MQA disappointing

We don’t listen to facts, we listen to music. Testimonials speak to the sound, which is what it’s all about. MQA sounds great, bring me more!

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You can’t hear facts.

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This doesn’t seem to make sense. Who is deciding how it should be judged?

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Hardware (such as a speaker or amp) is not music. Software such as MP3 or MQA is not music. Digital ecosystems such as Roon and your computer is not music. When judging these things, facts matter.

You listen to facts to get to the music. You are a fact, your ear is a fact. Your testimonial is an opinion

So is yours, but the FACT is, I like the way MQA and CD present music to me through my system. I see MQA as a clear improvement on CD too.

No they don’t the sound they make matters, that’s what they are there for?

I’ll check the dictionary to find out what “facts” means but no, I don’t think so.

Oh dear…

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You preference is one thing. The facts of MQA are another thing. Here is some good news for you: Miska provides an MQA like filter in his software. Other manufacturers provide similar filter experiences. So, you can have your MQA sound without the loss of bit depth, without lossy compression, without proprietary lock in and DRM at the bottom of your digital ecosystem. Fact is, MQA is not about sound quality and how it sounds to you - its about other things.

Facts matter.

And all this is authenticated how? It’s not MQA.

Fact is, authentication is marketing speak for an encryption check that is broken in MQA. Facts matter.

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You must have the last word, so I will leave it with you. I just don’t see things your way.

And the world is flat, because I only trust my eyes and not some facts!

I can see the curvature of the earth with my eyes especialy at the coast lol :joy:

In your case, you must have been standing on the Meridian to see that.

:grinning:

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Wow, how did you get there? What a leap!
So can YOU hear facts?
The facts behind MQA don’t change the way it sounds.
Not sure where you’re coming from there…The effect of curvature is definitely visible. Hull up etc.

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Bob Stuart has form with DVD-A. So he thinks up MQA which was referred to as a lossy noise-shaping process in an early patent in 2013. Curiously, the MQA process is not patented because they didn’t invent anything.

https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2013186561&recNum=132&maxRec=599628&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=&queryString=nano+OR+filter+OR+ceramic&tab=PCT+Biblio

The whole point of making it lossy was because in 2013 it was very difficult stream HD audio, at least it was in the UK, so this claimed to make it possible to stream in HD. Now don’t even think about it, I’ve had Quboz sublime for about 3 years and since then haven’t even thought about the data rate, it’s just irrelevant.

“MQA” was sold by Meridian to MQA Ltd and is now majority owned by outside investors. They’ve burnt a lot of cash trying to market something the main purpose of which became redundant years ago.

It does involve some noise-shaping. If you like that. fine. An alternative method is to put bits of cheese in your ears. Other than the it’s the prime example of snake oil since they invented snakes and oil proven by the fact that it has failed to get any traction.

There is not enough money in streaming as it is for record companies to allow MQA Ltd to take a share, so MQA sonly ever going to make money licensing decoders. They do have patents for various decoders.

The only way MQA will get anywhere is if they get record companies to force people to get devices with an MQA decoder. Seeing the biggest streaming service is Spotify, and most people run it on mobile phones, the idea that kids will buy a new MQA phone and pay a premium for it is simply ridiculous. Look at Apple’s iPhone sales. The phone market has become very price sensitive, and my family all use cheaper Huawei phones for that reason. No £1,000 iPhone for us, thanks.

I’m new to Roon and love it, especially off an Innuos server. A lifetime subscription is the price of a pair of opera tickets. I can live with that.

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I’ve tried that but it ruins the cheese.
Lots of new info for the discussion there.

Just to avoid any confusion here, the HQ Player MQA filters are stated to “clean up high frequency noise added by the MQA encoding”. They are not an attempt to reverse engineer an MQA decoder, like Auralic.

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Meridian is not exactly healthy. Accounts filed last week. Sales fell 7% to under £10m and fell 12% in high end audio, made an operating loss of £1m after charging MQA Ltd £250,000, had a financial restructuring and has retained losses of £25m.

They says they are cutting out cheaper low margin products and their route to success will be higher end products “strongly linked” to the top end new build property market. Good luck with that.

Thanks for the clarification. I am going from memory here, but does not HQPlayer offer other slow roll off filters minimum phase filters that correlate to MQA’s? I think HQPlayer had these before MQA was even a product. In any case, I don’t use them - I prefer linear phase (I am mostly a HP listener) and filters that filter ;). :wink:

Hum…is this noise shaping in context of so called ringing/ripple?