+48V
hi-fi or die
"Blasted"? Huh? Where, when...Wha'd I miss?that article was blasted by the pro MQA crowd here
"Blasted"? Huh? Where, when...Wha'd I miss?that article was blasted by the pro MQA crowd here
There is that word proprietary.. Usually I am heading in an opposite direction form any product that requires it at its core. Apple for instance, while admittedly a quality and perhaps even superior phone or computer, I disdain all the little restrictions placed on it, from file types to cords and plugs. Also that word always comes to mean that it is going to cost more, probably a fair bit more and then someone comes out with a different so0lution, backwards engineers it or even steels it. Whats to say that I buy a new $200 DAC and then MQA, realizing that the hardware requirement is holding back their goals of dominating the music industry and then comes out with a complete software solution to unpacking MQA? They already started down this road because before there was the manditory requirement of a MQA DAC just to make any of it work.Your analogy here is irrational. To me, that’s akin to saying Sharp’s Quattron technology is a DRM scheme.
Is MQA proprietary? Sure. Universal DRM foisted upon the consumer at the behest of the content owners? Nah.
However, for that little light to illuminate, there can't be any DSP processing done with the data stream, which seems to preclude the sort of modern driver and room correction that ELAC, Kii Audio, and many other forward-looking companies are doing with their powered speakers. DSP driver/room correction can do far more to improve SQ in-room than MQA.
Post#148. Instead of refuting the Benchmark article it was instead touted as the "party line" for the MQA bashers."Blasted"? Huh? Where, when...Wha'd I miss?
Are you referring to the Master authentication part of it? Or the Tidal software that partially unpacks MQA?
I have read to the contrary, but that article was blasted by the pro MQA crowd here so I wont bother to link to it.
Post#148. Instead of refuting the Benchmark article it was instead touted as the "party line" for the MQA bashers.
Here is the link in case anyone is interested..
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa
My fault, I shoulda just linked to it right away..Whoops sorry, posted after I hit reply. I guess my reply just confuses things. Dang! Just what we needed, more confusion...
Yikes. Didn't see that left-field reaction coming. I guess it's a matter of perception/cognition on how one views "that word" as it relates to ownership. Let's broaden the scope and hopefully de-escalate your distain toward the 'P' word. I believe that there must be some form of incentive to create new works whether it be innovative products or works of art. If MQA Ltd. wanted to make MQA open source...great! But that's there choice and they didn't. I'm surely not going to carte blanche condemn their choice to protect & monetize their product.There is that word proprietary.. Usually I am heading in an opposite direction form any product that requires it at its core.
Your exceptionally speculative, untamed anxiety is understandable I guess. So I rekon all I can say is, well...that concern comes part and parcel these days with bleeding edge tech. Personally, I see nothing wrong with you sitting tight with your present DAC, enjoy the "free" ride with Tidal, and make a better informed future decision on this proprietary offering.Whats to say that I buy a new $200 DAC and then MQA, realizing that the hardware requirement is holding back their goals of dominating the music industry and then comes out with a complete software solution to unpacking MQA?
Post#148. Instead of refuting the Benchmark article it was instead touted as the "party line" for the MQA bashers.
Here is the link in case anyone is interested..
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa
Dang! Just what we needed, more confusion...
You did come across a certain way, but so be it, everyone has their own way of expressing their viewpoint. Still it would have been nice to actually refute the blog post, showing his error instead. We are all trying to figure it out here. As for first hand experience, not quite ready to pony up for that. But if Siau's point has any validity, MQA will affect everyone if it becomes the standard digital format. I think in that light we do have a right to be here asking the hard questions. Siau's opinion states that MQA's backward compatibility has serious flaws in it. That concerns me along with the confusion factor. Will it ultimately help the SQ cause? Or will its proprietary model only serve to fragment it further. In a few years will having smaller files even matter, with storage, bandwidth etc growing as fast as ever, will MQA even matter?You've got John Siau from Benchmark's party line nailed, down to the digital volume control, digital room correction rants. I suggest you step off the high horse, quit giving MQA the high hat and sample some content. Save the misconceptions, take a breath and give a listen.
That's being blasted? If so I apologize, I think more like a strong suggestion to actually sample the subject in question instead of blathering on and on, anti all things MQA without having even sampled the content in question.
Opinion that damn's a process without firsthand experience? Again, where is the intellectual curiosity in that?
Admittedly, I passed over that link/article in a blur when it was posted. Thanks for the jog and reconsidering your hesitation posting the link. Interesting diatribe from another tribe.Post#148. Instead of refuting the Benchmark article it was instead touted as the "party line" for the MQA bashers.
Here is the link in case anyone is interested..
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa
Maybe it'd be better for me to start another thread on what I consider more fetching concerns, implications, kudos, and consequences of MQA in a separate thread rather than clutter-muck up 4th period science class here.
So long as the consumer has a choice, I think the market will ultimately decide the fate of MQA. If people think it sounds better, they will want it, and if they want it, there will be companies there to sell it to them. Hardware, software, whatever it takes. Those companies that resist the change risk losing business going forward. Whether they were "right" or not won't much matter.
I don't really think whether it sounds better to be a big deal in most company's decisions to carry it or not. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound or rather does anyone care how it sounded? In other words, with new audio technology, it has to go where people are rather than expecting people to flock to it. If Pandora, Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music, etc aren't using it, then so few people are hearing it that it is irrelevant to the market, regardless of how it sounds. MQA picked Tidal (or vice versa), which has one of the smallest user bases of all on-demand streaming options. The possibility of Tidal failing and MQA being left to rot on the vine is much more of a possibility than Apple or Spotify losing their streaming businesses over it.So long as the consumer has a choice, I think the market will ultimately decide the fate of MQA. If people think it sounds better, they will want it, and if they want it, there will be companies there to sell it to them. Hardware, software, whatever it takes. Those companies that resist the change risk losing business going forward. Whether they were "right" or not won't much matter.
Actually, if anyone is holding streaming back, it's probably audiophiles, holding on with dear life to their nostalgia and surface noise...
There seems to be a lot of press out there saying that 320 kbps is all you need for quality, and certainly the way most people listen to music that is the truth. Audiophiles are the exception, but there is even division among those as to what difference can be heard. In the end I think that the streaming outfits will need to do 2 things, cut costs and increase subscription rates. Cutting costs might mean a reduction in what music is available to stream, so raising rates could be their only answer but not until the competition dies off. There always seems to be a shakeup on the horizon, some merger, buyout etc. Probably in the end there will be fewer options hosted by fewer streaming companies that will offer this service. Nothing a few audiophiles will do can change that.I hope there's a critical mass of music lovers that make it a decent enough value proposition for the music biz to continue to offer the highest level of sound quality through the streaming format.
You do work for Tidal!! I thought so! Seriously, I have had different subscriptions over the past couple of years, from Pandora, Amazon and now just paid for a month with Tidal again ($10 plan) after a few years without. I can see the allure of having millions of tracks at one's fingertips, and for many that is the most important aspect, even more so than MQA. For me, I get overwhelmed at the enormity of it. I go on there (now Tidal) and look at all those pre generated "playlists", which have names that are almost meaningless to me (Amazon Unlimited is better I think in this regard) and I will pick something that looks curious only to find I don't like it. Even the playlists based on a particular artist quite often doesn't cut it for me. Then I'll go to something else with similar results. I think the problem for me lies in the fact that I am very picky about what I want to listen to whereas most streamers just are continually looking for something new to them. That is what they like, always new material, like reading books, once read, never needing to be reread. I listen to tracks dozens of times, usually I have 400 or 500 that get 80% of my listening time off my hard drive at any one time. Streaming would give me 30 million, but I have no time for all of that, and no patience to keep hitting the >> button waiting for something I want to hear.C'mon guys, help me out: Sign up for Tidal Hi-Fi!