Rex81
Well-Known Member
I feel like a spokesman for Meridian here, but please trust me, I'm not.
I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I guess I’m just a glass-half-full kind of guy, I already have a setup that allows full enjoyment of this technology, and I can easily discern its benefits. So it’s a positive for me. With that said, I’ll try to address some of your concerns.
I think it seems that way because MQA is actually a very complex process rooted in a lot of hard to understand science. This makes it difficult to explain what’s going on. So you’re left with 2 options: Just lay everything out there in all its complexity and confuse everyone, or boil it down to a few “tag lines” that may or may not resonate with people. If you’re a skeptic by nature, your BS meters are likely to be spiked by both approaches.
I can’t say. Also, I’m not sure if I would consider 700+ albums on day one a trickle. But if it’s to build hype around this, I can’t blame them. We don’t know how people will make money off of MQA in the future, and I understand if skeptics are concerned about this point. But it may be as simple as giving (in this case Tidal) a better point of product differentiation. Building hype is the way to get some value out of your offering. Lucky for us, at this point, we get it for free in that there’s no extra cost for MQA over Redbook. I understand this could change, of course.
This is exactly what's happening, and yes, it's pretty cool.
The authentication piece is a digital signature that guarantees you’re hearing the original master file. The master is either signed off on by the artist, the studio, or the copyright holder. Another way to say this is that it’s the original mix. No changes in the volume of the instruments after the fact, no added effects, no upsampling or down sampling throughout the process, etc. You’re hearing the performance sounded like when the lights in the studio/mastering booth went dark at the end of the session.
It's real. There's real science behind time-domain accuracy and smearing. Again, here's a great article on it and how it relates to MQA if you want to get heavy: http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality
This is where I'll argue with you. I think Meridian has made this as simple and user friendly as they can. They've packaged the time-domain corrections and authentication piece in an existing file format (FLAC) that anyone can play. So everyone gets those benefits no matter what equipment they have. That's pretty cool of them. If you want to take it one step further, you can buy a DAC to plug into your existing setup to do a lot of complex unfolding to get the full effect. Not all that cheap? The Audioquest Dragonfly Black is $100 and will get you a full MQA decode once the Tidal desktop app does the software piece. Want a full MQA decoder? The Meridian Explorer2 is on sale for $200. Want a complete MQA streamer/DAC/preamp/headphone amp-in-a-box solution? The Bluesound Node 2 is $499. There are a lot of audiophile "tweaks" that will cost you a whole lot more. This isn't like when CDs came along. CD players were a minimum of $4,000 and you had to buy all new media. For $100 and a free first month of Tidal hi-fi you're good to go.
I encourage it.
The thing that bugs me about this MQA thing the most is how they seem to leave it to the marketers to do the explaining, which always causes my BS meters to spike. There seems to be a cloud of smoke around it.
I think it seems that way because MQA is actually a very complex process rooted in a lot of hard to understand science. This makes it difficult to explain what’s going on. So you’re left with 2 options: Just lay everything out there in all its complexity and confuse everyone, or boil it down to a few “tag lines” that may or may not resonate with people. If you’re a skeptic by nature, your BS meters are likely to be spiked by both approaches.
If they have all these millions of tracks already out of the MQA ovens, why are they trickling them out??
I can’t say. Also, I’m not sure if I would consider 700+ albums on day one a trickle. But if it’s to build hype around this, I can’t blame them. We don’t know how people will make money off of MQA in the future, and I understand if skeptics are concerned about this point. But it may be as simple as giving (in this case Tidal) a better point of product differentiation. Building hype is the way to get some value out of your offering. Lucky for us, at this point, we get it for free in that there’s no extra cost for MQA over Redbook. I understand this could change, of course.
The whole "origami" concept makes it sound like they are actually folding something digital into a container which if that is actually happening would be a pretty amazing feat considering how far the computer industry has come with data compression and lossy formats.
This is exactly what's happening, and yes, it's pretty cool.
Exactly what a "Master" is and what "authentication" really means is still shrouded in mystery to me,
The authentication piece is a digital signature that guarantees you’re hearing the original master file. The master is either signed off on by the artist, the studio, or the copyright holder. Another way to say this is that it’s the original mix. No changes in the volume of the instruments after the fact, no added effects, no upsampling or down sampling throughout the process, etc. You’re hearing the performance sounded like when the lights in the studio/mastering booth went dark at the end of the session.
Is it real or are they relying heavily on marketing salesmen and psycho acoustics to drive their new format along?
It's real. There's real science behind time-domain accuracy and smearing. Again, here's a great article on it and how it relates to MQA if you want to get heavy: http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality
The next thing that bugs me is that I really need to shell out for more hardware, and not all that cheap either, in order to get the real MQA effect in all its detail.
This is where I'll argue with you. I think Meridian has made this as simple and user friendly as they can. They've packaged the time-domain corrections and authentication piece in an existing file format (FLAC) that anyone can play. So everyone gets those benefits no matter what equipment they have. That's pretty cool of them. If you want to take it one step further, you can buy a DAC to plug into your existing setup to do a lot of complex unfolding to get the full effect. Not all that cheap? The Audioquest Dragonfly Black is $100 and will get you a full MQA decode once the Tidal desktop app does the software piece. Want a full MQA decoder? The Meridian Explorer2 is on sale for $200. Want a complete MQA streamer/DAC/preamp/headphone amp-in-a-box solution? The Bluesound Node 2 is $499. There are a lot of audiophile "tweaks" that will cost you a whole lot more. This isn't like when CDs came along. CD players were a minimum of $4,000 and you had to buy all new media. For $100 and a free first month of Tidal hi-fi you're good to go.
In the meantime It does seem reasonable to give it a shot without the DAC, and go from there.
I encourage it.
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