MQA support on Windows 10

remember no marketing repetition. What audible spectrum are You talking of.

MQA uses 24 bits to produce a 15.something audio signal. The rest of the bits are used for telling the “decoder” which lights to turn on and what factor to upsample with.

Below 22KHz or below 24KHz depending if the file is multiple of 44.1 or 48 KHz.

That’s not marketing, since you’re not doubting that they’re burring something below the noise floor. You’ll agree that 7-8 bits (as you say) is a bit too much just to enable upsampling and tell the DAC “which lights to turn on”.

I’m fine with the claim that MQA doesn’t bring any benefit to the sound quality. That’s in the end very subjective. But I have a problem when incorrect things are stated.

I could be wrong, we might be living in a parallel universe and MQA really could just be doing upsampling and call it a day. It’s just highly unlikely, and I haven’t seen any credible evidence that this is the case. There is an increasing number of manufacturers that support MQA, pretty much all high end manufacturers and many on lower end. For how powerful Meridian may be, I don’t think they have a reality distortion field so strong to fool so many knowledgable people. I also don’t believe that people that like, evangelise or support MQA are all shills.

Well they need bits to tell the renderer which filter to use, What to upsample to, what light to turn on. I do think I’ve read somewhere that this takes care of the first three or four bits. According to Mansr the rest is occupied by random noise (which is why MQA does not compress well, since FLAC is optimized for music - not random noise)
Have You seen the many frequency plots, posted around on the web where there’s a big dip at around 22-24 kHz these are only present in the MQA versions. MQA have not explained why this happens, a theory is that it is a misalignment of the actual track and the random noise.

Well I’ve actually talked to a lot of the High-End DAC manufacturers. Almost none of them has included MQA because of what it does. But out of fear that missing a bullet point would loose them a sale.

I don’t doubt that they have buried something. Whether it is below the noise floor, or they simply have put the needed bits in at bits 17-24. (or 1-8)

See this: Alternatives to MQA? - Keep it cool?

What if it’s not just random noise but he just doesn’t know how to read it? Burring information into the noise floor is not a new concept. It’s been used in military applications to conceal information. The whole point is to have it appear as random noise. One of the stated goals of MQA is that when played on a non MQA capable system it plays like normal PCM without sound degradation.

If it was just about telling the renderer which filters to use and which lights to turn on, there would be no need for continuous stream.

I don’t believe in the narrative that the manufacturers are including it regardless of the merit and just to tick a box on a feature list. Some of them are doing some serious science driven design. They have the knowledge and capabilities to debunk it if it’s a hoax. I’m thinking of Ted Smith of PS Audio, Ed Meitner and such. I’m sure that the manufacturers are not eager to pay licensing fees to the competitor. Some don’t like what it does but still they don’t think it’s a hoax.

Just an observation but super tweeters are being sold at high end prices for playing over 20 kHz. So one part of the industry is basically promoting their products for playing outside our range of hearing while another (mqa) is saying we can’t hear it so it doesn’t matter lol.