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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
erik_squires OP
16,011 posts
 
I'm sorry, Phil Collins and Talking Heads are lost to us forever.
in_shore's avatar
in_shore
596 posts
 
Hi Erik ,.Check out Yarlung Records technics for recording , I have listened to much of what they offer and it is stupendous,,..All of it  

vinyl , hi res down load and their CDs . Minimalist microphone recording technics put on tape and none of the music is done in a studio ,.i would be surprised if MQA or any other technic could better Yarlung and others using simular methods .
don_c55
1,025 posts
 
MQA will flop IMO!
sevs
301 posts
 
Thank you guys, please keep this thread updated! I am eager to go all-digital but for now Vinyl sounds superior to my old ears
erik_squires OP
16,011 posts
 
I should have posted my experience so far. I compared the 96/24 and MQA tracks for the two songs uner this listing at

www.2L.no/hires

Vivaldi: Recitative and Aria from Cantata RV 679, "Che giova il sospirar, povero core"
Tone Wik & Barokkanerne (period instruments)

I chose 96/24 and MQA because (for each song) they were roughly the same byte size. I used my streamer to let me switch back and forth pretty quickly between tracks.

Honestly the biggest problem was just the treble. Ugh, very hard for me to listen to. It was congested and microphones were placed too close to the sources for me Still, I could hear NO difference at all in the two formats.

So far I agree with Peter McGowan of PS Audio that it’s value, if any, is "meh"

I plan to listen to better tracks, but part of the problem is, the best MQA examples are going to have to be remixes, so it's almost impossible to do an apples to apples comparison and know where changes (if any) are coming from. The reason is that MQA works best when you go back to the multitrack masters, and separately de-blur (and I use the term for lack of knowing if it does anything) each track, then remix.  Well, most engineers don't take such careful notes, or settings that they can precisely reproduce their choices again and again, especially when they are making dozens of changes on the fly in an hour.  It is possible that a mix-down tool could keep track of all this, but I haven't heard of such being used.

Best,

Erik
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