[OldRoadToad]

Looking back earlier in this thread about Jason's comment not to support MQA..... Well it's here now and TIDAL is delivering on its promise. Audiogon members are posting very positive responses.

I hope Schiit will come through on promising to upgrade their dacs. You can't honestly beleive red book is the end of improvements in digital audio?

How many disparaging MQA still are watching the B&W consoles

​I can honestly state that humans can not hear a difference unless they know are listening to some thing different.  People so want to be a part of the herd or a member of the "cool kids" at school

Nerds want to be liked by other nerds.  Me?
 
I am an Alpha Nerd. 
 
MQA?  It is BS.  You can feel other wise but you can not prove other wise.  Unless of course, you know when you are listening to it and then wax euphoric over it.  No thank you.  Do as you desire.  MQA would have people believe that they are finally listening to music as the arteest intended them to.  What a farce. 
 
That begs the question just what have we all been listening to all these years.  And what of live music?  Does that neeeeeeeeeeeeeed MQA codec too? 
 
ORT

 

[Currawong]

I found an MQA album, Mogwai - Rave Tapes, which I have a 96k master of.  My version sounds good, but compared to the MQA, a bit disconnected, feeling-wise. The MQA version to me sounds more "alive" and gives me more of an emotional reaction to the music when listening. So whatever voodoo they have done in re-mastering, it works at least on that album.

 

[pdickerson]

​​I can honestly state that humans can not hear a difference unless they know are listening to some thing different.

ORT

That is is crazy talk. I don't think you meant that. I don't know you or your history in audio so It is not fair to disagree with your experience.

My experience is different. I started listening to vinyl in elementary school. By high school I used some of summer working money to buy marantz amp, dual turntable and marantz. Then a reel to reel. The ticks and pops drove me crazy no mater how much I tried to care for my records.
When CD came out it was a two edge sword: gone were the ticks and pops but they were not mastered or recorded very well.

i raised a family and went through the home theater phase over from 2 channel to surround years ago with Pioneer Elite, KEF, m&k sub. A couple of years ago I returned back to two channel. Now with Primaluna hp, Aerial Acoustic, Schiit yggy DAC.

I does not take a trained ear to hear the difference between the HT setup and my current one. My wife was amazed at the difference. I listened to multiple dacs and there were differences in sq.

Last week I demo'd a turntable from my local hifi audio store. It was a rega p3. Not want I would call upper hifi, but still a week reviewed table. Yes, it was warm sounding, but I would use the word dampened. No comparison to my digital setup. I would have to spend 10 what I spent on the turntable to even approach my digital sound.

I did the test myself. I was foruntate.

There are still artist tracks that generate unpleasant vibration and pressure waves when the music is decoded.

Digital hardware and mastering have improved and so has the sound.

I am thankful we have such minds that had the genius to convert sound into electrical signals that flow from a microphone to recorded media and back out again from electrical to audio we can at least perceive what the artist wanted to share.

Yup, I heard the difference from my grand parents wind up Victrola all the way to what advances of digital with its upsampling, improved clocks and filters.

I for one am excited to hear audio continuing to advance in sound quality with its new formats Now I am going downstairs to put on some rickie Lee jones and appreciate what an incredible gift she was given. If rickie Lee jones was offered on MQA I would want to hear it, because I have the choice to decide for myself if MQA was able to repair the mastering problems of the ADC. The MQA approach sounds promising and I would be thrilled to hear RLJ sound as close as possible to the original studio take.

Enjoy the music!

 

[Currawong]

  ​I can honestly state that humans can not hear a difference unless they know are listening to some thing different.  People so want to be a part of the herd or a member of the "cool kids" at school

 
The MQA tracks are re-mastered. In at least one thread on here (there are so many talking about MQA now I've lost track) someone dumped the output of the regular track and the MQA into software and the spectrum (of the music) is visibly different.
 
If you want to denigrate people, let me comment on an observation I've had of the "cool kids" who discuss this stuff: It seems to me that the "cool kids" are the ones who want to trash companies and the people who run them by people, because they are jealous of either those that can afford expensive equipment, or who are getting the attention that they desperately wish they had. Those people then try and railroad (gaslight) their opinion all over forums, backed by their group of friends, putting down anyone who disagrees. We don't need more of that kind of crap. What we need is to be able to express a clear understanding of the technology (any technology for that matter) so that people can get a clear understanding of what it is about, even if they don't have a deep level of knowledge of the science behind it. Then they can decide how they feel about it themselves. 

 

[OldRoadToad]

That is is crazy talk. I don't think you meant that. I don't know you or your history in audio so It is not fair to disagree with your experience.

My experience is different. I started listening to vinyl in elementary school. By high school I used some of summer working money to buy marantz amp, dual turntable and marantz. Then a reel to reel. The ticks and pops drove me crazy no mater how much I tried to care for my records.
When CD came out it was a two edge sword: gone were the ticks and pops but they were not mastered or recorded very well.

i raised a family and went through the home theater phase over from 2 channel to surround years ago with Pioneer Elite, KEF, m&k sub. A couple of years ago I returned back to two channel. Now with Primaluna hp, Aerial Acoustic, Schiit yggy DAC.

I does not take a trained ear to hear the difference between the HT setup and my current one. My wife was amazed at the difference. I listened to multiple dacs and there were differences in sq.

Last week I demo'd a turntable from my local hifi audio store. It was a rega p3. Not want I would call upper hifi, but still a week reviewed table. Yes, it was warm sounding, but I would use the word dampened. No comparison to my digital setup. I would have to spend 10 what I spent on the turntable to even approach my digital sound.

I did the test myself. I was foruntate.

There are still artist tracks that generate unpleasant vibration and pressure waves when the music is decoded.

Digital hardware and mastering have improved and so has the sound.

I am thankful we have such minds that had the genius to convert sound into electrical signals that flow from a microphone to recorded media and back out again from electrical to audio we can at least perceive what the artist wanted to share.

Yup, I heard the difference from my grand parents wind up Victrola all the way to what advances of digital with its upsampling, improved clocks and filters.

I for one am excited to hear audio continuing to advance in sound quality with its new formats Now I am going downstairs to put on some rickie Lee jones and appreciate what an incredible gift she was given. If rickie Lee jones was offered on MQA I would want to hear it, because I have the choice to decide for myself if MQA was able to repair the mastering problems of the ADC. The MQA approach sounds promising and I would be thrilled to hear RLJ sound as close as possible to the original studio take.

Enjoy the music!

​It is far from "crazy talk", it is what I think. Not feeeeeeeeeeeeeeel.   It is as valid, if not far more so, than the drivel being spouted as religious rote by the MQA folk.
 
As for being able to hear and discern MQA?  Do it in a genuine double blind environment where you have no clue when or if it is playing or not.  Only your ears to tell you whether the WonderTwiin Power of MQA is activated or not.  And you have do succeed at a level where it is not just chance. 
 
I listen to music, not some codec that a guy who wants licensing fees and the like to remaster old and newer recordings as well as the brand new to "his" codec's specs.  And claim that it will make it as the arteest intended us to hear it.
 
If I really to hear the music as it's author intended, I will attend a live performance. MQA is like AutoTune for frAudiophiles.  Yup. That pretty much describes it.    I do not desire to be relieved of my hard earned money for the honor of "hearing the music as the sales man of MQA t intended it to be heard".  ENC.
 
I do not require the inclusion of some codec to enjoy music.  Why others do is a matter of rote in certain circles.  I am neither Audiophile nor a frAudiophile.  I enjoy music and have for well over 50 years now. 
 
Enjoy your music too!
 
ORT

 

[erich6]

 
​ORT

 

 
No worries ORT.  Just enjoy the music and let others spend their money as they wish. 

 

[obobskivich]

The MQA tracks are re-mastered. In at least one thread on here (there are so many talking about MQA now I've lost track) someone dumped the output of the regular track and the MQA into software and the spectrum (of the music) is visibly different.

If you want to denigrate people, let me comment on an observation I've had of the "cool kids" who discuss this stuff: It seems to me that the "cool kids" are the ones who want to trash companies and the people who run them by people, because they are jealous of either those that can afford expensive equipment, or who are getting the attention that they desperately wish they had. Those people then try and railroad (gaslight) their opinion all over forums, backed by their group of friends, putting down anyone who disagrees. We don't need more of that kind of crap. What we need is to be able to express a clear understanding of the technology (any technology for that matter) so that people can get a clear understanding of what it is about, even if they don't have a deep level of knowledge of the science behind it. Then they can decide how they feel about it themselves. 

While I agree with what you're saying here, what I can't help but wonder (And here's the chicken and egg debate): does MQA "sound better" because of some essential "MQA-ness" or because they're trying to enforce some proprietary standard that brings with it quality remastering? Like in other words if you took the "MQA master" because obviously its coming from the studio in whatever conventional format from very conventional gear, and just encoded it conventionally and put it on a CD (or if we have to be particular about it, run it up to the moon and put it on DVD Audio), and then compared that very conventional track to the MQA stream, would there be some essential difference because of the MQA part, or would they both be "good" because they're remastered nicely.

It's like the whole "remastered on Blu-ray thing" - Blu-ray itself as a container isn't the reason some old movies look better than ever these days, its because they've been re-mastered on good, modern equipment, they just so happen to be released on Blu-ray, but you could achieve the same quality with any other sufficiently capable (in terms of size and throughput) container (e.g. HD-DVD, very high bitrate streams, whatever).

 

[castleofargh]

first, wow! so many active topics about MQA. it's so not interesting that correct information must really lack. let me try to explain what I understand.
 
what it really does: 
1/ keep data for higher sampling rate signal than the sample rate of the file itself(of course there is a trick and a price to pay).
 
and that's it. all of it. that is MQA. how it works is complicated and if I get it right, somehow adaptive to the music content and file resolution, but the result is 1/ and that's it.
 
 
for 1/ to even exist there are several conditions to be met:
1a/ you need the original recording to be at least at the sample rate that the MQA conversion will try to save(meaning that to make a 24/96MQA file, you need an original PCM file of more than 24/96, else there is no point in doing it). it's not like MQA creates the extra ultrasound data from nothing.
so to be clear, whatever MQA does, can exist and does exist somewhere as a wave file of better resolution because it was made from it. it's basically like a format conversion, so good luck finding a revolutionary sound when all you do is lose some data to make a smaller file.
 
1b/ to store the information about those extra samples (which as a result will provide higher ultrasonic content), they use a few of the quietest bits in each sample of the file. those bits are used for sample rate data and as such are lost as dynamic range data. so a MQA encoded file of 16/44 will have a resulting signal with more than 44.1khz as sample rate information, but at the same time will also have less than 16bit of actual dynamic. 
again it's not magic and it's very arguable that it's better than something else.
 
1c/ is a direct consequence of 1b/, if there was high level content in the ultrasounds, MQA couldn't register it properly because it would mean using as many bits as needed for the ultrasonic amplitude to be coded, and soon enough you'd just end up with some overall hissy track.
in fact the very reason why it should always work as intended is because there is close to no ultrasonic information in most musics(by that I mean very low loudness level compared to the audible range). and that should make you question the benefit of having that data if it's in the ultrasound that we can't hear, and at a loudness level that would most likely be masked even if we could hear it.
 
1d/ if you play a 16/44 MQA file on a non MQA device, you still lose the dynamic from the bits used, but you don't get the extra ultrasonic data. so a basic 16/44 CD rip is factually superior in such use. they do as if it didn't matter because you won't notice the difference, and I would agree, but objectively it's a loss of data so not an optimal choice for everyday usage of your own library.
 
1e/ the usual patent system where you have to show your DAC process to Meridian that just so happens to also do DACs, I'm not sure DAC designers with special salsa will be overjoyed with the idea that the competition will have a say in what they can and cannot do in their own DACs.
 
so to summarize, MQA is a good thing for people who are obsessed with all the "time smearing" mumbo jumbo but don't want/can't use the actual highres flac file because they need to save some space. in effect the highest resolution and best "time smearing" solution will still be to simply use the high resolution PCM album or the DSD version(even if DSD doesn't add much over PCM highres because of all the stuff it needs to filter to get rid of the monstrous noise born from the stupid idea of making a 1bit format).
it's the glass half full or half empty. a 16/44 MQA could be said to be good compared to the same wave or flac 16/44 because it will help a few crappy low pass filters at such a rate. but compared to the actual PCM record that was used to generate the MQA 16/44, it's definitely a loss in resolution to save some space. so any talk of improved audio is 1337% nonsense as soon as we compare apples to apples.  it should be advertised as yet another streaming format and live it at that IMO. it's the only battle it's not immediately going to lose.
of course I expect a lot of remastered MQA albums, for the same reason it happened with DSD and DVD audio and highres in general. it will confuse the hell out of the average audiophile trusting his ears and failing to get that some sound differences will come from mastering and not from the "revolutionary" format.

 

[Currawong]

  first, wow! so many active topics about MQA. it's so not interesting that correct information must really lack. let me try to explain what I understand.
 
what it really does: 
1/ keep data for higher sampling rate signal than the sample rate of the file itself(of course there is a trick and a price to pay).
 
and that's it. all of it. that is MQA. how it works is complicated and if I get it right, somehow adaptive to the music content and file resolution, but the result is 1/ and that's it.

 
No, that is not all that is going on. The re-mastering is the real critical part. I think the high-res compression trick is necessary to sell it as if it were only CD quality it wouldn't get any attention.  I don't think that the high-res part is irrelevant though, because I've always been of the opinion, from experience, that the digital filters in a lot of DACs cause playback to sound unnatural, as high-quality up-sampling prior to playback has often sounded better to me. So if the MQA files are being unfolded to 352k inside the DAC, then through a lot of gear it effectively bypass the problem. Ironically I think this very problem arose through the hype of high-res in the first place!  Really though I'd rather own DACs designed by people who really know what they are doing to begin with so that I don't have to care.
 

  While I agree with what you're saying here, what I can't help but wonder (And here's the chicken and egg debate): does MQA "sound better" because of some essential "MQA-ness" or because they're trying to enforce some proprietary standard that brings with it quality remastering? Like in other words if you took the "MQA master" because obviously its coming from the studio in whatever conventional format from very conventional gear, and just encoded it conventionally and put it on a CD (or if we have to be particular about it, run it up to the moon and put it on DVD Audio), and then compared that very conventional track to the MQA stream, would there be some essential difference because of the MQA part, or would they both be "good" because they're remastered nicely.

It's like the whole "remastered on Blu-ray thing" - Blu-ray itself as a container isn't the reason some old movies look better than ever these days, its because they've been re-mastered on good, modern equipment, they just so happen to be released on Blu-ray, but you could achieve the same quality with any other sufficiently capable (in terms of size and throughput) container (e.g. HD-DVD, very high bitrate streams, whatever).

 
I recall them stating that even if the MQA track isn't unfolded, it will still sound better than it did before they performed their proprietary re-mastering. I wouldn't use the word "enforce" as much as "sell" though. I think the pitch of the files playing back fine through ordinary gear is to avoid absolutely requiring unique hardware, which would leave them dead in the water. Not to mention the lynching that would happen if the MQA'd music sounded distinctly worse than it did before until MQA-capable was purchased. 

 

[aamefford]

My experience with MQA is via Tidal. A couple of the master series albums are ones I know well, and are also available in the "regular" Tidal. I was by and large underwhelmed save for one album - I think it was Bowie Ziggy Stardust, but memory is not serving me well right now. That particular album was remastered "better" to my ears. The rest that I listened to were not. As MQA is now available on Tidal, I'll continue to experiment with it. I won't bother with hardware that decodes it though, as my experience thus far rates a resounding Meh.

 

[castleofargh]

 

  first, wow! so many active topics about MQA. it's so not interesting that correct information must really lack. let me try to explain what I understand.
 
what it really does: 
1/ keep data for higher sampling rate signal than the sample rate of the file itself(of course there is a trick and a price to pay).
 
and that's it. all of it. that is MQA. how it works is complicated and if I get it right, somehow adaptive to the music content and file resolution, but the result is 1/ and that's it.

 
No, that is not all that is going on. The re-mastering is the real critical part. I think the high-res compression trick is necessary to sell it as if it were only CD quality it wouldn't get any attention.  I don't think that the high-res part is irrelevant though, because I've always been of the opinion, from experience, that the digital filters in a lot of DACs cause playback to sound unnatural, as high-quality up-sampling prior to playback has often sounded better to me. So if the MQA files are being unfolded to 352k inside the DAC, then through a lot of gear it effectively bypass the problem. Ironically I think this very problem arose through the hype of high-res in the first place!  Really though I'd rather own DACs designed by people who really know what they are doing to begin with so that I don't have to care.

agreed about the low pass at low resolution as I mention maybe a little too fast at the end of my post. it's not always, but it can happen with some DACs and stop 16/44 from being transparent. and I also agree that oversampling can be an answer to poorly implemented filters. in fact I always wondered if the choice for asio drivers to be at max sample rate by default could have something to do with this?
 
 
about the remastering, fool me once, shame on you, fool me 10 times, shame on me. CD was supposed to be the final perfection, so much so that we ended up with people who would rather buy the absolute low resolution vinyl version just to avoid the loudness war. then came all sorts of highres media, all telling us how this time "fo'sho" it's the sound like the artist intended. turns out even the most famous CD vs highres paper got fooled and used highres albums that were in fact upsampled redbook sold as "high res". it's been like a poor running gag and keeps on running with each new system and each new online provider of highres wonders always ensuring us that they're not like the rest and they really care about offering a library of proper masters, traceability, etc. pono even came with it's very own signed highres files because "real music like the artist... blahblahblah". and soon enough people saw that some downloads were the same joke. and it's logical, you can't check 500 000 albums without trusting the guys providing them a little, and at best using some automation to check for the most obvious problems. nobody can really afford to be that one special snowflake that only takes the best of the best at all time. those who do that have a very very limited library and Meridian can't afford to do that if they aim at streaming, and if they were to remaster everything themselves, it would be streaming for year 2050. good will doesn't escape reality.
also I'm absolutely mad anytime a good master is done but not made available in many formats. that's artificial diversity not for the sake of music but for the sake of milking the cow just one more time, and I have sensitive nipples. at a point in time when 1 cellphone does more than the entire home electronic of 20years ago, it's really nonsense to expect the consumer to get 2 or 3 different devices to be able to listen to all the masters we like. it's really not aimed specifically at MQA, but I fear that they'll naturally try to incite us to use the format through that exact method. DSD style. 

 

[penmarker]

Are the MQA files actually the raw files recording studios produce for pressing? Wouldn't they be several gigabytes in size?

 

[obobskivich]

 Really though I'd rather own DACs designed by people who really know what they are doing to begin with so that I don't have to care.

I recall them stating that even if the MQA track isn't unfolded, it will still sound better than it did before they performed their proprietary re-mastering. I wouldn't use the word "enforce" as much as "sell" though. I think the pitch of the files playing back fine through ordinary gear is to avoid absolutely requiring unique hardware, which would leave them dead in the water. Not to mention the lynching that would happen if the MQA'd music sounded distinctly worse than it did before until MQA-capable was purchased. 

"Enforce," "sell," whats the difference? They're trying to create some "quality mark" like THX or Hi-Res Audio or whatever the newest and best buzzword compliance wants to see, and I'm okay with that IF it means quality remasters and good provenance, and not DRM, hijinks, or other tomfoolery. And unfortunately my guess is that like castleofargh's examples below, even if its well-intentioned from the start, its going to end up as yet another digital carcass on the side of the proverbial road.

about the remastering, fool me once, shame on you, fool me 10 times, shame on me. CD was supposed to be the final perfection, so much so that we ended up with people who would rather buy the absolute low resolution vinyl version just to avoid the loudness war. then came all sorts of highres media, all telling us how this time "fo'sho" it's the sound like the artist intended. turns out even the most famous CD vs highres paper got fooled and used highres albums that were in fact upsampled redbook sold as "high res". it's been like a poor running gag and keeps on running with each new system and each new online provider of highres wonders always ensuring us that they're not like the rest and they really care about offering a library of proper masters, traceability, etc. pono even came with it's very own signed highres files because "real music like the artist... blahblahblah". and soon enough people saw that some downloads were the same joke.

This. This right here is the problem.

Are the MQA files actually the raw files recording studios produce for pressing? Wouldn't they be several gigabytes in size?

Oh god no. That's what they're trying to sell you, but that's in no way what they're delivering. For whatever reason (and feel free to jump on me for that awful plattitude), the "music world" just can't seem to get its head around ultra-bitrate content like the motion picture industry has. Sure, (video) streaming/broadcast content is compressed by necessity (well, more like they want to get as much junk on the line as they can get away with before the lawsuits get too egregious), but in terms of what you can buy on removable media (and even more premium streaming) its just unbelievable the datarates/quality they'll happily provide in terms of containers (and how cheap they'll do it), and while there are plenty of notorious examples of bad eggs, its usually when they go back to clean-up back catalog releases (and try to cut corners), not new releases. Anyways, why the analogy you ask? Because the music industry, in 2017, is still on about "near CD quality" to try and tout their "we still haven't actually fully surpassed FM except now we want you to pay (a whole lot) for the privilege" distribution model. MQA is basically (in my view) yet another example of trying to put lipstick on that pig, but now it gets special LED lights that blink on and let you have warm fuzzies, and you get to buy new gear also. :rolleyes:

I'm not saying the end result is bad - but its like why is this like pulling teeth on their part? CD isn't bad by any means, but why are fighting over digital content that's "near CD quality" or "lossless compression of CD quality" when we should be arguing about which Blu-ray Audio or HD-DVD Audio player can deliver the most realistic experience, and what software will deliver the best rips thereof (and that absolutely *would* be into the realm of multi-gigabyte data storage). And the albums shouldn't cost an arm and a leg, especially if they're just digital distribution. Of course you can always just keep buying CDs and rip them and be happy, and there's nothing wrong with that (and that's honestly part of where I'm at a loss with "all these new fangled things"), and there's plenty of infrastructure to give you 16/44 basically whenever/wherever you want it (and it doesn't have to cost a lot, and isn't hard to use), but they're going for buzzword compliance to try and get their gear on the merry-go-round.

 

[erich6]

 
so to summarize, MQA is a good thing for people who are obsessed with all the "time smearing" mumbo jumbo but don't want/can't use the actual highres flac file because they need to save some space. in effect the highest resolution and best "time smearing" solution will still be to simply use the high resolution PCM album or the DSD version(even if DSD doesn't add much over PCM highres because of all the stuff it needs to filter to get rid of the monstrous noise born from the stupid idea of making a 1bit format).
it's the glass half full or half empty. a 16/44 MQA could be said to be good compared to the same wave or flac 16/44 because it will help a few crappy low pass filters at such a rate. but compared to the actual PCM record that was used to generate the MQA 16/44, it's definitely a loss in resolution to save some space. so any talk of improved audio is 1337% nonsense as soon as we compare apples to apples.  it should be advertised as yet another streaming format and live it at that IMO. it's the only battle it's not immediately going to lose.
of course I expect a lot of remastered MQA albums, for the same reason it happened with DSD and DVD audio and highres in general. it will confuse the hell out of the average audiophile trusting his ears and failing to get that some sound differences will come from mastering and not from the "revolutionary" format.

 
All the MQA files I've downloaded or streamed seem to be 24 bits so I think they are preserving 16 bits and using the remaining 8 bits to store reconstruction and filter information for the higher resolution data.  The reason why I understand it may not be "exactly" like a CD version of the track (assuming both came from the same master) is because they are stripping high frequency auditory data (above 24 kHz I think) as well which I believe cannot really be perceived anyway.  I'm not sure what you mean by "16/44 MQA."
 
Nothing can beat the original recording if you want perfect fidelity.  However, perfect fidelity does not mean the best sound.  That's why good sound engineers and artists will work together to master the track by mixing the recording in a way that creates the best music.  Engineers and artists will master the music differently to tailor how it sounds once it is played back.  If done right, studios will commission engineers and artists to master music specifically for the medium and audio system it is intended to be played in.  But, there is no single standard for playback (different mediums like CD, digital files, vinyl and different playback systems like phones, computers, radios, dedicated systems, etc.) so studios generally do a single master and perhaps some tweak for each medium and that's it.  The concept of MQA is to "level the playing field" sort of speak by encoding the file with the information used to transmit the studio master to your ears as much as possible and then compensating for it (they don't quite get the entire chain as it doesn't account for differences in analog amplifiers, headphones, and speakers).  That's the concept at least and in practice I'm sure much will be less than ideal but I think it is a step in the right direction.  I see it fundamentally different than just a "blind" compression algorithm.
 
So, I agree MQA does not "improve" the studio master--it merely attempts to preserve it across a variable set of playback systems.  That said, it may be a better way to "package" that master than what we've had before.

 

[erich6]

 
about the remastering, fool me once, shame on you, fool me 10 times, shame on me. CD was supposed to be the final perfection, so much so that we ended up with people who would rather buy the absolute low resolution vinyl version just to avoid the loudness war. then came all sorts of highres media, all telling us how this time "fo'sho" it's the sound like the artist intended. turns out even the most famous CD vs highres paper got fooled and used highres albums that were in fact upsampled redbook sold as "high res". it's been like a poor running gag and keeps on running with each new system and each new online provider of highres wonders always ensuring us that they're not like the rest and they really care about offering a library of proper masters, traceability, etc. pono even came with it's very own signed highres files because "real music like the artist... blahblahblah". and soon enough people saw that some downloads were the same joke. and it's logical, you can't check 500 000 albums without trusting the guys providing them a little, and at best using some automation to check for the most obvious problems. nobody can really afford to be that one special snowflake that only takes the best of the best at all time. those who do that have a very very limited library and Meridian can't afford to do that if they aim at streaming, and if they were to remaster everything themselves, it would be streaming for year 2050. good will doesn't escape reality.

 
I agree with all of this.  It seems, however, that MQA has made it practical for the Warner label to republish its ENTIRE CATALOG in a few months.  That's a huge catalog and no small feat.  We will see how good this turns out but so far what I'm seeing on Tidal is very encouraging.  Could this all unravel? Sadly, history shows that it could.  However, in the past, the focus has been on the medium.  MQA is changing that focus, even if just a little, to the mastering and the signal chain.  That's a good thing.