Any News on MQA Lately?

Hi @ptss You asked a question I did not fully answer.

How is MQA superior (significantly) to HDCD

At least on spec, HDCD compresses dynamic range, in addition to providing other frequency dependent tools. That is, the equivalent of more bits in a CD.

MQA attempts to pack a 384k/24 signal into 48k/24 and improve the overall fidelity by carefully matched de-blurring filters on the AD and DA process. So it's benefits are to file/stream size as well as fidelity.

However, this is all specmanship. Sadly I have heard no improvement in MQA recordings, and don't have an HDCD capable player either so I am unable to render a subjective comparison. It kind of bugs me that there isn't an HDCD software decoder for me to use. :)

Best,

Erik 

Lots of great info here, thank you everyone for what has been contributed.

In my travels, one of the audio salesmen I encountered said that "remasters" oftentimes were the reason why newer versions of the same old music sounded better, especially when they could go back to the old "analog" tape.  If that is true, I suspect what he's saying is that going from the original analog multi-track source to the now new original digital would make that conversion much better (with a newer analog to digital converter in the path).  He also said that starting out with original multi-track digital source, to digital master could also be an improvement, but (in his opinion), not as much of an improvement as starting out with an analog multi-track source in the first place.

Thinking of MQA, I'm guess something similar applies?  If the engineer can mount an original analog multi-track tape and master from there, the first analog to digital conversion would have the advantages of MQA, with the "de-blurring" happening there?  Would there be some sort of similar MQA benefit when the original multi-track recording was itself a digital source?

Hi ejr,

Yes, this was a big problem when DSD first came out. The DSD versions were noticeably different in energy across the audible frequency spectrum. It can also happen in reverse. As Bob Carver advertised, a lot of early CD's were heavily compressed, not just in dynamic range but also stereo separation compared to LPs. A lot of the "bad sound" of digital could be directly attributed to really bad mastering engineering and practices.

We also tend to hear any difference as improvement. Much like haircuts. :)

So the idea is to compensate for the original A/D step. This is done by measuring the blurring of the AD converter itself, and then applying a compensating algorithm to the Digital multi-track masters. As far as i know, the process for going from analog to digital is to first convert each track individually to digital. So whether or not we start from analog or digital doesn't really affect the process.

Only after multi-track masters are fully digitized can re-mastering begin.

Of course, some recordings are far simpler. A lot of great 1950-1960 orchestral recordings were multi-track, but by multi we mean 3.

Best,

Erik

Thanks for your feedback Erik. I shouldn't have made any comparison to HDCD as it was not designed to facilitate transmission by reducing file size. My only experience with HDCD is with Reference Recordings,which I've enjoyed.As I think more about this topic I foresee less need for MQA as I feel download speeds will make it less relevant. 

Got an email from Tidal this morning, they are rolling out the first MQA streaming on their desktop app (I presume they don't support it with the browser version).  They are branding this "TIDAL Masters".

I have a PS Audio DirectStream DAC, which from what I read doesn't do well with MQA.  So this weekend I'll make my way down to my local shop and see what MQA sounds like with the Explorer2 DAC...for $199 worth getting one, to see what all the fuss is about MQA.