"Hi-Res Audio", MQA, THX Certified and other certifications

Do you think these influence your decision to buy audio products? Or are they just meaningless to you?

e.g. Sennheiser HD650 doesn't have any kind of "Hi-Res Audio" logos, but I am sure they sound a lot better than the Sony MDR Z7 or the Audio Technica MSR7

here's an article which describes what entails the product to be able to bear the "Hi-Res Audio" label:

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=5512

 

Stupid marketing term that has zero influence over whether I'll buy a product, but certainly impacts market potential.

 

/thread

 

Ugh, anyone remember Pono? Even 24/96 is "underwater" for them.

 

Every amp maker that uses tubes and output transformers is going to ignore this, transformers have a hard enough time getting to 22kHz, let alone 40kHz.

I know nothing about MQA's specifics, but it sounds a lot like HDCD. Maybe it will be more successful, only time will tell.

 

A skeptic's well thought take on MQA:

http://www.metal-fi.com/meridian-audios-mqa/

 

Unfortunately, there have been a variety of audio formats and standards that have come and gone in the digital music era. I use to have a DTS CD audio disc. Anyone have one of those? HDCD pretty much went no were. Sony's SACD which also supported a CD audio layer which hardly ever was provided has pretty much died. DSD is another one that seems to be on its way out. Schiit recently discontinued their product that supported it. MQA will probably die like the rest of them. A lot of consumers' buying habits are driven by specifications and acronyms for various standards or certifications. Not all of that is bad, but sometimes hype is built up which generates interest and some people buy into it. Take TVs for instance. A few years ago, 3D TVs were all the rage. CES hardly talks about them anymore. The TV industry has double resolution panels now that they can't sell as a result, so they just market them as Ultra HD which still has nearly no content available...

 

Hi-res certificate for headphones is most ridiculous. They only need to match 40 kHz frequency range and some manufacturers achieve it in strange way.

RHA now has certificate on T10 and MA750, yet year ago these earphones was listed with frequency response going to just 22kHz.

 

Clearly they should rename the Hi-Res certification for headphones to "Meow-Res" because only your cat (or dog, or bat? Do people keep bats as pets?) is gonna benefit from arbitrary frequency ranges beyond 22KHz.

 

Or not. I hope that it Meridian has an expensive failure, which they deserve, for adding yet more bullshit to the audio market.

I'm not holding my breath, though. Unfortunately, it is a market that has a very large segment of customers that go doo-lally over bullshit.

 

Senn actually seems to have hopped on to the train too. http://en-us.sennheiser.com/high-resolution-headphones-3d-audio
They even joke about how their stuff meets high res standards since 1991, lel.
And at least the HD800S now has a High-Res sticker on the box, so you know you're buying something good

 

That's actually very smart of them. Despite the BS "Hi-Res Audio" monicker, all the involved headphone manufacturers get to differentiate themselves from Beats to the starting headphone users and appeal to the older audiophile croud that has been speaker-oriented up until now (you know, cause many old people fall for marketing buzz words so easily). Combine that with the Orpheus 2 hype generated by the press and tech reviewers, Sennheiser's got the perfect marketing strategy, in my opinion.

 

Starting form 2015 CES, the push has been real and 2016 CES it is obscene at this point. Nearly could not visit audiophile-related booth without hearing MQA it.

Meridian is taking brutal-forcing tactics and it is clear they are spending quite a lot of cash.... from what I heard, expect even non-audiophile brands will have MQA soon (not just HTC and receiver companies)

Personally I dislike proprietary stuffs again invading audio industry. It basically create yet another wall to make audiophile market viable to broader audience, as if high pricing is not good enough.

Plus:

LOL, so even Sennheiser is adding that near-meaningless stickers on their headphones now?

 

Don't we all remember the word "Digital" on our cheapo 'phones, long, long ago? Now it's "High Res." Just as stupid, but more respectable.

 

Great, because as we all know the masters produced these days are invariably just top notch.

 

MQA seems to be even worse than DSD since "Even though there is no audio information >22kHz in a 44kHz recording, MQA seems to be putting something into the lower 8 bits of the 24-bit file. This area is supposed to contain "encapsulated" high frequency data and in the MQA file based on 16/44 source, the "information" in this portion of the file appears to be stochastic noise":

http://archimago.blogspot.ca/2016/01/measurements-mqa-observations-and-big.html

 

Since this is like HDCD, where they're hiding a higher-rez recording inside PCM, that's probably a compression or encryption artifact.

 

What's the f'ing point? How about everyone gets better at recording, mixing, and mastering? I was listening to the original CD of Rust in Peace the other day and it has a warning on it that states "The compact disc is a high resolution digital medium that may reveal the limits of analog recording technology." With my modest desktop setup of a Schiit M2U stack and HD 650s, I could hear the tape hiss.

Why should a Megadeth album from the 80s probably recorded under the influence of hard drugs with a warning on the CD that you can hear the analog tape as the band probably spent the money for the good tape on smack sound better than 99% of modern digital recordings in popular music? The amp micing wasn't even that great as often you hear the scratch of the pick on the strings more than the guitar notes but nobody cares as Rust in Peace is a good enough recording of real musicians playing their best material well on real instruments.

The major labels are constantly searching for new ways to sell the public on poorly recorded, crappy disposable music for more than 10 bucks an album. Quadrophonic LPs, R2R, Minidiscs, SACDs, DVD-A, and HDCD all crashed and burned; Stereo LPs and CDs offered a real improvement in sound and were not accepted until they became mass market items as cheap as the competition. Lossily compressed formats were a joke that only sheeple paid for and everyone else just downloaded for free or bought the CD if they wanted a better sounding physical copy. The fully swing vinyl revival is mostly a f'ing joke and is hurting the club music and boutique labels that actually kept the format alive. These certifications are a f'ing joke too. Selling crap to idiots is more important than nurturing talent (it used to be demo -> pro-recorded demo in a real studio -> the single -> the EP -> the actual first studio album over a period of YEARS) and selling quality masters. One idiot buying 24-bit/192 khz version of a Kanye album on HD tracks makes them more money than selling five LPs of Rust in Peace pressed from the original tapes. It's the same bullshit as whitewashing rhythm and blues into "rock 'n' roll" or in the nineties convincing twelve year olds and their moms that Eminem and Pantera were acceptably tough compared to the gangster rap thugs and black metal nutjobs who actually stabbed people. The shareholders want money now!

/rant

 

Cut and pasting from an email response that we send out when we get MQA inquiries:

Three years ago, everyone thought DSD was the “next big thing.”

Fifteen years ago, everyone thought SACD was the “next big thing.”

Twenty-three years ago, everyone thought HDCD was the “next big thing.”

None of them went anywhere.

This is just another closed, compressed, encode-decode process that costs studios and DAC manufacturers BOTH big $ for licensing fees. The press writes about because there’s not much to write about in audio.

If it goes somewhere, of course we can fully support it, since all of our DACs from Bifrost on up are fully upgradable. Or maybe we won’t have to support it, because a software player will decode it. Or maybe it won’t be the revelation the press thinks it is (have YOU heard it? A/Bed with non-encoded sources?) From what I understand, the press hasn’t even heard a real A/B. Or maybe we’ll find out that only a tiny percentage of the Tidal library will be available as MQA (which I expect is very likely), in which case it’s not very exciting, is it? Or maybe Tidal will tank. It’s not a large company, and we don’t know their financial health, and other companies like them are not exactly doing well.

So, until this encompasses a significant portion of the addressable market—as in, the WHOLE Tidal library is available as MQA, AND it actually sounds better, AND Tidal looks to be a healthy bet in the future, excuse us while we cross our arms, sit back, and say, “We’ll wait a while."