MQA hype, will this kill the industry? An observation from a consumer
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| Posted on October 29, 2016 at 06:05:47 | ||
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I am 38, about 6 figure HH income. I bought an Auralic Aries, will these MQA guys allow firmware updates to software players or commit self immolation? I am not buying anything else yo!
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| RE: MQA hype, will this kill the industry? An observation from a consumer, posted on October 29, 2016 at 07:04:55 | |
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How in hell can you listen to that shit? SB
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| RE: MQA hype, will this kill the industry? An observation from a consumer, posted on October 29, 2016 at 07:07:16 | |
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That's what I am talking about, ....
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| very obviously, posted on October 29, 2016 at 12:04:08 | |
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Posts: 13158
Location: Kent Joined: June 1, 2002 |
What is obvious about an unqualified statement? Is this what some reviewers assume?
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| RE: very obviously, posted on October 29, 2016 at 12:05:36 | |
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I was right the first time. You're being intentionally thick to make some kind of point I don't understand. Good day.
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| Link?, posted on October 29, 2016 at 13:34:07 | |
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Do you have a link to that piece you mentioned? Thanks.
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| RE: Link?, posted on October 29, 2016 at 13:37:52 | |
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| RE: MQA files sound very good on a good, posted on October 29, 2016 at 14:52:05 | |
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Having seen what you've written elsewhere in this and in other threads, I'm skeptical of your intentions and don't expect this to go well, but I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. First, you need to understand that many of us are critical by nature. I certainly never embraced "DSD 2.0" or 1.0 for that matter. Frankly, I had technical concerns about DSD that I've since gotten over, it's something I think I was wrong about. I've owned SACD drives, and still have a fair number of SACDs in my collection that don't get played (they're in cardboard boxes, their redbook layer having been ripped to my homebrew server), but I always felt like, some SACDs sounded great, others not so great. For the record, I've felt the same way about high-rez generally; on average there was an advantage over CD, but it varies from one recording to the next. Some CDs sound fabulous to my ears. So what about MQA? There's far more I'd need to write to be complete; I'm going to say this as briefly as I can because I've got stuff to do. There are several key points that need to be made. The first is that to my ear MQA made more--and more consistent--improvements (over CD) than either DSD or high-res PCM. This is a sort of indirect comparison, so not entirely rigorous but not, IMO, without value. Almost every MQA file I listened to sounded significantly better than the CD version, something I could never say for DSD or high-res PCM. (This was true through the $299 Meridian Explorer 2. I wrote that review in Stereophile. In the few direct comparisons that were available in those days--mainly 2L files--I found that MQA performed well. I didn't, and still haven't, done more than few comparisons of (eg) DXD with MQA, but MQA has always held up well. So then you have to take a look at the technology. Is this some sort of scam? Does it make sense? I'm a physicist by training, with a PhD--so, pretty technical--and I've studied it. JA, who knows far more than I do about digital recording technology (and most things audio) has studied it--he too has a physics degree and is a very smart guy--and he too has concluded that the technology makes sense. There's a single insight--that the time domain matters more than people realized--combined with some clever digital engineering. It adds up to a compelling package. And then there's the problem of buying digital music. I just set up a server for myself last winter. I spent the winter burning my CD collection. Why did I wait so long to go disc-less? Partly it was server software--Roon isn't perfect, but it's better than anything else I knew about. But the big thing for me--the reason I didn't do more high-res downloads--was uncertainty about provenance. I heard stories about HD Tracks and how high-res files would turn out to be (apparently) upsampled CDs. Anyway, file resolution means NOTHING. A bad recording at high resolution is still a bad recording. No one could be blamed because the provenance of the files being downloaded couldn't be established. Maybe the company hosting and charging for the downloads was responsible (see Stuart's comments on this point), but maybe not. Who knows? All I know is that I didn't want to pay $18 or more for some information--no physical object--that may or may not be what it purported to be. That kept me from buying. It still does. So this "authentication" aspect makes sense: There are still no guarantees, but the blue or green light is a sort of signature: The label, or the artist, or both, are saying, "this is what we want our music to sound like." That's important to me. Finally, there's a problem to be solved--the Napster problem. Here I'm speaking for myself; I don't know whether these views are shared by others who support MQA. The Internet has made music dissemination easier but it has been a disaster for the music industry. People stopped buying music--they stole it instead, in very low-fi formats. The industry's profit model fell apart. I don't fully understand the economics of this--I'm not an expert on this topic--but there does appear to be a belief out there that giving a company control over its IP (via separation of archival distribution formats and this notion of "authentication" via the blue or green light) could help return music companies to profitability. Not everyone thinks that's a good thing, but I do. So you've got--what--four pillars? It sounds good to me. The technology makes sense. It solves a consumer problem (authentication) and it solves and industry problem (IP control). Downsides? If you equate file resolution with music quality, you may think you're giving up something because MQA is not totally lossless in the IT sense. (I think that's a dumb objection.) By handing responsibility for the sound back to the record companies, you take it out of the hands of the more tech-savvy consumers; I'm thinking EQ here. That's a much more reasonable objection--but there's no reason to think MQA is going to make life worse for those people--they can still download their PCM files and stream CD quality--it just might not make life any better. I'm not in anyone's pocket, and I'm not a fanboy. In fact, as my track record as an audio writer will show, I'm pretty skeptical. This just makes sense. I've just dedicated a big chunk of my day to this. Don't expect me to write this much again. :-) jca
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| Understood, thanks (nt), posted on October 29, 2016 at 19:57:40 | |
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Posts: 2793
Location: Orange Co., Ca Joined: September 19, 2001 |
Nt
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| Be polite, or be gone, posted on October 29, 2016 at 21:47:48 | |
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Posts: 13158
Location: Kent Joined: June 1, 2002 |
nt
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| RE: A question for Isaac-I think the, posted on October 30, 2016 at 03:18:09 | |
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Posts: 13158
Location: Kent Joined: June 1, 2002 |
same question should be addressed to the MQA promoters in this forum.
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