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In Reply to: RE: Comparisons/Marketing/Etc. posted by Doug Schneider on October 28, 2016 at 08:13:48
Well Doug, when I make a claim, especially one that reflects on colleagues, I make it a point to know what I'm talking about.
You haven't read my MQA review, yet you have an opinion on my stance re. MQA. That's some shoddy opinion-making.
You continue to make claims about a lack of comparisons that have been done. You don't know about them because you have not bothered to do the research.
My skin is just thick enough to still know when someone is misinformed. The fact that I point this out typically unearths other people's thin skin.
Follow Ups:
It's time for our videos of this... follow the money.
Hey Michael,
Well, it's obvious that you don't like when people do respond to your questions -- you choose to ignore that.
So let's just call it a day on this thread... again.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Hey Doug,It's obvious that you cannot accept the fact that you do not know what you are talking about and when this is pointed out, you continue talking without knowing what you are talking about.
This seems like a good place to call it a day.
Edits: 10/28/16
Sure Michael, carry on...
Doug
I would like to report on something our club did about 4 months ago. It is the River City Audio Society in San Antonio Texas. I purchased a Meridian Explorer2 with MQA decoding. I then went to The 2L Audio testbench and downloaded 12 tracks both in 16/44 and MQA. Both are derived from the same DXD master.. At our meeting we had about 20 people and set up a system with B&W speakers and Audio Research tube integrated amps. The files were played from JRiver 21 on a Macbook Pro. I simply would play the 16/44 file followed by the MQA file and then asked for opinions. After all the tracks were played the results were as follow. 5 out of 20 felt they heard differences but they were small . 15 people said they heard no difference in any of the comparisons. Of the 5 who heard something the term natural came up the most. I do want to say that the 2L files are so good it is hard to hear differences among any of the different different formats they offer. I am still waiting for streaming so I have a lot more music available to listen to.
Alan
.
Hi,This is a great story you told. That's also a pretty respectable sample size.
What's interesting to me is that 3/4 found no difference, 1/4 found a tiny difference. What's missing is if the 1/4 found the MQA better, or if they found the other better. Can you elaborate?
What's especially intriguing about this is that a portion of the press has thrown around some pretty big phrases, such as "game changer" and "beyond high resolution." But here we have JA's differences being not reliable and 3/4 of the people here hearing no difference, with 1/4 hearing a tiny difference. That doesn't sound like a "game changer" to me. I also can't help but wonder if that's why MQA doesn't like comparisons. In Munich, I asked for a comparison -- and didn't receive.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Edits: 10/28/16
I stressed that I wanted participants to tell if they could hear a difference. 5 said yes. In a followup I asked if they could describe what the difference was they were hearing? Two clearly said the MQA felt more natural sounding. More musical (Whatever that means). That has also been my reaction to MQA. The other 3 could not put words to there experience of a difference.
I came away from this meeting that at least with this material and hardware differences in sound quality are very small. I still insist that the jury is out on MQA until a lot more familiar material is available to the consumer
Alan
Hi Alan,
Thanks for this. I agree -- a lot more of this stuff needs to be done. And you're right about 2L recordings -- they're very, very good to begin with.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Doug:
This has been my concern as well. The only group that consistently seems to be utterly knocked out by MQA are a relatively small group of audio writers..maybe a dozen?
I have read about similar group tests like Alans, as many as 10 others written about on regional audiophile society pages and other forums like Audiocircle, and NONE, not one, had the same reactions as the press. Yes, some heard a difference, some preferred it, some did not. But the huge difference in reaction between ordinary listeners and reviewers is just too large to ignore.
Not once did I encounter the word "stunning", or a phrase like a "new era in digital".
I'm not sure it's a dozen!
As far as I can tell, there are two aspects to MQA:
1) Compression -- this is useful for folks with bandwidth issues. I'm not one of them (heck, my generous cellphone plan now follows me around the world), but for those who are, knock your socks off and use it.
2) Sound Improvement -- this is all that interests me. This supposed "time-smearing" fix.
Out of those two things we have gotten from -- I'd argue, less than a dozen -- absolute raves that this encoding scheme is the Next Big Thing. But the company won't do comparisons, and when they are done, they're small to nonexistent. It makes me wonder, too.
Doug
Well..Robert Harley, John Darko, Lavorgna, Jim Austin, John Atkinson, and little tid bits from show reports from a few others. So yeh, maybe you are right. I think Chris Connaker has beeen mostly neutral leaning slightly positive when he was sent a Meridian DAC and files.Darko is interesting because he used his usual technique, feigning tremendous skepticism, and then having a "conversion."
Edits: 10/28/16 10/28/16
Nt
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