I did not mean to imply that the fundamentals behind musicianship such as talent is not there. It’s just not being given the opportunity to develop in as many people as in the past, and the appreciation is not as widespread. Again, other things are more important now to the general population. I wonder about the “spread” of music through youtube, streaming, etc. I think the labels are right to see that there has been significant and rapid decline in the value the general population places on their product. Their diagnosis (e.g. “piracy” and file sharing) of the cause is wrong.
Circling back to something more on topic, Youtube is now the FM radio of today, except it has a screen component and of course is low fi compression played through low fi speakers attached to screens. Audiophiles don’t want to spread the joys of higher fidelity so they bought into MQA’s marketing that it will “enable” hi res for the masses. It was too late (bandwidth/storage are no longer issues, etc.), but on top of that most music lovers simply don’t want higher resolution. The value they place on music and sound quality is perfectly served by low res streaming and Youtube. However, Bob S/MQA certainly knew how to push audiophile’s buttons…
Not sure about that - and if true, the same could be said for Gen-Xers and even for boomers: from the second the radio showed up, you could get a better quartet in your home than what you could patch together from your kids, siblings, or neighbours. I agree with you on the rest, and I do think it’s a factor in terms of appreciation and significance given to music in general, simply because once you realise how damn difficult what the people in the gramophone are doing really is, you give it more attention, but I really don’t agree with the idea there’s some sort of true decline. It’s present elsewhere in the analog world, eh - I’d rather have them whippersnappers spend their evenings destroying their eyes over little house in the prairie than over Gundam or Assassin’s Creed, but with music, it feels like it’s just more of a mutation.
We always support our branding. It is pride of British people. If there’s a certain bias to the whole review, it will not be surprised other magazines will do the opposite.
In the end of the day it is all about selling you a brand and at times not focusing on the true meaning of high fidelity. That’s the saddest part of the spectrum…
Guys, get over it. Whathifi?'s target segment is NOT the audiophile niche (although they did review dCS Rossini), but rather the person looking for good audio quality at reasonable cost (whatever that is).
If they were targeting audiophiles, why would Spotify be #1?
MQA is not bad per se. Actually its quite a feat to squeeze “almost hires” quality into a file less than half the size of PCM hires.
I cannot tell the difference upon a casual listen. I have to compare with high attentiveness on an extremely high resolution system (said dCS Rossini with the wonderful bespoke MQA filters) to hear any difference at all. For the average Joe, MQA will sound exactly the same as PCM, or better than PCM, if he expects it to be better.
MQA is targeted at the mass market, not at a specialized niche. Tidal is clearly a mass market streaming service. The two go together well.
Qobuz is much smaller than Tidal and more of a niche oriented service targeted at Classical and Jazz lovers who care about audio quality.
Really? Spotify and Apple Music are dominant players in mass market when you come to streaming. Do I see any mass market adoption on MQA more than 4 years after its launch? Kind a bold statement you made but I understand the ignorance of not doing your research here.
I disagree. It is relatively easy to hear what’s wrong with MQA, provided you can switch A to B. Of course, if you pick a random track then making an accurate call can be much more difficult. In this sense I am more in agreement with all the proponents of MQA - there is definitely a difference. No doubt about it, the MQA file is not the same as the original Master.
Did I say anything about whether you can hear a difference? I only said that I cannot with my system. Have you listened with my system and my ears? Am I not listening hard enough?
That’s because Tidal apps are free to download with integrated MQA decoding. How many phones out there actually do native MQA decoding without the use of Tidal app? Oops! there’s where it can rip more profit…
I can say almost all phones can playback FLAC, that’s I said is a mass market adoption!
