Berkeley Audio Design and MQA?


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

ptss

@ptss 

On the dac end of things, MQA is simply the unfolding of their compression technique in order to feed its reconstructed pcm signal to a given dac’s pre-existing pcm dac. My dac has it however I have never “heard” a MQA track. I can understand a dac manufacturer including it for those customers who might want to utilize it. Its smart business to include features some customers might want. While I cant quite figure why you might be so offended but I guess you have a low threshold?

@ghasley. Not offended. Disappointed. I get business. But, just tell it like it is. "Studio sound forever" ? Hogwash. It's the developers I was offended by. Disappointed by those who new better; who should have said "this compression scheme is not all it claims; however, we will produce it for now and see where it goes." At this time customers want it so we will provide it as an optional way to listen. We'll be monitoring feedback and keep an open mind."  FWIW 

@ptss did you make a purchase based on someone else’s words or are you just bothered by someone else’s words. I don’t know anyone who did make a purchase based on MQA being present although I’m certain there is a long line of Meridien owners who may have thought it was a thing.

Perhaps the single thing MQA was doing, which Pono also did (I miss that player) was to authenticate bit streams. If Qobuz is meddling around with the bits somehow by using lossy compression, or some processing we are not expecting we have no way of telling if we are listening to the released recording or someone’s doctored version of it.

Kind of like cryogenically treated cables. No way for me to tell either way.

@erik_squires 

We already have technology that can do this and you don't need to pay a third part to use it - cryptographic hashes.