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MQA•Foolish New Algorithm? Vote!

Vote please. Simply yes or no. Let’s get a handle on our collective thinking.
The discussions are getting nauseating. Intelligent(?) People are claiming that they can remove part of the music (digits), encode the result for transport over the net, then decode (reassemble) the digits remaining after transportation (reduced bits-only the unnecessary ones removed) to provide “Better” sound than the original recording.
If you feel this is truly about “better sound” - vote Yes.
If you feel this is just another effort by those involved to make money by helping the music industry milk it’s collection of music - vote no.
Lets know what we ‘goners’ think.
P.S. imho The “bandwidth” problem this is supposed to ‘help’ with will soon be nonexistent. Then this “process” will be a ‘solution’ to a non existing problem. I think it is truly a tempest in a teacup which a desperate industry would like to milk for all its worth, and forget once they can find a new way to dress the Emporer. Just my .02

ptss
gdnrbob
4,447 posts
 
If I recall correctly, the MQA provided by Tidal is only a 'partial' decoding.
You have to buy into whole MQA system in order to get the full 'benefit'.
Hence, my post equating it with Dolby.
B
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,232 posts
 
Have not heard and compared, but it is a lossy compressed format which by definition means less accurate than original.

So that alone seems like a step in the opposite direction in regards to at least the accuracy of the sound.

Of course the most accurate sound does not necessarily mean "best sounding" so there are lots of other digital processing tricks that might be played to make things sound better, even with less accurate data to start. It sounds like the highest frequencies are being transformed in a lossy manner in this case. So trained younger ears might be better equipped to distinguish than older, if audible at all. Kinda like a Trojan Horse perhaps in practice. Most will probably never notice a difference even if there is one.







georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

THIS IS BS!!!! STOP ALL VOTING!!

THIS THREAD SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN AND RESTARTED PROPERLY, AS IT COULD DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.

AS THE TITLE OF THE THREAD IS IN DIRECT OPPOSITION TO THE "YES" "NO" VOTING CRITERIA IN THE POST, DEPENDING HOW ONE READS IT

kalali1,033 posts03-06-2018 12:27amAll I can say is an MQA version of an album sounds better than a non-MQA version of the same album. Same system same volume.
Be very careful how you conduct MQA vs Non MQA A/B’s on the same unit, as it was found that on the new $5.5K Aurender, that some of the MQA filtering was still on, and "hobbled" non MQA albums. This was still the case even after getting numerous new firmware’s to fix it.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/aurender-a10-network-music-playerserver

Cheers George
randyhat
156 posts
 
@mapman 

Exactly.  EVERYTHING in the audio reproduction chain is lossless.  We pick our favorite flavors.
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 
george, point taken. My very simple comparison method was streaming both MQA and non-MQA versions of the same album from Tidal through my Bluesound Node2. Not very scientific but the best I could do. Whatever they do, the music just sounds a little more detailed. Not saying night and day but incrementally better to my ears.  I do however agree this thread is a bit useless in terms of content (and context).
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