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Post by edshull on Jan 20, 2017 13:20:47 GMT -5
I have Tidal running through a Bluesound Node 2 into a Parasound Halo P5, Emotiva XPA-2 and into Magnepans with a REL Strata sub. I have the Node 2 going coax into the Parasound, which from what MQA tells me is fine if I don't mind that I'm getting one less fold. Most everything is coming in at 96/24, I think.
But what matters is this; the MQA tracks, with few exceptions, sound better. Fleetwood Mac sounds insanely good. It's a huge improvement and I'm hearing things I never heard from the CD.
As an Apple fan I'm greatly disappointed that they have stood by and let Tidal eat their lunch. Tidal is streaming the audio equivalent of 4k, while Apple's "near CD" quality is somewhere around pre-DVD Laserdisc.
I'm excited about MQA. I think it's great that we finally move out of the digital dark ages of 16bit. If Sony can push out streamable DSD, and it sounds better, great! I'll hop right on that too. I have my vinyl, so I'm no stranger to holding on to the physical medium. But I think we can all agree we'd love to be able to stream at the highest quality possible. MQA just moved us in the right direction.
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Post by monkumonku on Jan 20, 2017 14:41:35 GMT -5
I have Tidal running through a Bluesound Node 2 into a Parasound Halo P5, Emotiva XPA-2 and into Magnepans with a REL Strata sub. I have the Node 2 going coax into the Parasound, which from what MQA tells me is fine if I don't mind that I'm getting one less fold. Most everything is coming in at 96/24, I think. But what matters is this; the MQA tracks, with few exceptions, sound better. Fleetwood Mac sounds insanely good. It's a huge improvement and I'm hearing things I never heard from the CD. As an Apple fan I'm greatly disappointed that they have stood by and let Tidal eat their lunch. Tidal is streaming the audio equivalent of 4k, while Apple's "near CD" quality is somewhere around pre-DVD Laserdisc. I'm excited about MQA. I think it's great that we finally move out of the digital dark ages of 16bit. If Sony can push out streamable DSD, and it sounds better, great! I'll hop right on that too. I have my vinyl, so I'm no stranger to holding on to the physical medium. But I think we can all agree we'd love to be able to stream at the highest quality possible. MQA just moved us in the right direction. Out of curiosity, would you mind elaborating on what makes Fleetwood Mac a "huge improvement" and also what sort of things you are hearing through MQA that you never heard from the CD? |
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Post by Axis on Jan 20, 2017 14:49:22 GMT -5
I have Tidal running through a Bluesound Node 2 into a Parasound Halo P5, Emotiva XPA-2 and into Magnepans with a REL Strata sub. I have the Node 2 going coax into the Parasound, which from what MQA tells me is fine if I don't mind that I'm getting one less fold. Most everything is coming in at 96/24, I think. But what matters is this; the MQA tracks, with few exceptions, sound better. Fleetwood Mac sounds insanely good. It's a huge improvement and I'm hearing things I never heard from the CD. As an Apple fan I'm greatly disappointed that they have stood by and let Tidal eat their lunch. Tidal is streaming the audio equivalent of 4k, while Apple's "near CD" quality is somewhere around pre-DVD Laserdisc. I'm excited about MQA. I think it's great that we finally move out of the digital dark ages of 16bit. If Sony can push out streamable DSD, and it sounds better, great! I'll hop right on that too. I have my vinyl, so I'm no stranger to holding on to the physical medium. But I think we can all agree we'd love to be able to stream at the highest quality possible. MQA just moved us in the right direction. Out of curiosity, would you mind elaborating on what makes Fleetwood Mac a "huge improvement" and also what sort of things you are hearing through MQA that you never heard from the CD? I can hardly hear a difference between a YouTube video through my DC-1 and Airmotiv monitors and my CD unless I run that YouTube video through my USP-1 and tower speakers. There is a difference between a YouTube video and a CD. That's real to me. The notion that you can process the same recording that is on the CD and make it better would be news to me. Sounds like magic !  |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 20, 2017 15:04:14 GMT -5
Just to clarify.... you're playing MQA files with a NON-MQA DAC.... right? (And, enough with the "folds" already, which even the MQA boys admit is a somewhat inaccurate metaphor developed to explain their process to non-technical folks.) What you're getting is a non-MQA original, which was processed through the MQA encoder, then decoded using the software MQA decoder in the Tidal client, and sent to your NON-MQA DAC as PCM. Therefore, if it sounds better (or different) it's because of something the MQA encoder changed (or fixed) when it was encoded. You also said that the MQA version on Tidal sounded better than the CD. I wonder if it was created from the CD version master, or from the master used to make one of the high-res versions which are currently available (and which sound quite good).. (Rumours has been issued on 24/96k PCM, and Tusk and one or two others have been issued on 24/192k PCM - and both sound quite nice.) And, yes, I definitely agree that it's good that we're starting to see high quality streaming content (instead of the compressed stuff offered by iTunes). After all their claims about "caring about music", Apple obviously decided that most of their customers really can't hear the difference after all. I can't work up any interest in streaming DSD at all. While I've heard some SACDs that sounded very good, the differences seem to be mostly due to different mastering - since, to my ears, they still sound the same level of good after being converted to PCM. I have Tidal running through a Bluesound Node 2 into a Parasound Halo P5, Emotiva XPA-2 and into Magnepans with a REL Strata sub. I have the Node 2 going coax into the Parasound, which from what MQA tells me is fine if I don't mind that I'm getting one less fold. Most everything is coming in at 96/24, I think. But what matters is this; the MQA tracks, with few exceptions, sound better. Fleetwood Mac sounds insanely good. It's a huge improvement and I'm hearing things I never heard from the CD. As an Apple fan I'm greatly disappointed that they have stood by and let Tidal eat their lunch. Tidal is streaming the audio equivalent of 4k, while Apple's "near CD" quality is somewhere around pre-DVD Laserdisc. I'm excited about MQA. I think it's great that we finally move out of the digital dark ages of 16bit. If Sony can push out streamable DSD, and it sounds better, great! I'll hop right on that too. I have my vinyl, so I'm no stranger to holding on to the physical medium. But I think we can all agree we'd love to be able to stream at the highest quality possible. MQA just moved us in the right direction. |
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Post by brutiarti on Jan 20, 2017 15:13:45 GMT -5
I played "master" tidal for a week now, and i find the songs to be almost identical. When i hear a "difference" in a song that i know pretty well from memory, i go back to the "hi-fi" version and that "difference" actually is there too. So i started pulling both songs in the search so i can click back and forth with my eyes close and they are almost identical IMO. I almost feel that see "master" in the screen makes your brain think that it sounds better.
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Post by edshull on Jan 20, 2017 15:16:29 GMT -5
On Fleetwood Mac, Tusk more than Rumors, the sound is just more open than the FLAC version. Stevie's voice has roll off that I can best describe as live or human. She just sounds more present. The soundstage feels a bit, not bigger, but airy. Better separation.
Oddly enough when I switch over to Matchbox Twenty, some of the MQA stuff sounds not so great. She's So Mean is a perfect example. If you listen to them side by side, it's like someone put a blanket over it.
And yes, I'm listening to it on a non-MQA DAC. After an email to the MQA folks, they told me my options were to run out the Node 2 through the RCA's, or I go coax into my Parasound and use the 24bit DAC there. The only thing I'd be losing is possibly an additional "fold". From what I understand, MQA's can fold the music multiple times, but the software only lets you unfold once. I don't quite get the details, but I made the call to go coax into the Parasound. I may try the other way once there are more MQA's on Tidal.
But I can say the sound is better.
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Post by Axis on Jan 20, 2017 15:43:42 GMT -5
I played "master" tidal for a week now, and i find the songs to be almost identical. When i hear a "difference" in a song that i know pretty well from memory, i go back to the "hi-fi" version and that "difference" actually is there too. So i started pulling both songs in the search so i can click back and forth with my eyes close and they are almost identical IMO. I almost feel that see "master" in the screen makes your brain think that it sounds better. What has often sounded better to me is the HDCD's. John Mellencamp's Mr. Happy Go Lucky CD is HDCD and with my ERC-1 I can decode it. It is a remarkable recording and there are even CD's that are not HDCD that sound excellent because they are recorded very well. Dire Straits comes to mind. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 20, 2017 16:31:05 GMT -5
I personally tend to find their "fold" terminology to be especially annoying - because, while somewhat descriptive, it is also misleading. (To me at least, the idea strongly suggests that you can "fold" something, then "unfold" it, and get back exactly what you started with, like folding and unfolding a piece of paper - which is NOT true for MQA.) However, by describing the various encode and decode options as "folding and unfolding" they seem to make it less rather than more clear what they're actually doing. It would be more accurate to say that you can run an MQA encoded file through multiple decoding STEPS (as many steps as your equipment supports), but that each step should add an improvement in quality. However, assuming that they are starting with a digital master that already exists...... (this is the most recent version of the story I've heard). When they originally encode it (convert it into MQA) the encoder analyzes and "fixes" some specific "issues" with the original encoding process. It then encodes the resulting "improved" signal into MQA. This MQA signal can then be played back by an ordinary DAC or audio player as "plain old PCM". If you do this, then it isn't "MQA decoded", and you're losing a lot of the benefit of "sending it as MQA", but it should still sound better because of the "repairs and improvements" made by the encoder. It could also be played back by a software MQA decoder. If you do this you should get the benefits of those original "repairs and improvements". And you should also get the benefits of the "basic MQA decoding" (you're getting a technically lossy but highly optimized compression/decompression). HOWEVER, the best thing is to play it back on a DAC that will do hardware MQA decoding. If you do this you should get the benefits of those original "repairs and improvements". And you should also get the benefits of the "basic MQA decoding". And, in addition to all that, you will get the benefit that the DAC design itself has been optimized (or that the decoder has been specifically optimized to work perfectly with that particular DAC). (It's this last step that's supposed to convince you to buy an MQA certified DAC.) The "ultimate solution" would, of course, be if the original master was created on "MQA certified equipment" - but that hasn't happened yet. The real question, as I see it, is whether MQA really does deliver a consistent improvement, or whether it's simply another processing method that makes things sound different.... And sometimes they sound better, but other times not so much..... (I think it's way too much to hope that somebody is going to hand-convert each individual song and pick the version that sounds better.) On Fleetwood Mac, Tusk more than Rumors, the sound is just more open than the FLAC version. Stevie's voice has roll off that I can best describe as live or human. She just sounds more present. The soundstage feels a bit, not bigger, but airy. Better separation. Oddly enough when I switch over to Matchbox Twenty, some of the MQA stuff sounds not so great. She's So Mean is a perfect example. If you listen to them side by side, it's like someone put a blanket over it. And yes, I'm listening to it on a non-MQA DAC. After an email to the MQA folks, they told me my options were to run out the Node 2 through the RCA's, or I go coax into my Parasound and use the 24bit DAC there. The only thing I'd be losing is possibly an additional "fold". From what I understand, MQA's can fold the music multiple times, but the software only lets you unfold once. I don't quite get the details, but I made the call to go coax into the Parasound. I may try the other way once there are more MQA's on Tidal. But I can say the sound is better. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 20, 2017 16:32:08 GMT -5
It's called "expectation bias". I played "master" tidal for a week now, and i find the songs to be almost identical. When i hear a "difference" in a song that i know pretty well from memory, i go back to the "hi-fi" version and that "difference" actually is there too. So i started pulling both songs in the search so i can click back and forth with my eyes close and they are almost identical IMO. I almost feel that see "master" in the screen makes your brain think that it sounds better. |
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 20, 2017 16:39:31 GMT -5
It's called "expectation bias". I played "master" tidal for a week now, and i find the songs to be almost identical. When i hear a "difference" in a song that i know pretty well from memory, i go back to the "hi-fi" version and that "difference" actually is there too. So i started pulling both songs in the search so i can click back and forth with my eyes close and they are almost identical IMO. I almost feel that see "master" in the screen makes your brain think that it sounds better. It could be expectation bias, but there could also be a real difference |
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 20, 2017 16:56:08 GMT -5
The supicious thing with MQA is the lack off a
simple and clear explanation of what and how without
going in to too much details that can't be disclosed.
It's all a bit of the emperor's new cloths over it.
Note that I'm not saying that it's really that,
there may a clear benefit.
However, if you can't explain the benefit,
It's usually not there.
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Post by brutiarti on Jan 20, 2017 17:02:02 GMT -5
It could be expectation bias, but there could also be a real difference If people find a difference for the better go ahead and invest the money. To me i will need more than that to justify an "upgrade" . The day that a new technology can make a bad mix/master into a good one i will be the first one to throw money like crazy on it. |
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 20, 2017 17:09:11 GMT -5
It could be expectation bias, but there could also be a real difference If people find a difference for the better go ahead and invest the money. To me i will need more than that to justify an "upgrade" . The day that a new technology can make a bad mix/master into a good one i will be the first one to throw money like crazy on it. If it wasn't clear, I'm of the same opportunity opinion. Just wanted to be open minded for the possibility that there might be a decent improvement. One think to keep in mind is that expaction bias goes both ways! |
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Post by Axis on Jan 20, 2017 17:14:17 GMT -5
The more I read about this, I hope not to many get caught up in this magic carpet ride. I hope that audio companies will steer toward reducing need for any processing and the music industry bring the price down on content. Bring the quality of the recording up !  |
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 20, 2017 17:20:57 GMT -5
The more I read about this, I hope not to many get caught up in this magic carpet ride. I hope that audio companies will steer toward reducing need for any processing and the music industry bring the price down on content. Bring the quality of the recording up ! In all fairness, I think the recordings are good, it's the mastering that often is below par. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 20, 2017 17:26:18 GMT -5
To be fair, it IS in fact theoretically possible...... Any A/D conversion process will cause certain changes to the sound... many of which will involve "time smear" on sharp transients. In theory, if you know the specific characteristics of the original A/D converter used to make the master, you could "correct" for certain types of errors you know it causes. Likewise, in theory, even without knowing that in specific, by analyzing the content itself, you could "guess" what sort of errors were made and "compensate" for them. (You would essentially pick out certain waveforms that look like they represent certain sounds and see what seems to be "off" about them.) This is the way the various forms of "sharpening" work in photo editing programs like Photoshop..... They assume that certain specific forms of blurring have occurred and perform calculations to reverse the effects. The better ones actually look at the characteristics of the picture itself to make an EDUCATED guess about the errors it contains. The result is often an improvement, but not always, and it's usually going to be more of a guess than a specific correction. However, in many cases, the picture does in fact end up looking better, and may in fact be closer to the original. The details about how you "'decide what looks a bit off" and how you decide "the best correction" are actually quite complex..... So it is in fact quite possible that it really isn't practical for them to explain exactly what they're doing. My problem with their whole paradigm is that it includes many separate pieces... but they seem determined to sell me all of them as a package. For example, I think it's great if Tidal sounds better using MQA than PCM... and it's a legitimate justification for using MQA with Tidal. However, that DOESN'T necessarily convince me that I'll hear a further improvement by buying an MQA DAC. They clearly WANT me to buy an MQA DAC rather than just use a software decoder..... but they haven't sold me THAT part of the deal yet. Maybe an MQA encoded file sounds really great when I play it through a software decoder, but buying an MQA DAC really doesn't help much past that.... That's a separate piece of the puzzle, and they're going to have to sell it to me separately. And, as far as Emotiva is concerned, unless enough of our customers are convinced that an MQA-enabled DAC sounds a lot better than just using the MQA decoder in that Tidal client.... then they aren't going to consider it to be a "significant value add" for our products. To put that another way: How many of you would pay $50 for an "MQA upgrade" for the XMC-1 or the DC-1? Or would be willing to pay $50 more when you buy it because it has that feature? Unless it's quite a few, then it probably isn't going to come close to justifying the development cost. The supicious thing with MQA is the lack off a simple and clear explanation of what and how without going in to too much details that can't be disclosed. It's all a bit of the emperor's new cloths over it. Note that I'm not saying that it's really that, there may a clear benefit. However, if you can't explain the benefit, It's usually not there. |
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Post by brutiarti on Jan 20, 2017 17:30:31 GMT -5
In all fairness, I think the recordings are good, it's the mastering that often is below par. Agreed. Listening the "master" version of red hot chili peppers "californication" is painful all over again  |
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 20, 2017 17:31:08 GMT -5
I would easily pay 50 bucks for MQA in the XMC-1.
As long as it at least doesn't make it sound worse.
That with being sceptical over MQA. 😊
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Post by qdtjni on Jan 20, 2017 17:33:13 GMT -5
In all fairness, I think the recordings are good, it's the mastering that often is below par. Agreed. Listening the "master" version of red hot chili peppers "californication" is painful all over again I like that song but the recording, mixing, mastering Or whatever it is could surely be improved, a lot too! |
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Post by Axis on Jan 20, 2017 17:34:42 GMT -5
The more I read about this, I hope not to many get caught up in this magic carpet ride. I hope that audio companies will steer toward reducing need for any processing and the music industry bring the price down on content. Bring the quality of the recording up ! In all fairness, I think the recordings are good, it's the mastering that often is below par. I mean the whole ball of wax. I have done some recording in my time. I have been listening to music for 50 years and recordings or mastering should have improved long ago. Both of them. There has been many good recordings but I have a pretty big pile of music that I sure wish they did something better than they did. Blame whoever you want but if your in the industry just get to work and make it better please. |
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