MQA is Legit!

This is all such a lie. Meridian is dead and they need $.

"MQA reveals every detail of the original recording." (actually it is blurry)

"MQA captures 100% of the original studio performance. It then cleverly adapts to deliver the highest quality playback your product can support." (there is no "studio performance" everything in audio is processed and distorted on purpose for effect.   even a purist recording has mic, pre, AD, panning, eq, level.   the highest quality product is the NATIVE SAMPLE RATE of the approved mastering session. A 192 AD for $200 is not better than a $24,000 44.1 AD. Get real folks, this is all marketing lies.)


@waltertexasI mean that since there might be the "perception" it sounds better, then there is way more care put into the mastering and the recording.

No more is put into any mastering than any other, except as driven by the needs of the people who want to be happy with the results. You are assuming something that is not real.

MQA processing is being bulk applied to back catalogs to create a market, contravening the concept of mastering engineer authentication. So you’re just wrong here.

MQA is a touch louder, with distortions, and a recessed center image ... and all that distortion can sound good ... yet as a mastering engineer it’s a travesty. As a person of principle, it’s a con the likes of which the audio world has never seen.

I am a longtime, longtime audio enthusiast who bought a Mytek Brooklyn Bridge and is now almost three days into the modern streaming, outboard DAC era(!).  The only MQA I've listened to is from Tidal and I gotta say that though I prefer having the MQA button pushed over not having it pushed, it really doesn't sound all that much better to me.  A little more dimensionality and space?  Perhaps.  A more satisfying EQ?  Yeah, I guess so.  As for Tidal and streaming, it sounds perfectly acceptable and I love the amazing selection of music I can instantly access, but it  ain't sonically sending me to heaven.

I have to say, though, that I truly love what I hear when I listen to my Sony SACD player through the Brooklyn.  I've got the SACD player hooked up so that I can either listen to SACDs/CDs in Red Book Digital via the Brooklyn or in SACD via the Sony, and I gotta say that the Brooklyn feed consistently sounds more convincing.  Right now I'm listening to a old Erato CD via the Sony Mytek combo that is giving my admittedly aged SOTA/Alphason/Lyra/Moon analog rig a serious run for its money. 

It seems clear, apparent, and obvious to me that MQA is nothing more than an unneeded technology that was designed, intended and promoted as a new revenue "stream" for its innovators and I am quite certain and confident that it will fail because of the lack of market need.

I'm not gonna drink the MQA Kool Aid.

I decided to swing for an MQA-enabled DAC because MQA was developed by Meridian -- the once-monikered Boothroyd-Stuart bunch whose powered speaker system (I can’t recall the model) sent me into fits of audio ecstasy when I auditioned it at a Paris Audio salon in L.A., who knows when. It was the first time I’d ever heard 3D sound-staging from a high-fi. It gave me the shakes. I couldn’t afford the beasts but it propelled me along the high-end path. I figured that anything from those dudes was worth a try.
Bottom line, though, MQA or no MQA, I’m happy with the Mytek...even if this stone age dude has his share of trouble with the way you operate it.