Streaming Tidal or Spotify ?

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by Jem666

No...as I did not require a DAC and headphone amp.

FYI...the headphone amp of the Weiss DAC202 is rather good...however I now added the Sugden Masterclass HA-1. This discrete class A biased amp just adds a little more body.

Do you mean HA-4? Don't recall an HA-1. Class A definitely adds that touch of organic smoothness and body to the sound, in headphone amps as in full systems.

[JemHadar]

Originally Posted by PHC1

Do you mean HA-4? Don't recall an HA-1. Class A definitely adds that touch of organic smoothness and body to the sound, in headphone amps as in full systems.

Typo...HA-4 indeed...thx Serge for catching that one.

[bart]

Originally Posted by Jem666

No...as I did not require a DAC and headphone amp.

FYI...the headphone amp of the Weiss DAC202 is rather good...however I now added the Sugden Masterclass HA-1. This discrete class A biased amp just adds a little more body.

Thanks Jacques, as I was browsing the Lindemann site, I missed your earlier post.
Wow, you added another piece! Congrats and enjoy!

[JemHadar]

Originally Posted by bart

Thanks Jacques, as I was browsing the Lindemann site, I missed your earlier post.
Wow, you added another piece! Congrats and enjoy!

Thx [emoji6] but I had the HA-4 for some time now....used to be part of the McIntosh main system, then the Man Cave rig...now back out of retirement, just like the Weiss. The Limetree Bridge made it all possible...it was exactly what I needed to bring these pieces into the modern streaming age.

[damacman]

Serge ... you really should listen to MQA via a compatible DAC before making judgment...

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by damacman

Serge ... you really should listen to MQA via a compatible DAC before making judgment...

I will when I get a chance (I have an audioquest dragonfly but that is not a serious tool for comparison).

I do have to say though... I have no reason to embrace MQA. Why would I? It is designed as a lossy format to save storage space. I have zero interest in the gimmicky trickery of making it sound in a certain way that saves storage space. For whom? Me? For the Tidal servers?

Or is it really to line the pockets of Bob Stuart of Meridian? There are plenty of lossless codecs and I am very happy with the smooth and analog sound of Qobuz. 192/24 albums sound fantastic.

Read the criticism section here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master..._Authenticated

[PHC1]

Storage is dirt cheap, (not that it is even needed for streaming), 5G is already here, bandwidth is not a problem for most folks. MQA is an answer to a question no one asked in my opinion but as always, once a seed gets planted in the audiophile community... Watch out, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is most certainly not. Unless you like your music altered according to some psychoacoustic models...

[damacman]

I read all that same stuff when the debate was bigger news than the results. I decided I’d hear it before taking sides. Seems to me the seed was planted was by the anti camp.

I’m certainly no audiophile...

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by damacman

I read all that same stuff when the debate was bigger news than the results. I decided I’d hear it before taking sides. Seems to me the seed was planted was by the anti camp.

I’m certainly no audiophile...

Cool. Whatever gets you closer to music.

[PHC1]

No thanks.

MQA encoding is lossy; it hierarchically compresses the relatively little energy in the higher frequency bands into data streams that are embedded in the lower frequency bands using proprietary dithering techniques but after the decoding the result would be the lossless archive.

After a series of such manipulations, the resulting 44.1 kHz data, the layered data streams, and a final "touchup" stream (compressed difference between the lossy signal from unpacking all layers and the original) are provided to the playback device. Given the low amount of energy expected in higher frequencies, and using only one extra frequency band layer (upper 44.1 kHz band of 96/24 packed into dither of 48/16) and one touchup stream (compressed difference between original 96/24 and 48/16) are together distributed as a 48/24 stream, of which 48/16 bit-decimated part can be played by normal 48/16 playback equipment.

One more difference to standard formats is the sampling process. The audio stream is sampled and convolved with a triangle function, and interpolated later during playback. The techniques employed, including the sampling of signals with a finite rate of innovation, were developed by a number of researchers over the preceding decade, including Pier Luigi Dragotti and others.

MQA-encoded content can be carried via any lossless file format such as FLAC or ALAC; hence, it can be played back on systems either with or without an MQA decoder. In the latter case, the resulting audio has easily identifiable high-frequency noise occupying 3 LSB bits, thus limiting playback on non-MQA devices effectively to 13 bit. MQA claims that nevertheless the quality is higher than "normal" 48/16, because of the novel sampling and convolution processes.

Other than the sampling and convolution methods, which were not explained by MQA in detail, the encoding process is similar to that used in XRCD and HDCD.

However, unlike other lossy compression formats like MP3 and WMA, the lossy encoding method of MQA is similar to aptX, LDAC and WavPack Hybrid Lossy, which uses time-domain ADPCM and bitrate reduction instead of perceptual encoding based on psychoacoustic models.


Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio.