A post was split to a new topic: Usinger’s Brats are still the Gold Standard
I think there’s context there, he’s clearly a colourful character but he writes on the subject, has some infamy apparently. You’d expect he has actually compared, so like anything else in life make your own mind up. Not convinced? Fine, I’m not sure he described night and day, he may well be deliberately adding colour for entertainment.
You’re in a good position to comment with 8ks, do you notice much difference? what do you use for a front end? Toeing in is quite critical apparently. Just curious.
Moderators have (again) removed some posts that were off topic. Can we please stick to considered arguments about MQA and not about other people.
As I pointed out several times on this thread…
With regard to the potential SQ differences between CD quality, MQA and high resolution some people on here are making a mountain out of a molehill - in my opinion. In other words, I’m firmly convinced that if Red Book sounds bad on your system, then MQA or high res won’t sound great, either.
Thanks a lot, but other forum members are in a better position than I am. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m friends with one of the people I mentioned in my first quote. He is a professional keyboardist and an internationally sought-after sound engineer who has worked with artists like Simon Rattle, Ann-Sophie Mutter, Daniel Barenboim etc. He also teaches Sound Engineering at university and has done a lot of research on the benefits and potential drawbacks of ABX double-blind listening tests. He works with MQA on a regular basis and knows how the albums he mastered/produced got authenticated and by whom. In comparison to him, I’m really just an armchair expert.
Speaking of armchairs… 
– if you compare leaning back in your listening chair with sitting up straight or leaning forward, you’ll probably hear SQ differences much bigger than the ones between CD quality, MQA and high res. Just a thought…
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Spot on! Any potential differences we might notice between CD quality and MQA or high res are utterly dwarfed by even the smallest changes we make to our speaker placement, listening position or room acoustics. The (unpopular) truth is some people have no idea how much “musical information” gets “lost” just because they’ve obviously set the wrong priorities. Some of the pictures posted on the “Showing (off) your Roon setup” thread speak volumes in this respect…
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I should read back to May 18? Thanks for the references, can’t say I find any different but I’m hesitant to comment on SQ differences generally.
Funny you should say that, I do change position quite a lot with that in mind, hence comments about toe in.
Happy New Year
Any potential differences we might notice between CD quality and MQA or high res are utterly dwarfed by even the smallest changes we make to our speaker placement, listening position or room acoustics.
If listening were just a matter of ranking the magnitude of different error sources in the room or system, we could elect to simply not bother fixing anything below the largest. Reality is obviously different because errors affect different parameters, both measurable and perceptual ones that are important to the hearing system. Head tilting and off-axis listening affect a lot of things, including interaural time differences (ITDs) that matter to perception but they don’t necessarily eliminate the audibility of timing edges in the music being played. Humans are also subject to the cocktail party phenomenon, where you tune out a great many high-volume distractions to focus in on small things, i.e the voice of a friend, that have meaning to you.
The differences I hear in MQA are specifically an increase in fine detail and transient definition. Part of what makes music compelling and musical is the coherency of sound, including microdynamics and accurate transients. Assuming MQA adds to those, it wouldn’t need to be a night and day effect to subtly increase enjoyment and realism.
I hear MQA fine detail on my resolving main system but also on headphones with a cheap portable playing from a laptop. The second has far worse capability than my main system, so detail survives.
This may or may not be important to you.
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No need to defend yourself. When I wrote “you” and “your” etc., I meant “one” and “one’s”… No criticism intended.
A list of publications on those would be appreciated, out of interest.
Occasionally my listening impressions are similar. However, most of the time I either prefer high resolution or don’t hear much of a difference.
I absolutely agree, but I was talking about the people claiming that MQA sounds “like another recording altogether” etc.
Nobody said we could or should ignore the smaller issues. But in my opinion it makes a lot more sense to START with the more important error sources…
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That may be more accurate for MQA applied to the Warner catalog of old CDs because the A/D converters were worse a couple of decades ago. That opinion is supported by mastering engineers I know who say that the advantages of high resolution over CD have lessened as converters have gotten better.
I was talking about people like Michael Fremer and his review of Lang Lang’s Bach album…
Tidal has both the MQA and regular FLAC for this one. Any opinions? They sound very different to me.
I can see 4 versions of this album and track on Tidal:
A 16 bit version and a 24bit (MQA) version of “Birth in Reverse” from the deluxe version of the “St. Vincent” album (16 tracks in total).
and
a 16bit version and a 24bit (MQA) version of “Birth in Reverse” from the standard version of the “St. Vincent”
album (with a different album cover and just 12 tracks).
This track (both16 bit and 24bit MQA) from the standard album does indeed sound very different to the same track on the deluxe version of the album (both 16bit and 24bit MQA, but in a way that tells me that the deluxe versions of the album have been re-mixed differently.
I suspect this if what you are hearing. You are probably comparing a 16bit version on one of the versions of the album with a 24bit MQA version from the other.
Try comparing the 16bit or 24bit versions from the same version of the album (standard (12 tracks) or deluxe (16 tracks)) and I think you’ll find that they sound very similar.
By the way, the album cover photo you have included in your post is the Deluxe version of the album. Here is the album cover of the standard album:
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I do not know the facts about this one. But from 2 musicians and a sound engineer I know, that Tidal often uses different masters or transfers from analog recordings with different dynamics and equalisation for their MQA streams. Make your own assumptions why they do it.
Yes - that may often or at least sometimes be the case, but not I think on this occasion.
In this case I think that both versions (16bit & 24bit MQA) of the standard 12 track album use the same mix, and both the versions of the 16 track extended deluxe album appear to use the same re-mix which does sound different to me from the original standard version.
most of them are 24/192 and 24/96, sometimes an original album in hires 24/192 and the other a remaster or remix.
e.g. Led Zeppelin catalogue hires master 24/96 in MQA Studio and cd master in MQA 16/44.1.
Van Halen in 24/192 and another 24/192 Van Halen 2015 remaster by Chris Bellman.
Made In Japan (Original Mix) and 2014 Remaster.
and so on…
Thanks for that! Yes I naively thought that the Deluxe and Standard versions would use the same mastering on this album but indeed they do sound different.
The Deluxe MQA is the worst sounding in my opinion: it feels compressed and quite artificial. The Standard MQA version is a little better but still sounds unnatural. The 44/16 FLAC sounds better but I’d give top spot by a considerable margin to my local 96/24 FLAC.
I suppose it’s impossible to know whether the same sources were used for each version or it’s just different mastering moves or MQA secret source accounting for the differences.
I think it’s a shame humans crawled out of the swamp and progressed from a gramophone. There was none of this malarkey in those days…well until different cutting curves and stereo sound reared their heads. It appears we have argued about every advance since recording began!
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12 posts were merged into an existing topic: Tidal - All Neil Young albums before 1982 are gone. Thanks TIDAL!