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Have you actually heard a MQA file...or should I just chalk you up in MQA haters club 😉
" - lalitk
I listened to a few Norah Jones tracks on a system that I was told were generated with MQA source files. I couldn't hear anything remarkable about them. I have most of her catalog on CD and am very familiar with her music as I've been listening to her for many years now. While I have the equipment to measure a lot of acoustical and electrical phenomenon, I have never been in a position where something I could clearly hear could not be seen in measurements. It's almost always the other way around - measurements show things I could potentially hear but don't. In the case of MQA, measurements show it is inferior. But the level of precision and accuracy inherent to the digital media format is sufficient for the limited adulteration imposed by MQA to be largely inaudible. When it comes to reproduced music, some people actually like the bass doubling that occurs when a mediocre loudspeaker woofer struggles with signal overload. To some, more distortion is better. Attenuated bass/exaggerated "warmth" often experienced with tube amps is welcome. These kind of subjective arguments are ALMOST useless in terms of being capable of informing the uninformed or misinformed. It's a lot more useful to say for example that amplifier X has a high output impedance and will attenuate bass below Y hertz Z decibels at a particular drive level than to say to someone who's never heard it - bass is kinda rolled off with low impedance speakers. The bottom line is MQA adulterates or diminishes signal quality - whether or not you personally can hear the degradation or like the degradation is largely irrelevant when it comes to the value or usefulness of a proposed standard. There's no room for subjectivity when the overall goals are supposed to be "authenticity, precision, accuracy, and faithfulness to the original". You pick your criteria standards and measure them to verify that you've achieved your goals. You don't establish a standard based on subjective mumbo jumbo that can't be measured or objectively proved through some kind of rigorous, reproducible testing/evaluation procedure.
