[OB Ron]

Hi fellow AudioCircle members from new member OB Ron.  I'm enjoying digital music reproduction in my home for the first time in 30+ years, and hoping to raise my enjoyment much more with further system improvements.  I tried and gave up on digital music many times over that period, seeking refuge in live music performances, believing that eventually digital audio will be done well.  I refused to return to antiquated vinyl recordings after most of my audio system and my entire record collection was stolen out of my home in the 1980's.

It took a lot of effort to get to where I am now.  Doing digital audio well is difficult, especially on a small budget.  It shouldn't be this hard.  With lots of tweaks and tuning, when the AC power is good, and the environment quiet, the magic will hopefully happen.  When it does, I'm feeling pleasure from recorded music greater than ever before.  Some recordings surprise me with how good they are, even some old rock classics that seem fresh and new, even amazing.  My taste in music is quite varied, but I don't have much patience for rap and similar.

I'd like to have an MQA compatible DAC soon, but I'm probably going to wait until it's a well proven and optimized technology with lots of DACs to choose from, lots of reviews to guide me, and abundant good MQA encoded recordings.  I hope experiences and opinions from AudioCircle members will help me, and I hope I can contribute to help others, too.

One thing I can say right now that has proven to be very important for me toward achieving emotional connection with the music is to get the absolute polarity/phase correct for each recording.  A friend keyed me in on this a few years ago, and I'm sure glad he did, because recordings vary a lot.  Getting it right makes a huge difference for me with my current system (much more than previous system), even on TV shows.  I think frequent wrong polarity is one of the key reasons digital audio has a bad reputation, and why people resort to vinyl LPs.  My current DAC has a helpful polarity switch.  Having easy quick remote control selection of polarity is one of my requirements for my next DAC.  Why does digital audio have a polarity problem?  What's your experience?

[FullRangeMan]

Welcome OB Ron
Polarity (0/180º) switch is a facility not a prob.
Some amps invert polarity(180º), same to some digital recordings, then some DACs offer the option to adjust.
W/ polarity 180º the sound stage is flat.

Sometimes happen just 1 mike or cable or mike preamp is out of phase and ruin the final phase, which will be 180º(out of phase).

With vinyl and tape is impossible to adjust the phase.

[Guy 13]

A warm welcome to AudioCircle Mr. Ron

Guy 13

[Blackmore]

I heard a MQA demo at CES and it sure seems like the real deal. We listened to a Bob Dylan track at 192 then the same track MQA and the sound was much improved. I'm interested in the streaming aspect of this process and will watch the whole thing unfold before jumping in. Glad you're joining us at AC. 

[ArthurDent]

Greetings & Welcome to AC Ron 

[Phil A]

Welcome to AC!

[Brad]

Always good to have another OB guy on the site.  Welcome, Ron!

I'm also quite interested to see where the MQA technology leads.

The polarity comments are interesting - wouldn't it be cool to have a toggle in the MetaData for ripped digital music as to whether the polarity was correct or not, and have it set the DAC appropriately?

[OB Ron]

The polarity comments are interesting - wouldn't it be cool to have a toggle in the MetaData for ripped digital music as to whether the polarity was correct or not, and have it set the DAC appropriately?

Yes, Brad.  Why don't media players and other source tools provide an easy way for us to set the polarity for a track or whole album, or even just provide overall polarity control for systems that don't otherwise have it?  Does anyone know of ones that do provide polarity control?  It's a major functional omission to not have this capability.  I know sound editors have the capability, which I do use some, but that's a nuisance we shouldn't have to do, and may not even be able to do with MQA files.  With conventional digital audio files and streams, a needed inversion can and should happen prior to the transmission to the DAC so that it works with all equipment that receives digital audio streams.  With MQA though, it seems we may have to send a command to the DAC as you suggest.  There needs to be a standard way of doing this.  Has Meridian/MQA thought about this and handled this need?  We need to collaboratively and collectively push for resolutions to these problems.  The DAC switching ability, and remote control of such, should be needed only for testing purposes to assure that the polarity is set correctly.

I'm also wondering whether Meridian/MQA has a way to authenticate correct polarity in their MQA specification and recording or conversion process.  If we can be assured that all MQA files or streaming have consistently correct polarity, that would be a wonderful and joyful advancement in digital audio.  It would be worth having MQA just for that one feature.  I sent them a message about this, but didn't receive a reply.  If others can take the time to question them on this issue, perhaps they will take it seriously (if they haven't already).  We have a window of opportunity now to get it correct before large quantities of MQA files are produced with inconsistent polarity. 

Is advocacy a part of AudioCircle?  Is there a single place in AudioCircle for Advocacy Projects that we can participate in?

[FullRangeMan]

Mastering studios usually avoid changing the polarity of files, unless the producer ask for it, it must be done as a first step at the begining of the mastering job.
It is seen as unnecessary and dangerous.