|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
70.54.49.94
In Reply to: RE: Comparisons/Marketing/Etc. posted by ahendler on October 28, 2016 at 11:11:54
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: 10/28/16Follow Ups:
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
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: