New Format: MQA

[blessingx]

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=3851

[Grahame]

(oblig glossy vertical scrolling one page web site)

 

http://musicischanging.com/

 

has someone been drinking the Pono Kool Aid?

 

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=3851

 

http://www.stuff.tv/meridian/meridian-s-mqa-format-allows-streaming-studio-quality-music/news

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/robert-harley-listens-to-meridian-mqa/

 

 

lossless compression for streaming ?

 

How is it different from FLAC?
 

 

[blessingx]

You're 60 seconds late.

[Grahame]

That's what happens when you spend time adding commentary. I'll never make it as a no value-add news feed aggregator

[Filburt]

So...what is MQA then? The nearly-contentless descriptions in the links make it sound like a method of dynamically switching bit depth and sample rate based on analyzing the parametric requirments of the input, utilizing a psychoacoustic model. In which case, it's doing a less sophisticated form of what so-called "lossy" codecs do. I don't really care to pay AES $20 to read the white paper, though, in order to find out what they're actually up to.

[Grahame]

^ I came to similar conclusions. the description is almost content free.

 

If they are saying "most"  of the data in hi-rez files can be thrown away vs CD data rates (because you can't hear it), aren't they shooting themselves in the foot or being self defeating ?

 

If its backwards compatible with PCM gear, then aren't we back in HDCD land, which is moot since we can have true 24 bit samples if required.

 

Looks remarkably like badge engineering, or  a tax on Hi-Rez. THX for Music?

[Grahame]

Hydrogen Audio Steps in http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=107124&st=975

[roadtonowhere08]

"As sample rates increase to 192, 384, 768 and even 1536 using 24-bit or 32-bit words, audio files are getting huge! What if you could scale the encoding of a piece of music according to how much information is present at each frequency range and at each stage in the production/distribution chain?"

 

What if you fucking realized that anything more than 24/96 or 24/192 is a waste of space?  What a concept.

[grawk]

that's basically what they say they're doing.  There's no information above 22khz, so the entire spectrum over 44k sample rate is empty, or just noise, so they can ignore it.  Thus bringing things to cd sample rates...

[roadtonowhere08]

I see it as a way of capitalizing on the ridiculous arms race of bitrate/bit depth.  None of it is necessary.

[grawk]

obviously it's not necessary.  But some people want to make sure, so they spend the money.  Maybe they're right, maybe there is information up above where any microphone or recorder is rated to process.  Maybe it even makes things better.  

[roadtonowhere08]

It's their money of course, but I really wish they would educate themselves and focus on the entire recording process rather than the flashy end product.  Or they could just tape a few $100 bills to their headphones...

[Dusty Chalk]

Hey!  HEY!

[grawk]

dusty and the bats can hear it

[roadtonowhere08]

[grawk]

dusty generally wears clothes tho

[roadtonowhere08]

Ahhh.  Gocha.

 

[grawk]

that's him!

[Grahame]

More "Info" from the source http://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=225234#Post225234

[Grahame]

Oh look. an "MQA READY"* Dac

 

https://www.meridian-audio.com/products/personal-audio/explorer2/

 

Maybe It'll even have a low output impedance.

 

EDIT: looks like it does. 0.47 Ohm.

 

http://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=224155#Post224155

 

 

 

*you mean one that handles PCM? or turns on a LED when it senses some low order bit pattern?

Edited December 6, 2014 by Grahame

[HeadphoneAddict]

I always thought the reason to go to 48K or 96K was so that the phase distortion from the sharp cutoff filters before digitizing would occur above the audible frequency range. I may have used the wrong terminology, so please forgive me.

Anyway, next thing we'll see is them bringing back dbx decoders, and touting compression-decompression routines again, to save space that 16bit and 24bit files are wasting, in the quest for reasonable S/N ratios with 8bits encoding.

[Dusty Chalk]

[roadtonowhere08]

 

 

Last one.  I promise.

 

Edited December 6, 2014 by roadtonowhere08

[Grahame]

"Small enough to download or stream today"

And what about tomorrow? Or are data caps fixed forever. Thanks telecom oligopolies.

[postjack]

To be fair I haven't read anything about MQA beyond this thread but does anyone really give a shit how big a file is anymore?