How Is MQA Fareing?

Here's another man's opinion. Note: Very long


      http://iar-80.com/page170.html

@jon2020

Good article, the author seems to be without a strong technical background (gets a few things wrong or confused and some misunderstandings) but overall a good critique with solid concerns about MQA. A bit wordy. TLDR.

Here is a technical summary in short version:

MQA is all hand waving BS and has absolutely no sound technical basis. It consists of manipulation of the audio file to give up some bit depth (loss of about 6 bits resolution) in exchange for a higher sample rate (a portion of higher sample rate data is buried in the lost bit depth data). Lots of hand waving to say that this is a beneficial trade off which is dubious as the greater bit depth has proven benefits (dynamic range) and the benefits of ultra high frequency stuff is useless or dubious at best. As anyone can see - you are almost certainly better off without this lossy form of compression.

For most part all those have access to MQA files, continues to enjoy the enhanced resolution.

Ever since I bought the Vault 2, I have come to appreciate the MQA recordings in direct comparison with their redbook counterparts.

Tidal resolution as is very good, consider MQA files are bonus and taste of what’s about to come in next year or so when HD Tracks and hopefully others starts to stream high resolution files.

We can compare or judge the merits MQA files when we have high resolution streaming available from other resources, until then just enjoy!

This is a very interesting conversation. The objective analysis from the articles cited above as well as writings by Andreas Koch (Playback Designs) and others are very convincing to me. At the NY stereo show, I heard a comparison of a few tracks of hi-res v MQA  (via headphones) and had a hard time telling the difference. But there was background noise and I figured I'd leave a comparison to another day. I attended a presentation by Peter McGrath at Innovative Audio using Wilson Alexia v2s and D'Agostino electronics. Peter is one whose ears I and many others trust implicitly. He played an orchestral piece which he said was MQA'd by Meridian especially for him. It was clearly better in every way than what I recollect was a hi-rez file for comparison. The difference was so apparent and so huge, it was shocking. 
It occurred to me that something other than MQA was utilized to make the MQA sample sound so much better on this custom made track.
My mind says no to MQA for many reasons including the fact that it is lossy and claims to be master quality authenticated when it seems to me that it would be difficult if not impossible to recreate and reverse engineer the attributes of an A/D converter and entire recording chain when the converter and chain are, in many cases unknown and/or no longer exist. My ears said yes on that one occasion. I need to hear many more track comparisons before I buy in to the MQA format which just happens to be another opportunity for record companies who adopt it as a new standard to sell us the same music once again.   

+1jon2020
Thanks for posting this article. It is a great read.