How Is MQA Fareing?

jazzdc
2 posts
07-29-2017 3:29am
MQA - is not worth time and effort. Consensus with my audiophile contacts is some things sound a bit 'better' will others a bit worse! Mostly it just makes things sound slightly different and NOT better. When I recorded tracks 20-30 years ago, we would take a mix and run out to our car and listen to see how it came across on the vehicle's cassette player. This was an effort to see how things sounded in the real world and our final mixes were adjusted accordingly. Getting that mix prior to that step does not improve anything.

Hmm, really technical (as in accurate LOL) then. I get your drift, but poor analogy. Studios use a mini monitor for 'radio' check, and full range (hopefully good) speakers for sound check. But as in all things, some studios were better than others, and we have all come across hideously harsh or bright recording, even recently clipping recording in the digital domain (Metallica as an example). My view is anything that gives us access to 'better' sounding albums, then good news. The ones I have tried do seems a bit cleaner and more dynamic, though I am using 96K tracks to a non MQA DAC, so got got the 'whole' MQA bounce. But it is an improvement to me.

And yes, lets stop the MQA bashing for the sake of it, way too much of that political / corporate nervosa going on. And IMO if more pay for Tidal Masters, the price will drop not go up, and Amazon and others might offer a similar service to help drive it down.
Sorry, have to bash Apple though, they had their chance with 'Apple Music' service, it was / is dire. Forget Apple, they are too into selling mp3 at garbage quality for 99p a track. That is on the way out and will die soon I am convinced.

I've had MQA for the last few months and really enjoy it.

It's true I do not have the technical expertise to bring to the the table but with 40 years earning my living as a performing musician and the last 20 endlessly experimenting with various combinations of high end audiophile equipment, my opinion more than counts, it supercedes. 

Whether MQA 'sounds' better or not will always be a matter of opinion highly reliant on your own equipment and personal mixing preferences for the last particular track you heard. If that kind of jumbled mess is the criteria for progress, you've got me beat. 

note: My audiophile friends mostly agree but there is one hold out - the non musician. 

Love MQA through my ARC system and Blusound Vault 2... When I can find music that I want to listen to...
I Don't like the concept of "renting" music though and find the Tidal music channel appears to be pushing lots of its own musical genre that I don't find interesting. That said, when I dig in and search for music that is to my liking it often is not in the MQA format which makes the $20 monthly fee questionable.  I do feel MQA is an entertaining high quality musical source with audible pleasantries to be sure.  Some recordings sound more intimate and come alive in MQA... I do find myself wishing that there were some quality alternatives to Tidal as a distribution channel.

Bottom line though is regardless of how good it sounds (or potentially can sound given the original master), MQA is a "lossy compression". For those such as myself who primarily listen to bands - such as but not limited to the Grateful Dead - whose live recordings are readily available in "lossless" compression formats such as flac or shn, why would I ever want to stream MQA when I can just download the lossless files and play those?