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Old 01-21-2021, 12:38 AM
James Tanner - Bryston James Tanner - Bryston is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Parabellum View Post
Quite honestly, I don't fully grasp all the concepts of MQA and its actual practical use for the end user (or its benefits if any). I haven't done much research on this topic as I have almost zero interest in it simply because I really like how my BDA-3/BDP-3 combo sounds even on regular CD rips. If you don't endorse it as a company I believe there are very good reasons to do so and I thrust your call judgement.
Hi Serge

There are more reasons than this but here are some:

MQA “TRUTHS”

1. MQA is not "lossless" high-resolution.

2. The "deblur" claim appears to be without merit and the company seems to be distancing itself from using that terminology these days.

3. The idea of needing to compress hi-res streams down to a 24/44.1 or 24/48 container is moot in the wake of Qobuz and Amazon HD capable of up to 24/192 FLAC.

4. There is no rationale for why MQA-CD would sound "better" than regular CD as claimed by MQA. In fact, MQA-CD is anything but hi-res (worse than standard CD resolution) since the system robs bits and hence resolution from 16/44.1.

5. When the MQA blue/green light/indicator goes on and the DAC says it's playing 176.4 / 192 / 352.8 / 384kHz, realize that this is not true 4X or 8X resolution. This is all upsampling from lossy reconstructed 88.2/96kHz.

6. If we shave off lower bits of audio data, the DAC blue light would still turn on! "Authentication" is at best partial and hence compromised. If they can't guarantee that something is "authentic", then clearly the name "Master Quality Authenticated" is a terrible misnomer.

7. The digital filters used are questionable yet mandated for "full" MQA decoding.
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