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woodnote

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  1. Emphasis is mine... But you have just articulated the crux of what has been bugging me so much since all of the discussion (i.e., hype) about MQA started. Everything that I have read, whether from big audiophile sites singing its praises, or even from Bob Stuart himself, has been threaded with this insinuation that all of our "legacy" systems and bit/sample rate-focused audio formats are full of myriad problems that we never knew we had, but for which suddenly a solution has been developed! And it can be ours for several mildly uncomfortable payments of a few hundred, or thousand, dollars. Ever since the discussion moved away from the benefit of having smaller files for easier streaming of HRA (which I also agree would have been much more valuable in a world before cheap terabyte hard drives and easy streaming of endless HD video with surround sound to every TV and phone... but I digress), the language about MQA has been not so much about subjectively good-sounding audio that sounds different from current formats and can add a novel method of encoding/archiving to the current repertoire; rather, it has been about "better" sounding audio and about encoders that will "fix" problems that current music is seemingly rife with, from frailties throughout the entirety of the recording-to-listening chain. I'm not going to argue that the DAC in my smartphone couldn't stand a little improving, but my BS-o-meter starts to ding when I hear that MQA is a "chameleon" with the ability to adapt itself to what sounds like any and every scenario so that the studio master/my phone/my home stereo will now be "better". What Chris described in his initial review of MQA's impact on SQ was much more even-keeled than the majority of the writing I've read on the forthcoming music revolution, I have really had it with this notion that somewhere, someday, someone will present all of us with the be-all, end-all "best" audio, and that as we move toward that, everything new or different is in fact "better". I realize that superlatives are much more effective for marketing, though, and so I will not hold out too much hope. In any case, me and my "legacy" stereo system will be fine - since I actually did set it up to sound the best to me and don't need any uppity encoding formats telling me that they know better.
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