MQA - Music Discussion


This thread is to discuss MQA music currently available, listening impressions, and how they were encoded.

Please keep tech. talk (except provenance) out of this discussion! :) This thread is about finding good music sources, listening impressions, and mastering. There is a lot to be said about the algorithms, hype, and politics but please use other threads for that in the Digital section perhaps. :) 

I'll start.  I know right now of only two big labels offering MQA:

2L.no (maybe only test tracks)

and

https://www.highresaudio.com/studio_master.php?fids=153&cr=MQA

as well as at least one indie label. Thanks to Peter Veth over in the DAR thread here:

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/08/mqa-a-non-hostile-takeover/#comment-135610

I'm particularly interested in talking about works we can find to do A/B comparisons with, as well as any tracks listeners feel are exemplars and say "This is good stuff!"  because so far I've had no luck at all.

As others know, the thing that has so far affected music the most is the mastering choices made by the engineers, as opposed to actual encoding technology, so I welcome details of that along with listening impressions.

Thank you.
erik_squires
Okay, this is something I wasn't familiar with. They used MQA to correct for the A/D error in the original. It is offered as a Hi-Res.  Interesting because I expected that recordings sould be offered as MQA but I didn't expect an MQA "remix"



Yes, correcting for errors at input and end part of the cycle is how they claim MQA sounds better They have a "generic" mode when you don’t have access to the original A/D to measure though, so it IS possible to take a Redbook CD track, MQA it and have the MQA light turn on, but in theory it’s not as good as being able to go back to the source knowing the characteristics of the A/D converters.

Where it gets further very difficult is that to do this the most accurate way you should apply MQA fixes to EACH source track, not the 2 channel mix down. You have to correct the multi-track originals, and then remix THAT to get a new 2-channel mix down. So there is no guarantee anymore that the recording master has taken exactly the same settings. This is why I think HDT is calling it a "remix."

So...

Since this is a highly regarded recording (To Die For), I plan to purchase each version and do the comparison. My hearing isn't what it used to be and my system isn't as resolving as I would like but I have been interested in acquiring different versions of the same recording for this very purpose.

44.1/16
192/24
192/24 MQA Remix

But as you say, there's no guarantee the mix down will have te same settings. Your thoughts?

Well, not sure I"d buy EVERY copy, but treat the re-mix as a remix as opposed to an A/B comparison.  If you've ever heard say, the John Coltrane remix, you may have heard how different it sounded from the original CD release, which has nothing to do with sampling rates.

Best,


Erik