Meridian MQA
- Thread starter Billy Shears
- Start date
It sounds like we will be getting "some" content early next year. This is from Scottish artist Amy Duncan regarding her upcoming release "Undercurrents".
"Sound quality is very important to me and so I am delighted to say that Undercurrents has been encoded into a brand new streaming format which is being launched by Meridian Audio called MQA: Master Quality Authenticated.
I heard some of the MQA tracks in London last week, and the songs sounded expansive and rich like they did in the studio, with absolutely no loss of quality. Normally it is only the artists and producers that get to hear music in this way but this new format is going to be available for everyone to hear soon!
Really happy to say that Undercurrents will be part of the promotion of MQA as it is being introduced to the industry, alongside some other great music which I am looking forward to discovering."
"Sound quality is very important to me and so I am delighted to say that Undercurrents has been encoded into a brand new streaming format which is being launched by Meridian Audio called MQA: Master Quality Authenticated.
I heard some of the MQA tracks in London last week, and the songs sounded expansive and rich like they did in the studio, with absolutely no loss of quality. Normally it is only the artists and producers that get to hear music in this way but this new format is going to be available for everyone to hear soon!
Really happy to say that Undercurrents will be part of the promotion of MQA as it is being introduced to the industry, alongside some other great music which I am looking forward to discovering."
So, it's primarily another compression scheme. I don't see anything else about it that's significant.
When Tidal adds MQA content and a decoder, I'll be very happy. That's the only thing about MQA which matters to me.
When Tidal adds MQA content and a decoder, I'll be very happy. That's the only thing about MQA which matters to me.
No, that is not correct. It is not just a compression scheme.
Skip ahead and listen from ~58' to ~60'. That just one other point.
I listened to the video you posted. There's nothing new there.
I really think the OP's video is a much better explanation of MQA. I'm talking about for me. I don't see any real benefit to the auto correction that MQA purports to do. I also don't see the major advantage to how MQA suppossedly improves the time domain. It looks like MQA actually makes the impulse response a little worse in some ways and "better" in other ways. So, that's just a wash. I'm not minimizing the importance of MQA because I DO think streaming better quality files is very exciting.
I agree it is exciting to be able to stream high quality recordings. Now, if we can just figure out how to have the artists make money with streaming. As my son is about to enter this arena, I would like to see him make money off his recordings! 
The real key is to listen to MQA encoded music and decide.
I found MQA encoded and decoded files on a $80,000 Meridian system at a local MQA demo sponsored by Meridian to be not as good as listening to the same music in regular FLAC and DSD versions.
Hires streaming is great. But the rest of the MQA hype reminds me of the hype about Pono. I really don't think MQA will improve upon hires AtoD formats like DSD256 or 24/192khz recordings.
There were no comparisons done in the demo I attended so going from poor auditory memory about half were much better than any version I have heard in the past. Nothing stood out in the other half. Like you they used their 8000 series speakers but they were not set-up up in their main room which has decent acoustics rather in a setting where they could set up multiple chairs. I look forward to hearing MQA in a familiar setting.
The other key is hearing MQA encoded music without hardware (in the DAC) and software (in player software) decoding. How does that compare to unencoded FLAC and DSD files?
That will also be a key in terms of do streaming services only offer MQA encoded music, or do they offer it both ways for listeners without MQA equipped DACs and software.
If you do not have MQA capability you get exactly what you get today. They do not have to create two files.
It can't be physically the same yet be 6 times smaller. You will likely get a lower sample rate version/baseline.
Correct.
You will be listening to the music file with the MQA encoding applied - which includes lossless and lossy compression, pre-distortion, etc.
What it actually sounds like will depend on the encoding and whether the listener has the MQA software decoding, MQA hardware decoding or neither.
I agree it is exciting to be able to stream high quality recordings. Now, if we can just figure out how to have the artists make money with streaming. As my son is about to enter this arena, I would like to see him make money off his recordings!
Same here.
Since i got the Chord 2 qute Dac I have been listening to Tidal Hifi (and digital in general), more then i would care to admit...
I was addressing the case where you do not have an MQA decoder. That baseline version will have to be at lower sample rate/bit depth than the high-res original. I think they said the baseline is CD?
The sound I am getting out of my multibit DAC is exceptional. I have a nice older VPI TT that will continue to collect dust!
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