(2023) $80 MQA Decoder

[Owen Smith]

Just give me lossless, be it CD or hi-res, physical or download or streaming.

Exactly my view.

 

[kfbkfb]

I just ordered my first MQA CD "GRAND FUNK RAILROAD Mark Don & Mel 69 - 71 JAPAN MQA UHQ MINI LP 2 CD" off eBay.

Do you have this album on a regular CD also, if so, I'm interested to know if the remastering process increases the L-R volume to make the stereo MQA version sound more spacious and to produce better derived surround sound?


Kirk Bayne

 

[par4ken]

Why should I keep an open mind? MQA is not lossy it imposes degradation on the normal frequency range of human hearing, whether unfolded or not. I'd rather have lossless at CD resolution, or higher if available.

How does it do that?

As I understand it the baseband is unaffected, so it is not lossy. The unfolded part is what most would consider to be inaudible anyway but is measurable and when "unfolded" closely matching what you get with a hi-res recording. A small amount of (inaudible) noise would be added. I don't see how that would degrade the sound in any significant way.

Does that unfolded part added to the baseband actually make an audible difference? It's OK to be skeptical there but unfair to cast final judgement without listening first.

It's not "religious" or dogmatic. It's a simple statement of fact that the technology is lossy, and arrived too late to be particularly useful. Modern broadband Internet makes streaming and downloading hi-res a dawdle, so why bother using lossy compression to pack it into a 16-bit/44.1kHz container? If it had arrived ten years earlier, and been licensed more liberally, it would have been a revelation. In 2014, though, there was very little reason for it to exist and there's even less now. Just give me lossless, be it CD or hi-res, physical or download or streaming.

Not lossy, not the portion below 22khz anyway. I agree that hi-res is more practical via Internet for steaming and downloading and that storage space is cheap and abundant now. Even today I bet regular CD's still far outsell the hi-res formats.

Both of you seem to miss the core idea of MQA, what they refer to as de-blurring. The effect is supposed to be an audible improvement without even unfolding the CD. Again I have no opinion if it does improve, deteriorate or do nothing to the sound without hearing for myself.

At this point I have no plans to purchase the equipment to unfold MQA. The DAC that kfbkfb linked to is bargain priced but I would rather something more high end. Software unfolding would be the way to go! What I'm primarily hoping for with MQA CD's is a good sounding well mastered non brick walled recording!

 

[par4ken]

Do you have this album on a regular CD also, if so, I'm interested to know if the remastering process increases the L-R volume to make the stereo MQA version sound more spacious and to produce better derived surround sound?


Kirk Bayne

I have that album on vinyl. The album is culled from the first five albums, all of which I have on CD as well as vinyl. The first CD album is an early Japanese release and sounds great. The others are more variable in sound quality, some suffering from various amounts of compression.

Those early albums were great in stereo but they don't have a lot of correlated information to make for a great decode. They do more of the triangle thing Lb,Rb,Cf. I don't expect any better surround but we shall see.

 

[Owen Smith]

How does it do that?

Sorry I should have said "MQA is lossy". I've edited my original post to correct that.

As I understand it the baseband is unaffected, so it is not lossy.

That would break the laws of physics. MQA is buried in data within the baseband, and as such the baseband is lossy. Tests have shown audible degradation at 3kHz, the tests for that were linked on QQ somewhere.

The unfolded part is what most would consider to be inaudible anyway but is measurable and when "unfolded" closely matching what you get with a hi-res recording. A small amount of (inaudible) noise would be added. I don't see how that would degrade the sound in any significant way.

Maybe it degrades the sound and maybe it doesn't. I don't care. Just give me the lossless version of the same thing, there's plenty of bandwidth.

Both of you seem to miss the core idea of MQA, what they refer to as de-blurring. The effect is supposed to be an audible improvement without even unfolding the CD. Again I have no opinion if it does improve, deteriorate or do nothing to the sound without hearing for myself.

If MQA would actually explain what the hell they're talking about with de-blurring I'd be prepared to listen. But it's all smoke and mirrors and "just trust us, we know what we're doing and you're testing it wrong". I'm an engineer, I can read things and make an attempt to understand them. But they're treating us like children, so I smell snake oil and assume they have something to hide.

What I'm primarily hoping for with MQA CD's is a good sounding well mastered non brick walled recording!

Good mastering does appear to be a benefit of MQA. But they could have given us that without all the snake oil designed to collect royalties.

 

[kfbkfb]

My 1 MQA CD sounds like the remastering process converted the stereo to L+R and L-R, turned up the volume of L-R and then converted it back to L and R, my regular CD doesn't have this spacious sound (or provide as good derived surround sound) as my MQA CD.


Kirk Bayne

 

[James Hoffmann]

I'm new to Tidal and have trouble finding MQA tracks. Even playlists with 'MQA' in the title have tracks in FLAC. I wonder if the recent update did away with them entirely.

The only benefit I've seen of MQA over high-res FLAC is the light on the SU-1 coming on. And the Exclusive mode is sometimes louder, which is a sales trick.

I thought that Tidal pulled the MQA tracks; I have a decoding DAC, but let my subscription lapse.

 

[James Hoffmann]

My 1 MQA CD sounds like the remastering process converted the stereo to L+R and L-R, turned up the volume of L-R and then converted it back to L and R, my regular CD doesn't have this spacious sound (or provide as good derived surround sound) as my MQA CD.


Kirk Bayne

And you're decoding it through an MQA DAC, or a standard system?

 

[kfbkfb]

Undecoded, I skimmed the MQA info online and didn't find anything about modifying the L-R volume as part of the MQA process, since I just have this one MQA title, I'm interested to know if this L-R volume modification is common on MQA CDs.


Kirk Bayne

 

[par4ken]

That would break the laws of physics. MQA is buried in data within the baseband, and as such the baseband is lossy. Tests have shown audible degradation at 3kHz, the tests for that were linked on QQ somewhere.

All that is added is a bit of noise. Actually if I understand the linked to article the noise replaces the random noise that is there with a regular recording so maybe there is no or little noise penalty?

If MQA would actually explain what the hell they're talking about with de-blurring I'd be prepared to listen. But it's all smoke and mirrors and "just trust us, we know what we're doing and you're testing it wrong". I'm an engineer, I can read things and make an attempt to understand them. But they're treating us like children, so I smell snake oil and assume they have something to hide.

As I understand, it removes that "digital" sound or glare, which is or at least was a real thing! They talk of correction of time-domain errors. Good article here. Listening to MQA which links here I've Heard the Future of Streaming I would suggest looking up their patent(s) but sometimes they are written cryptically to burry details.

Good mastering does appear to be a benefit of MQA. But they could have given us that without all the snake oil designed to collect royalties.

Above all that is what I'm hoping for, good mastering.

 

[JediJoker]

My 1 MQA CD sounds like the remastering process converted the stereo to L+R and L-R, turned up the volume of L-R and then converted it back to L and R, my regular CD doesn't have this spacious sound (or provide as good derived surround sound) as my MQA CD.

So, sounds like the mastering engineer applied a width enhancer to the MQA master, or did some other form of mid-side processing. That's not uncommon.

 

[jaap74]

MQA is a fork in a world of soup.....

 

[AYanguas]

Above all that is what I'm hoping for, good mastering.

This is the only sentence that have sense.

We look for good mastering and have to find what producer/releaser/format gives the best Master.

But it turns out that to sell a proprietary format you have to argue for its better sound quality. Since that is not technically possible, what remains is to prepare a Master that sounds better (or different?) than the previous ones released.

 

[Rhinojack]

https://www.amazon.com/S-M-S-L-MQA-CD-Decoder-AK4493S-768kHz/dp/B0C1Y7C9HH/ref=sr_1_2

(I guess Amazon qualifies as media)

Just found this, I have 1 MQA CD (and the same title on regular CD), I noticed the MQA CD has better fake surround sound (DPL2 music).

Anyone have one of these?


Kirk Bayne

I bought that same brand, different model a couple of years ago and never could get it to interact with my Oppo player, I sent it back. Never could get the MQA logo show up on the little screen acknowledging the processing. I contacted MQA itself and they said decoders had to be officially authenticated by MQA to decode discs.

 

[barfle]

The whole MQA thing strikes me as a tempest in a teapot. It never could have made much of a difference anyway, and the expense just made me uninterested. Atmos will be far more noticeable, IMNSHO.

I’m not saying the folks who love it are making shit up, like I do about the guys who claim a power cable was a major upgrade, just that to these old, ringy ears, I wouldn’t be able to tell, and even if I could, there just isn’t enough material out there to float MY boat.

 

[par4ken]

You MQA haters make me want to tear my hair out! All of you are condemning a system without hearing it first. Your rhetoric is purely based on "religious beliefs". You remind me of the surround haters who think that music must be presented over only two speakers!

The CD's are worth it whether they sound good simply due to better mastering or if the sound is improved due to the so called "de-blurring" process. I hope to find that out for myself. I will not be unfolding them as I have no means of doing so. If the CD's sound bad to me I will let you all know.

I might be starting a new controversy but I maintain that high resolution audio is a big step up from regular CD audio. Obviously you can't hear frequencies that high but it would allow for better phase accuracy in the high end. That might account for the sound improvement. On that same or related note SACD's converted to PCM lose something in the translation unless care is taken with the noise filtering.

MQA's attack is therefore twofold. Add back in the missing high end and adjust for phase anomalies that otherwise tend to cause "digital" harshness or blurring. That seems like a reasonable proposition, hardly "snake oil". Does it live up to it's claims, again I don't know but many here seem to think so.

It sounds like MQA was developed largely for streaming but as already been mentioned with high speed internet that point is rather moot.

 

[kfbkfb]

Re: MQA deblurring of ADCs - seems to me that this could help with creating derived surround sound - reducing/removing the phase shift of the early ADCs.

Maybe the deblurring tech could be licensed separately since I don't see a downside to using it.


Kirk Bayne

 

[Owen Smith]

All of you are condemning a system without hearing it first.

It's lossy, so I don't need to hear it. At best it won't audibly degrade things. High bit rate MP3s and AAC streams or files can sound good too, but I seek out lossless versions instead. It's not religion, it's scientific.

As for de-blurring, if that means anything real then it can be done on a lossless stream. Why improve the sound with de-blurring (whatever that means) and then degrade it with lossy MQA encoding? I makes no sense to me, until I remember that MQA is actually a box designed to collect royalties. The licencing is onerous specifically for that reason, if all music companies took MQA up then every track released would pay an MQA royalty and to play it back unfolded every playback device would pay a royalty. That feels like a stitch up to me.

 

[Owen Smith]

Maybe the deblurring tech could be licensed separately since I don't see a downside to using it.

I'd like to understand what they claim de-blurring does. Given they have a stereo master made decades ago, how can they compensate now for timing issues with the microphone placement and ADCs? The stereo mix has been done so lots of elements are all mixed together with different timing issues, and that's assuming there are complete details of the original recording setup which is very doubtful. I can see how it could perhaps be done with a new recording made assuming de-blurring is going to be done, but I don't see how it can be done for a decades old master.

 

[par4ken]

It's lossy, so I don't need to hear it. At best it won't audibly degrade things. High bit rate MP3s and AAC streams or files can sound good too, but I seek out lossless versions instead. It's not religion, it's scientific.

As for de-blurring, if that means anything real then it can be done on a lossless stream. Why improve the sound with de-blurring (whatever that means) and then degrade it with lossy MQA encoding? I makes no sense to me, until I remember that MQA is actually a box designed to collect royalties. The licencing is onerous specifically for that reason, if all music companies took MQA up then every track released would pay an MQA royalty and to play it back unfolded every playback device would pay a royalty. That feels like a stitch up to me.

How is it lossy? I'm talking of the baseband of the CD. Unfolded it is just a regular CD. It would not be compatible if it wasn't. I would have to read more about it (so don't quote me) but from the article that I linked to it sounded like even the high frequency (encoded) portions are lossless. If not it is a very close approximation. The encoded parts show up as low level noise, that does not make the CD lossy, even if the unfolded version is.

So you don't listen to Dolby Digital or DTS? Both are lossy. I remember you arguing with me when I criticized the sound of MP3!