MQA General Discussion

Audio Gear Talk MQA
141

Thanks for the article.

I heard Mr Stuart speak on a panel at THE Show last year (i think it was this one), and without re-watching it my recollection was that from him the primary benefit of MQA is what it opened up for streaming by shrinking the file size and not some second coming of audio fidelity.

While MQA doesn’t do anything for me personally to worry about having to re-buy my collection (97% of the music i listen to isn’t available in anything other than RedBook anyway) it a note worthy product for being able to decrease the file size and maintaining close to if not the same, or maybe slightly better fidelity. That is quite an accomplishment and should be great for streaming.

If you click through to the link to PS Audio , Paul McGowan shares very similar thoughts to my own.

If all the hype and hoopla had merely stated the end results were indistinguishable from the original, I might be jumping up and down with how close they got it. Few systems have the resolving power of Music Room One and the fact they got close after folding the music into a smaller file size is quite an achievement.

PS Audio

I think MQA has been poorly served by two things - Marketing and the “audiophile” press. Meridian deserves some blame for some of the claims attributed to their reps but i think more goes the the press members who took these comments and added levels of hyperbole on top to create the fuss.

142

I saw the hour long interview of Bob Stuart by Chris from Computer Audiophile. The amount of fluff in his responses made me question his knowledge, intentions or both. At this point all I can say is MQA has done itself a huge disfavor. I will hold off on the technology per-se as we shall see what happens and how it performs in reality.

143

MQA is a lot more than a compression system for streaming. For those interested read higher up in this thread for some good summaries of the other benefits MQA.

MQA may well have been overhyped by the “audiophile” press, my experience is that many of the benefits they espouse for the equipment they review are overstated. However having driven many cars and drunk much wine I would say the same for writers on those topics :smiley: For these people it is their livelihoods and even the smallest thing is a big deal to them, we all need to be sensible about their hyperbole.

I’m not sure we can draw a lot from the archimago blog test.

  1. The ADC stage the analogue signal is being put through is written off as not doing anything detrimental but this is precisely one of the things MQA is claiming to improve.
  2. For the listening tests this digital file is then put through another DAC, this is also one of things MQA looks to improve upon.

The most I would expect from this test is to be able to find that the MQA compression process does not have a detrimental impact when compared to a HiRes file. Which is indeed the main conclusion made. Any of the other potential benefits of MQA are almost certainly “lost” by the additional stages the MQA signal has gone through.

144

I can learn nothing from anyone who would question Bob Stuart’s Knowledge and intensions. I have found him to be a man of integrity and his record of achievement says all there is to say about his knowledge.

145

I find it genuinely absolutely extraordinary - and quite an interesting / fascinating social study in itself - regarding the (literal) ignorance posted about MQA, both here & on other fora.
Some people are trade competitors. Some people clearly seem to have an agenda. Some others really need to get out more…

Hours & hours and thousands of lines of text, bashing a new technology that’s apparently not fully understood, but which can be almost completely explained simply by going to the MQA website and reading…

  • Firstly, primarily and simply, it’s a new technique to improve sound quality by preventing (from source), or later repairing any “damage” already done by digital filters & equipment to the time-critical audio data. MQA call it de-blurring, and if you’ve actually heard any decoded MQA files, that seems to be a very good description of what it sounds like. The actual quantity of improvement - or none - might well depend on the file it’s being compared-to & the playback chain / environment in which it’s being listened to.
  • Secondly, there is a synergistic technology that’s been applied in parallel, which is simply a new compression technique which they call “Musical Origami”. This allows high-res / high-data-rate files to “appear to be” approximately CD-size, which unlocks many previously closed doors & potentially opens others e.g. High-Res streaming / Radio etc.
  • Thirdly, this clever development called MQA can be decoded using hardware or software, which can also be read about on the MQA website. Another very clever aspect is that if you don’t decode it, it appears to be a relatively normal FLAC file - so it can be played on a huge variety of existing / legacy equipment, which MQA claim also benefits from the de-blurring process.

The two new technologies, which are firmly rooted in the science born from research, are clearly different & can be judged on their merits separately and appear to be (even under close scrutiny) both extremely clever & interesting in their own right. To some people, this is extremely welcome.
And it comes from a team who are well-known & respected in Audio, with a proven track-record, who are quite capable of explaining & defending their products / technologies / thinking when questioned in a rational & reasonable manner. However, don’t expect them to share Proprietary information or Intellectual Property until the subject of discussion is declared open-source !

For those who aren’t interested in MQA, well, that’s fine - but if you’ve nothing to contribute to the conversation apart from just bashing it in a baseless & (literally) ignorant manner…well…you know what to do.
If you have questions about MQA, why don’t you ask, er, MQA ?
If you don’t like how it sounds, or don’t hear a difference, that’s also - of course - fine. Please post your opinions & the details of the files / equipment / environment used, or test performed, in a separate thread so it can be the basis of a sensible discussion, which will be of interest to many.

Debate and discussion are fine - and indeed necessary - if held in a rational, fair & progressive manner, otherwise it’s just trolling.

Yes, MQA is a new format, and yes, people will seek to make money from it. MQA, which is a spin-off (and now a separate company) from Meridian aren’t in existence as a charity.
The first 7Digital / Onkyo sampler is very cheap, and there are the free downloads from 2L, but the first (whole) albums clearly aren’t comparable to CD prices. Let’s wait & see how this develops, although the link-in with Tidal (High-Res subscription only) seems that it will be the vehicle that brings MQA a critical mass of interest. Or not.

Attempting to finally circle-back to the original thread topic, what happens with MQA & Roon integration will come to pass, but I believe there’s a high degree of certainty - based on everything we’ve learned about Roon so far and with their unenviable relationship with Meridian (and by tenuous association, MQA) - that it will be the benchmark.

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146

I’m a scientist by training. I don’t give anyone a blank check. When I hear mumbling and evasive answers I lose respect.

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147

I think some posts have indeed conflated the topic and muddled it. It is clear this is a multifaceted technology.

[quote=“rolski, post:248, topic:88”]
Firstly, primarily and simply, it’s a new technique to improve sound quality by preventing (from source), or later repairing any “damage” already done by digital filters & equipment to the time-critical audio data. MQA call it de-blurring, and if you’ve actually heard any decoded MQA files, that seems to be a very good description of what it sounds like. The actual quantity of improvement - or none - might well depend on the file it’s being compared-to & the playback chain / environment in which it’s being listened to.[/quote]
This is when it starts to get muddy. “Deblurring”? What does that mean? What does it sound like? (Yes, I have listened to MQA at Meridian in NYC) I venture it means an apodizing filter to reduce the ringing - and I gathered from the papers I read that they mean post-ringing is preferred to pre-ringing. I would like explanations from MQA to be a bit more precise that “deblurring” which frankly means very little at all.

This is great for streaming, I’m all for it. For file storage, I am not, as it is a lossy compression. Just consider the folding mechanism: the least 8 significant bits below 44KHz are used to store information that exists at higher frequencies. From that alone you realize that the dynamic range of the lower frequencies is at most 16 bits.

MQA pulled software decoding out right before CES 2016. Why? Either the implementations were not good, the sound of the sources was not good, or just revealed that it wasn’t the panacea it is touted to be. As for “legacy” equipment, well I wouldn’t call the latest DACs out there “legacy” frankly…

Surely there are some psychoacoustic studies quoted. The same was roughly true with CD’s argument that nothing can be heard above 20KHz. But lets keep in mind that a 24/192 - properly produced - file will faithfully reproduce 96 KHz without phase shifts associated with a brickwall filter if done properly.

I’m all for it for streaming.

I actually am very interested. When at Meridian, I asked the reps many questions and got nonsensical and contradictory answers. I got the same from Bob Stuart interviews, frankly.

What is the point of my argument here? I want to know what MQA does - so far no details on any of the three items above that I can understand technically - Examples:
1- What is deblurring?
2- How does folding work and how can you actually fold a 80KHz signal into a 44KHz sampling rate (this alone will make quite a few assumptions!)
3- What exactly is the nature of the post-processing that is tailored to the output DAC?

All reasonable questions. If Bob Stuart wants to tell me “this is all proprietary, I’m not interested in someone copying my technique” then fine. Just don’t give me nonsense.

I want MQA for TIDAL, I want to decode it in software so I can use my “legacy” $25k DAC to listen to this music in better than CD resolution. That is all.

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148

I lost you.

:relaxed:

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149

You should not really find the discussion so extraordinary.

MQA promises a lot and has created a large buzz. The truth is that many are trying to understand it, often as part of a buying process.
I am waiting to buy my new DAC until it has MQA decoding added, but it might not need it if Roon can decode… Then there is the question of whether it is even worth waiting, depending how good it actually is.

We’re in that time where it’s so new that people are struggling to work out what directiion to take… what if it sounds fantastic but can only be decoded via hardware (due to commerical decisions) and one goes ahead now and spends £1000’s on a DAC that cant decode MQA? It’s a tipping point right now that raises many questions. Some people seek knowledge by stating heir current understanding and waiting to be corrected by someone who knows more.

150

Worse… what if there isn’t enough content to make any of this worthwhile? I feel like I am watching the DSD movie all over again.

151

Indeed - yet another question that makes decisions ven more complex.
The sage advice is usually to just buy what is available now, but it’s always a bit more difficult when major channges are looming.

152

The sage advice would be software first, hardware later.

For all its technological prowess, MQA does not mean that much to me until the music I actually like to listen to is available. It remains to be seen what Tidal will offer at rollout – and I sure as hell won’t rebuy a 1.000+ albums.

I’m not too interested in blue lights lighting up if the quid pro quo means having to endure Enya.

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153

What, you don’t want to buy DSoM or Kind Of Blue for the 5th time?

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154

I’m sorry, but you claim to be a “scientist” and that you have read the papers, and still you somehow arrive at the “Deblurring = Apodizing /Pre-Ringing” conclusion??

To me, the Papers, Interviews and Videos on MQA are more than clear enough for even an average Layman to understand that one of the main potential advances of MQA is the preservation of Timing Cues and elimination of Time Smearing in the TIME DOMAIN…all of which has very little to do with the Frequency Domain

Both Pete Craven and Bob Stuart have gone to great lengths to explain how recent advances in Psychoacoustic Studies and Science have shown that we as a species are far more aware of events / changes in the Time Domain…and further studies have shown that Sampling at even 96Khz can “Smear” or attenuate these vital “cues” that we instinctively expect when listening to music

While Craven and Stuart have been understandably reticent to explain some aspects of what the advances are, IMHO they have been CRYSTAL clear in their Papers and Interviews on the above issues of the Time Domain.

For anyone to read these Papers or Interviews and arrive at Debugging = Apodizing / Pre-Ringing I find frankly baffling and I can only respectfully suggest that you go back and read the same papers and interviews again and focus on what they are saying about the importance of the Time Domain in Music…and how the focus on the Frequency Domain in Music for the past 30 years has caused us all (Craven, Stuart & Meridian included) to forget about the importance of the Time Domain

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155

Software is done - Roon :smile: I don’t plan on using anything else in the long term. Now if Roon decodes MQA at the software level then superb… we’ll just have to wait to find out if that will be a reality.

I am rather partial to the blue lights though :sunglasses: Sometimes its best not to fight ones irrational needs… I wonder will the blue light activate if MQA is decoded at the software level…hmmm.

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156

Roon is just fine, but I was alluding to the software on these stacks of shiny discs and the piles of digital downloads…

And while I have led a perfectly satisfactory life so far without DSoM, I bought KoB three times: vinyl, CD and 96/24. I intend to hold on to the last one for at least a decade longer. :wink:

157

Ha! Fair enough. I am interested in MQA for streaming assuming it can be decoded in software. I am not interested in discussing further why MQA is this or that without more actual details. My previous reply was just to clarify what issue I have with the PR part of it.

158

I stopped reading these posts at about this point too.

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159

Who was it who said ‘I can explain it to you but I cannot understand it for you’?

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160

@Chrislayeruk No idea, some dullard :slight_smile:

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