[Marius]

HI Chris, James,


Will Bryston support MQA? http://www.whathifi.com/news/tidal-to-launch-hi-res-audio-streaming-in-2016?




Seems Tidal and some other suppliers are trying yet another proprietary (de)coding.


Since MM on the BDP is supporting Tidal, i wondered what Bryston's viewpoint on this might be. Somehow Tidal hasn't got a lot of attention really over here, i even would dare to fear for its longterm succes, to use an understatement. From that point of view, it is remarkable you support Tidal in the first place, not speaking of it being the only third party you support in MM natively. 


Cheers,
Marius

[James Tanner]

Hi Marius,

We have looked at MQA but so far no decision. 

I wonder though how people will feel about yet another decoding format requiring more copies of the same music they already have?

james

[Marius]

my thoughts exactly. Adding to that the steep monthly price, and library which still lacks compared to other services.. Don't have exact figures (at all) but it doesn't feel like a winner, sorry to say.


Hope Bryston focusses on the other services to stream through our BDP's though.


btw, people wouldn't need another format would they? we're talking about streaming aren't we? so no copies necessary, only another streaming format the player needs to support?


cheers,
Marius

Hi Marius,

We have looked at MQA but so far no decision. 

I wonder though how people will feel about yet another decoding format requiring more copies of the same music they already have?

james

[James Tanner]

Yes as a streaming format it has merit - as I understand it MQA is just another type of compression system.

james

[Phil A]

I don't know if another encoding/decoding scheme is required.  MQA is supposed to be compatible with plain old PCM so that if you don't have MQA it will play back at CD quality.  If may be good for someone who sees value in something like - http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/pioneer-digital-audio-player-becomes-first-portable-player-to-offer-mqa/   

I'd love to have a portable hi-rez player for the car.  However, that being said, hi-rez files take up lots of room and for me being it's the car environment, I opt for simplicity.  I sold my 7-8 yr. old 160GB iPod Classic many months back.  My car takes thumb drive and will play MP3 or WMA.  When I use Foobar to convert a hi-rez file, it gives me 320kbps and 16/48.

For the home, I guess if someone wants to stream lots of hi-rez, it may make sense.  Perhaps someone at some point will make an outboard decoder (if the format takes off) and then it can be played back hi-res.

[BSMSPEMBA]

Hi James,

With the apparent big splash that MQA made as CES this year (link below), I was curious about what your and Bryston's point of view is regarding the format.  Admittedly, my understanding of it is fairly limited.  However, from what I understand it is both backwards compatible with normal players, they claim that even not so flexible iTunes can play an MQA file, and capable of producing better than CD quality sound (i.e., master quality), if it is played through an MQA capable system. 

What I was wondering was if Bryston has taken another look at the format, thinks they will fully support it, and if so, are the BDP and BDA units capable of playing the master portion of the MQA file? 

http://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-takes-big-time-2016#S532HTlBBRQSU8C0.97

Thank you

[scirica]

It's an interesting concept, given MQA's understanding of the original recording equipment and process they can use specific thumbprints to package and unpackage.  Like others, I believe this has merit in the streaming world, but not ready to invest in hard media duplication (again).

SC

[mav52]

I'll believe it when it actually happens. After all they have been talking about this since 2014 CES and it's still inching along.    And I'm not sure how many formats of King Of Blue I can handle 

[BSMSPEMBA]

From my point of view, I would not repurchase anything.  If I ultimately go with MQA, I would use it for future purchases or streaming through Tidal.

The thing that I am really interested in is if it is simply a functionality that can be added to the BDP via a software upgrade and if the BDAs' DAC can decode it after a firmware update or if a completely different DAC chip is needed.  Those are the two things that are not really clear to me. 

[James Tanner]

Letter to stereophile on MQA

Pure Bullshit.
Submitted by dce22 on January 5, 2016 - 11:23am

Meridian was serving dvd audio's lossless encoding and they lost that cash cow now it's trying to create fictional better file format to keep sucking the cash from unsuspecting music lovers while we have excellent open format like FLAC, and keep talking about temporal resolution (it's fictional thing does not exist in audio).

When i asked John Atkinson what is this "smearing in the time domain" that they are peddling with Bob he provide me with this link

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18046

read it at your own free will.

It talks about how Bob compares audio resolution with camera lenses and screen pixel density to audio PCM sample rate, that is the first hole in the theory, there is nothing in sound "physics" that can be compared to screen or film resolution its apples and oranges you can kind of argue that audio frequency response is like color saturation (PCM Sample rate) and audio dynamic range is like contrast-grayscale rate (Bit depth) but even that is incorrect.

It has some nice graphs about impulse response of few filter types some graphs that prove that 16/44.1 is almost all we can hear, and some simulation of air responses and it talks about how there oversampling filter is so much closer to air simulation and that is the kicker air does not have oversampling filter and you cant compare air with hearing mechanism you need to check is the oversampling filter inside your hearing envelope and not is the oversamping filter inside bat's hearing envelope, to achieve highest audio clarity from PCM system you must be fully nyquist shannon theorem compliant no filter leakage at all (high performance dac's like Benchmark media filters leak).

The whole think inside MQA system is a oversampling filer with alot of leakage, because ... hey the air does not have tales in the input response so hey we make our filter not have either not accounting the fact that the tales are crucial part about high frequency precision.

If you get a chance to hear MQA it will sound different of course it distort alot it has to sound different but different does not means better.

The only filter that does not touch the audible band is FIR phase linear the default one in most of the DAC's if you want extra cushion go 96khz then you have covered cat's and dog's hearing, yes it's that "high" frequency and you wanna cover bat's and dolphin's you go 192khz i mean all of species inside bat's family, insane type of frequency response.

All the ADC DAC problems stem from filter distortion inside 1khz-10khz audio band you can't fix it with more sampling rate only shift it around you need better filter less ripple using more coeficients more memory and better precision not some kind of minimal phase leaky abominantion.

[Phil A]

Personally, I don't think we need another format. Consumers don't control what format something gets released on (I have two SACDs that are awaiting burning and a bunch of hi-rez PCM titles in my wish list at HDTracks).  I'm certainly not going to go out and re-purchase a large amount of music even if for some reason it does sound a bit better (same is true of 4k Blu-Ray - expect about a year from now I'll have a player and there may be a few titles I might consider - but I still have about 600 DVDs and between those, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc., there are not many things I'll be rebuying, and, if I do, it will be something found in a bargain bin - just sold my LDs and bought one title on Blu-Ray cheap I had on LD). 

From what I understood (have not followed it since the initial press release some time ago and could be wrong), the stuff will play on any player.  So if the player can accept the sampling frequency (and down convert it if necessary to a DAC) then I understood it could be played.  One just couldn't get whatever benefits MQA was supposed to offer.  It's probably really late in the game for many manufacturers to start licensing and adding extra costs to their products.

[*Scotty*]

If Meridian can get the industry to adopt MQA it will mean a revenue stream from licensing the technology for them, but it would render every existing DAC out there incompatible with the format. I don't know if a firmware update would work in some cases or not. I know that I won't be purchasing a new DAC just to get this technology.
Scotty

[Phil A]

I know that I won't be purchasing a new DAC just to get this technology.
Scotty

+1 on that.

[Marius]

James,
I'm guessing this means no MQA support from Bryston soon ..
Thanks for sharing this most delightful 'letter'.
Cheers,
Marius

Letter to stereophile on MQA

Pure Bullshit.
Submitted by dce22 on January 5, 2016 - 11:23am

Meridian was serving dvd audio's lossless encoding and they lost that cash cow now it's trying to create fictional better file format to keep sucking the cash from unsuspecting music lovers while we have excellent open format like FLAC, and keep talking about temporal resolution (it's fictional thing does not exist in audio).

When i asked John Atkinson what is this "smearing in the time domain" that they are peddling with Bob he provide me with this link

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18046

read it at your own free will.

It talks about how Bob compares audio resolution with camera lenses and screen pixel density to audio PCM sample rate, that is the first hole in the theory, there is nothing in sound "physics" that can be compared to screen or film resolution its apples and oranges you can kind of argue that audio frequency response is like color saturation (PCM Sample rate) and audio dynamic range is like contrast-grayscale rate (Bit depth) but even that is incorrect.

It has some nice graphs about impulse response of few filter types some graphs that prove that 16/44.1 is almost all we can hear, and some simulation of air responses and it talks about how there oversampling filter is so much closer to air simulation and that is the kicker air does not have oversampling filter and you cant compare air with hearing mechanism you need to check is the oversampling filter inside your hearing envelope and not is the oversamping filter inside bat's hearing envelope, to achieve highest audio clarity from PCM system you must be fully nyquist shannon theorem compliant no filter leakage at all (high performance dac's like Benchmark media filters leak).

The whole think inside MQA system is a oversampling filer with alot of leakage, because ... hey the air does not have tales in the input response so hey we make our filter not have either not accounting the fact that the tales are crucial part about high frequency precision.

If you get a chance to hear MQA it will sound different of course it distort alot it has to sound different but different does not means better.

The only filter that does not touch the audible band is FIR phase linear the default one in most of the DAC's if you want extra cushion go 96khz then you have covered cat's and dog's hearing, yes it's that "high" frequency and you wanna cover bat's and dolphin's you go 192khz i mean all of species inside bat's family, insane type of frequency response.

All the ADC DAC problems stem from filter distortion inside 1khz-10khz audio band you can't fix it with more sampling rate only shift it around you need better filter less ripple using more coeficients more memory and better precision not some kind of minimal phase leaky abominantion.

[werd]

Sounds like another THX certification on its way.  . I don't know its hard to say if its going to make it to the consumer as an actual real improvement.

[Grant Hill]

I did not get exactly how it works, but indeed there is a lot of sense in what you guys said - defintely we don't need another format

I think all should focus more on making better master at the beginning, than try to re-master in new formats what is borne with poor quality...

[werd]

I did not get exactly how it works, but indeed there is a lot of sense in what you guys said - defintely we don't need another format

I think all should focus more on making better master at the beginning, than try to re-master in new formats what is borne with poor quality...

This reminds of something James Tanner said awhile back on a board topic. It probably still is his opinion and very much mine. "You are going to get the best improvement in playback when the component power supply is made better" or something close to that if i recall.

Just give me 24 or 32 bit recording. Don t really care about output filtering.

[Krutsch]

I wonder though how people will feel about yet another decoding format requiring more copies of the same music they already have?

IMO, I think MQA is more relevant for Tidal than for consumers that purchase/curate their own music.

One of MQA's benefits is it can "fold" information into the bits below the noise floor (I am paraphrasing what I've read, taken with a grain of salt). In effect, for the streaming providers, it's a sort-of lossless compression for high-res music. I think that's the attraction for Tidal and a software decoder can transcode back to a sort-of, high-res PCM equivalent that the MQA evangelists say sounds better than a Redbook CD, despite using little more than the same volume of bits for transmission over the Internet.

I completely agree with James Tanner (and many others) that recognize that for our own collections of purchased music, none of us need yet another copy of Kind Of Blue, along with a new DAC for certified decoding.

[brj]

Personally I'm very intrigued regarding MQA and am very much looking forward to an opportunity to audition it.  I will look for this feature in future DAC purchases if it pans out.

I'm confused as to why people seem to think they'd have to re-buy their entire library.  If you move to an MQA capable DAC, it would still play all of your current music without issue.  While I might re-purchase the odd album here and there, much like I've done with DSD and high-res to date, I certainly wouldn't re-purchase everything, and I certainly won't enjoy what I already own any less.  Assuming, however, that an audition proves that the technology is worth it (to me), I would definitely start steering any future music purchases toward the MQA format from that point forward.

If Meridian can get the industry to adopt MQA it will mean a revenue stream from licensing the technology for them, but it would render every existing DAC out there incompatible with the format.

Scotty, on what source are you basing this?  Everything I've read indicates that a non-MQA capable DAC simply spits out CD quality audio when processing an MQA file.

In that sense, this is a massive improvement over the current high-res formats - the DAC must support those high-res formats or you get no useful output when playing them.  (I have a 24-bit/96 kHz DAC that sounds fantastic, but feeding it DSD or 24/196 kHz files gets me very painful noise, not 24/96 output!)


Again, I haven't heard MQA yet, but I'm very impressed with what I've read so far about how the technology is implemented - far more so than any standard high-res format.  The proof will be in the audition...

[*Scotty*]

There is kind of no reason to purchase MQA 24/96 or higher data rate product when it plays back as CD quality. If MQA gets a lot of traction then you will need a compatible DAC to realize any improvement in sound quality that the format might bring to the table.
Scotty