolding, so it should not be a factor. As far as “flac vs flac”, theoretically it should never be a difference no matter what system you use. A 44.1/14 Tidal flac file vs the same both played on my system theoretically should sound the same, but hey don’t.
MQA is not a lossy format. This may be why it doesn’t sound as good. And that is with a MQA capable dac.
You mean it IS a lossy format.
Correction , it is lossy
Let’s say that we have an album that has been recorded in hi-res (24bit/192 MHz) and that the album is released in two formats.
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CD Quality (16bit/44.1KHz) on CD and made available as CD quality files on Tidal and Qobuz.
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MQA (Hi-res) release on Tidal.
You would no doubt describe the MQA release as ‘lossy’ compared to the original hi-res recording, and you would be technically correct, no matter how clever and effective the MQA processing.
However, would you not also describe the 16bit/44.1KHz versions on Tidal and Qobuz as being ‘lossy’ compared to the original hi-res recording, because they have been down-sampled in order to be made available as CD quality files?
In which case, is it not entirely possible that the hi-res MQA file is closer to the original recording than the 16 bit CD quality version and sounds better because of this?
Again we use lossy as a digital term. The whole point of MQA and why it is a closed system (you need a decoder and renderer plus a capable replay system) is that it is not lossy in analog terms. No musical information is lost at the loudspeaker. You hear the sound put into the system.
You may be used to, familiar with and enjoy the compromised CD/digital sound more. MQA should sound different.
Live with it for a while and you will see what I mean.
My MQA optimised system sounds amazing and my many Jaw Drop experiments I have done with people who have no idea what MQA is, tells me all I need to know.
A familiarity with quality live sound is also a great tool to have in the box and I encourage people to experience this as much as they can when concerts resume.
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Anyone who doubts the sound quality of MQA should listen on Tidal to the 50th anniversary edition of Workingman’s Dead fully unfolded in 192 hi-res on a Meridian system
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MQA is a lossy format, per it’s inventor, Bob Stewart.
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44.1/16 is lossy, but, it does not have, to my ears, as much wrong with it as the same track in MQA. To my ears, MQA sounds smeared, and lacks the transient response 44.1/16 has. And the higher the bit and frequency it goes, the better it sounds to me. DSD beats everything, though. Especially if recorded with great skill and care, like the new Don Gruisin effort, Out of Thin Air on PS Audio’s label Octave Records. Not really my kind of music, but my, oh my, oh my, my system has never sounded as good as when this is playing. The most realistic sounding piano ever, again to my ears. IMHO, anything less than DSD looses something.
So why would you listen to something that is “not really my kind of music” just because it is recorded well?
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But, the analog sound you get from MQA, imho, IS lossy, lossier that anything was or flac from 44.1/16 on up. I hear distortion and smearing that I don’t get with the wav and flac files of the same tracks, and inferior transients. Each and every one of us is unique to our abilities to hear the various deficiencies in music. You might be able to detects distortions and deficiencies that I can not, and vice versa. That’s just a fact of life, and something I accept. I hope you get as much pleasure from MQA as I do from non-MQA. If you are, then I know you are smiling. And I want everyone to smile, especially with all that is going on. Health, happiness and good listening to all.
It is my reference of how it should sound. And I do enjoy it, and greatly appreciate it, just not as much as The Doobie Brothers, John Lee Hooker, and my other favorites. Like, when I have to get something accomplished, I’m better off playing stuff that does not get me singing along and tapping my feet, and shaking my bootie. But I still want it to sound good. The Gruisin album fits that purpose like a custom made suit.
Technically not true. The bandwidth and resolution are limited by the format choice, but the bits that came out of the ADC and were stored on the disc are exactly reconstituted back for the dac to chew on. It’s clearly bit perfect or it couldn’t be used as storage for computers.
But you are correct in spirit, the actual waveform as digitized is filtered both in the frequency direction and also in the amplitude direction. It cannot store the waveform perfectly.
MQA does not store the waveform perfectly either, but has made a choice of not being bit perfect to ease the storage and transmission requirements. Because of that, I’m not really interested in it. Not because it sounds better or worse, but because there is no future in it. It’s like HDCD or SACD, time will not be friendly to it.
Sheldon
You nailed it when you said “not being bit perfect to ease the storage and transmission requirements” - MQA solves a problem that really doesn’t exist for anyone with a broadband connection any more.
This is a commonly held misconception. Not everyone lives in a place where you can get 500Mbps cable internet.
While broadband availability is of course a challenge, especially in rural areas, you really don’t need a super-fast connection just for audio. Most 24bit/192khz tracks encoded to FLAC are about 5-6 Mbps, so they can comfortably be streamed with a 10-15 Mbps connection. MQA takes it down to typically 2 Mbps. Your cable company’s marketing department will likely disagree with me.
We live in a rural area and get our internet over the cell phone network. 10-15 Mbps is aspirational - usually it is about 5-7, and forget trying to stream Tidal via Roon between 6pm and 8pm (the Lumin app seems to do a slightly better job there). Qobuz is also not available in Canada. MQA sounds great in our setup and brings us a lot of hi-res stuff that would otherwise not be available.
Well redbook would be a better choice in your situation. MQA is a rather busy format and doesn’t compress very well for only being 24/44.1 or 48.