par4ken, you are quite correct in assuming that if the unencoded/unfolded MQA CD was lossy it would not conform to the RBCD standard and would NOT play in a standard CD player!
You just answered your own question. That added noise means reduced fidelity. It's not "lossy" in the same way that MP3 or DTS are, in that information is not thrown away, but the existing data are degraded—distorted—by added noise. There's also the matter of the black box "de-blurring," which would also be a form of distortion.
I don’t think I’m a hater, I just think it’s a day late and a dollar short of being a major breakthrough. I’ve heard a few “unfolded” downloads and they sound lovely. But there isn’t much material there to warrant the hardware purchase, at least to me.
The added noise would be inaudible. The article says that the random noise that is present is replaced by the encoded non random noise.
It makes the CD slightly lossy.
I listen to them when I have to ie when nothing else is available to me.
I remember. MP3 can sound OK and it can sound poor. Again I listen to it when no better option is available to me.
That makes sense, thank you. But it does not match what MQA said about de-blurring, they talk about timing differences due to microphone placements and things like that. This is my biggest beef about MQA, they don't describe accurately and clearly what the different parts of it do. Some of it might have merit, the excellent mastering certainly does and corrections for decades old ADCs might, but they bury it all in a morass of techno babble and actively obfuscate things.
Oh I'm sure many MQA CDs sound fine. But could they sound better without the added MQA noise and distortion? We'll likely never know because any other issue of the music will likely be different mastering.
No! That is not what we refer to as lossy. Even a hi-res recording down sampled is not considered "lossy". Yes that may just be just "semantics" and I do understand what you are saying.
Me too.
So why all the fuss about it? I would not purchase an MQA CD in preference to a high resolution (Blu-ray, SACD) version. It is my hope however that these CD's are not brick walled like most regular CD's are. Why not focus your hatred on an industry that keeps releasing a (defective) compressed (or to use your term "lossy") product. At least MQA are/were striving for better sound quality.
Because they could sound better if this deliberately added distortion (as you call it if you don't like lossy) was not added. It's unecessary.
Actually I believe the primary driver was to create a scheme for earning royalties, both from the music industry encoding titles and from the hifi industry making playback equipment. If they were mainly interested in better sound quality they would have licenced software players to do the unfolding rather than restricting it to hardware playback devices.
Owen, a wood of advice: When cbmmm3, the UNDISPUTED MQA
KING speaks .... LISTEN!
I've always felt that a glass of Chivas Regal made my system sound better. The second glass improved it even more. I'm unclear as to what the third glass does.In defiance of MQA I institute my own 'blurring' process when I listen to music, which usually involves beer and Jack Daniels
OMG, barfle, one Expresso martini with a shot of baileys knocks me on my
!
