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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: Sounds like black magic !

Bits that "you don't need" are stolen from the original 44/24 file and replaced with the bits "you need" that were in an 88/24 source file. The presumption is that the bits "you don't need" are unnecessary (e.g. the low order 8 bits) and that all the high frequency bits "you need" will fit into the space previously occupied by the stolen bits. This might work better than a 44/24 downsample of the original if the stolen bits are actually less valuable than the benefits of the high frequency bits that replaced them. (Scrambling techniques are used to ensure that changing the stolen bits sounds like added noise when playing back without a decoder.) This might be a net gain in sound quality if one is limited to 44/24 bandwidth, however it can only be a net loss in sound quality compared to the 88/24 original without MQA. In other words, this portion of the MQA story amounts to data compression, not sound quality improvement. Meridian decides which bits "you need". They are no help to audiophiles who want all the bits that were recorded.

The other sound quality claim concerns filters. The claims are sufficiently ambiguous, but the impression is that there is a magic filtering process that can automatically improve older 44/16 recordings and that the MQA encoding process does this. In reality, any old 44/16 recording can be remastered into a higher resolution format and this can improve (some) bad choices of filters. This can even be done by the consumer by selecting appropriate upsampling filters. So the most that can be said about this part of the marketing is that by buying a new DAC you can avoid fiddling around with filters in an existing DAC or computer player. Of course, demos are easily concocted that compare bad older masterings with new remastering in to the MQA format. And one can find record label owners and DAC manufacturers saying how great MQA sounds in the hopes that they will sell more recordings and DACs.

Finally, there is the "authenticated" part of the deal. It seems the main benefit of any authentication is to MQA, in that it creates a captive market (sales, lease or a service business) for MQA encoders and encoding. In addition, because of the use of encoding, laws such as the DMCA in the US, come into effect that make it illegal to build decoders that aren't authorized by the MQA company.

Because the encoding authentication depends on the secrecy of the encoding keys the encoder needs to be specially packaged in a secure box and the encoder comes with a corresponding high price. This means that small record labels will not be able to use MQA economically, instead they will be cut out of the system or have to use a MQA encoding service. If MQA succeeds in the marketplace, the effect will be to make it more difficult for small record labels to compete against larger labels.

It is highly questionable whether users will receive any benefit from MQA's authentication. It will protect the content from the distribution chain, but it will not protect the content from manipulation prior to its being encoded by MQA. In no sense is there "end to end" integrity, since this would have to begin at the recording studio and ends in the listening room.


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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