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MQA Sonic Comparisions

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Nick B:

--- Quote from: _Scotty_ on October 02, 2017, 10:51:31 AM ---Here is a link to James Tanner's comments and conclusions from the Bryston circle' Post #93
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=151245.80
My concerns about MQA are in regards to its best case recovered resolution of 17.2 bits – a loss of 6.8 bits from the 24 bit original and the potential for DRM problems.
 Of course DSP and crossovers are nixed by MQA from the get-go.
Scotty

--- End quote ---

Thanks, Scotty. It’s threads like this that have put me into the anti MQA camp. So I respectfully decline for the privilege of paying for another new format.

AJ Soundfield:
I spent 2+ months straight on Tidal (had it for well over a year) listening to "full" unfolded MQA via a Mytek Brooklyn.
My experience mirrors TMazz. Another audiophile prank. :roll:

Both the Mytek and Tidal are now gone.

rollo:

--- Quote from: AJ Soundfield on October 02, 2017, 06:09:52 PM ---I spent 2+ months straight on Tidal (had it for well over a year) listening to "full" unfolded MQA via a Mytek Brooklyn.
My experience mirrors TMazz. Another audiophile prank. :roll:

Both the Mytek and Tidal are now gone.

--- End quote ---

   Could not agree more. AJ check out AQUA DAC's. Either La Scala or Formula.


charles

tmazz:
let me clarify that I am not ready to pull the plug on MQA based on a three album comparison. What I attempted to do was simply see how much I could evaluate the sound of MQA. And not surprisingly to me, a first class LP beat out every one of the MQA files I tried. This should have been no surprise to anyone, as I have come to the same conclusion. I am sure that part of the reason is my personal preferences and part is the quality of my analog vs digital hardware in the first place.

I chose the albums that I did for the comparison based on what physical media I had readily available to make the comparison with as opposed to any particular sonic merits of the chosen albums. There are many MQA encoded albums on Tidal that I think sound great  (and sound better than other Tidal CD resolution versions of the same albums) that I did not use in the comparison. I don't know if they sound better because of the MQA encoding or because of the remastering that was done as part of the encoding process (I would lean towards the latter),, but I really don't care. As far as Tidal goes, the addition of MQA files to the library has to some extent improved the SQ of the library. And as far as I am concerned, better sound is better sound. It it the best tha you can get for those particular albums, most likely not, but it is better than what was there before.

And this leads to my attitude towards Tidal in general. I absolutely love the ability Tidal gives me to have a huge amount of music instantly at my fingertips. It allows me to access in real time things that would otherwise take me days, weeks or more to put my hands on. Itg also allows me to program large blocks of music so I can listen while busy with other things and easily have music going for hours at a time without fussing over it. Is it the best sound, absolutely not. But when I am going to plop my ass in the sweet spot for some serious listening it is a vinyl world anyhow and for the most part digital of any sort need not apply (YMMV). But I spend a whole lot of time enjoying music in situations other than sweet spot listening and for those times the breadth of the Tidal Library and the ease of accessing it often makes the somewhat lower SQ a very acceptable compromise. And to the extent that it can help the sound of Tidal to inch up a bit, even if only on some of the albums, I think that is a good thing.

No, I do not foresee a time then MQA becomes my go to format for high quality sound, but within the confines of when I tend to use it I think it can be a worthwhile technology.  Of course the rapidly dropping price and availability of storage and bandwidth steaming High Res files in their native formats may become financially more advantageous than paying for MQA licensing and hardware, but that is another issue altogether.

shadowlight:
Tom,

How does the same album sound on Tidal if they have a non-MQA copy?

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