MQA disappointing

Audio Gear Talk MQA
2667

Of course not everyone can afford a system like ours. WE couldn’t until my husband retired and we got a very good lump sum and pension plus my own pensions.

I also know people have different priorities. Children are an excellent example.

However, it doesn’t cost a fortune to be able to play music as made, not as AAC or MP3.

Being ignorant, when I first started using the iPod Classic (of which I have one brand new unopened and 2 others!) I wasn’t that happy with the sound. It wasn’t until I mentioned it to someone one that I found out about compression and what it did. I also found out i could put the music on my iPod in .aiff or ALAC. I did this and found even years later that it sounded excellent even when using Grado headphones.

The point I was trying to make about music and film becoming an only streaming option works out more expensive because of what one needs to hear or see well.

We have chosen in many instances to forego the physical disc for film because we are very cluttered (one room has 400+ pairs of DMs and other brands in it! It will pay for my care if John stops being able to or stops being here.)

We both hoard. John is an historian, well respected in his field, and the house has books every where, including the floor. As with DVDs and CDs. Even my dressing room has now overflowed to my work/boot room and downstairs too.

I am sure it has been noticed I tend to prattle. I have forgotten what this was about in the first place.

Oh, 1. of course not all can afford things. I am not going to feel guilty because in ‘old age’ we can. 2. I’ll just have to accept there are those who don’t care their music isn’t what the artist made. If it were possible to change my art by others, I’d be very unhappy about it.

We are all different, have different means, have different priorities, have to choose which charities to give to as we can’t possibly give to them all. Have different musical tastes and now I know that quality matters not to some. Although looking at how some very rich dress I ought to know that quality and taste are not a priority either! (And yes, just because a sweater costs £1000 doesn’t mean it is quality.)

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2668

And my point, it’s all good. For me, I’m somewhat of a minimalist. I own zero books, no collections of anything, no LP’s, no CD’s, no DVD’s, sold my car, two pairs of shoes, etc. etc.

I do enjoy Tidal and Qobuz streaming MQA and high resolution music, but my entire system including Nucleus, Oppo 203, Bose 5.1, Meridian Prime, Dragonfly Cobalt, AEON headphones, Sony headphones, and Sennheiser headphones probably cost around $5,000 at most.

I think the majority of young people could probably not care less about high resolution music. But, that’s OK. Not arguing here, just having a discussion.

2669

I couldn’t do that. I spend most of my time indoors and need to do more than twiddle my thumbs. I do like tech.
I always have knitting on the go. I am either reading, listening to music and knitting, or watching tv and maybe knitting. I certainly could not do without my car which is a WAV, in my case a Ford Grand Tourneo.(Coincidently, Mark, just before he dies, bought the exact car for his business but the van version.) I need a WAV in order to carry James which is a super duper wh/chair which does all sorts but my fave raises me up to eye level with men, aller than women and most of the time I don’t need help to get off the top shelf. I DO need help to deal with morons…

“Nucleus, Oppo 203, Bose 5.1, Meridian Prime, Dragonfly Cobalt, AEON”

I know what a Nucleus is and I have an Oppo 105D and a 205EDU, BOSE make a number of things so don’t know what this is, I do know what a Dragonfly Cobalt is but not an AEON.

I think judging from those young people in and out of my house for almost a year that more young people would be interested in better sounding music but I am talking CD quality. Hi-res is a different ballgame.

I know we are only discussing.

2670

3 posts were split to a new topic: Off Topic Discussion #01

2672

Back on topic…I love MQA, high resolution also. To me, there is little to no difference.

2673

You keep making this assertion, could you share your evidence, please?

2674

Again, do you have evidence this is so?

2675

There may be recording artists and sound engineers who don’t want MQA but I know quite a few excellent sound engineers who like it a great deal. MQA does not try to fix the recording; the only thing it corrects for are some issues introduced in processing hardware. The recording is what it tries to preserve.

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2676

Nobody said that. MQA has absolutely nothing to do with how music is recorded.

Just because the overwhelming majority of us recording artists and sound engineers hardly ever work with MQA doesn’t mean we “don’t want it”. The fact that MQA is still a niche product doesn’t necessarily say anything about its quality.

I know many mastering engineers who like how MQA can sound. In fact, I’m one of them, as I’ve pointed out multiple times (both here and on other threads). However, I don’t know a single colleague who’s happy when his work shows up on Tidal or highresaudio as MQA, although he’s never “authenticated” it.

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2677

You’re quoting me out of context, and on top of that your incomplete quotation doesn’t even contain an intelligible “assertion”… This makes it impossible for me to prove or disprove anything. What’s the point you’re trying to make?

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2678

Just because some people here are criticizing certain aspects of MQA doesn’t mean they’re MQA haters. Why is it that lots of users here seem to have such a hard time accepting that not everything about MQA is black or white. Sometimes a few “shades of grey” don’t hurt (pun intended).

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2679

So much MQA is MQA and not MQA Studio. It is MQA Studio that has been signed off and your colleagues would be involved in that process or know who is responsible. I wonder if they are happy about MP3 as well? Probably not if sound quality is of concern.

2680

MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated. It doesn’t stand for Unauthenticated Master Quality. If it did, it would be called UMQ…

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2681

Yes, but there are two distinct versions for many reasons. One is MQA Studio, the signed studio master.
Then MQA where the MQA process has been used but is not confirmed as the final master. Perhaps a further release will be MQA studio, perhaps it cannot be signed off definitively. The reason are probably many and various but this is clearly indicated in the authentication.
So, a Green light indicates the Latter and a Blue light is Studio.
That sounds like authentication to me.
You know exactly what you are getting. Just add ears :joy:

2682

Would your opinion on MQA Studio change in any way if I told you that in quite a few cases we do NOT get involved?

None of the records I’ve ever mastered are only available as MP3 files. In fact, more than 90 % of my work is available in high res. However, if the mp3 (320) version of a well-recorded and well-mastered record sounds terrible on your system, then something is seriously wrong (and you certainly can’t blame your Meridian DSP 5200 SE for it).

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2683

How can a master that “cannot be signed off definitively”, as you put it, be called “master quality authenticated”? You’re clearly contradicting yourself.

Just because your ears tell you that a record sounds like the master has been authenticated by a mastering engineer doesn’t make it true. The lights don’t make it true, either. To you this may sound like a mere conspiracy theory. But it isn’t. It’s something many of us have experienced more than once…

It’s extremely peculiar that the very same people who stream and recommend the albums we make for them are trying to tell us what we have or haven’t authenticated…

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2685

For clarification, can you explain where the process is going wrong then? Who is responsible for the MQA encoding and release? Is it the fault of the labels for whom you master? If you were a small label yourself, then you would have control over the release.

2686

@Chrislayeruk, are you seriously equating mastering engineers who say they didn’t get involved in the “authentication” of their own MQA albums with people who prefer mp3 to lossless? That’s absurd.

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2687

Never mind my last question. I can see from Alan’s post that the labels are the likely problem since they control the output. It’s not the first time that this complaint about control has arisen for artists and engineers.

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2688

I’m not trying to make any particular point, I was interested in whether you had a source for the claim that the vast majority of sound engineers and recording artists criticise MQA, which seems to me to be what you were stating -

HWZ seems to be claiming something similar, so I was wondering if I’d missed some mass petition on behalf of a huge number of artists/engineers, or something of that nature? I’ve largely kept well out of MQA debates, so this would be quite possible.