Looks like end-to-end was misinterpreted as quality assurance… they meant licensing.
I knew I should have snaffled one of those MQA signs showing Auralic and Roon from CES 2016.
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Impressive list
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Really? Looks smaller than before. As for content, the most important part of this list frankly, you have 2L and Warner -who will in all likelihood batch convert most of the catalog.
I think this will just take time.
Sorry not sure there is a sarcasm smiley but if there is I missed it off.
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I just read RealHDAudio - RMAF: Show Report. Just like you said @joel
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That is absolutely not what I was referring to; I meant that you should be wary of trusting information from individuals with hidden (or blatantly obvious agendas) and/or an incomplete understanding of the technology. Further, there is nothing wrong, in principle, with MQA’ing the PCM from careful transfers from the analogue, because the transfer ADC will be known. Studio records aside, MQA’s pipeline can apparently detect which ADC was used from the noise floor profile. Admittedly, this is not a full “white glove” treatment, but you can bet that the really important/popular/seminal/landmark albums will be receiving this.
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There are many cases where production is mix of material from different ADCs.
And the ADC has to be pretty bad if it’s noise floor is visible in the recording instead of the analog gear preceding it…
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As our esteemed ex prime minister once said
“This all reeks of smoke and daggers”
SJB
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Don’t forget, all these mastered PCM are mixed down, EQ, processed with effects using DSP, what are left is totally different from the ‘raw’ PCM right after the ADC. To be effective, the the encoder must be placed right after the ADC, with minimal processing, for example no DSP without affecting the integrity of the codec so it can properly decoded back at the consumers end.
So my question, will music studios willing do a re-mastered on all their old catalogs to MQA? Not to mention some of analog master tapes have already degraded to the point it is not possible to do it now, where they have already digitalized many years ago.
MQA is an end to end process, beginning right after the ADC with minimal or no processing so it doesn’t affecting the integrity of codec and can properly decoded back at the consumers end. This is exactly what MQA is all about.
Actually, my point in making this post was merely the fact that it’s not the entire WB catalogue being MQA’d. Nothing more.
I came across another article…
He mentioned about software decoding as a form of plug-in, in reality this going to gain a strong foothold instead of forcing us to buy a new DAC. If they can only think beyond… It is a win-win for everyone 
B[quote=“BLH, post:760, topic:8204, full:true”]
I just read RealHDAudio - RMAF: Show Report. Just like you said @joel
I asked about the status and throughput of the encoding process — specifically the WB Records catalog that has been promised in the MQA format. When I first learned about WB getting behind the MQA format, I thought it meant that they would mine their catalog and create MQA versions of everything. That’s not the case. According to Jeff Dean, only the 3500 “high-resolution” albums that have already been transferred from analog masters to high-resolution PCM digital files are being targeted for MQAing. I imagined that WB mastering would have to redo all of the original transfers from the analog masters so that the details of the conversion could be included in the process. I was wrong. They took the existing PCM files and encoded them into MQA files.
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This sounds like a good way to go about it and get good MQA content. Doing a blanket trnascoding of the entire catalog would conpletely bastardize the principles behind MQA.
Yeah, sounds pretty implausible to determine DAC out of noise floor.
For high quality, highly regarded analog masters, I can’t imagine that data as to what ADC was used s not available. The date and venue of the ADC process alone could probably give you a fairly authoritative answer.
If you took one of the cheaper MQA capable DACs, tapped into the I2S data line from decoder to DAC, saved the data from an MQA file, and compared to the standard high res PCM version of the file, would it not be possible to deconvolute the transfer function out? Just as an experiment.
By deriving an already mixed down PCM and converting to MQA is not always the best quality. They have to re-do the whole process by placing the encoder right after the ADCs. I would say this provided the closest to the original performance. Another word I can think of is native MQA audio recording.
This reminded me an already mixed down PCM can be converted to DSD and mastered on SACD. Of course we know this is not native DSD recording.
Yes, that’s pretty easy way and not hard to do. But I think I’ve already found even easier way. I just don’t have high priority on doing such things. I’ve done quite a bit of analysis on digitized output of a Meridian DAC, comparing original and MQA’d versions.
But from comparison perspective, a multi-tone signal would be good and revealing to see noise modulation on transients. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I feel that I could find similar noise modulation issues as A2DP/AptX/MP3 have, also with MQA. Although comparing original and decoded version would reveal such too.
It will be interesting to see how it behaves when subjected to impulse transient click and a square wave test at 10kHz from the encoding to decoding. This is considered a brutal test but it can shred some light how robust the overall system handle on transients which make up part of music.
Or you could just listen to actual music?
Or you can do both.