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In Reply to: RE: Benchmark weighs in on MQA posted by Mr_Steady on August 17, 2016 at 12:17:43
Mr_Steady: "I have a hunch that if MQA is adopted at all it will be because the owners of the music want the Digital Rights Management if provides. I bet it galls the heads of the record companies no end to think that someone somewhere is ripping 16/44 streams onto a hard drive. It's probably giving them ulcers. How MQA sounds will probably have nothing to do whether it is adopted. Oh they may use that to sell it to you, and get you pumped up about it, but that won't be the real reason."
I think what galls the heads is that their "crown jewels" - 24/48, 24/96, 24/192, etc. "studio master" files are being distributed and copied.
MQA is a compromised format. PERIOD. It promises time domain "de-blurring" but cannot do anything about speaker time alignment issues even if it does something good in the digital data. It claims resolution like 24/192 but in reality it *cannot* achieve the same 24-bit resolution. AND we know that above the baseband 22kHz (44kHz sampling rate) or 24kHz (48kHz sampling rate), the rest of the ultrasonic spectrum is lossy reconstructed.
By doing this, the record labels happily sell you this hybrid of lossless/lossy without giving away the full crown jewels on the basis that this is somehow good for streaming (which I contend is ridiculous because it eats up 50% more bandwidth than Tidal 16/44 and is less compressible than just straight 24/44 PCM).
At some point in the future, the record labels will happily sell you again something better than MQA and closer to 24/96 or 24/192 that we already can obtain today.
We might not call it DRM in that we do retain the right to copy MQA files I suppose. But it is a form of control of user rights in that we have to buy MQA sanctioned/licensed DAC hardware. And we cannot access the hi-res portion of the MQA file without such hardware. This means people currently using HQPlayer or do convolution DSP for room corrections will not have access to the full resolution digital for playback.
Needless to say, I feel MQA is a step backwards and the points above do need to be expressed openly. The audiophile press seems to have a hard time being critical of something which is so obviously flawed!
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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
Follow Ups:
The audiophile press seems to have a hard time being critical of something which is so obviously flawed!
The audio press lives off of hardware sales, albeit indirectly via advertising budgets. So the audio press as a whole has a self-interest in perpetuating the upgrade cycle.
You are right. But, does that mean every single upgrade, every new technology, every review is just part of a vast commercial conspiracy cynically to sell more gear? Some might well be and provide no improvement.
But, you cannot just broad brush everything. And, there is a profit motive behind every innovation, good, bad or indifferent. If there is no incentive, why bother to innovate at all in anything, anywhere?
It remains to be seen whether MQA has something useful to offer. Even if it does, will it succeed in the marketplace? The jury is still out, IMHO. Unlike many, my mind and ears are still open.
Amen!
It would be nice if MQA underwent the quick death that it deserves. Instead, it appears that it will drag on for months/years and neurotic audiophiles will continue to demand DACs that can decode MQA. Sigh.
Our best hope is that the labels will never add MQA titles to any substantial degree. I, for one, will not buy a single one. Heck, my small collection of DSD titles includes only 2 albums that I paid for - and DSD, at least, is a format with a redeeming feature!
"We might not call it DRM in that we do retain the right to copy MQA files I suppose. But it is a form of control of user rights in that we have to buy MQA sanctioned/licensed DAC hardware. And we cannot access the hi-res portion of the MQA file without such hardware. This means people currently using HQPlayer or do convolution DSP for room corrections will not have access to the full resolution digital for playback."
I agree. I used the term DRM, and that is not correct. However what I was trying to get at was that it is a way for the record companies to sell us hi-res while retaining the master tape version for themselves. They certainly have the right to do that. The fact that it can only be used on licensed hardware sure makes it walk and talk more like a DRM duck.
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Big speakers and little amps blew my mind!
Since MQA encoded files can be played on any dac I don't see the problem An MQA encoded file played on my Master 7 dac sounds a little better than the original non MQA file
Alan
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