2. digital
  3. 125560-20253

MQA - One Filter to Rule them All?

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I'd start another flame....er, discussion. I've been reading some about MQA.  It has several components, but I want to focus on one in particular. The digital filter compensation.

The other two parts are compression and authentication.

We don't have a lot of DAC's to listen to with MQA right now, but here's my understanding.

By measuring time or amplitude errors in ADC's AND DAC's MQA seeks to correct the behavior, making the entire A/D --> D/A chain closer to ideal. It's pretty ambitious. What I'm wondering is, assuming this is real and not snake oil, does this mean all MQA DAC's will begin to sound alike? Will otherwise mediocre DAC's step up, and great DAC's not have that much to contribute anymore?

If so, maybe this will usher in another great era of tone controls being built into our preamps or DAC's instead of having to make tonal changes via cables and tweaks.

What say you? Assuming MQA is not snake oil, (could be, haven't heard it) doesn't it mean all DAC's will sound the same?

Best,


Erik
erik_squires
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,588 posts
 
I believe Meridian has a $399 MQA Dac and a $22,000 MQA player.  I doubt they sound the same.
erik_squires OP
16,056 posts
 
@tomcy6 I wonder. ;)  Im far too jaded to believe in price being completely tied to performance.

Good to know about a bargain player. 

thanks!!
terry9
2,333 posts
 
Any electronic device still needs passive components (LRC). That means lots of room for quality or lack thereof. So yes, there will still be an opportunity for costlier units to sound better.

mike_in_nc
1,147 posts
 
I'm with Schiit. We don't need another format, especially one controlled by one commercial company. We don't need another codec that will alter recordings so that they can be decoded in full resolution only by a proprietary decoder.
erik_squires OP
16,056 posts
 
@mike_in_nc

Good points.  I'm still waiting to see if there will be an open-source alternative. To my knowledge, you cannot patent or copyright decoding, or a format. You can patent your specific code, but you cannot, for instance, prevent some one from writing a Zip, Jpeg,  MPEG or MP3 decoder. I may be wrong on this, please don't take this as sound legal advice.

It's quite possible that if the benefits of MQA are real, we'll see just such things. If nothing else, the promise of compressing my current music collection to half it's size and being able to take it along on my portable is a very nice thing.



More to discover