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RE: Sorry if this was posted earlier (didn't find it) - "Schiitting on MQA".

Posted by Bruce from DC (B) on November 11, 2017 at 08:20:20

In Reply to: Sorry if this was posted earlier (didn't find it) - "Schiitting on MQA". posted by Beef Guinness Cutie Pie on November 9, 2017 at 10:03:34:

MQA seems to be the answer to a question that was asked 18-20 years ago:how can we make red book CD or MP3 sound better? The constraints that might have prompted that question (aside from the sonic limitations of rbcd circa 1997), were the capacity constraints for both digital storage and transmission.
Today digital storage and digital transmission, on a per megabyte basis, are cheap and getting cheaper.
It's not too cynical to suspect that part of recorded music companies' enthusiasm for a new, "better" digital format in the late 1990s was the prospect of re-selling, a second time, all the analog stuff in their vaults that they had successfully reissued on CD. Unfortunately, the industry couldn't agree on a single hi-rez standard, so the consumer was offered two competing, incompatible formats: SACD and DVD-Audio. Reportedly, both formats sounded better than rbcd At the time . But the market for high fidelity was never big enough to support two hi-rez formats. And millions of people thought MP3 was good enough, when you accounted for the benefits of your own personal stereo in an iPod music player. The loser in this deal were folks who bought DVD-As and, to a lesser extent, "pure" SACDs that can't be ripped and can only be played on SACD players.
As the owner of a ca. 2002 Stereophile "Class A" SACD/cd player, I will say that, on that player every SACD recording sounds better than the best cd.
Today, however, the future of recorded music seems increasingly to lie with streaming services, and the bandwidth exists to have the music streamed in un-lossy compressed rbcd equivalents. Practically no one is going to be moved to repurchase, yet a third time, recorded music for his own personal library.
Although I don't have the experience to speak with any authority, my guess, from what I read, is that the quality gap between DSD and the current state of the art in rbcd playback, if not non-existent, is very, very small. Moreover, the resurgent interest in DSD downloads (and in hi Rez PCM) shows that the cost of digital storage is low enough that the increase in file size between rbcd and DSD is almost irrelevant to folks who are obsessed with sound quality.
Therefore, what's the argument for another lossy compressed digital format, or another digital format purportedly superior to rbcd? So, I don't care whether Jim Austin's upcoming technical analysis shows that MQA is a deception or is the real thing in managing to both reduce file size and increase "fidelity" or not. It strikes me as a redundancy either way.
There might have been such an argument 20 years ago, but I don't think there is one now.
As for me, I'm looking for a DAC/NAS solution to handling my CDs along with downloads I want to buy. Streaming audio may or may not be a part of that picture, but just the prospect of having an app on my iPad to manage my digital music collection excites me. I have my hands more than full managing my vinyl record collection.
To Messrs. Harley, Atkinson, etc also.: I urge you to ask yourselves whether or not MQA is any more than a solution to a problem that might have existed 20 years ago, but does not exist today. I do so without implying any nefarious motives, etc. but in absolute good faith. I don't know how many more blind alleys our hobby can tolerate, and I think that should concern anyone whose participation in it is for more than just fun.

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