Abtr

It's not easy to blind test DACs because of the different analog output levels, but IME different DACs can sound different. By the way, most of that difference seems to me to be due to matters like the quality of the analog output amp/buffer and galvanic isolation; not so much to the actual DAC (except for some NOS/R2R designs).

That's highly unlikely unless he uses different digital hardware to stream these different media/services. And *always* galvanically isolate your DAC from your computer/streamer.

As I said, if the same master is used then I personally don't hear a difference, and I don't personally know anyone who does. Brian Lucy used to use tube amps to power his studio monitors and his masterings used to be much too loud (compressed/limited) for my taste. Possibly his ears hear subtle distortion and EQ-ing in mQa that I can't hear. But I have my doubts about that. In the same thread someone called mQa "worse, but inaudibly worse". I tend to agree with that. To do a blind test you only need someone to switch sources for you. And you don't have to convince me, convince yourself, before stating on a forum that mQa sounds clearly audibly worse than PCM. I too want mQa to disappear, for the same reasons you do. But IMO this goal is not getting any closer by stating how bad mQa sounds, which is easily verifiably false and may do more harm than good. If it was true I don't think mQa would be where it is today. Let's stay with real technical and commercial arguments against the mQa lies.

My original response to your post has fallen victim of otherwise justifiable moderation ridding the forum of some increasingly irrelevant interaction. I'm still left with the basic question though which I think is appropriate and not off-topic (else I trust this post will be removed). What do people who hear *clear* differences between MQA and e.g. redbook actually hear? I'm not saying that you don't hear what you describe you hear, I will only suggest that what you hear may actually be different masters, i.e., not the (very real) artifacts of MQA processing an sich. And I'm of course open to other suggestions/explanations. IMO people hearing a difference between MQA and the original master must be hearing the aliasing and ringing added by MQA which allegedly can give a false sense of detail and a softening of transients respectively. If at all audible, in the case of MQA this difference should be (very) subtle. You say MQA is overly bass-inflated and lacks detail. That doesn't sound like a subtle difference, it sounds more like EQ, i.e. a different master, which should be visible as such in the analog frequency spectrum. I regularly listen to 96, or 88.2 kHz MQA streamed from Tidal through a non-MQA-enabled DAC using a minimum phase filter (short delay slow). I never heard an MQA-enabled DAC playing 'higher-rez' MQA (second unfold) and I will not buy one to try it. So this may be an important difference in the way we listen to and evaluate MQA. Anyway, if I compare 96 or 88.2 MQA to redbook from the same master, I generally can't distinguish them in a blind test. And in my admittedly limited experience with high-rez (24/192) I found that most high-rez is remastered and sounds indeed clearly different (not necessarily better) from the redbook version. This may explain some of the difference you hear since many MQA releases use the same master as the available redbook version. Sometimes there is a clearly audible difference between MQA and redbook. For example the Steely Dan album Gaucho. The redbook version sounds much better to my ears than the MQA version (both versions are on Tidal). The MQA version is from the 24/96 master with a DR of 9 while the 16/44.1 version has DR 15! The fact that different masters were used is obvious and very audible. But when I compare e.g. the recently MQA-ed version of Alice in Chaines' MTV unplugged with the original CD (which is clearly from the same master), played through the same DAC, then I can't distinguish them in a blind test. I experienced this a few times when Tidal replaced the redbook track that I was used to with an MQA track from a different master. But, again, I generally hear no difference between MQA tracks and redbook tracks from the same master. By the way, my Tidal desktop app (macOS) frequently stalls when it switches from a non-MQA track to MQA in playlists. This is of course ridiculous and annoying and it makes unbiased listening to the MQA tracks more difficult.

The McGill study does not back up what you state you heard and without a blind test your opinion basically has no value. As far as we are trying to stop MQA here, your opinion is doing more harm than good IMHO.

So are you saying the conclusion of the McGill study was wrong and there actually is a clearly audible difference between MQA and regular 24/96 (or redbook for that matter) using the same master? Did you do a blind test? I think most (if not all) people will be unable to hear a difference as is shown by the McGill study and which is also my own experience. You may subjectively believe that MQA sounds worse, just like MQA proponents may subjectively believe MQA sounds better. But stating that MQA sounds like 'garbage' doesn't help the objective discussion IMHO. It may even push some neutral listeners into the pro-MQA camp because what you state is obviously not what they hear.

The McGill University study demonstrated that listeners cannot hear a difference between 24/96 PCM and MQA and personally I can't hear a difference between redbook and the 'first unfold' of MQA, or between Qobuz and Tidal for that matter, *unless* a different master was used. I think we should avoid statements like MQA is "a tech that makes music sound like garbage ." It's not true and it doesn't help anyone. Now the Tidal Hifi tier is another matter. It most likely streams MQA without unfolding to 96 or 88.2 kHz. This may result in audibly degraded sound.

Ah, sorry I missed that

You mean it can't be fixed? Then why show the link? Now it looks like a bug. Apart from that it can be quite annoying for non-members browsing the forum or following some topics..

It seems that the link to go to the last post of a topic only works when one is signed-in..

Woudn't disabling the mqa core decoder have you stream mqa that didn't even go through the first unfolding algorithm which (to my ears) is audible? It seems better to avoid mqa altogether..

Yep, sorry, both versions are available also in the Netherlands.

The Styx album The Mission is (currently) not an mqa album on Tidal..

Hi all, I want to share an experience in sound reproduction that both pleasantly surprised me and has me wondering what on earth is going on.. Basically I connected two subwoofers (one to each stereo channel) where I previously used a single sub with both channels meeting at the sub's input; where supposedly the left and right signal and ground connections are simply shorted to electrically sum the left and right input. The surprise was a much superior sound quality with stereo subs, which subjectively seems to be mainly due to much better sub/main integration and overall better bass quality. It subjectively improves the entire sound spectrum and reminds me of the character of my old (DIY) floor standing speakers, whereas I now use (relatively small) KEF LS50's with Sunfire HRS-12 subwoofers: I think three mechanisms may account for this perceived SQ improvement: 1) Electrically summing left and right sub low signals is somehow different from summing them in the acoustic realm. Note however that the two subs are stacked on top of each other, so I doubt any sub-bass stereo information is being conveyed that is otherwise nulled in the electrical summation at the input of a single sub. Also note that there is no significant difference in measured frequency response between a single mono sub, and the stereo sub setup. Yet the subjective SQ difference is what I might call night and day. 2) Two subs are better than one sub because the total bass driver surface is twice as large, and each sub in a two sub setup has to work less hard. Note in this respect that a single Sunfire HRS-12 has a 1000 Watt amp (Designed by Bob Carver) and is quite capable of providing room shaking bass in a relatively large listening space. A single HRS-12 provides ample bass in my 25 m^2 (269 square feet) listening room but it's just lesser quality than I get with stereo subs. 3) Finally, I use an active analog Linkwitz Riley two channel 4th order 24db/octave crossover at 100Hz feeding a Schiit Vidar stereo amp into the KEF LS50s and the (active) subs. Possibly the output opamps are happier with two separate subs because the input impedance they look at is twice as high (15k Ohm per channel instead of 7.5k Ohm). Note that many preamps and AV-receivers only have a single mono bass channel output. This makes me wonder how stereo to mono conversion is implemented in such units and whether this industry misses out on the benefits of stereo bass reproduction.. I tried a Monacor stereo to mono converter, which is based on induction and galvanically isolates stereo inputs from mono outputs, driving two mono subs. This was subjectively an improvement over a single mono sub, but (again subjectively and in my setup) stereo subwoofers sound much better. Personally, I tend towards explanation 3. But I'm very curious if anyone here has a similar experience with mono, versus stereo subs, with maybe another explanation.. Thanks!

Yes, there is.