The Album page can display “Original Release Date” and “Release Date” which can be one way of distinguishing between different Masters or versions of a recording. But Roon is reliant on the metadata to make that distinction, and often it doesn’t.
I’d like to see a Mastering Date field, but would not have much hope that it would be carefully implemented by recording companies.
I wonder, if you went to a “record store” today, how much of their new vinyl inventory truly is “digital free”. Much would be cut from CD masters, and others from higher-res (but still digital) masters.
That was true in the mid-1980s too. Back then CDs often included the SPARS code: AAD, ADD, DDD, DAD etc. So there was vinyl (and cassette) cut from digital sources. Brothers in Arms and Bad come to mind.
Yes, I was being sarcastic about vinyl.
It is certainly not “lossless”.
I remember back in the day when I was so excited about CDs, and we were MOST excited when one was DDD, meaning the BEST SOUND!!! Now I am back to buying vinyl LOL…Sorry, off topic, but Martin’s post got me all nostalgic 
I remember an early Genesis CD which had 500 RPM printed on the label.
Yep. And instead of looking for DDD, I look for AAA vinyl.
You should be so lucky! ABBA Arrival released in 1980 or 1981 was later released as DDD so recording and mixing was digital long before the advent of the CD. Pretty sure I have a few Deutsche Grammophon vinyl in this category too.
Ry Cooders’ Bop 'til you drop. First digital pop album was released in 1979. Prior to that classical was being digitally recorded so there were digital masters well before we gained the ability for digital playback in a domestic environment.
I have a “blues collection “ from a Magazine where Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker etc are labelled as DDD!
Marty McFly disrupted more than was caught on camera apparently!
.sjb
Another article trying to makes its ways out… This time he is telling us the aliasing is inaudible when there’s is nothing to aliase! OMG! I think he is forgetting that there’s one component that is always there… the noise floor. He is telling us listen to it, I suggest to him why not capture on a graph and let’s analyse it?
This is a graph that says it all. The is a 44.1k recording and a sharp cut off at 22.05k. For a conventional PCM one will NOT have any ultrasonic noise above that. In a MQA, this ultrasonic noise aliasing with the noise floor. One still have to take into consideration that aliasing gets reflected back to the audio range; these noise will ‘modulated’ with the music contents that resulted in distortion. Does the incurring distortion make the music sound better? Well I’ll let you be the judge.
Latest development in the MQA “scam” to day the Piano & a microphone 1983 by prince was released in MQA from a cassette tape master. They are really going for high quality:rofl:
I think that certain DACs suffer from differential non-linearities. The extra ultrasonic almost random noise may help improve this kind of non-linearity.
Of course, the root cause of the problem is the poorly designed DAC - and they are so common that finding a DAC that measures and performs well is actually rare…
If that is the master, what’s the problem. People record to Cassette, even today.
Where do we go from here? We have MQA streaming the studio sound (I know, I know, MQA theorists won’t agree, that’s OK) surely a lot of the race is over?
Better and better systems can only go so far, and then what?
Great sounding audio has never been more affordable for people if they know about and want it.
What do you do when you have it all, Is it a blessing or a curse?
Well, I suppose we just enjoy the music and only wish we had more of it sooner. Re issues encourage us to delve into the wonderful back catalogue that we either enjoyed originally (I’m talking transistor radio on AM here lol) in Low Fi, missed or couldn’t afford at the time.
Luckily for them, Computer tinkerers will always have stuff to play with to satisfy the DIY wing of the hobby… hmmm, not sure where I’m going with this. Think I’ll play some Tom Petty in MQA…
You are not listening to Studio sound when streaming Tidal MQA.
You are right, the game will be over sooner than later for MQA.
MQA is not considered a ‘studio sound’ but an improvement over 16/44.1 FLAC streaming. The only way to get ‘studio sound’ is to get the original master file (lossless and uncompressed) and it playback. In my listening test, both the original lossless master Hi-Res PCM vs MQA, they both sound different.
I missed you all lol 
Sounds pretty good to me though.
I can’t think of anything less aspirational than “studio sound” given the overdamped, peaky near-field monitors that dominate most commercial studios.
It’s really the antithesis of what I’m looking for in home music reproduction.
