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In Reply to: RE: Is MQA technology getting closer to us? posted by Frihed89 on August 18, 2016 at 12:46:42
" I am talking about getting the technological capability to transform an existing digital format into MQA to playback through an MQA capable Dac. By us, I mean you, not the recording industry and not Meridian."
Why would a consumer at home want to "transform an existing digital format into MQA" when they already have that exisiting digital format which they can play back with as much perfection as their system allows? What would be the purpose for them of MQA encoding?
OK e.g. someone may have a non-copyright hi-rez audio file that they want to send as an email attachment but such instances would be so infrequent as to have no bearing on the success or otherwise of MQA.
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Just to get control of it? From what I have read (and perhaps don't understand), the transfer process to MQA starts with a digital file in some format and the software translates that into MQA and the next step is that you play the file through an MQA capable Dac (of which there appears to be only 1 on the market).
That's pretty unique, isn't it.
Whether it sounds "better" is another question.
For example, I am happy to be able to turn a Wav file into AIFF. It sounds the same to me (and i guess everyone else), but it compacts the Wav file. So, the consumer has control over the size of the stored file.
Now what if you and I could do this at home and improve the quality of the sound at home, understanding that making it worse would kill the whole concept.
Maybe this is like turning lead into gold, whether the first step is under our control or not? Snake oil!
I will try to clarify what MQA does ( or, I suppose for the naysayers, claims to do ).It has two basic functions. The first, and main one, is to enable the data of higher resolution recordings to be contained within the "envelope" of a lower resolution carrier. It does this by "folding" the data into capacity within the lower resolution medium that is not actually used to store music information or, I think more precisely if I understand their claim, audible music information (only noise).
The second function, which is optional, is called "authentication". This is a process by which the original producer of the recording ( which may mean an appropriate person or persons on behalf of the copyright owner) who verify that the MQA encoded recording is the same as the master recording ( I assume that they mean production master rather than multitrack here). Part of this process is to correct known abberations caused by the digital filters in the ADC that was used in the original mastering. To do this MQA ( or the person encoding) needs to be made aware of the ADC used. It is feasible because the range of ADCs used for professional mastering are limited in type and hence they can be analysed and corrective algorithms produced. This is where the improvement to sound comes in.
So there is no point for home users to have access to encoders because they don't need the data reduction capabilities (storage is cheap) and they will not have access to the information needed to correct for the original mastering ADCs influence.Is it better? What I have heard sounded wonderful but I didn't have anything to compare it to. John Atkinson ( whom I trust) opines:
Edits: 08/20/16 08/20/16
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