“MQA is a philosophy”..John Stuart

I think it's worth having this discussion if we can separate the value (which is arguable) from the process, which is in fact pretty ambitious. 

From a technical point of view, I think it is clear that MQA is "not just a codec" by any sense of the meaning. The full scope of it's ambition, to correct all timing errors in the A/D, D/A chain and to do so using equipment specific data is monumental. 

Benchmark has one of the best explanations, as well as technical criticisms I've ever read about MQA here:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa

The blog puts to rest any attempt to relegate MQA to the world of "mere codecs." 

Is it worth while?  On my MQA capable Brooklyn I leave it off. You should do as suits you best.

Best,


E

Forgot to mention something. IMHO, MQA is about 2 decades too late. With high bandwidth internet and terabyte thumb drives, and DACs that in the last 5 years play Redbook MUCH better than they used to, the pure need for MQA has really diminished a great deal IMHO. 

If this had been introduced a few years after the CD, I am sure it would be the dominant digital standard today. 

In the end, we will be led to where ever the music is, because we love our music. :)

+1, amg56

The above referenced article and "Archimago's" work confirm what the impulse response measurements posted in Stereophile say directly with actual data. Noise is added by this "codec" to raise the noise floor and mask the low level ripple (commonly and erroneously referred to as "pre ring") in the impulse signal. For those who work with impulse response signals on a regular basis, they don't need a detailed explanation of how MQA degrades the signal. They can see it immediately in the response graphs. Not only is noise added (dither) to adulterate the signal - thus losing net signal precision from effectively 16 or 24 bits down to 14, but the claimed "time error correction" actually adds time domain distortion to the end result. You can see this in the Stereophile impulse response graph easily from the delayed negative going spike. The impulse response of any linear system or approximate linear system is the fullest expression of signal quality and fidelity that we know of today. It is a complete characterization of the system's time (and thus frequency domain for linear systems) domain behavior. One need look no further than the impulse response graphs. They tell the full story in an instant. MQA is not merely a flawed codec. It's a licensing lock box piece of garbage masquerading as an industry standard for digital media distribution.