I've avoided MQA as well, but only because of my preferences for players and receivers that didn't feature it, not due to actual avoidance. I'm also someone that never streams music or downloads it, only using CDs as my source. I've been a FLAC person from day one, so by default I'm a proponent of open source.
Seems we have a few parallels at play.
Given the whole market seems to be moving to ‘much higher powered’(CPU) controller chips, the task of unfolding the MQA stream is made super easy by chips that many devices will already feature. (at some point it must seem mad to not include MQA support, as it will up the sale rate of the product to ‘some users’, many of them quite vocal for the feature).
My bugbear with MQA is regarding the ethics attached to the marketing of it, and having seen a few ways in which it was hoodwinked into the market, and ‘tricks‘ used to fool early professional reviewers to say ‘nice things’ about it...
The reality is it strips music back to effectively 13bit sound for the ‘have nots’, based on the tech articles I have read on it -that go BEAUTIFULLY IN DEPTH, and have been written independantly by a range of equipment journos and ‘industry professionals’. (there isn’t a collaboration to denounce it in their combined efforts, they are all just ‘sharing their findings’)
Now whilst we all might argue whether a cable makes a difference or whether 320kbps (compressed formats) is ‘transparent’, it doesn’t take a blind man to realise the sound quality drop that a 13bit ‘final product’ equates too: most people can hear ‘non MQA’ decoded sound as
inferior. (and this is why many are against MQA as it creates a market of ‘have nots’ for people who won’t ‘pay the piper’)
It looks like the tech was to enforce itself into the market (once partly adopted), and leave those unwilling to buy the patent tech as ‘have nots’ (who want the old sound they used to have(or better)), and whatever academic improvements it brings, and the premise of lowering internet bandwidth use (-=sarcasm=- a noble goal I am sure-=/sarcasm=-), isn’t enough to segregate the market and enforce a whole new demographic of hardware sales... (does it feature MQA? I NEED IT TO FEATURE MQA!!)
As an example of a tech evolution that did pretty much the exact opposite (whilst delivering better for everyone), was HDCD.
HDCD required the source file to be processed, sure... but once HDCD encoded, all playback kit (with and
without HDCDs “PMD100/PMD200” chips) would have a better experience for it.
I bought the DVD A and SACD koolaids. (Minidisc and other failed formats too)
HDCD recordings are still many of the best I have ever heard.
I would part argue that this was due to incredible engineering and a ‘chicken and egg’ philosophy; early adopters (artists/engineers) to HDCD probably did so due to caring about ultimate fidelity and sound quality. Their next albums would have still been engineered to ‘a very high quality level’, of this I have no doubt.
The difference with HDCD technology, was that ‘non HDCD’ players still got their normal level of fidelity, or better, when playing back HDCD encoded media.
HDCD players I believe may have (but don’t quote me on this) also benefitted non HDCD discs by using the improved digital filter.
HDCD as an encoding process could have also given to ‘future formats’ (it wasn’t tied to a media type),
I have a very large collection of HDCDs. A few of them I can honestly say I have never listened too.
Much like MQA makes people WANT to try one service over another (if they have the playback kit), HDCD was a bit like that as well (always on the lookout for discs that have the ‘logo’);
in fact I recall the day when a friend and I had gone shopping in the wee hours of the day (we were both on the ‘late shift’ at the same workplace), and as we walked past a record store, a display for the new Tool album at the time (Lateralus), was just being walked out the front. Tool was one of my mates favorite bands, I knew this because I had borrowed their entire media catalogue and Tool had the most discs- many ‘b’sides and singles...
“hey - isnt’ that the new....” (he had already looked at his watch/figured out this was ‘the day’, and we were inside the shop and throwing money at the man behind the counter. (okay it may have been a woman, and it may have been a bankcard,..)).
Anyhow- shopping trip cancelled, we were off to my place (I had the better hifi rig, and my only neighbour was a government building)(we would be able to ‘play it loud’!);
We get home -I fire up all the respective bits and pieces, disc in tray, about to hit play: my friend spots the HDCD logo in the liner notes that came with the disc -“hey isn’t this...”
WE BOTH COULDN’T BELIEVE OUR LUCK:
up to this point in HDCDs ‘coming to market’ it was a lot of Neil Diamond and ‘high quality’
respectable recordings. (of which my favorites were Supertramps‘ “some things never change” and “city of angels” (soundtrack)).
To get some actual music that we would listen to (I love Aenema, the album before Lateralus), was a
gift.
The problem?
well I know I advocate “I’d rather listen to good music through an average stereo than poor recordings through a good stereo”, but in this instance, we knew that the maiden play of this new ‘never before experienced’ (by ‘us’ at least) HDCD album was going to be epic; but that my HDCD CD player was ‘in the shop’.
Two months earlier I had bought a Rotel RCD-971 CD player. This was the end of a long road of buying and returning CD players (to the same store, the first three or so were all from the ‘second hand/trade in’ pile they had). I had been on an upgrade path for my front end disc spinner and they all sounded so ‘meh’. (a sound effect dismissing the previous statement to being average or ‘unexciting’). They all sounded ‘average’ or ‘the same’ (more or less) until I upped my budget and bought the Rotel RCD-951 (the first ‘new player’ I could see excellent value in)
The RCD 951 didn’t have the torroidal power supply of its’ bigger brother (if I recall correctly), it featured ONE 18bit DAC chip, and could play back HDCD (a 20 bit format).
The price jump to the next one up the ladder, importantly to my mind- gave two 20bit capable DAC chips (in a dual differential arrangement) and this made sound sense to my academic belief ‘to have 20bit DAC chips’ to pass on a ‘20bit sound format’ (the torroidal and the second DAC chip being icing on the cake that had me return the RCD951 after a week of auditioning (it was a great player in the late nineties)).
The new RCD971 skipped disc tracks ‘sometimes’. It was sick. It needed to go back to the store. So I took it back- described the ‘intermittent fault’ and ‘left it with them’. “Friday” they said.
Next Friday was ‘my day off’ (brilliant). Friday mid morning I go to pick up my ‘fixed’ player (the hifi store had a dedicated service section).
“we meant ‘next friday’ “ (no you didn’t!!)
Friday two weeks later, I go in, on business open, to collect my player.
“nothing wrong with it” they tell me.
I go to length to re explain how the player would jump around whilst tracking discs, but that the problem was intermittent (and the Sherlocks at home who may be thinking I had the thing resting on a high powered speaker and that the bass notes were making my discs skip- No- just “No” (my players rested on half cut squash balls and were ‘well isolated’ from the audio space (and the skipping would happen when listening with headphones too)).
They keep it ‘another week’.
Friday rolls around again.. I go in to collect it- a different tech states they couldn’t find ‘anything wrong’; but at least they humour me, and say they will retest ‘whilst I am in store’.
Now I have heard some pretty good diplomatic speeches in my life. the 21st century, given the advent of recording devices, is literally ‘littered with them’.
What happened next, in terms of a sales person ‘choosing their words’
very carefully, still to this day has me ‘chuckle/laugh’ (at least on the inside).
“There is nothing wrong with it, but we did discover a problem and we are going to order a part”
I parroted this statement back to them and asked how that was different to ‘having something wrong with it’. -the diplomacy was longwinded and continued, unabated, whilst I ’walked out the door’. (they already had my money, and they had my player- I literally had ‘no power’)
Next friday rolls around. Middle day (I have learned to not get my hopes up) I go in to pick up my player.
Pat, the beaut salesman who had helped me EVERY STEP OF THE SALES JOURNEY, sees me on the way into the store.. “how is your player going?” he asks... “Pat- I wouldn’t know...”
I explain to him what had been going on. Naturally he is disgusted, reckons they should have just swapped the unit over for a new one on the first visit (this store was the best hifi store in town, and was not uncommon for prime ministers to peruse the shelves/‘rub shoulders with the rest of us’).
They are out of stock, but he says ‘let me get you a new one’; (and informs ‘it will take a month’)
A month rolls by, give or take.. It is Tuesday. I have been shopping since 8am. I have a disc in the old CD player, by Tool, and have just discovered it is HDCD... It is 10am in the morning.
My friend and I start work at 4pm, and will need to leave around 3pm to get there. The Tool album runs for ~80 mins.. doing the math ... Hmm ‘might be enough time’.
My hifi store is on the far side of the city.. their phones are engaged. After half an hour of ringing, only to ‘not get through’ to a person, we make an executive decision- lets risk a drive across town to see if the player has landed.
We knew our margins would be tight, we would need lunch, but my friend could sort that out whilst I pickup the box...
A little after midday I walk into the foyer of Duratone Hifi to be greeted by Pat, who informs me a shipment has just landed (I could see the foyer stacked with boxes, ‘being received’ (a very uncommon sight))...and that my player ‘was in’.
That day we listened to (the HDCD mastered) Lateralus, at an obscene volume (having to shout to be ‘heard’) with just enough time up our sleeves to sit in silence for a few moments after the experience had washed over us.
Was the album better because it was HDCD engineered. Sure/‘likely’.
It definitely wasn’t worse for being processed by some new cutting edge technology. (unlike modern MQA offers those without the tech/‘haven’t payed the piper’)
My passion for the tech, HDCD, has never died. It gets us to 20 bit sound.. (which is perfect for consumer tech, engineers maybe wanting a bit more headroom for ‘play’)
Microsoft bought the company (the HDCD algorithm gave them an advantage against Apple AAC at 64kbps compression level, purely for marketing, as even then 192kbps was the low, with 256 and 320 (and variable rates) being the’norm’). Microsoft buried the tech, basically overnight. But we did get the option to decode HDCDs (in software) via Windows Media Player. (not that they wanted us to have this feature- and newer version of media player buried the option futher and further (you can still go into windows media player settings, and find the devices panel, and click on output, and find a tickbox (in another pop up) to allow ‘hi res decoding’ or some non descript term, that if ticked, will let HDCD files playback at the improved bitdepth (rip your HDCDs as WAVE files, as it leaves the HDCD flags intact)..)).
I know this post is ‘not the usual‘ headfi banter,.. but I am a community member here, and anecdotal stories relevant to the history of hifi, are important for some readers (those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it),..
Not all formats and patents are anti consumer. Some are.
I do believe the power we hold as individuals, internationally in differing ‘markets’, is to ‘vote with our wallets’.
Bad things happen when good people fail to act...
My child, who has many musician friends, wonders if many of them have ever heard proper ‘hifi’ music.
We both see, in the modern world, what the masses are given -certainly without any reference that there is truly better out there(that generally costs pennies if we go vintage and ‘second hand’).
I feel great system synergy can be had with a mix of the old world and the new, and am disappointed when I see the biggest corporations and those ‘at the top of the tree’ enforcing ecosystems of ‘everything must be bought together’- the whole system needs be made of parts built in the last couple of years(to be compatible with each other).
We are not quite in this dystopian world of hifi sales yet.. but we seem to be sailing ‘very close’ to this goal. (HDMI specification has been such a constant moving target that it has created massive buyer hesitancy, as one such example)
As a technician who has built a lot of hifi rigs, for many people, and has serviced many households for technology advice (and businesses too); this rushed adoption rate of modern technology that keeps burying last years flagships to ‘redundancy’ is maddening.
The lengths I am willing to go through to “jerryrig” ‘mismatched’ technologies together, is thorough.
When I discover modern ‘budget’ parts that deliver better than expected performance I champion them.
When I find brands that use ‘better engineering and design’ that allows higher tiered performance at ‘more wallet friendly pricepoints’, I share my findings, and when I find ethical companies that support their end users, AND their products beyond warranty period I am infatuated (in ‘love’).
I have
much love for FiiO.
It is why I post on their threads. It is the free community support they get from me, because I feel they give to me in ways that are supporting the human race and the planets’ need to avoid constant obsolescence.
We could say ‘that is just good marketing’ (support your customers), but they don’t know me from Jack, and, having been on their forums and threads and read/‘seen’ first hand what they do- it isn’t lip service, it is
action.
Of course any consumer with a ‘back bone’ who stands for beliefs against the consensus (when the consensus may have it wrong), is a champion in my eyes too.
’together we stand’...
