MQA

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by Gravity, Mar 18, 2016.

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  1. Madaboutaudio

    Madaboutaudio Friend

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    I will gladly have a non-MQA schiit multi-bit dac anytime over any of these MQA shitma-delta dacs.
     
  2. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    ..for the music you have and the money you'd prefer not to piss away unnecessarily?
     
  3. lm4der

    lm4der A very good sport - Friend

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    Hey, no worries @ultrabike. I think I was in a grouchy place yesterday. I think I took it out on you, probably because you know a lot about this stuff! But my comment was not constructive. My apologies as well.
     
  4. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    This was a good read.

    According to the write-up, it's pretty clear MQA is a lossy compression codec.

    FLAC, ALAC, APE, WMA Lossless, and uncompressed WAV will be superior given the same source at the expense of file size. The competitors here would likely be MP3, OGG, and WMA (all the not Lossless ones).

    AFAIK all of the above codecs, uncompressed, lossless or lossy will usually be converted to (uncompressed) PCM by the host or the interface chip before it hits the DAC chip (which can be multi-bit, delta-sigma, or multi-bit delta-sigma). I don't think Nyquist, bit depth, aliasing, sampling rate, DAC architecture or DSP theory factor into discussions about MQA because MQA likely will operate regardless of any of these parameters (i.e. at some point in the chain it will likely become PCM).

    It is apparent to me that the original master (or archival quality source) will limit what MQA can do, and MQA will be of lesser quality. If the master is analog, it will have to be converted to digital before MQA is applied and reduced in quality. If the master is digital, MQA will follow suit and compress it at the expense of fidelity.

    I think MQA is not going to succeed because lossless formats by definition are superior in terms of quality. The main target might be MP3, which is a very mature, widespread, successful and strongly supported standard. I would have to agree with Jason form Schiit that it's hard to see any motivation from the studios or the audio manufacturers to support MQA with further licensing fees and HW support.

    EDIT: My post here does not aim to diminish nobody, nor to aggrandize myself. I do not pleasure myself with this. It's in many ways an opinion of someone who is not intimate with the audio industry, but understand compression, digital signal processing, and some fields of electrical engineering. Do not take it as an authoritative statement. It is not.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2016
  5. Madaboutaudio

    Madaboutaudio Friend

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    Mr Hans gave his subjective impression on MQA vs PCM recording(5min: 23sec)

    For those with no time to watch: No change in timbre, takes away muddiness in mid-low(less warm), mids and highs sound more open and clear.
     
  6. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    MQA smells bad. Like local city politics between residents and deep pocketed developers where I live.

    Thread closed.
     
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