MQA - One Filter to Rule them All?

According to what I read online, yes, Mytek did in fact submit the DAC’s for approval, or measurement or whatever. I’m not sure how it works, or what exactly they must measure. It sounds like a pain in the butt honestly. I doubt every applicant has the same or appropriate measurement devices, so this must mean that Mytek has to submit the DAC somehow, get Meridian to measure it, and provide refreshed code or coefficients, have those implemented, and re-measure. What a mess.

I'm not sure how this measurement thing goes back-forth between the OEM & Meridian but it certainly has the connotation of "one filter to rule them all" & I am certain that no OEM wants to be under Meridian's thumb no matter how brilliant their idea. It certainly exudes the feeling of Meridian is in judgement's chair while all the other "lowly" OEMs submit their designs to Meridian for (the master's) approval. This can be demeaning - which is the vibe I got off Schitt's website (I'm not going to manuf my devices & have Meridian tell me what I can & cannot do!)
But there are many smaller OEMs that could benefit from this in that they could use MQA-compatibility as a marketing tool to get better sales. We've seen this before - a smaller OEM latches onto a larger OEM's bandwagon & rides the tide with them.

It may even be possible MQA decoding will be build into streamers, so you can configure your steamer and say "My DAC uses an AKxxxx chip" and voila. Then you could be all Schiit happy and have MQA. On the other hand, once the type of benefit is known (if any), maybe an open-source DAC adapter will be written which can provide at least the proper de-coding adjustment.  That is, if Meridian is measuring something like a pre-ringing filter, adjusting for that in the stream could be done by others without stealing their code, just the idea.

Now this would be the way to go, if Meridian was going to be smart about it. Make it available for free (pretty much like Android OS. I realize that Android OS is not totally free but they give you enough incentive to use such that Android phone far outnumber iOS phones) & encourage as many people to adopt it as possible. If the OEM wants to be MQA-compatible then they download & implement Meridian's software & pay them the royalty fees; otherwise not. This way Meridian is not checking everybody's DAC designs. Can you imagine how large this overhead is going to be for Meridian?? Can they even afford it?

After the Alpha with MQA comes out maybe i’ll find a fellow San Francisco Bay audiophile to bring it and compare though.

yeah, curious minds want to know the outcome..... ;-)

Right now I am just hoping for construction to finish so I can finish breaking in the Brooklyn. :)

indeed it's good to keep things simple & 1st things, first.....

@erik_squires

I consider HDCD a cautionary tale. It received similar over-the-top press when it was introduced. However, Pacific Microsonics now is out of business (bought by Microsoft), and there are no HDCD hardware decoders available. I believe those were always in a DAC chip, and since DAC quality has improved since the HDCD days, even using NOS HDCD DAC chips (if available) in current products would be a poor idea.

A non-proprietary software decoder does exist and is built into (e.g.) JRiver Media Center. It is not a success. From discussions on the JRiver forums, it's clear that no one knows how to use the public-domain decoder to figure out which HDCD features are needed on any particular recording.

Smaller storage requirements are always nice (one reason I wish some real research on DSD would be done, so we'd know how to get the good parts of DSD sound from a reasonably efficient format). Still, storage is getting smaller and cheaper, and to my ears, high-rate mp3 is indistinguishable from lossless encoding, except on a high-quality audio system in a quiet location.

Have I stated enough heresies for one morning?

@mike_in_nc

No heresies.  I remember HDCD, there was also a Windows decoder, which I once thought about reverse engineering and converting to Java, or C for Linux but lost interest. :) It actually decompiled fairly nicely.  I believe Microsoft ended up with the HDCD license (lots of good it did them) and that's how the decoder came about.

I don't remember over-the-top reviews. Where there any?

I'm not sure what the lesson is except that you can only tell a fad in retrospect. :) The same could be said for SACD and yet the format remains.

MQA does have the undeniably useful feature of compression, even if we ignore all the sonic claims. I think that one way or another, their view on how to compress audio will remain relevant for years to come. Whether it lives on in a proprietary format or in open source formats remains to be seen.  Technology, specifically bandwidth and storage, may have moved onto the point that it has become irrelevant.  20 years ago, MQA compression would have been a godsend and could have saved high end music from the MP3 era. 

Best,


Erik

@erik_squires

My memory is that Stereophile was extremely enthusiastic about HDCD at the time. Their online archive doesn't go back far enough for me to see if my memory is right.

Meridian also introduced MLP, Meridian Lossless Packing, which became an optional standard for DVD-audio. I would prefer that new codecs be lossless and reversible.

OK, I just gave up on MQA. Stereophile's latest article starts with such shameless hyperbole that it's gone off into the land of cold-fusion, dark energy reactors, and healing cancer with magnets.

It's not like I didn't know Stereophile has to make a buck to stay in business, but this level of bs is higher than my waders. I can't be polite and smile anymore.

Now I'm going to go try to do some DSD streaming and see if I find a compelling reason to eat up all my hard disk space with DSD downloads.

Best,

Erik