51 (edited by rdfornasero 2021-03-08 21:34:53)

Re: MQA is it possible?

nickchop wrote:
rdfornasero wrote:
ramses wrote:

My decision is already set, I regarded it only as "funny" to refer to a huge thread where you can be sure that SNR is low wink

A very smart member at AS reverse engineered MQA and debunked all of MQA's claims. MQA is a lossy codec. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. It's simply marketing BS.

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/ … ions-r701/

Why anyone would pay $20.00 / month for Tidal MQA when they can get real lossless CD and Hi-res FLAC for $15.00 / month from qobuz is hard to understand.

Edit: Added link to MQA A Review of Controversies Concerns and Cautions

This is exactly the kind of confused anti-MQA arguments I'm talking about. Look, regardless of what you feel about MQA's business model, AN MQA FILE CONTAINS MORE SONIC INFORMATION THAN A CD EQUIVALENT. It's lossless up to and slightly beyond CD-quality. Only the high res component is lossy, which is harmless. There is very, very little energy in that range, most of it being high frequency noise and meaningless. In other words, in the very least it is superior to CD-quality. Whether or not it's superior to standard high res PCM will come down to whether or not you believe MQA's claims about better time domain performance.

And no, Archimago didn't "reverse engineer it". He's writting about it. He's thought about it. But ultimately MQA is a closed-source platform and his measurements are indirect. Yes, it's too bad that MQA is so secretive. It would be nice if we had proper end-to-end test files and great details about how it works.

But while we must speculate on how it works, WE DON'T have to speculate on whether or not it's better or worse. If you have the time and inclination, you can set up a proper ABX. It's amazing to me how strong people's opinions on MQA are, despite so few actually trying it a rigorous way. There is nothing scientific about ignoring experience, especially when we have the ability to record it in a rigorous and controlled fashion.

Try it. You might be surprised at the result. Or you won't be. Either way, you'll have learned something.

I didn't say that Archimago reverse engineered it. The person who did is mentioned in the Acknowledgements.

Re: MQA is it possible?

nickchop wrote:
rdfornasero wrote:
ramses wrote:

Which of the 878 posts in this thread is relevant ?

Just start with the last 20 pages.

Say NO to MQA.

If you're serious about sound quality, switch to qobuz.

If you're serious about sound quality, attempt a rigorous ABX comparison with an MQA DAC instead of reading endless internet forum claptrap.

I'm quite happy with my RME DAC and lossless FLAC thanks.

Re: MQA is it possible?

Neil Young pulls music from Tidal, because of MQA:  https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/ar … -Listeners

Re: MQA is it possible?

rdfornasero wrote:
nickchop wrote:
rdfornasero wrote:

Just start with the last 20 pages.

Say NO to MQA.

If you're serious about sound quality, switch to qobuz.

If you're serious about sound quality, attempt a rigorous ABX comparison with an MQA DAC instead of reading endless internet forum claptrap.

I'm quite happy with my RME DAC and lossless FLAC thanks.

And presumably you would be after testing it properly, right? So what's the harm in trying something?

Re: MQA is it possible?

klausi99 wrote:

Neil Young pulls music from Tidal, because of MQA:  https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/ar … -Listeners

Not sure why that is supposed to matter, or why that would be a substitute for a controlled listening experiment? I mean... how often is "Because Neil Young said so" a conclusive argument?

56

Re: MQA is it possible?

To all: Can we stop this useless discussion, please? There are other forums for this kind of stuff, and the main question has been answered. Thanks.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: MQA is it possible?

Please - no MQA BS by RME. You don't buy RME DAC to feed it with loosy stuff.

Re: MQA is it possible?

After 50 posts, I am surprised that no one has proposed a solution to "no MQA on RME", which is ... move from Tidal to Qobuz.

I could understand someone wanting MQA if they are mobile and streaming via mobile data a lot, but the RME products are not portable products. So I do not understand why an RME customer would choose Tidal? OK, Tidal may have a slightly larger catalogue. 10% perhaps? Who knows. But, as a Qobuz customer with broad tastes, I can affirm that it is only once per month, if that, that I fail to find something on Qobuz that I would expect to find there. I cannot believe that, in 2021, the relative size of the Tidal and Qobuz catalogues is any justification for choosing Tidal over Qobuz.

With Qobuz this whole discussion goes away. I became frustrated with the secrecy and marketing BS put out by MQA and Tidal, and the endless discussions and misinformation and ambiguity, and simply turned my back on MQA. I believe that in most territories, Qobuz is even cheaper? And the RME driver works better with Qobuz than with Tidal?

I am genuinely puzzled as to why an RME customer would want MQA?

(Use this service to transfer your playlists from Tidal to Qobuz: soundiiz.com   Free or about $4 one-off )

Re: MQA is it possible?

I can understand that the ADI-2 has DSD support as this actually requires different hardware decoding (in some sense) compared to PCM. (although AFAIK the DAC chips are all sigma-delta in the adi, no "true" multibit, not that it matters though).
MQA is just a complicated software codec. There is absolutely no difference in terms of hardware once the data has been decoded (to pcm). I would never be interested in MQA. But for those who are, I am sure in due time you can find MQA hardware decoders on aliexpress which you can then use to feed the decoded data to the ADI.

60 (edited by nickchop 2021-03-11 22:48:07)

Re: MQA is it possible?

Mark Dirac wrote:

After 50 posts, I am surprised that no one has proposed a solution to "no MQA on RME", which is ... move from Tidal to Qobuz.

I could understand someone wanting MQA if they are mobile and streaming via mobile data a lot, but the RME products are not portable products. So I do not understand why an RME customer would choose Tidal? OK, Tidal may have a slightly larger catalogue. 10% perhaps? Who knows. But, as a Qobuz customer with broad tastes, I can affirm that it is only once per month, if that, that I fail to find something on Qobuz that I would expect to find there. I cannot believe that, in 2021, the relative size of the Tidal and Qobuz catalogues is any justification for choosing Tidal over Qobuz.

With Qobuz this whole discussion goes away. I became frustrated with the secrecy and marketing BS put out by MQA and Tidal, and the endless discussions and misinformation and ambiguity, and simply turned my back on MQA. I believe that in most territories, Qobuz is even cheaper? And the RME driver works better with Qobuz than with Tidal?

I am genuinely puzzled as to why an RME customer would want MQA?

(Use this service to transfer your playlists from Tidal to Qobuz: soundiiz.com   Free or about $4 one-off )

Well, firstly. In my blind, controlled tests I've found fully-rendered MQA to yield better results than high res PCM. If you'd like me to go into detail about how I constructed these tests, feel free to PM me. Generally speaking, I find that MQA images better with some improvements in timbre, which are consistent with MQA's claims of improvements in the time domain. I'll admit that MQA's claims are left pretty murky given their refusal to present a complete, technical picture of how it works (instead supplied with marketing BS like "origami" and such nonsense), but I've still nonetheless found the results to be consistent with their claims.

The second reason why an RME user might prefer to Tidal to Qobuz is because an RME user might also be a non-RME user. For example, while I have two ADI-2s I also have a mobile device that I use for both travel and in the car. A third reason is because I have family members who also use Tidal and we share. So Tidal is what I have.

A fourth reason is because--if you're interested in high resolution content--there is simply much more of it on Tidal than there is on Qobuz. Like it or not, MQA has enticed major studios to start dropping new content from their flagship artists in MQA, as well as re-releasing much of their back-catalog.

Now given that there are many people who choose Tidal for any of the above reasons (or others that aren't relevant for me and therefore have difficulty thinking of), it's best to have an MQA DAC. We can debate all day about whether or not MQA stacks up to conventional high res PCM*. But it's significantly lower bar to establish that Tidal sounds better on an MQA DAC that it does on an equivalent non-MQA DAC

That's all I'm saying here. I'm not here to convince people of the greatness of MQA. I'm saying it's here. It's prevalent on one of the major streaming services. It sounds better on an MQA DAC. It would be nice if it were a paid upgrade for RME users who for whatever reason have Tidal.

* Instead of arguing about it, we could try rigorous blind AB testing with repeated trials, but that's just not something people are interested in doing. Throwing links to Neil Young's most recent comments or the obligatory Archimago post is so much more stimulating.

Re: MQA is it possible?

Why are we still talking about this? ADI-2 won't support MQA for good reasons (its a dead horse).
Qobuz costs 15$/month, which is a fair Price IMHO. (around 200$ per year). If you are not willing to do that. Use the 200$ to buy an MQA dac from aliexpress. Problem solved. Can we close this topic now?

62 (edited by pschelbert 2021-03-12 22:04:16)

Re: MQA is it possible?

@nickhop
RME will not support MQA, thats clearly stated here in this thread. So stop asking for it.
Buy other brand if you need MQA.

I said I do not need nor want MQA.
I do not streaming at all, I buy CD quality and highres.
I know nobody who uses Tidal.

To Admin: suggestion, do close this thread

Re: MQA is it possible?

helohe wrote:

Why are we still talking about this? ADI-2 won't support MQA for good reasons (its a dead horse).
Qobuz costs 15$/month, which is a fair Price IMHO. (around 200$ per year). If you are not willing to do that. Use the 200$ to buy an MQA dac from aliexpress. Problem solved. Can we close this topic now?

Well you just decided to chime in. So why did you elect to do so? You're continuing this discussion. I mean, what, did you think a plainly false, low-effort comment like "It's a dead horse" is going to put the topic to bed for good? Tidal is one of the most popular streaming services in the world, and Tidal streams MQA. Today more high res is released in MQA than in any other high res format. It's plainly not a "dead horse."

Re: MQA is it possible?

pschelbert wrote:

@nickhop
RME will not support MQA, thats clearly stated here in this thread. So stop asking for it.
Buy other brand if you need MQA.

I said I do not need nor want MQA.
I do not streaming at all, I buy CD quality and highres.
I know nobody who uses Tidal.

To Admin: suggestion, do close this thread

Your issue isn't with me. I'm just an RME customer who asked a simple question of MQA staff. But for some reason I cannot grok the mere invocation of the letters "M, Q, and A" summons a train of weirdly emotional audiophiles with something to say, usually in the form of low-effort, usually false, and/or snide remarks.

Re: MQA is it possible?

your question is answered.

RME will not support MQA. Full stop.

Re: MQA is it possible?

pschelbert wrote:

your question is answered.

RME will not support MQA. Full stop.

Is this really how you choose to spend your time?

67 (edited by KaiS 2021-03-13 02:10:51)

Re: MQA is it possible?

After reading a lot about MQA, still unclear:

What does “support MQA” mean for a DAC, aside from paying a license fee?

I only found unspecific claims of “fixing DAC errors” (what errors?) without further explanation.


I’m one of this “few” Tidal users, but cannot tell much of a sound difference of “HiRes” compared to “Hifi” = CD quality.

What happens from time to time that Tidal HiRes distorts sibilants in a way like bad resampling, a distortion that is not present in “Hifi”.

If MQA per se is to blame for that I don’t know.
Might even be bad remastering job.

68

Re: MQA is it possible?

Thread closed. Thanks everyone for their understanding.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME