No MQA

[reddog1]

As is your prerogative. I think as an audio application, Audirvana takes some beating, aesthetically as well… I don’t stream, and use USB to my DAC, it’s all i need. Never had the pleasure of MQA, pretty much all my files are FLAC, of varying resolution, but Audirvana’s up sampling is pretty good, so, all in all I’m very happy with my listening experience. Much to the chagrin of a few folks on here, If the music moves me, I don’t really care about how many bits or thingys it has😱

[Jud]

@Stephen_Marsh

You only have to listen to CD quality after a MQA album on a decent system to hear the difference.

And now you know what’s responsible for the difference.

As we’ve all said, whatever it is you like, that’s great. Enjoy your music!

[reddog1]

@Stephen_Marsh

i find them a little brighter and in your face than MQA files.

That to me says ‘better’ - more information, more dynamic range.

[Jacob]

Sorry for being off topic and not having a studio license to analyze this. But this HiRes album looks, in my opinion, like very bad work from whoever is responsible for the mastering. Maybe this sounds as good as an MQA album.

If someone could do the analysis in AS, I would be curious to see what that looks like.

[OffRode]

This what you needed Jacob? Particular track?

[Jacob]

Thanks for the analysis. Other than that I don’t need to see anything specific.

I think this is an extremely poorly filtered upsampling of a 48khz 24bit recording. In this case my preference would be a CD.

Does an MQA look something like this on the output of the DAC?

[Reynaldo]

@Stephen_Marsh

You only have to listen to CD quality after a MQA album on a decent system to hear the difference. Because of what Audirvana has done i am moving across to Roon to listen to high end music

What impressed a lot of people when listening to MQA, is being able to see the green or blue light on.

[Ironz]

@Reynaldo

What impressed a lot of people when listening to MQA, is being able to see the green or blue light on.

Yes!
This, in a nutshell

[Jud]

The light being lit reflects the use of bits to tell the DAC what filter to use for MQA rather than to encode music, as I described in my longer post above.

[Jud]

@Stephen_Marsh

I do enjoy Flac files as they are great on my high end hifi but i find them a little brighter and in your face than MQA files.

@reddog1

That to me says ‘better’ - more information, more dynamic range.

There are of course any number of system interactions and subjective influences that can give this result. The OP said he liked vinyl if I remember correctly, and the top end frequency response there isn’t what it is with digital, so if he’s accustomed to vinyl sounding right to him, I can see normal digital sounding too bright. Or as I mentioned it could be something about the system response that just makes MQA sound better through it.

[Agoldnear]

MQA Explained: Bob Ludwig on MQA

[Djm1960]

As always, everyone’s perception of SQ is different especially when searching for that elusive 1% of perceived improvement at the high end of the audiophile scale.

Each to his own but getting upset with an almost dead technology on Tidal ( who were reported yesterday that they were laying of staff and switching focus to technologies rather than streaming content and services) seems strange to me. Obviously in the earlier stages of grief………