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In Reply to: RE: I don't understand very much (any?) of this, BUT posted by Jim Austin on October 30, 2016 at 05:21:24
I have to wonder based upon the admittedly scant critical analysis (cough-cough) I've seen.
Let's take Atkinson's blind testings as example.
Just to clarify, I scored 4 our of 7 correct in this blind test (see link below). But as I later explained, 2 out of the 3 I got wrong were the same track, Steely Dan's "Babylon Sisters," where I misidentified it as what I thought was the better-sounding MQA version. Specifically, I preferred the quality of the bass on what turned out to the original hi-rez file.
Hmmmm...? While not 16/44.1 v. MQA 16/44.1 is it not reasonable to ask if perhaps the MQA encoding was responsible for the preferred bass of the hi-rez original? And if that were the case who's to say the same wouldn't be true for MQA encoded 16/44.1?
Let's look at the Atkinson's subsequent thoughts ...
If you eliminate those 2 failures, I got 4 out of 5 correct in blind comparisons on the other tracks, which, while still not statistically significant, is relevant information, I feel.
So rather than wondering if MQA encoding somehow messed with the bass, instead he suggests the samples should be tossed, yielding a better result from his testing in favor of MQA identification!
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I think that speaks for itself and I suggest, given Stereophile has gone all-in for MQA, reasonable folk should expect more Ra-Ra-Ra, not critical analysis, from said esteemed publication on this topic.
Follow Ups:
This is not the first time that he has teamed up with the audio media on format publicity.
Lossless was one case and this was responsible for the bad mouthing and killing off of sacd.
Another UK manufacturere was even more successful in killing off Japanese Direct Drives, which is now much valued by audiophiles. These guys claimed that they were making belt drives with bearing accurracise that werb just not possible in absolute terms those days. I used to have 2 Linns and never found them to be any better (in fact more coloured) than my direct drives.
As for the first subject of your post, I couldn't say.
However with respect to Linn and the press killing the DD TT market, that is specious in the extreme, giving the them undeserved credit.
The big Japanese manufacturers had no interest in that foolishness, busy as they were phasing out the TT in preparation for the launch of the CD ... perhaps the greatest cash cow the industry (music + manufacturers) ever experienced.
Hogwash The big Japanese manufacturers were happy to sell turntable until the level of sales fell way off that they were no longer profitable. It was good Ol' Ivor and his allies in the British magazines who make the crazy claims about the deficiencies of Direct Drive turntables. The British press was eager to help the native manufacturers even if the product wasn't as good as imported products. That kind of thought moved into the US audio press with the importation of people like Collums, Kessler and their ilk. All you have to do is read TAS or Stereophile from that era and you can start to see the change take place.
Of course the British Press has no problem with imports now that so much of the local manufacturers have been bought by the Chinese. They ignore the fact that their local equipment is now made in China and the names are just names with nothing of substance behind them.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. ~ Bernard Bailey
I actually attended a demo conducted by the great man at the London Hilton - a big space in which he compared turntable v cd player.
The sound quality of the replay was poor, so that any comparison between the two had little meaning (for me anyway). Yet the audience all nodded in favour of the turntable when so suggested!
This demonstrates to some extent the power of the media and the force of suggestions to an audience.
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