Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

[bmanone]

I guess I just endorsed what kostaszag said a few post back.

 

[McClelland]

Kudos to earnmyturn, torqu and and RCBinTN for summarizing the practical and technical aspects of this MQA and DSD issue.  I've had no luck with DSD regarding resolution or SQ I can appreciate and sometimes I'm not even sure that the playback is running as I expect.  Is this even DSD? or have I made some mistake in a parameter in my media player?  I have to ask myself because I can't tell the difference. Several things came home to me this morning which I ran a basic Google Play stream through my Mojo to my Soundlink III.  I was focusing on a what to do with a painting and something about the sweetness of the music coming out of that set of speakers  grabbed my attention and I had to go back and do several A-B round with Mojo and without Mojo. 
The difference was so noticeable.  No wonder something got my attention.  Same with playing FLAC files ripped from my CD's.
 
This is actually a relief because I don't want to spend much time thinking/reading about deep rabbit holes.  I want to get to a good sweet spot with the music I actually like.  Too many things that I love are not on HDTracks and I agree with torque that the results can be really mixed.  It's a bit strange, but interesting, to realized that I'm back at lossless Redbook and exploring how to make the most of it.

   
Given how far DSD hasn't come, and bear in mind it's been around in one form or another for 17 years now, I have very little hope, and no expectation, that MQA is going to be anything more than a distraction and any sales are going to be driven from a fear-of-missing-out perspective.
 
I'm not going to hold off on my pending DAC purchase to see what happens with MQA, since I expect that, even if it IS successful, that's something that is going to take years to actually happen.
 
MQA could sound like a choir of angels personally serenading me ... but if the music I enjoy is not available there then why on Earth would I give a damn?

 

  The issue with MQA is not technical, at least not with the theory behind it, it's the business model. The great majority of those who can afford high-quality audio can even better afford high-capacity storage and high bit rate transmission, and anyway good transmission and reproduction of 44.1/16 PCM gives you so much bang for the buck that buying into a proprietary format so that you an get a bit more resolution at a given bit rate seems totally silly.

 

  I agree - this is where I am.  Purchasing CD's and ripping to 16/44.1 ALAC to listen thru JRiver.  That SQ is great, for me (Thanks to the GMB!).  Even the old MP3 stuff still contained in my iTunes sound better when played through JRiver.  I do occasionally buy 24/96 albums from HDTracks, but my experience with them is about 50% - half don't sound very good, so a waste of money and they aren't cheap. @kstuart
As always IMO,
RCBinTN

 

[Yethal]

I don't know whether it is too early to ask this question, but has anybody here actually heard the MQA? So far it seems as if it existed solely as a concept with no real product behind it.

 

[sheldaze]

  I don't know whether it is too early to ask this question, but has anybody here actually heard the MQA? So far it seems as if it existed solely as a concept with no real product behind it.

Yes. There are MQA samples and decoders available today.
 
From what I've heard (my own ears, not reading) it would be best if you enjoy the implementation of whatever you plan to purchase or keep based on how it sounds with PCM-only. I'd certainly not recommend buying or owning any device specifically for or that only sounds good with MQA source.

 

[yay101]

And on a technical level, even at its best it will never sound better than a normal pcm file from the same master. The file CAN just be smaller.

 

[earnmyturns]

  From what I've heard (my own ears, not reading) it would be best if you enjoy the implementation of whatever you plan to purchase or keep based on how it sounds with PCM-only. I'd certainly not recommend buying or owning any device specifically for or that only sounds good with MQA source.

PCM and MQA require quite different decoding logic and filtering, so a dual code DAC could be good at one code and bad at the other (or worse, jack of all trades and master of none). The only rational way to buy a DAC is to focus on the source encoding you care about, get the DAC for that, and forget about other encodings. If MQA blows up PCM down the line, the MQA DACs available then will be much better buys (from design progress and demand-supply balance) than any DAC offered today with MQA as an "extra feature."

 

[earnmyturns]

And on a technical level, even at its best it will never sound better than a normal pcm file from the same master. The file CAN just be smaller.

No sure this is right. If the master is analog, MQA encoding of that may sound different from PCM encoding, just because of the differences in how the signal is discretized and thus approximated in the two encodings. If the master is digital PCM, then I agree with you. If the master is DSD, I don't know, transcoding to PCM vs MQA could create sound differences. AFAIK (I could be wrong), there's no exact transcoding between PCM, DSD, and MQA.

 

[Ableza]

Beyond my engineering technical curiosity, I have no interest in DSD and even less in MQA.  I do not stream nor will I ever do so.  99% of my music library is from CDs I bought myself and burned on my music server.  The other 1% are a few tracks I purchased from iTunes.  I buy CDs every week and will until they are no longer available.  As a former owner of a megabuck turntable and over 25000 LPs (which I happily sold off and gave away years ago, gaining back half a room that had previously been used for album storage) I laugh at the so-called vinyl revival.  You can have that hassle, been there done that not going back. I have a great home theater system, an excellent High-End 2-channel stereo listening room, a beautiful headphone setup, and when I travel I use my iPhone and IEMs.  I am happy.  My stuff sounds great, I love the music server convenience, and I don't need any format other than what I use now.  Y'all knock yourself out chasing the digital compression dragon, I'll sip my scotch and jam out to some tunes.  Using gear for the music I have (not that I have to buy) 

 

[rtaylor76]

Not to mention that Meridian NEEDS and basically has to rely on this tidal wave (no pun intended) for the success of MQA. They are trying to create a demand for a product that they benefit from. So let's all consider who is really telling us that we need MQA.
 
From a marketing standpoint, this is the hardest thing to do. They are trying to climb uphill for the reasons that Jason mentioned. Besides, you are trying to create a demand for a format that a) barely exists, b) is questionable in quality, c) even if not questionable in quality requires many buy-ins from all sides (labels, distributors, manufacturers, end consumers). If they get a fire from below from consumers, they probably feel that they will get much windfall. The last time I ever saw this happen that survived was Dolby Digital and DTS - and that only survived because consumers demand for theater sound in their home, and the only reason why that great sound was in the theaters because it was a smaller market and B to B (Hollywood to Cinemas) and consumers heard the proof first hand (remember hearing Jurassic Park in DTS for the first time?).
 
One could make the argument with MP3s and players and the m4a/iTunes - but MP3 is cheap (if not free), and not everyone uses m4a and or iTunes. I would say the iTunes Store allowed adoption to iPods faster, but so did smaller devices with more memory that were also cheaper thanks to 1-bit technology. No format won here, just morphed from CDs to lossless downloads, although I think iTunes still holds the most download purchases per a given release currently, and streaming is just a kind of extension of that in a different delivery system.
 
I know that Meridian is not only going for a bottom up strategy, just saying they do benefit from it and that strategy helps them out the most. They are actually going for and ALL strategy that involves all parties. However, I don't think there is enough to sticky to stay on the wall.

 

[AudioBear]

  Beyond my engineering technical curiosity, I have no interest in DSD and even less in MQA.  I do not stream nor will I ever do so.  99% of my music library is from CDs I bought myself and burned on my music server.  The other 1% are a few tracks I purchased from iTunes.  I buy CDs every week and will until they are no longer available.  As a former owner of a megabuck turntable and over 25000 LPs (which I happily sold off and gave away years ago, gaining back half a room that had previously been used for album storage) I laugh at the so-called vinyl revival.  You can have that hassle, been there done that not going back. I have a great home theater system, an excellent High-End 2-channel stereo listening room, a beautiful headphone setup, and when I travel I use my iPhone and IEMs.  I am happy.  My stuff sounds great, I love the music server convenience, and I don't need any format other than what I use now.  Y'all knock yourself out chasing the digital compression dragon, I'll sip my scotch and jam out to some tunes.  Using gear for the music I have (not that I have to buy) 

+1
 
Well said.  

 

[yay101]

No sure this is right. If the master is analog, MQA encoding of that may sound different from PCM encoding, just because of the differences in how the signal is discretized and thus approximated in the two encodings. If the master is digital PCM, then I agree with you. If the master is DSD, I don't know, transcoding to PCM vs MQA could create sound differences. AFAIK (I could be wrong), there's no exact transcoding between PCM, DSD, and MQA.

From the same master source and at the same end bitdepth:rate there should be no difference beyond the alterations from the mqa DSP, and as far as I am concerned DSP is a dirty word if something was mastered right in the first place. The link I posted with the q and a has info on the how they "convert" digital masters.

 

[earnmyturns]

   I laugh at the so-called vinyl revival.  You can have that hassle, been there done that not going back. 

I just asked my 20-something daughter why vinyl is (relatively) so popular in her world, she explained it's not really to play, but as swag from favored bands; the records come with digital downloads, which is what they actually listen to.

 

[MWSVette]

  I just asked my 20-something daughter why vinyl is (relatively) so popular in her world, she explained it's not really to play, but as swag from favored bands; the records come with digital downloads, which is what they actually listen to.

God I'm getting old...

 

[earnmyturns]

  I know that Meridian is not only going for a bottom up strategy, just saying they do benefit from it and that strategy helps them out the most. They are actually going for and ALL strategy that involves all parties. However, I don't think there is enough to sticky to stay on the wall.

They are also exploiting the delusion among the major labels that then could walk back the cat of free copies by having the world move to a DRM-ish format. Like a zombie, that delusion has kept returning at intervals since the late 90s. 

 

[reddog]

God I'm getting old...

Yes you and me both are getting old...vinyl as swag the youth would rather listen to the digital download. We do live in a mass consumption society.