elahrairrah wrote:On a side note, Meridian, the snake oil salesmen behind MQA, are they the same Meridian who made the Meridian Lossless Packing scheme for DVD-Audio?
To add further controversy about MQA, I decided to look up Techmoan's video on MQA CDs . . . and I can't find it!! Did Meridian make him take it down?!?!?
elahrairrah wrote:To add further controversy about MQA, I decided to look up Techmoan's video on MQA CDs . . . and I can't find it!! Did Meridian make him take it down?!?!?
Heh, I know I'm rather late to this party, but I've picked up a fair few of those SACDs that the thread started off with. Granted the Jeff Beck one isn't the original quad (it's been remixed to 5.1 even if the cover says differently), but I can say for certain that the Santana ones they've done are pretty great.
I have noticed a couple of audio glitches (one I'm not sure if it's a problem with the mastering or the master recording, Evil Ways off their self-titled, 2:49 or so) but I know the stereo section and subsequent CD layer that was struck from the DSD stereo master of Caravanserai (the remastered quad disc from last year) has an audible error at about 6:05 that wasn't there on any other version. Granted, I didn't really buy that disc for the stereo, just the quad mix (which sounds fantastic) and I've fully enjoyed it. Lotus, Abraxas and Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters are all great listening experiences.
Just, remove them from the cardboard platters they come on. I've noticed that they and the polycarbonate the SACDs are made of do not get along at all.
P.S. I have a few of those MQA CDs that UMG Japan were rolling with, all struck from the DSD masters for their SACDs (and subsequently it seems to have made them shift from their SHM-SACD discs which is definitely a reason to not be thrilled with them) and they sound... only very barely different to the ones that do have SACD releases, if that. And, of course, the SACDs do sound better. Not because they're lossy or some other stuff like I seem to see people think is the issue, but rather that it sounds a bit less clear than the SACDs that those masters were prepped for. Who knows what went on behind the scenes.
And about Meridian Lossless, the technology apparently ended up getting wrapped into Dolby's TrueHD codec for their lossless compression scheme, if I'm not mistaken.
elahrairrah wrote:I am curious to hear what MQA CDs actually sound like when "unfolded." Are they really 24-bit/352.8kHz? I wonder if the MQA files on HDTracks are of the same frequency.
Could never hear a difference with the CD version, except that playing an MQA file undecoded sounded worse.
First decoding will turn into 88.2kHz (my audio streamer does that) and then there is another rendering phase that supposedly brings you to 24-bit/352.8kHz but it has been counter-claimed many times and the whole point of reducing bandwidth with extra packed information is pointless in today's world of Gbps networks.
Garbage in, garbage out.
You can't "invent" data from a 44.1/16 Red Book CD no more than a few bits here and there (like HDCD).
It was all for marketing/control/licensing royalties. And it failed. Won't be missed.
Here's an interesting video on the whole MQA debacle.
Arguably, you can say they were trying to pull that ownership of the media and process with DVD-Audio since you couldn't listen to the format without their proprietary decoding on there as well.
