Not correct. DSP8000 are active speakers. There were no other amps required in the demo you saw.
Danielās point about not being able to judge the claimed benefits with a single presentation is good though. Would be interesting to hear a comparison with untreated 24/192.
@rugby, I understad you to be saying that existing 24/192 files will need to be remastered to obtain the <10ms claimed time domain benefits. Am I understanding you correctly ?
As far as I understand it, yes.
Apparently MQA is a lossy high resolution format designed to get as much information from high resolution contents and stream it at a CD bit-rate. Thatās a 1:6.5 compression ratio when compared to native 24/192. It is really very hard for me to come to term that MQA is going to sound close or even better. For the industry, Tidal were quick to embrace MQA and claim āHigh Resolution Audio Streamingā it doesnāt need to change the streaming bandwidth and thus offer the same subscription rate. I believe all it need is a back end MQA encoder and process all the raw PCM files, either 16/44.1 up to 24/192 on the fly. At the receiving end, Roon need to implement a software MQA decoder and convert all content to ārawā PCM. So in my opinion, in our receiving end thereās no need any MQA hardware!
The music industry too will probably quick to embrace MQA so they can sell and download at the size of CD file and claim to be high resolution. Probably charge the same price as the native counterparts. We have come a long way to playback contents at its highest possible fidelity; near or equal to studio quality. I remembered when the days MP3 is claimed to be virtually indistinguishable to CD, now we got a repeat of a lossy format that stream like a CD bit-rate and claim going to sound ālikeā or ābetterā than native 24/192. This is indeed a very sad scenario.
Perhaps we should, you know, see what it sounds like before writing it off ? The people behind it (Bob Stuart etc,) have excellent credentials in audio engineering.
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I agree. I look forward to listening to MQA files to judge its merits but first there actually has to be content. Personally while i have hope for the format after listening to Bob Stuart talk about it a THE Show it faces a pretty big uphill battle. My library is built off of CDs and even if i had the inclination to replace as much as possible with the highest res possible for download it would still amount to a small percentage of my library above redbook. I can certainly see the benefits for Tidal to use the wrapper to deliver streaming files but i am of the opinion that files specifically mastered for MQA will probably end up being like the availability of DSD files today, limited to a very small selection for a very small audience.
Iāve already done what I can (in this thread) to clarify that MQA is not lossless in the conventional sense; this will be my final comment on it. To call it lossless shows a big misunderstanding of what Meridian is doing. Itās a new paradigm and it is completely lossless in terms of audio transparency, and is nothing like - for instance - MP3 compression. It is actually less lossy than the ālosslessā PCM that we are used to, because it extends ālosslessā to the ADC and DAC processes.
No itās not. Originally Meridian planned for this and even filed a patent for it, but in their own words, āthe studios have now got over DRMā. DRM is not part of the current MQA implementation.
For the record, itās an ~Ā£50k system (DSP8000SE + 818v3), but your point is obviously valid! I would say though, that the Meridian ExplorerĀ² DAC is only Ā£200, will do MQA with a firmware update, and sounds superb with MQA material. Iām looking forward to when MQA decoding is implemented in iPhones (which will happen either natively or in 3rd party apps like Roon), which answers another valid point raised in this thread: a lot of this stuff will just happen and essentially be āfreeā.
Finally, it is taking time because there are so many ducks to be lined up, butā¦
All of the major studios are on board and, yes, they are apparently going through their vaults to remaster the Crown Jewels in their back catalogues (yes, to make more money by selling us Kind of Blue again). And it does sound like MQA will become the de facto standard going forward, because it is favoured by artists (connection with fans), engineers (sound quality), and the studios ($$$) alike.
The backwards compatibility of MQA^ means that as streaming providers move to streaming āCDā bit-rate audio, they can move to MQA with no additional bit-rate penalty. MQA has capped what is necessary from a bit-rate perspective, because, unlike MP3 which throws away audible information, MQA selectively encodes everything which is audible without the use of āperceptualā codecs, and drops the empty, and completely wasteful, Shannon space.
^ Non-decoded MQA is essentially pre-apodized CD quality which will therefore sound better than a conventional CD mastering, because it has less/zero ringing.
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Basically itās clear to me that very few people fully understand the technicalities of MQA and its delivery in a consumer environment. That is no real surprise of course. Then, having failed to understand it, many people are throwing around terminology and assumptions which are misplaced, seemingly delighting in predicting its abject failure and lack of relevance (this comment is not targeted at anyone in particular btw - itās happening on a few forums). I donāt understand it either, but I will judge it on cost/practicality/audio quality when it finally arrives in a form in which I can access it. The practical issue for me is that any equipment purchases, particularly Meridian, are on hold until it all shakes out.
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@VirusKiller. Provided the consumer market is flooded with MQA decoder which I think right now is a real uphill taskā¦ I donāt see why the studios will ever take the risk to remaster their catalogues to MQA. The De facto standard is native PCM which can be edited, process and port it to any other lossless format.
Well, all the SE editions of their speakers are MQA ready now if you were looking for speakers. No need to wait.
Iām not sure anyone here is delighting in MQAās potential failure. In terms of its use as a compression methodology for streaming services, I think it is a great way to get better sounding music into a smaller package. I personally think it will make its biggest traction in the market in this segment. Assuming licensing deals are cheap enough.
Whether people are swayed to buy into this new approach will depend on sound and money. If it sounds great and it is cheap then I think it will have a good chance in the market.
No need to worry about lack of MQA- decoders on the market. We only need 1-2 streaming platforms to provide a software decoder to have 30 of the 35 most used streaming services providing MQA-decoders that then sends out a 100 percent PCM (with all the MQA information decoded for all to listen in their old DACs).
Companies like Tidal, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, 7digital and more do not own their own platform but hires a software platform full of features and adjust it to their likes, visual apperence etc.
As almost all large streaming services uses the same platforms and MQA decoding will almost certainly already be implemented by now, getting access to a software decoder is a non issue. It is likely in your next update launched somewhere after CES2016 (early January).
I have built a few companies working with streaming and used to be a IT hardware and software analyst, so I recon my guess is spot on. It would be very non business vise to have it any other way.
This means that all readers of this forum will have a MQA decoder in your PC, your tablet and your smartphone very soon. If Tidal turns on the feature before any body else time will tell. We will know in a few weeksā¦
This means that there is no uphill task to provide consumers with MQA decodersā¦
Another guess is that some streaming services will wait until there is more content while others will launch the feature from day one. Maybe another service will let you upload your own MQA content in form of social music non record company contract indie styleā¦
Having an MQA decoder will be like having a media player that can decode H.264 AVC or MP3. Even if it is not only another codec, that is the way it will appere in your software solution. It is just a function that will work, if you play the content.
To avoid misinterpretation, a streaming services solution is not only based on one single platform (it can be) but usually is built around many platforms for payment, data transfer, BI, social functions etc. It is a plug and play business where all will have MQA software decoders available as a feature turning the information into pure PCM.
Next likely development is a Windows update with support for MQA, at least if more than just a few records are remastered.
@Niclas_Mardfelt. You seemed to be very confident that MQA will be available across the board. I wish you luck! Letās not forget MQA is licensed product. Streaming services and manufacturers will have a pay additional fee or loyalty, whether this seems like a good idea, Iāll leave them to decide. We still do not know how computer intensive MQA(software MQA) is to the end user; especially the massive reduction in bitrate as compared to a native 24/192. This raises some questions whether MQA(software MQA) can be easy deployed in portable means. I believe Meridian Audio is more interested to sell hardware enabled MQA to manufacturers. Again, I have to wait and listen for myself the merit of MQA vs a native 24/192. Iām looking forward in the year 2016!
[quote=āMusicEar, post:55, topic:5408ā]
I believe Meridian Audio is more interested to sell hardware enabled MQA to manufacturers
[/quote]Is that just your intuition or have you read something that backups that argument?
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[quote=āMusicEar, post:55, topic:5408ā]
We still do not know how computer intensive MQA(software MQA) is to the end user; especially the massive reduction in bitrate as compared to a native 24/192. This raises some questions whether MQA(software MQA) can be easy deployed in portable means.[/quote]In conversation with Richard Hollingshead (circa 18 months ago now) he advised that any modern smart phone would be more than adequate to be able to decode MQA ā¦ But of course after decoding itās then down to the devices DAC which needs to have the fidelity in order to get the most out of the stream.
Unfortunately, Iāve yet to see any smart phone that does practical software MQA decoding however, Pioneer has a new Digital Audio Player XDR-100R that does MQA decoding. If I can get hold on it will try out. Check out this link: http://www.pioneer-audiovisual.eu/uk/xdp-100r
I donāt think he is saying there are any phones out there currently decoding MQA files right now, though there very may well be in testing somewhere, but rather giving an example of the processing power necessary to do so. That being said given that many phones are now shipping with 24/192 support and that the number will continue to grow i would certainly expect that there will be plenty of media players that will do just that released. there is also no reason to think MQA couldnāt be decoded at the hardware level in something the size of a smartphone given the size of the explorer 2.
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