Eye-opening analysis on Tidal MQA

[AJ Soundfield]

Lighten up Francis.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I see all these DAC's that charge a premium fee for being DSD compatible, but where is the content? The choice is abysmal compared to MQA

Depends what music you listen to. In classical, there's lots of DSD (albeit less than earlier) and MQA seems invisible.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Sure Peter Veth, sure

 

[AJ Soundfield]

he dumps on not being able to encode MQA. Did I miss something here?

Yes. You didn't watch video and you've already given the game away with the "we" comments. The MQA sham has been exposed, along with all the "new member" shills the suddenly emerge whenever there is MQA thread on forums.
Peter Veth is usually at least 3 of them

 

[AJ Soundfield]

you need to REALLY point the finger on the biggest lie

Ok simmer down Donnie, your rants aren't helping the tale. Everyone here already knows Redbook is provably just fine and there is zero scientific evidence against, including Bob's own AES papers, which were a complete bust.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

To my ears it is amazing SQ:

Nope, only to your eyes seeing the blue MQA Pavlov light. All the "ears" test have shown it's a complete wash, exposing the sham nicely.
Files supplied by Bob: Ooops https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/ebriefs/?ID=685

 

[ddude003]

Now for the million dollar question, is DSD the new betamax? I see all these DAC's that charge a premium fee for being DSD compatible, but where is the content? The choice is abysmal compared to MQA

I am not a fan of MQA or DSD... If I want to fold, spindle and mutilate my music I can add one of a million signal processing kits and/or roll my own... Which I do... At least I know exactly what is being done to the signal...

 

[RichB]

Tidal does not supply Redbook CD quality audio they supply "Hi-Res" whatever that is, at CD bitrate.
Tidal does not supply Hi-Res audio quality it supplies something called "Master" presumably MQA.
There is no Hi-Res logo on the Tidal site.

Tidal has begun supplying 44.1/16 bit MQA encoded downloads.
The files are about 13.5 bits of dynamic range when not decoded by MQA and it is unclear if the encoding includes ultrasonics. MQA has, quite cleverly, traded dynamic range that we can hear for ultrasonic that we cannot hear.

MQA does forces a reconstruction filter and limits EQ on some devices. Roon got dispensation to turn the blue light back on for "Authenticated". The reconstruction filter is slow and so can alias. Computer audio has provided a wide variety of reconstruction filters that cannot be applied to unfolded MQA.

At this point, size does not matter, they do not provide a single source (most services support MP3). It requires royalties from content producers and from hardware/software vendors. There is no bandwidth advantage that could not also be supplied by a 96 kHz/18 bit file (MQA tops out at 17 bits).

The euphonic sound quality supplied by their reconstruction filter is supported by testimony from the audiophile press and community. I an aware of no blind test with results showing a preference.

IMO, MQA began with the goal of extracting royalties and the features flow from there. It provides no proven benefits but several sites have shown clear degradation in downloaded content with some anomalies.

It is a shame the Hi-Res audio include no quality guidelines nor does it support quality metrics.
If only the industry would embrace a model similar to video. SDR, standard dynamic range, and HDR, high dynamic range.
Download sites could easily support both formats.
HDR-Audio can be supplied in a standard 44.1/16 format, equivalent to the smallest sized MQA file.
Premium subscriptions could include access to the HDR-Master.
I don't see this happening when re-mastered often include additional compression.

- Rich

 

[Todd Anderson]

MQA Reacts to Recent Allegations, Says Youtube Video by GoldenSound Is Fundamentally Flawed

(May 19, 2021) Last month, YouTuber GoldenSound published a scathing assessment of MQA's legitimacy as a studio-quality lossless codec. His video – I Published Music on TIDAL to Test MQA - MQA Review – has collected more than 219,000 views and become a focal point of discussions on audio forums...

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