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mmry404 OP t1_jd0ijvv wrote

Reply to comment by ku1185 in I blind tested Qobuz (HiRes bit perfect) vs Deezer (CD) by mmry404

There's a video by Golden Sound, proving that MQA is actually lossy, so an MQA dac sould probably just sound worse. Although it seems like more and more dacs are supporting it now... which in itself is a worrying observation that hardware manufacturers may be prioritizing marketing claims and fancy labels over performance. Ideally everything should be checked in a blind test, but these are cumbersome to carry out correctly. I'm just dipping toes into it..

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ku1185 t1_jd0lsk1 wrote

Yeah I'm aware of the video. My understanding of the tech (or at least, what is claimed) is that it stores information under the noise floor or something, and MQA hardware can "unfold" that information to generate a more complete reconstruction. Whether there's any audible benefit, I have no clue. Given all of the different masters on Tidal, it makes it difficult to determine whether the codec is actually making any difference or if its the master itself. So I just gave up trying to see if there's any real sound quality differences for MQA itself.

I think the biggest issue with MQA is false marketing claims and the proprietary nature of the tech. If they made more accurate claims that were verifiable and improved the listening experience, I wouldn't mind it.

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mmry404 OP t1_jd0mynl wrote

Indeed. The thing with marketing claims is that people need a deep technical understanding of the subject to be able to discern false marketing from real marketing, and it is just not feasible, since said marketing is addressed to the masses. And even with that level of understanding there is still a chance that something could be dodgy under the hood where we can't see. With enough critical thinking/paranoia it gets impossible to consume and be happy about it, so maybe it's the case that "the less I know, the better". Simulacra and simulation, all that..

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