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RE: "MQA is presented as an improvement in sound quality"

>> So, is S'phile right to back it or is it a sham? <<

In my opinion there is more to ask than just the sound quality. The reason being that MQA fundamentally alters the entire music distribution chain. If we were just talking about a single piece of hardware, your question would make perfect sense - "it costs $xx and it sounds like this - we like and and think you will too".

But when you are talking about taxing the entire playback chain at every step, using a proprietary closed system that requires new hardware be purchased (with licensing and royalty fees), is only available from one source, has an extremely limited number of titles, has the potential for grievous misuse due to the DRM built in (see link below), then the equation is not so simple.

To recommend it *solely* on the basis of sound quality is a huge mistake, in my opinion. Even then the question is "why does it change the sound quality at all?" Originally it was only supposed to compress the bandwidth required for streaming. Then they promoted it as sounding "better" because of "de-blur". In many cases we have found that they have done a lot of other things besides just "de-blur". In which case recommending it on the basis of sound quality is misleading.

Even if the *only* thing MQA did was "de-blur", the question should be raised, "is it possible to 'de-blur' with some other means that is not a closed proprietary system with DRM that prevents any digital processing such as room correction or loudspeaker correction?"

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  • RE: "MQA is presented as an improvement in sound quality" - Charles Hansen 14:45:44 08/24/17 (0)
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