MQA answered (mostly)

In light of the MQA format becoming the Greatest Show On Earth, I’ve been looking out for informed commentary on the subject. here’s the best so far: archimago.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09 … .html#more .

TL;DR is there’s no appreciable difference between MQA and hi-res PCM, so probably not worth chasing within Volumio…

Chris M

Is this guy comparing files with the same size? The advantage of mqa is that it should deliver hi-res quality with cd-size files

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MQA is lossy, correct? Why would I ever want to switch from FLAC, which is lossless, to MQA, a lossy format?

Media storage is getting cheaper - file size isn’t a big issue anymore.

This thread is still going strong:

computeraudiophile.com/foru … vaporware/

I did just post Archimago’s final article on the DACs section; here it is again:
computeraudiophile.com/ca/r … ions-r701/
I think this probably puts the boot in finally, and casts MQA as, essentially, audiophile FUD. I suspect only the vested interests will pursue it, and it’ll be interesting to see if it ever gets out of the audiophile hothouse. I admit that I had high hopes for MQA as Meridian have a splendid pedigree in the music reproduction business, but reality intrudes when measured accurately…

Hi. I find this discussion slightly strange. The whole Point with MQA as I understand it is that it is practically impossible to distinguish from flac, but at the same time its smaller size makes it perfect for streaming. This means you can stream hi res Music from fx Tidal instead of having to buy single tracks or records for a (high) price. This also means that the Music consumer market is slowly shifting gear from just quantity to quality. Personally I Think it´s great. If I have misunderstood your discussion, I apologize.
best regards
Jörgen

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It’s MQA’s restrictive architecture and the aspect that fast bandwidth is more readily available in today’s world (+cheap) that is holding me back from embracing it.

PCM is proven, lossless, capable and an open source architecture that even allows DIY DSP (if that’s your thing). Digital data storage is cheap. Internet bandwidth is widening, increasing in speed and reducing in cost. The incentive to go MQA, as a result is evaporating fast.

The real rub comes with claims of improvement to sound quality (check back a few years on the audiophile mainstream media and you’ll see what I mean). The multiple posts by Archimago, along with commentary from people like Brian Lucey and Bruno Putzey provide a reference point to reflect on MQA’s claims and question their substantive basis.

Ultimately, let your own ears decide.

I know what you mean, and some of the claims the mqa people have made, may have been without ground. But it’s biggest landmark as I see it is that sounds as (at least if you’re not a golden eared audiophile) good as pcm and foremost that it is the first time in history as far as I know that quality matters to the big players in the music industry. So far everything has been about availability and quantity… If PCM makes it’s way to the music providers it would of course change things…
Regards
Jörgen

I think serious music lovers would get better value from recordings being mastered without the (loudness war) compression.
These days if you want a recording that’s not horribly compressed with a dynamic range <DR10 you need to pick up a vinyl pressing.

Effort spent there would pay off big on sound quality terms. IF MQA is beneficial, then I’d suggest that it’s in the realms of diminishing returns. Again, if the individual’s ears is hearing audio nirvana then enjoy the experience.

I’ll stick with PCM based audio and the existing hardware/software that I’ve got that works for me.

Ok. The companies behind streaming want to make money. MQA has made those companies see a way to make money from quality rather than just quantity. I think we can agree on MQA being better than MP3? That’s the only point I wanted to make. Hopefully some company will pick up the fight and offer true high Res flac music some day… And since volumio is at least partly about streaming services, I think it would be a good thing if it offered those with the best quality. If you don’t like the streaming services, for whatever reason, you can still just play s flac and dsd from USB or NAS. I’m sorry if I sound like I want to pick a fight. I most certainly don’t. I respect your views.
Regards
Jörgen

Looking at how MQA works, it appears to be bundling of two clever techniques in 4 steps.

As I understand it -

  1. Correction of the master for temporal artefacts.

  2. Encoding this into a PCM stream where a compressed version of the difference between the original and the down sample is used as dither to keep the quantization noise down.

  3. Decode back to the original sample rate. This will be lossy compared to the original, but better than the PCM. This can be done in an MQA DAC or in the player software with a standard DAC (Which has limits applied, that the DAC method doesn’t).

  4. (Optional) Temporal artefacts corrected in the DAC.

The issue I have isn’t with the theory (it’s clever) but with the artificial bundling of the techniques.

If the correction techniques were used to create an original definition flac it would be better. And less propitiatory.

The backwards compatibility is clever though. Existing kit (including Volumio) with an MQA DAC added will get the higher quality sound, whereas without it, it is just standard quality (but with the time corrected source).

The time correction on the MQA DAC allows better sound from cheap kit, but I wonder if it is disabled when MQA files are not being played (which would be a nasty trick).

If Volumio could decode MQA, it would be nice, but I suspect that would require royalties, and so not be possible for a free player.