January 9, 20179 yr comment_751589 I read a couple paragraphs beyond the first paragraph, so not much more. From what I read, you must have a DAC with the special decoder to hear an MQA file the way it was intended. Otherwise, it is just a 24-bit 48kHz file with noise on the 3 LSB, lowering effective resolution to 13 bits. The MQA file decoded claims to have "folded" into it the upper 48kHz I believe, so generates something akin to 24/96 (lossy). There is also some other metadata which tells the DAC what filters to use on the fly and maybe some other stuff, with some typical mention of the pre-ringing/apodizing stuff that Meridian love to talk about, and something about proprietary sampling/convolution. I just found this article after I wrote above post, have not read it yet but the title is pretty much as expected: https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa Report
January 9, 20179 yr comment_751590 2 minutes ago, mypasswordis said: From what I read, you must have a DAC with the special decoder to hear an MQA file the way it was intended. Tidal has the MQA software decoder built in so it is able to "unfold" the file. The next version of Audirvana will have it also. Report
January 9, 20179 yr comment_751592 ^ interesting, will be curious to see how many more adopt it. I would love to see proponents of MQA attempt a single or double blind with 256kbps mp3, 16/44, MQA, and 24/96 versions of the same track. So would the people at Schiit and Benchmark, I'm sure. Report
January 9, 20179 yr comment_751597 1 hour ago, TMoney said: The next version of Audirvana will have it also. Audirvana 2.6.4 seems to work with the Tidal "master" recordings today. Not sure if that means Audirvana already supports MQA or if the files aren't actually MQA. Report
January 10, 20179 yr comment_751615 Does anyone know if there's a way to figure out what bitrates are going to the DAC on a Windows computer? Listening to Black Sabbath now. From memory (several months), it sounds a little less harsh, but that's from memory, it's going to require some contortions to find my downloads, which got lost and not restored when I switched computers. (Because I found them too harsh to listen to repeatedly.) Report
January 11, 20179 yr comment_751764 Best I can tell from the Roon forum, some streamer apps (including Roon) can pass the MQA stream though to an MQA DAC. Some apps (Tidal, and soon several others, including Roon) can our will eventually be able to transcode the stream to whatever resolution it represents. But i can't see how the matching filter thing could be implemented for an arbitrary DAC. If so, software decoding won't be able to provide the "complete" MQA expense. So, for me, it's "95% of 95%", whenever I can figure out the logistics of getting the signal to the DAC in the system I actually want to use it in. Report
January 18, 20179 yr Author comment_752480 Meanwhile ... 900+ MQA albums discovered on Tidal https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10VtON9VjMAt3uyHC2-Oo2MjIa3orv9DKZfwiRQKmTAA/edit#gid=945476039 Report
January 18, 20179 yr comment_752499 Wait Blue Man Group have another studio album? But it is a dup, so don't know which one to play. Report
January 23, 20179 yr comment_753017 So how will Sprint handing out the service to their customers affect the overall streaming of Tidal? Report
January 23, 20179 yr comment_753053 Dunno. I have Sprint, so I guess I'll hear something eventually. I'll post when I do. And maybe this will put Tidal on less shaky ground. Hopefully. Report
March 2, 20179 yr Author comment_757402 Meanwhile... Tidal may have some lossless competition from Spotify http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/1/14776780/spotify-hi-fi-preparing-launch-lossless-audio-tier Report
March 2, 20179 yr comment_757431 Interesting. A good thing if it comes to pass. Fascinating that removing the head jack makes it possible for people to want decent quality. An alternative factoid. Or some part of marketing that I don't understand. Also interesting that Spotify isn't profitable yet. Report
March 17, 20179 yr Author comment_759148 Meanwhile ... HIGHRESAUDIO TO STOP OFFERING MQA Online music provider to drop MQA, claiming format 'not lossless' Via: http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/highresaudio-to-stop-offering-mqa/ Technical analysis paper https://www.xivero.com/blog/hypothesis-paper-to-support-a-deeper-technical-analysis-of-mqa-by-mqa-limited/ Conclusion / Summary points 1) MQA is in fact “lossy” because it alters the bit-depth and frequency response (magnitude & phase) and therefore time domain appearance of the original high resolution audio file by applying none-linear-phase filters impacting the critical audio spectrum (e.g. 4dB attenuation at 40kHz). 2) An alternative compression scheme that does not show those adverse effects has been described above and can be used for streaming applications or mobile high resolution audio players, with limited memory, to store at least 40% more audio files. Discuss Edited March 17, 20179 yr by Grahame Report
March 17, 20179 yr Author comment_759152 Also Linn state : https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music Report
March 17, 20179 yr comment_759162 Yeah, my first impression was, "critical?", but...any difference is a difference, so it's not lossless. Lossless has a very specific meaning. Report
March 26, 20179 yr Author comment_760095 Meanwhile ... https://gizmodo.com/streaming-music-services-from-most-screwed-to-least-sc-1793612699 Report
May 26, 20179 yr Author comment_765654 Meanwhile ... http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7809477/tidal-ceo-jeff-toig-departure-jeffrey-new-executive https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/tidal-ceo-jeff-toig-exits-jay-z-1202445915/ Report
August 3, 20179 yr Author comment_771378 Meanwhile ... https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywgeek/why-spotify-lowered-the-volume-of-songs-and-ended-hegemonic-loudness Report
August 12, 20179 yr comment_772119 On 8/3/2017 at 6:43 PM, Grahame said: Meanwhile ... https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywgeek/why-spotify-lowered-the-volume-of-songs-and-ended-hegemonic-loudness So Spotify finally caught up with everyone else? That's nice. Report
August 21, 20179 yr comment_772832 Big TIDAL app update and now their top recs for me are Jay-Z and some likely young chap called A$AP Ferg. So, yeah, right in my wheelhouse then. Report
August 21, 20179 yr comment_772835 Did you check out the new kodak black mixtape tho... straight fire fam ??? Report
August 21, 20179 yr comment_772836 Check out this track in TIDAL: "Shabba" by A$AP Ferg, A$AP Rocky http://tidal.com/track/21787458Love this track.Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk Report
August 21, 20179 yr comment_772837 Is there an A$AP Shitty, or does that just go for all of them? Report
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