Is this MQA news a big deal?


Just now stumbled across this release regarding DACs from ESS adding MQA, but I'm not certain if it means there'll likely be many companies offering MQA decoding soon enough. Or if it perhaps means something else. Any thoughts?

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/05/08/1497989/0/en/SABRE-DACs-from-ESS-Technology-to-Int...
hodu
@craigl59

Good article. MQA is a lossy format which injects a ton of up imaging noise into the high frequencies. If it sounds better then

1) The master audio file used to create the MQA file is better than the other master you are comparing to
2) Your DAC is suffering from poor linearity (very common especially with R-2R) and the inaudible ultra high frequency noise added to an MQA file is helping to randomize your DAC non-linearity.
Find that 4k, streaming, and MQA all share a single purpose: copyright control.

I'm no fan of MQA, in that I cannot tell it does anything better, but copyright control (aka Digital Rights Management or DRM) is not one of the problems.

MQA recordings can be encoded to any common format like FLAC or ALAC, and copied like any other computer file. There is no DRM in MQA. None.

Best,
E
I heard the MQA it’s really good, I preferred it over DSD. It’s the one that came close to vynil, in the system we were listening...
Not a big fan of MQA. I prefer DSD128 and 192/24PCM. MQA is a lossey 192/24. 5G and Wifi bandwidth is more than enough to stream DSD and 192/24PCM. 
@jayctoy 

  I heard the MQA it’s really good, I preferred it over DSD. It’s the one that came close to vynil, in the system we were listening...

Curious, what DAC were you using? 

Best,

E