This is in fact what Rob Watts (Chord’s DAC designer) also found with MQA:
"…the compression from 88.2/96 to 44.1/48 this is seriously flawed with major sound quality and measurement issues. For one, it has a massive notch at 22.05 kHz or 24 kHz that is introduced, which will have transient timing repercussions; secondly the system has completely unacceptable aliasing issues, which means distortion at 20kHz is a massive 1% - and aliasing has a huge consequence to the sound quality too, as again it degrades transient timing; thirdly the system is lossy, and converts a 24 bit signal into something like 17 bits. This is again unacceptable.
But you do need to believe the measurements in order to then decide to not pay attention to them when listening. It’s not like one can just ignore facts and believe something totally opposite, and be correct.
[Moderated]
Jim_F
(Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)
405
I subscribe to Tidal and Qobuz. I listen to Tidal MQA and CD quality as well as Qobuz High Resolution and CD quality. Sometimes, I listen to less than CD quality. Never once have I given a damn what any measurements are. If I like how it sounds, I will listen again. If I don’t like the sound, I will remove it from my library, or not add it in the first place.
I have an engineering degree and MBA. I understand measurements.
If you have a file with inaccurate timing (PCM) and another file with corrected timing (MQA) and you compare the two, how do you know which one is most correct?
Asking for a friend.
That’s not what this is about. It’s not about the timing of the bits.
There is timing “blurring” in the PCM file which MQA tries to correct.
Read about the ideas here:
Of course not. But that’s because they don’t make claims that are hard to prove or quantify. They clearly tell what they offer and are open about it. We don’t need a video from Golden Ear to cirucumvent all sorts of methods put in place to deliberately not show wat MQA is doing.
You do realise FLAC is only a container file? MQA is delivered inside a FLAC container.
Also for you reference, it’s widely discussed and understood that FLAC is a development of MLP(Meridian Lossless Packing). Created by Bob Stuart of all people…yes, one of the people behind MQA. So if you don’t like MQA, you shouldn’t like anything you hear sent using FLAC compression.
‘Part’ of MQA takes all the work undertaken in MLP and develops it into a more efficient internal carrier without losing any music data. As FLAC is used throughout the industry, Meridian/MQA put the MQA file inside a FLAC file. Hence they are labelled ______Mqa.FLAC.
Also just to balance your opinion with another, that is equally as valid. To my ears on my system, MP3 is vastly inferior to CD in sound quality and CD is quite noticeably inferior to 24/96 Hi-Res. The equivalent 24/96 MQA data is very slighty better(not night and day) than the conventional Hi-Res 24/96.
I think you are missing my point. Without the high level microstructure (20-50khz) we don’t not get the timing information that enables us to sense direction and distance. This is ‘one’ of the key parts to MQA…so both the higher frequencies upto 50khz are important…AS WELL AS…the filtering.
If you are referring to the filtering used…which I think is where you are coming from?,then that adds in another aspect of time smearing. Pre-and -post ringing, both which are non natural occurring sounds that are an artefact of conventional digital filtering(brick wall) Which is one of the reasons why Vinyl generally sounds better than CD.
MQA uses a development of the anti-aliasing filter(I believe this to be spline filters) This is taken from astronomical research…which is an area Peter Craven has worked in. He is the co-Founder of the MQA technology, alongside Bob Stuart…which is really about 30years old idea that has been developed…so I’m not sure why everyone it barking on about it now being lossy?
Everyone has been listening to to the foundation of MQA since the 90’s on Dolby Digital…but that’s another topic.
MLP was developed by JR STUART, PG CRAVEN, MA GERZON, MJ LAW, RJ WILSON, as can be found on Meridian Audio’s pages. FLAC was developed by Xiph.Org Foundation, Josh Coalson, and Erik de Castro Lopo, with Coalson being the main developer. Nowhere can I find Stewart’s name even remotely associated with the development of FLAC.