but you’ll have to pay
less highbrow, but decent methodology:
And several consumer organisations worth of testing with the general public, google is your friend.
Aww, bless.
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Thanks. FYI, a convention paper is not peer reviewed. I’m going to have a look to see if it actually got peer reviewed and published.
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Even the free abstract says it was.
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For bonus ‘fun & games’.
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And here’s another one, not peer reviewed but a lot of data involved
Fun trivia: Jeff Atwood who designed the test is the man behind Discourse - the forum software you are using here!
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Ah okay, but I’m pretty certain that peer review for presentation at an AES convention involves less rigour than for full publication in JAES.
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This got me curious!
Can you name a song that reveals the lack of “timbre” in lossy mqa? To test both lossless pcm and lossy mqa. Preferably in plain english, so I’d know that to listen for; cymbals being too sharp, vocals too vague, kick drum too noisy. …
Thanks 
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All mqas with multiple instruments playing at the same time. If you want specific examples try the Neil Young “studio” mqas.
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Have you seen the BBC paper?
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Neil Young pulled all of his work from Tidal, or so I’ve read, I left Tidal too.
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After a rework they have got the the bit rate right for 16/44.1 but they are still advertising lossless bit rate speeds for a hi res music tier which Tidal & MQA does not give you
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You’re building a strawman and assuming at least two things which are impossible to verify due to obstruction from MQA, Ltd:
- It is possible to access an unadulterated version of the same master that was used to encode the MQA file.
- The MQA encoding codec does not audibly alter the file in ways unrelated to the publicly stated process, i.e, there is no EQ or level boosting at play.
Because there are no publicly available files that allow us to properly compare, any amateur comparisons that favor one or the other are moot. This is by MQA, Ltd’s design.
There is one case of controlled study of the results of the MQA encoded process, done by a university in Canada, with support from MQA, ltd, and published by AES.
The conclusion was that their test subjects have no preference for MQA-encoded files (“Data shows that listeners were not able to significantly discriminate between MQA encoded files and the unprocessed original due to several interaction effects.”).
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These files have been around (free) for years:
How can we be certain that these are representative of what’s available on, say, Tidal ?
2L on Tidal (and Qobuz) is MQA.
Yes - but my point is that 2L is not representative of 99.99% of MQA content.
Anyway, I’ll let the interested diff the outputs to their heart’s content. The take-home is that the one serious study points towards BS’s super-MP3 not making an audible improvement, contrary to MQA Ltd’s claims.
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Morten at 2L is pro MQA not saying that this could bias the process but you need to bear that in mind.
I was only replying to (and only quoted) your comment "there are no publicly available files that allow us to properly compare, any amateur comparisons that favor one or the other are moot. This is by MQA, Ltd’s design."
In relation to @Niels_Jensen 's "Has anyone blindtested an mqa file from Tidal vs a non-mqa, and finding an obvious difference, that favors the non-mqa?"
Whoever is interested, go forth and compare 
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No I hadn’t; thanks for the reference.
The 2L test bench is there for fooling people.
“white glove” =
- pcm before remaster =>
- remastered pcm =>
- mqa of remastered pcm
On the 2L test bench you see 1 and 3 but never 2.
You can see that when you look at the “original resolution” column there’s a 24 bit mqa for what was a 16 bit master. And they call it “original resolution”… right.
Like always, mqa let people compare apples with oranges:
16 bit pcm with 24 bit mqas (that are 2.5x bigger in size).
You won’t find the 24 bit pcm (the high quality remaster) that was used to create the mqa from and which is the only format that makes comparisons valid.
Mqa doesn’t sound better, the remaster does but you won’t find it there.
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