Berkeley Audio Design and MQA?


Why did they espouse MQA, knowing, as we all do now, the inherent flaws and falsehoods?

ptss

What a format sounds like (assuming it is not grossly reducing data… like MP3 is very large the result of the hardware that is used to interpret it. MQA was a great idea, with lots of things going for it that was too late to market. It can sound great, and would have been a great if introduced 10 years ago. 
 

Top level companies need to embrace new standards in  technology. I have heard MQA on a Berkeley Reference Alpha 3 in my system. It sounded great. I did not do a detailed comparison. But I seriously doubt there was much if any difference in the sound quality with a red book file. 

I don’t see any reason to fault Berkeley. If you use Tidal, that was what much of their library was in.

Those of us who have heard and compared more than a few A2D converters… would deeply understand the improvement genesis behind the MQA idea….

If you do not enjoy MQA then do not pay the extra fee that Tidal charges for its recordings, pretty simple, why diss Berkeley just because they are giving the customers that DO want MQA options, you can still buy the same DAC by them and still benefit from their quality of product without listening to any MQA recordings 🤷🏻‍♂️. It seems in these times someone has to biotch about something or another, life is hard enough, enjoy your music 🎶✌️

@pizzano plus one ...

 

We'd be lucky to discern an audible difference between any digital format

PS - The only discernible difference I have heard from MQA was the forced use of an apodizing digital filter.  Personally prefer others, but if I think about the sound quality, I think most of what I'm hearing is the filter choice. As I've said before, in a modern 5G/500 MBit / 2 Terabyte storage world I have no idea what MQA is doing in the 21st century besides charging a license fee.