Any News on MQA Lately?

Hi Eric
Would you be able too describe the decoder you were using or heard and if the recorded material was identified by the decoder/player as being MQA files. 
I was hoping that the MQA format would result in overall better recordings, not that I am anxious to start over or replace a lot of my current media.  Even though my best source is my Turntable, I am not a advocate of any one particular media. I believe that all source equipment are recording dependent.  I do believe that if all steps in the analogue process are of the highest caliber, that vinyl has the advantage, but with this in mind, I have a lot of poorly recorded LP's and superbly recorded CD's / DSD/SACD. I was disappointed to hear your observation of MQA files, I was hoping that process would improve the overall sonic quality of recordings and be a reliable source for quality recordings. I guess I will have to listen for myself,  but do value your opinion 

there is a lot of rumor-mongering recently that MQA is a way to enforce DRM...

Hi @bradf

I used a Mytek Brooklyn. Yes, MQA was properly identified when played. My sources came from 2l.no

In my case I comapred 96/24 to MQA and I honestly could hear no difference at all. Not a bad thing considering MQA is a lossy and complicated format to reconstruct. Still, it has no value for me at all.

The Brooklyn IS a very good DAC, and to my ears, plays Redbook much better than most DACs from even 5 years ago. MQA is currently disabled so I can play with other filters. There is an odd bit of interface troubles. If you enable MQA you can't change filters. :-)

Best,


Erik

 

The big question will be if the market goes for MQA.  Without a large enough catalog of music, I don't see the DAC makers investing in making their units MQA-compatible.

The MQA folks have said that non-MQA-compatible DACs will be able to play back their files (as they are in a PCM wrapper), but from the few articles I've read on the subject, it seems that FPGA-based DAC manufacturers report that the resulting sound quality is not good.

I guess time will tell.  But it seems that there was a real flurry of excitement about MQA earlier in 2016, which seems to have calmed down.