MQA Sounds Really Good!

[Listen!]

If a DAC maker charges a 400% premium promising better sound quality, and measurements show it performs like any other good DAC you don't need listening tests. If some listeners insist it sounds better, then you can blind test the two in order to determine if there is a perceptible difference. Is it meant to stop discussion? You bet. Because if you let uncontrolled sighted listening impressions be your standard you'll never reach a conclusion because the sound quality isn't the source of the differences much of the time.

So I don't understand about it all being a matter of choice. It is a matter of choice, but why insist on inconvenient or more expensive methods if they don't offer anything extra except the illusion of choice?

It simply is an inconsistent attitude if not ALL perceptional sound quality differences are ruled out by the 'golden standard' ABX test method. Either use it all the time for every variable or do not use it selectively as soon as the discussion is getting difficult or not pleasing to your mindset.

 

[Blumlein 88]

It simply is an inconsistent attitude if not ALL perceptional sound quality differences are ruled out by the 'golden standard' ABX test method. Either use it all the time for every variable or do not use it selectively as soon as the discussion is getting difficult or not pleasing to your mindset.

Your comments indicate you don't understand the method. Firstly, it does not, nor is intended to rule out sound quality differences. So you don't even understand how it is used. We don't have to be straight jacketed into using any particular method at all times because depending upon what is being investigated it isn't the best way to proceed. Yet that doesn't mean it is used selectively because it isn't pleasing. You are operating under some kind of idea of what all this is about which is incorrectly drawn in your mind from what I can tell of your comments.

 

[Listen!]

Your comments indicate you don't understand the method. Firstly, it does not, nor is intended to rule out sound quality differences. So you don't even understand how it is used. We don't have to be straight jacketed into using any particular method at all times because depending upon what is being investigated it isn't the best way to proceed. Yet that doesn't mean it is used selectively because it isn't pleasing. You are operating under some kind of idea of what all this is about which is incorrectly drawn in your mind from what I can tell of your comments.

So do not use the argument ABX testing thenI would say

 

[RayDunzl]

So do not use the argument ABX testing thenI would say

So...

If somebody says "this measures better than that" you can, perhaps, point to data.

If somebody says "this sounds better than that" - then what?

Yes it does!
No it doesn't!
Does!
Doesn't!

Take a vote?

???

 

[Blumlein 88]

So do not use the argument ABX testing thenI would say

You've obviously got a bee in your bonnet about ABX. You might try and understand its uses. So I'm guessing you have some idea about something that ABX testing didn't agree with so you assume it was wrong. Care to fill in the details?

 

[Listen!]

I just want to see a consistent attitude during all discussions when it is related to sound quality and ABX testing. There is enough material available on the internet which will degrade any valuation of an electronic product or music format to nothing. You will for sure know Brent Butterworth:

https://hometheaterreview.com/why-do-audiophiles-fear-abx-testing/

http://www.brentbutterworth.com/bluetooth-blind-test.html

But still, for me and my experience, or belief system, I judge the sound quality of MQA better than HD or SD and even the recording and mastering engineer of 2L shares this opinion ;-)

 

[solderdude]

I would love to find out more about this and at which treshold we are capable to define resolution with our ears during blind ABX test

There are 2 ways to find this out.
Read all info you can find on both 'camps' and form an opinion based on other peoples tests / opinions / conclusions.
Or... perform some tests yourself and see what your thresholds are with actual music recordings on your system.
Just be sure you are using the right transducers and capable gear and the conditions are good enough.

I went for the latter and accidentally also included the 'long term I have to get used to it' test.
Once you know for yourself you will find little interest in arguing about this subject.
I really don't mind if my hearing is sub-par to that of others or if they are capable of hearing much more than me nor do I wish to teach myself what to look for and be annoyed about it when I (think) I hear it.

Test yourself... and verify you have tested correctly.

The problem with MQA is that there is no way for sure we know we are dealing with the exact same master that hasn't had a single change other than be encoded/decoded differently. This is because MQA does not allow scrutiny this way.

When the MQA recordings have better (re-mastering) for instance I am all for it.
That is what inmproves SQ. Not the method, as is claimed.

One can always record the analog output of a fully MQA expanded recording and put it in any format one likes so one can enjoy the better master (if there is) and not need MQA capable DACs.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I just want to see a consistent attitude during all discussions when it is related to sound quality and ABX testing. There is enough material available on the internet which will degrade any valuation of an electronic product or music format to nothing. You will for sure know Brent Butterworth:

https://hometheaterreview.com/why-do-audiophiles-fear-abx-testing/

http://www.brentbutterworth.com/bluetooth-blind-test.html

But still, for me and my experience, or belief system, I judge the sound quality of MQA better than HD or SD and even the recording and mastering engineer of 2L shares this opinion ;-)

I don't see much of what Mr. Butterworth wrote to disagree with. It also doesn't seem to fit with your comments.

I also don't see the connection with your last sentence. I've no idea of how the 2L person arrived at his opinion. If it was thru uncontrolled listening, then I've little more regard for it than anyone else. One of my complaints about MQA is the lack of transparency with giving us samples that are otherwise unaltered regular PCM and MQA treatment of the same. 2L samples are about the only game in town.

Did you arrive at your opinion of MQA thru sighted uncontrolled listening? Did you at least match levels?

 

[Listen!]

I don't see much of what Mr. Butterworth wrote to disagree with. It also doesn't seem to fit with your comments.

I also don't see the connection with your last sentence. I've no idea of how the 2L person arrived at his opinion. If it was thru uncontrolled listening, then I've little more regard for it than anyone else. One of my complaints about MQA is the lack of transparency with giving us samples that are otherwise unaltered regular PCM and MQA treatment of the same. 2L samples are about the only game in town.

Did you arrive at your opinion of MQA thru sighted uncontrolled listening? Did you at least match levels?

I arrived to MQA like I did with all the 'stuff' I purchased for my stereo system at home, just like 99,999% of all audiophiles do: read articles and reviews, visit friends and audio shops and hifi events. Test new gear before buying it and compare with the older gear present in my system. Then decide to purchase and enjoy it. Now I am researching MQA just for fun, inspired by the controversy around it, but open-minded and curious. Based on Amir's review and tests and after a listening session in my home, I decided to upgrade from BlueOS to Matrix Element-X and now I am able to compare all stereo formats flac, even 16x DSD, DXD and MQA and again I experience that MQA sounds best. During my research, I discovered this old video regarding what is left of the 24 or 16 bit of resolution at the end of the pipe: our loudspeakers. I find this very revealing and worthwhile to find out more. I would love to see reviews in which this statement is being confirmed or rejected:

From 10: 35 to 11: 30 Bob Stuart during his Meridian period, explains this:

" If you got 24 bit of resolution going into a loudspeaker, you need at least 16 bit of resolution from the cabinet. Most company speakers, if you measure them, they have about 6 bits of resolution, because there is so much extra sound coming of the walls of the loudspeaker, right? Really, the only sound we want to hear is what is coming out of the drive units themselves."

 

[KozmoNaut]

I arrived to MQA like I did with all the 'stuff' I purchased for my stereo system at home, just like 99,999% of all audiophiles do: read articles and reviews, visit friends and audio shops and hifi events.

In other words, you were swayed by subjective opinions and marketing. That's fine, just be honest about it.

The simple fact is that the majority of these subjectively experienced differences vanish the instant they are subjected to objective testing. This is where MQA especially plays a dirty trick. There is absolutely no way to do an objective test of their format, because it is proprietary, locked down and protected by NDAs and a legal team ready to sue anyone who divulges this "sensitive" information. You don't know what kind of processing, EQ, filtering and other changes they do to the files you send them, thus you cannot ensure that a comparison involving MQA is fair.

MQA and their proponents are telling everyone "trust us, there is a difference, which we can't show you or prove to you in any way, but it's absolutely there". When people say things like that, any rational person should immediately become deeply suspicious of their intentions.

It is not up to us to disprove the merits of the format. It is up to the proponents to prove the merits, and so far they have been completely unable to, or possibly completely unwilling to, because they don't want people to see how the sausage is made.

That should, yet again, arise very deep suspicion of their intentions.

I may seem a little harsh when I say this, but it needs to be said: Proprietary formats and standards are a cancer upon the world.

 

[Blumlein 88]

snippage..............
During my research, I discovered this old video regarding what is left of the 24 or 16 bit of resolution at the end of the pipe: our loudspeakers. I find this very revealing and worthwhile to find out more. I would love to see reviews in which this statement is being confirmed or rejected:

From 10: 35 to 11: 30 Bob Stuart during his Meridian period, explains this:

" If you got 24 bit of resolution going into a loudspeaker, you need at least 16 bit of resolution from the cabinet. Most company speakers, if you measure them, they have about 6 bits of resolution, because there is so much extra sound coming of the walls of the loudspeaker, right? Really, the only sound we want to hear is what is coming out of the drive units themselves."

I think equating speakers with bits of resolution is a daft approach, but I can see his point. Plenty of good sturdy speakers are not letting that much out of the cabinet walls though some cheaper ones do. I've thought for quite some time (and the idea isn't originally mine) that we need a rigid cabinet to hear only the drivers. Even then you could say almost no speakers are better than 8 to 10 bits if you want to use the bits measure. You'll run into peculiarities that way however. Like clearly hearing added noise 12 bits below the music level if its added. The reason being even with some non-linearity only 50 db down other parts of the spectrum can be heard lower than that. A raw bit level of resolution isn't the right tool for the job on characterizing speakers. It is an oft misleading way of characterizing many things if you aren't given other information to go with it.

 

[Wombat]

Rigidity raises cabinet excitation frequencies. Mass lowers them. Bracing can increase stiffness and break-up vibration nodes. Controlled-layer damping can reduce vibration.

Smaller cabs are easier to design in this regard.

I can remember the big concrete enclosure designs of the 50s and 60s.

 

[Eirikur]

Not really. There is at least $20 in royalties in Blu-ray format. And has been from day one and only increasing after that with other claims. Not seeing consumers avoid that format. Or DVD before it which had over $10 license fee. Or MPEG-2 used in just about every video product with $2.50 license/copy.

Apple charges a hefty license for any audio accessory that plugs into iPhone/ipad/ipod. When they used DRM, they would not license it to a soul. Yet millions and millions of people bought content in their format.

We (Microsoft) led the effort to reduce such fees by getting licensing for H.264/MEPG-4 AVC to be a few cents with a yearly cap. It was never done before but we managed to influence the MPEG LA patent pool to do that. This was an exception as otherwise you are dealing with cartels in audio/video fora which get together, create a format replete with patented technology, force it down everyone's throat due to their dominance in the market, and then charge basically what they want for it. And consumers go along with such huge fees without any riots in streets.

MP3 had licensing fee. The decoder was not expensive but encoder was. We paid tens of millions of dollars to license the encoder for Windows so we did not have to pay copy (which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars).

Dolby Digital/AC-3 has not only fees, but strict draconian terms like if you bought one piece of software on a PC that had it in there, you had to pay for it again in another piece of software on the same computer! The licensee had to make sure to lock it down, and make sure there are no open interfaces for any other software to use.

And of course DTS codec was allowed to be in the format too requiring equipment to license both competing technologies. Heck on the video side, a licensee pays for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 for the same player. The same patent used in each codec gets paid for three times in a row!

So I do know how dark motives in audio/video industry get. It would get some drug deals look good!

You guys complaining about MQA have no idea who dirty this pool game usually is. And go along with using products built this way times a factor of 1000.

Aw man, summed up like this it's a miracle any of us can sleep at night...

So, agreed when it comes to price. We let ourselves been duped over and over and just pay the ferryman lest we're left to wander the barren earthly shores - although actually, isn't Orpheus on our side? Perhaps better to seek him out than pay the self-proclaimed gods to enter the uncertainty of the underworld

 

[Listen!]

In other words, you were swayed by subjective opinions and marketing. That's fine, just be honest about it.

The simple fact is that the majority of these subjectively experienced differences vanish the instant they are subjected to objective testing. This is where MQA especially plays a dirty trick. There is absolutely no way to do an objective test of their format, because it is proprietary, locked down and protected by NDAs and a legal team ready to sue anyone who divulges this "sensitive" information. You don't know what kind of processing, EQ, filtering and other changes they do to the files you send them, thus you cannot ensure that a comparison involving MQA is fair.

MQA and their proponents are telling everyone "trust us, there is a difference, which we can't show you or prove to you in any way, but it's absolutely there". When people say things like that, any rational person should immediately become deeply suspicious of their intentions.

It is not up to us to disprove the merits of the format. It is up to the proponents to prove the merits, and so far they have been completely unable to, or possibly completely unwilling to, because they don't want people to see how the sausage is made.

That should, yet again, arise very deep suspicion of their intentions.

I may seem a little harsh when I say this, but it needs to be said: Proprietary formats and standards are a cancer upon the world.

So you purchase you gear and choose music formats using a DBT..?

 

[Listen!]

In other words, you were swayed by subjective opinions and marketing. That's fine, just be honest about it.

The simple fact is that the majority of these subjectively experienced differences vanish the instant they are subjected to objective testing. This is where MQA especially plays a dirty trick. There is absolutely no way to do an objective test of their format, because it is proprietary, locked down and protected by NDAs and a legal team ready to sue anyone who divulges this "sensitive" information. You don't know what kind of processing, EQ, filtering and other changes they do to the files you send them, thus you cannot ensure that a comparison involving MQA is fair.

MQA and their proponents are telling everyone "trust us, there is a difference, which we can't show you or prove to you in any way, but it's absolutely there". When people say things like that, any rational person should immediately become deeply suspicious of their intentions.

It is not up to us to disprove the merits of the format. It is up to the proponents to prove the merits, and so far they have been completely unable to, or possibly completely unwilling to, because they don't want people to see how the sausage is made.

That should, yet again, arise very deep suspicion of their intentions.

I may seem a little harsh when I say this, but it needs to be said: Proprietary formats and standards are a cancer upon the world.

All MQA says is to trust what you hear and judge it as such. The technology behind it is sophisticated and not easy to understand completely. The bonus is, that the record companies who use it, are indeed cleaning up their storage rooms to search for provenance and authenticate their best available masters. No more upsampled versions, but the authentic stuff.

 

[Listen!]

I think equating speakers with bits of resolution is a daft approach, but I can see his point. Plenty of good sturdy speakers are not letting that much out of the cabinet walls though some cheaper ones do. I've thought for quite some time (and the idea isn't originally mine) that we need a rigid cabinet to hear only the drivers. Even then you could say almost no speakers are better than 8 to 10 bits if you want to use the bits measure. You'll run into peculiarities that way however. Like clearly hearing added noise 12 bits below the music level if its added. The reason being even with some non-linearity only 50 db down other parts of the spectrum can be heard lower than that. A raw bit level of resolution isn't the right tool for the job on characterizing speakers. It is an oft misleading way of characterizing many things if you aren't given other information to go with it.

It shows the relativity of our desire for better quality. At the end of the chain, the analog reality is what we listen and what defines the overall resolution of a system and the room in which it is used.

 

[solderdude]

So you purchase you gear and choose music formats using a DBT..?

That's a weird conclusion

 

[KozmoNaut]

So you purchase you gear and choose music formats using a DBT..?

This discussion is about audio codecs, not various gear, so yes I absolutely test every codec before using it.

It is so easy to ABX codecs using freely available software, everyone should try it.

All MQA says is to trust what you hear and judge it as such. The technology behind it is sophisticated and not easy to understand completely. The bonus is, that the record companies who use it, are indeed cleaning up their storage rooms to search for provenance and authenticate their best available masters. No more upsampled versions, but the authentic stuff.

Again, you have to trust that MQA is telling the honest truth, because you have absolutely no way of verifying their claims. I don't care if anyone says the technology is "sophisticated and not easy to understand", you might as well tell me it's magic. I want to see for myself and make my own judgement based on clear specs and test data.

MQA doesn't want that. Don't you wonder why that is?

 

[watchnerd]

So you purchase you gear and choose music formats using a DBT..?

When it comes to choosing digital formats -- yes, I use DBT.

And after I did digital DBT, I use HD when I have it, anyway, for paranoid and placebo reasons.

 

[600lbs of Sin]

Learned something new about MQA. As I continue to evaluate MQA I noticed one of the albums on my play list is labeled MQA Studio. Most I come across are listed as MQA. Fyi, here is the said distinction along with a link. I'm interested if this adds anything to the discussion.

Provenance
Provenance and technical standards are completely different things. A music file can be altered after artist release, irrespective of the technology used. Provenance is indicated when MQA is played back.

• The MQA ‘Studio’ (blue light) gives confirmation directly from mastering engineers, producers or artists to their listeners. MQA Studio authenticates that the sound you are hearing is exactly as played in the studio when the music was completed and, by implication, that this is also the definitive version of the recording at that point in time.
• A second level, ‘MQA’ (green light) is available to indicate that although the stream is genuine, provenance may be uncertain or that it is not yet the final release.

http://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/mqa-authentication-and-quality/#