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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
jon2020's avatar
jon2020
986 posts
 
Before anyone downloads the Aurender MQA software, you may like to consider whether you can switch in and out of the decoder at will to allow for comparison. At the moment, I don’t yet see that option. I can’tell be sure if "Enable MQA unfolding" is a pure switch in and out once the software is downloaded. This issue would be moot for MQA dac owners.


I have brought home a full MQA Meridian 808v6 player in the past for a home audition and comparing an MQA file played through it with a non-MQA version played through my Esoteric non-MQA dac, I found that the MQA file sounded softer and darker overall with significant blunting of transients.


lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,503 posts
 
@jon2020,

Aurender owners have an option to enable/disabled MQA Core Decoder within the Conductor app. From what I heard so far, the decoder is staying enabled.
jon2020's avatar
jon2020
986 posts
 
@lalitk 

Aurender owners have an option to enable/disabled MQA Core Decoder within the Conductor app. From what I heard so far, the decoder is staying enabled.

Does this mean it cannot be disabled?
lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,503 posts
 
@jon2020,

Yes, it can be disabled.  
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
lalitk876 postsYes, it can be disabled.

In the $5.5K Aurender A10, MQA did switched off, but part of the MQA’s filtering remained active in the Stereophile tests when measuring/playing non MQA files, and no different firmwares fixed the problem. The filters that remained hobbled the non MQA sound for the worse.

One must ask the question, is this done on purpose? to make MQA look/sound good compared to non MQA??

Cheers George
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