MQA disappointing

Indeed, it removes the blurring and that changes the sound.

For those worried about hearing loss at higher frequencies. You May wish to enjoy this video explanation.

This one covers the maths more.

This guy earns income from manufacturers; I don’t think he is a reliable source of information. He simply perpetuates audiophile myths since it is in his interests to do so.

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Chris, did you take the time to actually watch the first video you posted? It doesn’t deal with age-related hearing loss AT ALL…

The second video briefly touches on this subject. In a nutshell, Hans Beekhyzen explains to us that our hearing is non-linear…

I think we all agree that people who are older than 20 can still enjoy listening to music.:wink: But there’s no escaping the fact that our hearing deteriorates as we grow older…

Speaking of age-related hearing loss…

Here’s an informative and well-researched article titled Losing the Music: Aging Affects the Perception and Subcortical Neural Representation of Musical Harmony…

The article mainly focuses on “clinically normal (i.e. age-related) hearing deterioration”…

Could you
a) Tell us which tracks/album you used for the test and for these, and…
b) Could you explain the steps you took to verify the provenance of the MQA file, i.e. how did you ensure that it wasn’t from a different master?

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a) and b) - by making barriers to performing any sort of tests too high we can claim anything.

Lossy is lossless! Hearing improves with age!

Are you being ironic? “Tell us which tracks/album you used for the test” etc. is making things too complicated?

Are you being ironic?

I’m not 100% sure if you mean me, since you quoted from @anon55914447’s post and then repeated the question that I asked. But in many cases it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to get any information about the master used, don’t you think?

He catagoricaly states that this is not the case.

That’s true, but the second video clearly shows the fact that this does not stop us enjoying music.

Providing proof or citing evidence is absolutely the right way to support the claims made. It isn’t hard to do either. 2L provides samples in numerous formats to enable direct comparisons from the same masters.

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It is often very hard to get information about masters used. Is it then useless to compare things?
Should we get sworn testimony from everyone involved in the mastering of a song just to compare MQA to a lossless format?
By just raising the bar for “evidence” all the time no comparison is possible.

That’s quite some hyperbolic jump from what I was actually asking. :roll_eyes:

If you don’t know if the masters you are comparing are the same - either d/l from a source that guarantees the same, or by looking at the waveform in audacity - then it’s impossible to claim that your SQ differences are as a result of MQA, especially as from the evidence we have gathered so far, a significant proportion of Tidal MQA releases have been shown to be from different masters to the 16/44 version they are packaged with.

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As for knowing it was sourced from a particular master, the only other way would be a very modern recording, say in the last year or 2. The odds would be pretty high the MQA is sourced from the same hi-rez master. But even then…

A few sources for comparing “apples-to-apples”:

  1. The 2L Hi-Res “Test Bench”
  2. Tidal MQA versions of Steven Wilson remixes of Yes albums and Jethro Tull (same as high-resolution masters available for purchase)
  3. Tidal MQA versions of ECM albums
  4. Tidal MQA versions of Blue Note label remasters done by Analogue Productions

And while you are doing all the intense comparing take some breaks and enjoy really great music :slight_smile:

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A good place to start with is 2L test bench

I’ve a Mytek Brooklyn MQA DAC (borrowed) and my current DAC is a Holo Spring R2R, all capable of doing up to 24/384k PCM as well DSD512. These are high-end DACs capable of very good resolutions.

My comparison of various Hi-Res tracks, including DXD, which 2L recorded as their reference master in 24/352.8k are also available for testing. This is converted to DSD and also to different PCM sampling rates. Last but not least MQA.

You will be surprised that DXD master and the converted to lower PCM sampling rates, e.g. 24/192/96k are surprisingly similar but when you compare with MQA, it a lot different. Pay attention to the ‘timber’, the ‘tonal quality’ as well the ‘overall body’.

There’s also 16 bit MQA CD but this is probably the worse I’ve heard when compared to a standard Redbook. I would strongly recommend at least 24 bit MQA.

OK, I did do some ABing of one of those tracks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear a blind bit of difference.

On the other hand, it did sound like a promising disc and it’s on Tidal, so I added it to my library. :+1:

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That is very unfortunate as many of us were able to tell the difference. The 2L test bench is obviously here to differentiate the sonic qualities of different formats.

The reasons you may not able to hear the difference may attribute to hearing loss (not everyone hears the same) and the low resolution audio setups. All these contributes to no difference when doing AB testing.