In this case, is there any post processing done by MQA at all?
Pal,
Thank you for taking time to engage in this thread. It makes a big difference to this Tidal listener.
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And we will jump in and explain more as we go along. There are things we can say and canât say yet. A lot of the things people speculate about and read a lot of meaning into are things we havenât even decided upon yet. Fun to follow the conversation. One thing I can say and that is it sounds good and behaves fruitful for streaming and thatâs all that matters.
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Depends on definition: removing the brickwall filter is of course post processing, but does just lift the brittle pre-ringing veil. But since that alters the sound, I think it is important that those who own the recording hears it and approves. Perhaps not every single track, but at least has heard what it does. Hence the authentication lights, which might seem confusing now but over time and learning is a stroke of genius.
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Agree that is important. However, I expect that this will become a meaningless label to be honest and studios will just sign off as they produce an MQA version regardless of how it sounds. It will mean that what you hear is basically what the mastering produced, no further degradation, but that will not mean that the master will sound good, just an assurance that it is what they produced. Surely this is useful in knowing who to blame when the sound is bad!
PĂ„l:
Can you tell us how many versions of a track or album that will be available.
A 24/96 and above will only exist in MQA ?
A 16/44.1 in both Redbook and MQA or ?
You did say in an interview that you only needed the MQA version for all different streaming qualities. Is this still correct ?
Will there be an easy way to know and find MQA encoded music, and also to find those that are Hi-res (>24/96) vs Redbook ?
(Or will everything at some time be MQA ?)
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[quote=âmiguelito, post:310, topic:5408, full:trueâ]
I think it would be more accurate to say that a good upsampling filter would remove the âbrittle bad-filter veilâ. This is maybe the reason why HQ-Player can make such an improvement on many DACs. But clearly the Meridian filter used for the MQA-listning tests does not do this if you believe the hype. More interesting is if/when software decoding is available so that âfairâ comparisons are possible for more people between a good filter and MQA.
I really hope Tidal does not remove true PCM flac files as this would be a misstake in my opinion. But I am contemplating getting a Explorer2 for work when MQA launch where I cannot use a more advanced solution for playback e.g real high-res files / proper upsampling. 
Strange, my Tidal app isnât working. It just says bad network. I was worried about losing the Master setting but now Iâve lost the whole thing. Downloaded app again from website and rebooted computer and still says bad network. This of course after I just order an Explorer2 
Oh man. Say it aint so.
Indeed. But I have a high end DAC (EmmLabs XDS1v2, and possibly a DA2 in the future). No high end DACs (other than the Meridian, but that one has other limitations I do not want) is known to have any plans to support MQA. So thereâŠ
Keep in mind also that in many (most?) cases MQA will be taking a finalized digital master - essentially what you buy from hires stores - and applying their deblurring plus origami and giving you an MQA file that is (hopefully) much smaller and will be decoded back to standard PCM (internally in the hardware at this point).
You might say that this filter includes optimizations for the recording chain. I would argue the cases where it does are few and far between, simply by the fact that recording chains, ADCs, etc are either not known (most cases), are a digital mix of a many recording chains (many microphones, mike preamps, and ADCs), etc⊠So the concept of tuning to the recording chain is frankly a bit coocky when you think about it for a minute or two.
So all in all this is a filter, however complicated. I am not an expert in the entire suite of digital filters possible obviously, but this is science and if you tell me Meridian/MQA/Bob Stuart have discovered something noone else had seen before, I will be very skeptical. If you tell me that they have discovered that certain combinations of known digital filters - with specific parameter choices - sounds very good and improves the sound, then I would believe that.
Bottomline:
1- I am all for MQA for streaming
2- I want to be able to use my $25k DAC with MQA by having it decoded in software
3- I do not believe for a second that MQA has uncovered untouched territory in the field of ADC/DAC⊠But happy to be proven wrong
4- Roon is the perfect tool/place to add the provenance info for a post-processing digital filter that would both incorporate the majority of the MQA post-processing fine tuning and would work with any DAC
Let the science begin!
- Agree if I can choose not to stream MQA also 2) agree strongly 3) agree 4) this would be the best
My comment was more I âpoliteâ way of saying that I donât want to express a strong opinion before I have listened for myself to MQA. The observation I made is that if the listening tests are correct the Meridian Apodizing filer does not remove the âVeilâ as MQA is said to sound better. Hence as MQA is a kind of filter there is potential for a filter to remove the âveilâ.
This is also my observation as I have listened to HQ Player and Chord WTA and been very impressed by the improvement. For example, in a direct comparision the Chord Mojo sounded much clearer than a much more expensive Meridian Burson combo. And I think the description âbrittle veilâ is quite good to describe the Meridian sound compared to the Mojo. Observe that the Meridian/Burson combo sounded great it just had a âveilâ compared to the Mojo
From a scentific point of view it is a little hard to understand why such comparably small errors that the standard filters cause can sound worse than the very large increase in errors caused by MQA. This statement assuming that measurements from Miska et al are representative of the 0-24 kHz range after MQA decoding.
Further I think the pre-ring talk is complete rubbish, what I think can be happing is the missmatch between interpolation filter and sample kernel. As we know a Nyquist sampling causes 0 time error as long as the sample rate is sufficently high (i.e. 120 kHz according to the Meridian paper). Hence given that you sample at a high rate you can use basically a point sampling technique. Hence 0 ringen of any kind, of course such a sampling technique would cause a higher noise level as you would fold noise from high frequencies. But as we know high levels of noise is typically quite nice sounding (maybe why MQA sound good despite only having 13 bit resolution).
Hence there is probably no problems from ADC to solve as Miska claim he has verifed for a set of ADC converters. What may be a problem is the recreation of a time continous analog signal. Again as is well know if we use a Sinc function we can perfectly recreate the original analog signal (potentially with some extra noise due to folding from an imperfect âpointâ sample kernel as described above). But in all practical solutions a window function is used to create an interpolation filter with compact support. This has been discussed much by Chord e.g. how many âtapsâ does the interpolation filter need, e.g. how aggresive window function is used. Now this window function does cause something that could be considered time domain âblurâ. But probably much less blur than MQA.
Hence maybe MQA gives something nice sounding (maybe 13 bits is enough as LP only has at most â12 bitsâ) but it does it by severly destroying data in the files (which could be ok for streaming). But if you buy files MQA basically not only force everyone to buy new files, but also if some even ânicerâ technique (MQA 2.0) is discovered we may need to buy all music again. My current standpoint is that HQ Player / WTA or other solutions are much more attractive from a consumer point of view, as these techniques improve all our old Music also. And even better is if Roon does software decoding of MQA Tidal streaming and everyone can pick what they like. 
I listened to an MQA demo at Meridian in NYC in March 2015 (donât remember the exact date). The content was selected by Meridian of course. MQA sounded markedly better. The most noteworthy case in my mind was a 24/192 recording that was process through MQA. The MQA version was indeed a lot better - not subtle at all. This makes me think that either:
1- Mastering of the 24/192 was crap and MQA went back to the master and redid it
2- Thereâs way more âbeautificationâ in the MQA algorithm than just deblurring.
If the reason for the better sound is â1â, then well, this is not really an MQA achievement per-se, you could say the value of MQA in that case would be that the âMQA certified lightâ indicates the original master was carefully taken to the final product.
My point is that I donât believe for a second that MQA per-se can make a pristine 24/192 recording that was properly produced sound any better but possibly slightly worse due to the lossy character of the origami compression technique.
Having said all this, it will become clearer when we get to compare many recordings, and hopefully have software decoding available.
Agree completely, nicely put!
I also hope that if there is a new better mastering âfixingâ errors, I would hope the record labels would want to sell this new master as a true PCM Flac.
I just like that, itâs gone. I used an app cleaner to get rid of Tidal app and install new one but asked me to sign back in and no Master setting anymore.
I went to trash and put back library cache and restarted and got the Bad Network error again. So what ever glitch caused me to get Master setting has been patched.
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Well after 10 days I finally got a reply from Tidal about my Bad Network error. They just said to reinstall.
I have my Explorer2 now but still no Master setting. I have tried the 2L test samples for MQA and they sound amazing. I havenât bothered comparing them against the 24/192 files yet.
Think Iâm going to keep the Explorer2 since seems to have enough power for my headphones and with HQPlayer, Iâm able to get amazing sound from the standard Tidal tracks.
MQA tracks direct do sound better than upsampling them thru HQPlayer. So once Tidal turns MQA on, Iâll bypass HQPlayer for those albums.
Iâve decide to bail on MQA and the Exployer2. Didnât sound as good as my old headphone amp/dac, so going to try the ifi micro idsd. Figured Iâd get more out of upsampling 99.9% of my library thru HQPlayer than the few tracks in MQA. It might make sense in a few years when Tidal has a large catalog in MQA, but I want best sound quality for what I have now.
MQA did sound really good thru Explorer2 but overall it was the fact that it wasnât a great headphone amp. So not the best example to show off this new technology. I didnât have an amp to run it thru, so maybe as a dac I would have had better results. So maybe in a few years when there are more choices in dacs with MQA will it make sense.
Took me a few days to realize my old amp had much better sound quality. So thatâs why the change of opinion. The music didnât draw me in the same way. Think had enough power to sound loud but not enough to power it the way it should.
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Try the same 2L recordings through your current setup. The 2L 24/192 versions sound amazing.
Had a listen to some of the 2L recordings last night, specifically the Magnificat and the Mozart violin tracks. Listening with a friend who did not know which tracks were which or that MQA was involved just that they were different versions.
We came to the conclusion that both sounded very good but that the 24/192 sounded more âliveâ and âairyâ a recording while the MQA version sounded more âproducedâ and âcontrolledâ We could listen to both but would prefer the 24/192.
Pretty sure my set up will never have MQA support in the Dac and wonât be changing it.
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