Tidal Masters & MQA Thread!

[old tech]

  That's one of the best rationales I've seen yet for avoiding MQA! The very last thing I want is for a digital audio format to change the smoothness, black background or remove the haze or grain the artists and audio pros have put there in the first place! Imagine changing the smoothness or background of say the Mona Lisa!
 
 

 

Kinda reminds me of noise reduction that is used in some recordings.  Some people like it, saying "wow it has eliminated all the tape hiss" but any serious audiophile avoids it like a plague as it affects the depth and "good" parts of the music.

 

[old tech]

That goes both ways, you have no way of proving that
our appreciating the better SQ of Tidal Masters & MQA files ISN'T real.

....my ears says that it is.

Science cannot explain everything, and the ear is much more time domain sensitive
than was previously believed and than modern measuring instruments - hence the main reason why Chord DACs such as
the Mojo sound so good - much more accurate in the time domain than the competition -
as well as great engineering, low distortion and noise, better coherence, ease, musicality.

As was said a few posts back.... these improved masters wouldn't exist without MQA -
reason is that hires has been here formany years but no easily streamable format
has come ou "till MQA did it.


This isn't a science thread. Sure, not everyone needs or wants MQA, no argument there....

As I've said there are different paths to musical playback satisfaction - none of them have a monopoly.

Yeah right.  NASA spent over $400 million on very sophisticated equipment to hear gravity waves - which detecting its presence is highly dependent on the time domain.
 
What a waste of money, they should have just used their ears.
 
There is over a hundred years of real world hearing studies and measurements.  Human hearing, well at least the limits of it, are very well understood.
 
And I am sure science can explain something which was invented from science.

 

[winders]

So I just listened to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album using MQA. My DAC, an Yggdrasil, does not support MQA but my software does so it was unwrapped to a 24/96 format. I don't know anything about how the songs were mixed or manipulated. All I know is they do sound different in 24/96 MQA than they do Red Book sourced 16/44.1 256 Kbps lossy.
 
The MQA tracks were more lively and boisterous than the Red Book tracks. Voices had more airiness to them. Drums stood out more. It's almost like a loudness button was pushed or some EQ was applied. I don't know that is a good thing. I certainly heard no extra detail. The soundstage was a little different. Not bigger or smaller. The instrument and voice separation was different. I can't put my finger on it. Let's put it this way, I didn't hear anything that made me want to listen to MQA all day every day. I didn't hear anything that made me not want to listen either. I do have concerns about the change in sound. But that could come down to the album being a different mix.

 

[pinnahertz]

 
hello again pinnahertz - - how long have you been auditioning MQA? 

Lacking any information as to how MQA files were created, the question would be, has anybody been auditioning MQA....at all?  We don't know what we've been listening to.

I've found your position on MQA in earlier posts and basically you seem to feel it is a cash grab
and not the revolution it purports to be......do you agree and if so do you still feel that way?

There is no evidence to support that is provides any improvement.

If you do hear a meaningful improvement and if the type of improvement hasn't been found in the streaming
format before then why the skepticism?

If...and another if....too many ifs....

If you don't fine a meaningful improvement with MQA inline with what Steven and
other professional audio reviewers have found and after listening for a few weeks
please just let us know - your feedback will be appreciated.

Sorry, that's impossible. Read my posts again.

If there is a significant, meaningful improvement but you don't think it's due to the MQA process, then 
let competitors move in and copy what they've done in some other format.
 

As if it's up to me....
 
As I've said too many times now to count, we have no positive way to know if MQA offers and improvement or not.  We don't have the file's heritage.  If there is a difference, is it MQA or something else?  
 
Let me turn it around: if YOU think the percieved improvement is solely due to MQA processing, can you prove that nothing else has been done?  

 

[headfry]

  So I just listened to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album using MQA. My DAC, an Yggdrasil, does not support MQA but my software does so it was unwrapped to a 24/96 format. I don't know anything about how the songs were mixed or manipulated. All I know is they do sound different in 24/96 MQA than they do Red Book 16/44.1 256 Kbps lossy.
 
The MQA tracks were more lively and boisterous than the Red Book tracks. Voices had more airiness to them. Drums stood out more. It's almost like a loudness button was pushed or some EQ was applied. I don't know that is a good thing. I certainly heard no extra detail. The soundstage was a little different. Not bigger or smaller. The instrument and voice separation was different. I can't put my finger on it. Let's put it this way, I didn't hear anything that made me want to listen to MQA all day every day. I didn't hear anything that made me not want to listen either. I do have concerns about the change in sound. But that could come down to the album being a different mix.

Tthanks for your impressions - as I said before if it's strictly due to a different mix then let competitors come
in and provide similar SQ with a different stream-friendly format.
 
So far it hasn't happened, we"ll see. BTW, I'm not a fan of the MQA version of Rumors as I'm not a fan of the album,
there are many more MQA albums to try.
 
That you hear differences but don't think they are significant improvements is fine, I and many others do think so, but
opinions will vary and so the rationale for this thread.

 

[saddleup]

  So I just listened to Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album using MQA. My DAC, an Yggdrasil, does not support MQA but my software does so it was unwrapped to a 24/96 format. I don't know anything about how the songs were mixed or manipulated. All I know is they do sound different in 24/96 MQA than they do Red Book 16/44.1 256 Kbps lossy.
 
 

Red Book is 16/44.1 period is it not?  256 Kbps lossy is not Red Book.

 

[smartin]

  Lacking any information as to how MQA files were created, the question would be, has anybody been auditioning MQA....at all?  We don't know what we've been listening to.
There is no evidence to support that is provides any improvement.
If...and another if....too many ifs....
Sorry, that's impossible. Read my posts again.
As if it's up to me....
 
As I've said too many times now to count, we have no positive way to know if MQA offers and improvement or not.  We don't have the file's heritage.  If there is a difference, is it MQA or something else?  
 
Let me turn it around: if YOU think the percieved improvement is solely due to MQA processing, can you prove that nothing else has been done?  

 
As I said before, compare from the 2L test tracks, different formats from same source (which they list, including one MQA remaster) http://www.2l.no/hires/
 
Also, not sure if this has been linked here, but Archimago did a good review where he did a DAC-ADC chain and compared the digital output (he also provides listening impressions, for what that is worth...) http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/02/comparison-hardware-decoded-mqa-using.html
 
Short version is that MQA does a very good (certainly psychoacousticly transparent) job of reproducing native 24/96 (beyond that is sketchier).  You can argue whether there is any 'benefit' of 24/96 over Redbook, but that is a different argument.

 

[pinnahertz]

   
As I said before, compare from the 2L test tracks, different formats from same source (which they list, including one MQA remaster) http://www.2l.no/hires/
 
Also, not sure if this has been linked here, but Archimago did a good review where he did a DAC-ADC chain and compared the digital output (he also provides listening impressions, for what that is worth...) http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/02/comparison-hardware-decoded-mqa-using.html

The 2L "test tracks", unless I've misread, originated as DSD.  So, the comparison would have to be the original DSD to the MQA version.   That presents more than a few issues, and frankly, doesn't relate to the discussion of more common material processed to MQA. 
 

Short version is that MQA does a very good (certainly psychoacousticly transparent) job of reproducing native 24/96 (beyond that is sketchier).  You can argue whether there is any 'benefit' of 24/96 over Redbook, but that is a different argument.

The argument that relates to the thread would be whether MQA "improves" anything over Redbook or above, as that's the primary source type for most material pre-MQA.   
 
In my tests of the 2L tracksI heard what I thought was a slight upper midrange rise in the MQA files, otherwise, no difference.  I was able to check that perception by nulling an MQA and non-MQA to the mid 50dB, but only after adding a bit of EQ in the upper mid.  It was pretty consistent track to track, with one requiring a slightly different EQ, but still nulling well.  Again, the source files were DSD, and that's a different path we aren't specifically discussing here.

 

[smartin]

  The 2L "test tracks", unless I've misread, originated as DSD.  So, the comparison would have to be the original DSD to the MQA version.   That presents more than a few issues, and frankly, doesn't relate to the discussion of more common material processed to MQA. 
 
The argument that relates to the thread would be whether MQA "improves" anything over Redbook or above, as that's the primary source type for most material pre-MQA.   
 
In my tests of the 2L tracksI heard what I thought was a slight upper midrange rise in the MQA files, otherwise, no difference.  I was able to check that perception by nulling an MQA and non-MQA to the mid 50dB, but only after adding a bit of EQ in the upper mid.  It was pretty consistent track to track, with one requiring a slightly different EQ, but still nulling well.  Again, the source files were DSD, and that's a different path we aren't specifically discussing here.

The 2L test track originals are almost all DXD (it says original format in the far right column).  Two are lower resolution, but none are DSD.
 
The relevant argument is whether MQA improves on Redbook, not 'Redbook or above'.  MQA is designed to be a HiRes streaming protocol.  MQA is ~60% the size of native 24/96.  If, as Archimago showed, MQA can provide an acoustically transparent version of 24/96 (or higher), then it's met its goal.  As I said above, you could provide a mathematically better (but not necesarrily acoustically better) format (i.e. 18/96) at similar bit rates, but at the moment noone is (and from a marketing standpoint, it's easy to understand why), so that's a strawman argument.  If you want to argue thet 24/96 is no better than Redbook, that's fine, but that is a completely different argument.
 
In regards to your listening impressions, and being the objectivist you seem to be, I'd ask, considering Archimago's frequency plots, what exactly is causing the upper mid-range rise, specifically this plot http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_148908082184813&key=a7cf329d5bd13115736c5131a3c772ff&libId=j02o7xad0100rcxm000DAbg8bq03l&loc=http%3A%2F%2Farchimago.blogspot.com%2F2017%2F02%2Fcomparison-hardware-decoded-mqa-using.html&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-2wFpyluLLno%2FWJU2mk3M6II%2FAAAAAAAAJks%2FnfOl0PiTG3IlorPq6pTM0E8WpHnnw0NewCLcB%2Fs1600%2FSpectral.png&ref=http%3A%2F%2Farchimago.blogspot.com%2F&title=Archimago%27s%20Musings%3A%20COMPARISON%3A%20Hardware-Decoded%20MQA%20(using%20Mytek%20Brooklyn%20DAC)&txt=
 
the differences null out at -90dB.  Objectively, where is that upper mid-range rise coming from?

 

[winders]

  Red Book is 16/44.1 period is it not?  256 Kbps lossy is not Red Book.

Technically, that would be correct. But I am talking about Red Book content compressed using a lossy algorithm.

 

[castleofargh]

 

  Red Book is 16/44.1 period is it not?  256 Kbps lossy is not Red Book.

Technically, that would be correct. But I am talking about Red Book content compressed using a lossy algorithm.

 if it's not 16/44 LPCM it isn't redbook spec.

 

[winders]

   if it's not 16/44 LPCM it isn't redbook spec.

Why do you feel the need to post something that has already been agreed to?

 

[pinnahertz]

  The 2L test track originals are almost all DXD (it says original format in the far right column).  Two are lower resolution, but none are DSD.

DXD, yes, sorry, my mistake. That doesn't change anything though.

The relevant argument is whether MQA improves on Redbook, not 'Redbook or above'.

Yes, correct. I included the "above" part because they do. But it's not part of the discussion specifically centered on improving Redbook. However, in this discussion, the 2L files become useless anyway.

 MQA is designed to be a HiRes streaming protocol.  MQA is ~60% the size of native 24/96.  If, as Archimago showed, MQA can provide an acoustically transparent version of 24/96 (or higher), then it's met its goal.  As I said above, you could provide a mathematically better (but not necesarrily acoustically better) format (i.e. 18/96) at similar bit rates, but at the moment noone is (and from a marketing standpoint, it's easy to understand why), so that's a strawman argument.

What's your point?

If you want to argue thet 24/96 is no better than Redbook, that's fine, but that is a completely different argument.  

Haven't said anything of the kind in this discussion.

 
In regards to your listening impressions, and being the objectivist you seem to be, I'd ask, considering Archimago's frequency plots, what exactly is causing the upper mid-range rise, specifically this plot&

The plot linked to is useless other than to show there is a difference of some kind.
 
As to why, how should I know? Or anybody know except those inside MQA?
 
Why would you ask me this?

 
the differences null out at -90dB.  Objectively, where is that upper mid-range rise coming from?

I didn't say they null to -90dB.
 
And again, how should I, or anyone outside of MQA know that?

 

[smartin]

  DXD, yes, sorry, my mistake. That doesn't change anything though.
Yes, correct. I included the "above" part because they do. But it's not part of the discussion specifically centered on improving Redbook. However, in this discussion, the 2L files become useless anyway.
What's your point?
Haven't said anything of the kind in this discussion.
The plot linked to is useless other than to show there is a difference of some kind.
 
As to why, how should I know? Or anybody know except those inside MQA?
 
Why would you ask me this?
I didn't say they null to -90dB.
 
And again, how should I, or anyone outside of MQA know that?

Why is it useless?  Your argument has been that when people say an MQA stream on Tidal sounds better than the Redbook version Tidal stream, they don't know what they are comparing.  Ignoring the fact that only a tiny number of re-masters have been done (Warner has acknowledged that 95%+ of their MQA conversions are automated encodings of their current master, not re-masters) so they were in almost all cases comparing from the same master, the 2L tracks take away any question.  You can directly compare Redbook and MQA encodings of the same source master.  Isn't that exactly what you were saying isn't possible?
 
That plot shows that the differences between software decoded Tidal MQA(Tidal only, no hardware decode), and a lossless, native 24/96 version of the same file, are minuscule and way below the ability of any human to differentiate(if you are an objectivist that is...), this comparison nulls at -90dB, objectively, period.  The files become even more similar with hardware decoding, but since the difference was already inaudible, it's sort of moot (though I suspect many will say MQA decoded to 24/384 sounds better than software decoded to 24/96, but that, like so many other things is another argument...).
 
You said one cannot compare because there's no way to know what is being compared.  That is simply not true.
 
There are lots of valid critiques of MQA, but saying it does not provide an acoustically transparent fascimile of HiRes is not one of them.  People can subjectively compare themselves (with all the caveats that entails), something that anyone can actually do fairly easily, contrary to what you keep saying.  They can also objectively compare (as Archimago did), albeit not quite as easily.

 

[old tech]

  Why is it useless?  Your argument has been that when people say an MQA stream on Tidal sounds better than the Redbook version Tidal stream, they don't know what they are comparing.  Ignoring the fact that only a tiny number of re-masters have been done (Warner has acknowledged that 95%+ of their MQA conversions are automated encodings of their current master, not re-masters) so they were in almost all cases comparing from the same master, the 2L tracks take away any question.  You can directly compare Redbook and MQA encodings of the same source master.  Isn't that exactly what you were saying isn't possible?
 
 

How do you know that?  Pick any popular album and it is likely that there are several masterings of it.  Even back in the analog days there were variations in pressings depending on which masters or remasters were used.  With digital, remasterings are much easier and more prevalent.
 
As for the Warner comment, I'm not sure as to what is meant by their "current master" and not a remaster.  The current master is in all likely hood a remaster, unless you mean the current release of that album?
 
Lastly, and probably a different debate, unless the recording is 24/96 DDD it is not high res music, so even if you accept that a human can detect a sound difference between redbook and 24/96, it is simply not possible (assuming the same master) if the source was analog tape or a CD master.  If there is a difference it means that there is an issue with the way MQA is treating the source, or hardware imperfections or, most likely, expectation biases.