DSD vs. PCM vs. MQA - Group listening experiment


Hi everyone,

So I just re-discovered the 2L website which has free samples of high resolution music.

I thought it would be worthwhile to ask the fans about the tracks here, specifically if there are any you feel are really good exemplars of why encoding scheme X is better or different than Y.

I just downloaded a bunch of Vivaldi and will share my own observations (and lack thereof) here.

As for me, file size matters so I'm going to try to stick to relatively similar file sizes when possible.

Best,


Erik
erik_squires
@jon2020

It was really odd.  I mean my ear lobes literally felt hot.  Like they'd been exposed to too much sun. :)  I've not tried to reproduce it, it may have had more to do with the recording than MQA.

Best,

Erik
Very interesting.....

If you didn’t sound so serious, I would have thought you were punking us. :)
But it does sound real and at the same time, surreal.......

@georgelofi Well, I'm pretty sure my karma is such that I'll die of some mental disorder, but I turned the music off before they were affected. :)

@jon2020 Like I said, the oddest thing. I've experienced this once before, but I think I attributed it to the speakers. This was a long time ago.  I should have given them a chance with different material. At the time I didn't think it was weird, but thought everyone must experience it too.... so I didn't make a note of it.

This time it happened with me in my living room, so I know it's not the speakers, unless the speaker's high bandwidth made something of the recording come through.

In any case, I'm saddened that I really don't seem to like the recordings over at 2L as much as I had hoped.

I'm going to download some DSD from Blue Coast Records to give my ears a thorough spa treatment. :)


Best,

Erik
To me DSD sucks, just SACD without the copyright.

Give me good uncompressed PCM (Redbook, DXD or DVD-A) converted with a well implemented Multibit dac with a well thought out I/V stage.

Cheers George