MQA Lossless and Deblurring: the Two Most Bothersome Claims

MQA Lossless and Deblurring: the Two Most Bothersome Claims - SoundStage! Real Hi-Fi (Ep:18)

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2 жыл бұрын

In late 2015 and early 2016, the MQA digital music format was being presented to hi-fi reviewers, some of whom were calling it game-changing and revolutionary digital-streaming technology. At the time, the MQA company and many reviewers also made bold claims about the technology-claims that should've been verified right at the start. But it didn't appear many in the hi-fi press wanted to dig too deep into what was really going on.
Because of the MQA misinformation that was out there, SoundStage! founder Doug wrote "Myriad Questions about MQA," which was published in SoundStage! Hi-Fi on April 1, 2016. His goal was to start the ball rolling on questioning the claims of the company and the reviewers. He followed it up with more articles. If you want to read Doug's original MQA article, click through using the link below:
www.soundstagehifi.com/index....
In this video, Doug reflects on when he wrote "Myriad Questions about MQA" and talks about the two MQA claims that bothered him the most and still bother him today. Watch it to find out which ones they are.
#mqa #audiophile #masterqualityauthenticated

Пікірлер: 45

@WimHulpia 2 жыл бұрын

I bought a 3k mqa dac and so I had pretty high expectations from mqa. One day I decided to give Qobuz a try. One week later I ditched Tidal/Mqa. I guess MQA stands for Mystery Quack Audio

@94nolo 2 жыл бұрын

Yeah the difference between Qobuz and other services are more than subtle.

@valkyr989 2 жыл бұрын

Wow sorry to hear. What was the 3k dac?

@WimHulpia 2 жыл бұрын

@@valkyr989 Matrix Element X. Excellent neutral and detailled dac/streamer with ES9038PRO chipset. Highly recommend it. But is seems so detailled it shows the defects of mqa (mqa blurs when mulitiple instruments play at the same time - details get lost - probably because of the lossy compression... and it adds unwanted extra bass because of its minimizing filter... good example is "the only living boy in ny" by Simon and Garfunkel.... sounds like a joke in mqa). Luckily the mqa logo was just a sticker so I could easily remove it so I no longer have to look at it and think why I had to pay 100$ more for the mqa scam. Oh well... I do love the dac for regular pcm. If you have a chance take a listen to it. You won't regret.

@TiagrajI 2 жыл бұрын

@@WimHulpia thank you man. I will give it a listen when I get a chance. The mqa saga makes me mad. I was caught in the hype before until I got more knowledge and understood what is happening really. I am sure there is clever technology in the mqa compression but they should be more transparent in what they are actually doing. Have you listened to the lcd 5 on a totally unrelated topic? You'll enjoy if you have some good tracks

@WimHulpia 2 жыл бұрын

@@TiagrajI you're welcome

@dungysphincter7974 2 жыл бұрын

Products that have MQA should be cheaper to buy than non-MQA products.

@Steve-kx4yz 2 жыл бұрын

Signed up for the Qobuz trial after seeing this and the comments here, it does sound cleaner in my system

@Chunksville Жыл бұрын

UPDATE: seems MQA have gone into administration as of 3rd April see their website

@soundstagenetwork Жыл бұрын

It appears so!

@firebladeclements 2 жыл бұрын

With the availability of lossless music these days it appears their time will becoming to a close. Although our darn dacs change the sound anyway soooo..... just make your ears happy!

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

We agree!

@TikTok_Sucks Жыл бұрын

My ears are happier when I'm not being lied to.

@krihanek117 Жыл бұрын

When Meridian developed MQA you would imagine they did all the things you described. That would be the only logical way to test MQA s it's being engineered. Meridian would do listening and measurement tests on the same master. The fact that the current MQA company has no interest in sharing this data says a lot about their lack of transparency and honesty. Frankly MQA is simply not necessary. It adds nothing more than licensing cost.

@KruseScharling 2 жыл бұрын

Hi Doug! Geetings from Denmark. Also as role as audio reviewer I have to agree totally with your stated points. Very precicse said, and also I was in the beginning of the MQA dissapointed over, that no one could or would document thw “master recording quality” aas maintaned. No evidence of before and after processing. I am happy that qobuz now is available in Denmark, and I now have skipped Tidal, supported by the fact that qobuz delivers more constant high hi-res quality.

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

From Doug: "Thank you for sharing that! The way the company launched this was incredibly disappointing. I, too, agree that having Qobuz is a good thing -- uncompressed files at various resolutions, the way it should be."

@deadquietvinyl 2 жыл бұрын

@@soundstagenetwork And if Qobuz will serve mp3s converted into FLACs, what's next? I've tried Qobuz with an account made in another country. I wasn't able to use it where I am. I am happy with Tidal as long as I know what music to pick and listen to. Speaking of FLAC songs. I have bought many Hi-Res albums from HDtracks. If anyone would have the curiosity to look on the docs in the downloads will find out that covers that they download are mentioning Hi-Res (sometimes) on a cover that is probably made in paint. hahahaha... look closely where you can identify Hi-Res, see how it looks... The pdf are are most of the time showing the CD covers. So, with all these said, I would say this: if anyone wants to own something, buy it. If you want to stream, be ready to: 1st - stream does not mean owning - especially for the price. 2nd - what you stream really has no trace of where the recording comes from. So? is Tidal that bad after all?

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

@@deadquietvinyl Tidal is by no means "bad." If you're happy with it -- and if that's all you have -- go for it.

@deadquietvinyl 2 жыл бұрын

@@soundstagenetwork What I also meant to say among that is that listening to a FLAC without really knowing where it really comes from and who created it, is as bad as the other things people are afraid of. When we'll really know who created the FLACs, from which kind of recording - you know, all those precious details we hunt on vinyl, as an example - all this fuss about MQA/FLAC, Tidal/Qobuz it really is insignificant, in my sincere opinion. :) LE: and I say this exactly for the reason that we don't own these recordings, we are just streaming them. If I would buy them, not knowing the source and the mastering, then I would really have a problem. But for the money people pay to stream anything they want, I think is just playing with companies' image. We pay for software on our computers and we get more bugs and failures than a record. And we pay significantly more for software. :)

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

@@deadquietvinyl This is all true. If you noticed in the video, Doug said it mostly comes down to the recording, not the format. MQA, on the other hand, was purporting benefits that weren't actually in the recordings. That then becomes a different story. On the other hand, even vinyl has a problem because oftentimes the source material for the vinyl isn't known.

@dungysphincter7974 2 жыл бұрын

TY! Doug. I am glad to hear your side on MQA, Bravo!

@ericharrelson2045 2 жыл бұрын

I appreciate you covering this topic. Thanks.

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

Our pleasure!

@spudpud-T67 4 ай бұрын

MQA is trying to be a middleman. Make yourself an industry standard that by demand everyone must buy into and laugh all the way to the bank. An unnecessary link in the chain.

@thepickyaudiophile 2 жыл бұрын

I’m just kinda annoyed to have paid for Tidal for years, carefully choosing the HiFI quality setting, which was advertised as FLAC (Huffman coding and true lossless) only to find that I’ve actually been served MQA at low bit rates (that I couldn’t fully unfold) most of the time. Any validity to MQA’s claims or not, at this point it looks like they might have blown it.. Qobuz all the way Baby 😁

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

Qobuz is a very good choice for high-res streaming, particularly it' integration with audiophile-based software streaming products.

@paulhunter6652 2 жыл бұрын

I personally enjoy MQA Tidal and it sounds great on my system. Full stop. Have not heard Qobuz as its not in Canada yet?

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

As Doug said in the video, MQA can sound fine. What you're going to hear depends mostly on the recording. But if you want true uncompressed, Qobuz is probably your best bet.

@paulhunter6652 2 жыл бұрын

@Loss fer’ Words Same New NAD Gear, JL sub, paradigm Founders F-100. Sometimes reviewers split hairs over streaming.

@howardskeivys4184 2 жыл бұрын

Quite frankly, who gives a flying fig? Whatever the pros and cons of MQA whatever it’s attributes or caveats, whatever false claims have been made or misleading terms have b been used, everyone is entitled to their opinion. To me, MQA is another digital file format. If you like it all the better. If you don’t, there are plenty of alternative digital formats to choose from. Me, I’m an analogue man, old school, a purest. That have being said, I do stream much of my music these days, it’s just so damned convenient and yes, my DAC is MQA capable!

@PixelPotionCafe 2 жыл бұрын

I did my own A/B and I like the MQA version. Having said that, the comparison was to CD rate files as finding high bit rate FLAC and MQA to compare is rather difficult. The MQA will use less data. Also, note that MQA is not a compression or a codec. The compression is FLAC, lossless. However, some LSB bits are used for the MQA info. Since MQA files are normally 24 bit, these bits are well below the noise floor, so nothing lost. Also, part of the MQA process happens before encoding, so you cant just compare with a FLAC bit-for-bit since the "deblurring" etc happens before encoding. All you can really so is listen for yourself!

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

We are unsure any of this "deblurring" occurs. It has never been proven by MQA or by others, as far as we know. Also, the MQA data is packed into a FLAC container, but MQA has its own algorithm for what bits get into there. But thanks for commenting.

@Ash-en1pk 2 жыл бұрын

Your comment reads like deliberate marketing obfuscation - much like the material MQA itself puts out. There is credible information available online that pretty much fully debunks MQA. If that information is not credible, then why do MQA (and Tidal for that matter) not refute it with evidence? They are financially incented to do so! If you like the 'sound' of MQA, more power to you. However, the fact that MQA wants to become the ubiquitous distribution format while (for all appearances) doing nothing but adding licensing costs that ultimately get passed to the end consumer should cause EVERYONE to closely scrutinize MQA's unverified claims.

@PixelPotionCafe 2 жыл бұрын

@@soundstagenetwork I'm aware that they use the lsb for their own purpose. It's a 24 bit FLAC, do you really need those 1 or 2 bits? As for deblurring, stream an MQA file through a non MQA system and see how it sounds. The problem with "debunking" is empirical tests just show that its different from the same recording on FLAC, but its kinda supposed to be. Tests using measurements say that MQA is crap while those that listen to it generally like it. To me, the instruments are more defined with a more pronounced soundstage. Its basically impossible to really test the process unless you have an analog master to compare to, and I dont think anyone has managed to pull that off.

@PixelPotionCafe 2 жыл бұрын

@@Ash-en1pk Just because you dont understand it, doesn't mean its obscured or marketing speak.

@soundstagenetwork 2 жыл бұрын

@@PixelPotionCafe We believe they use more than the LSB. From what we understand, they're using 6 or 8 LSBs for their high-frequency encoding.