The MQA debate is finally over


There used to be intense debate over the superiority of MQA vs flac and MQA vs non-MQA dacs.

I have listened to both formats through both dacs (Esoteric vs Meridian Ultradac) and to my ears in my system, flac via a non-MQA dac rules.

RIP, MQA.

128x128jon2020

It's worthy of note that few have come forward here to champion MQA as a superior format unlike those chumps over at Stereophile, TAS and the dealer owner of Audioshark.

Hardware companies will now stop touting their dacs with MQA decoders.  Lol.

@jon2020 

There are pluses and minuses to every format. If I had my way they would have streaming in mulitchannel DSD for everything. Good luck with that. I found the deblurring effect in MQA to work for me. It gave a palpable sense of life (as in musicians in the room) in my system on many recordings (not all).

 

@kray

As for minuses I can give you an example. If you listen to violins in an orchestra in FLAC they sound rich, harmonious, they ebb and swell with the tempo, its wonderful. But they sound like a group of violins, not individual violins.

When I listen to a good MQA master I hear more of the individual violins standing out from each other while playing together as a group. If you weren’t able to compare you might never notice, but once you hear the difference you notice it when it isn’t present. I find 24/96 PCM to offer "more" of everything but still doesn’t get that rich sound of each individual instrument the way I get with MQA.

@kota1 

As for minuses I can give you an example. If you listen to violins in an orchestra in FLAC they sound rich, harmonious, they ebb and swell with the tempo, its wonderful. But they sound like a group of violins, not individual violins.

When I listen to a good MQA master I hear more of the individual violins standing out from each other while playing together as a group. If you weren’t able to compare you might never notice, but once you hear the difference you notice it when it isn’t present. I find 24/96 PCM to offer "more" of everything but still doesn’t get that rich sound of each individual instrument the way I get with MQA.

 

You are describing my exact experiences with quad DSD vs PCM (24/96 and greater).