Meridian MQA

[amabrok]

I just don't think this is going anywhere. To the average customer it's just all the same. MP3, FLAC, MQA, DSD, PCM, AIFF, WAV, etc. The average consumer doesn't care about the how's. They just care about cheap/free music. Therefore it's not profitable to change anything with regards to fancy encoding (heck, even the artists themselves don't care how awfull their music sounds, SQ wise), it'll just cost more to encode music with MQA, so studio's won't use it. Perhaps a very few Audiophile labels will think about it, but that won't be enough to give this any momentum. Just my 2 cents.

I agree with most of what you said Eddye

but i am still hopeful that something might spring out of this and provides the niche of audiophile with another mean to access high sound quality.

we are all cursed in a way by the fact that very few people/labels/producers/artists care about SQ.

some may argue that they listen to music not SQ, but i would argue that systems/listening environment/SQ are vehicles serving music to us and without them one won't be able to live the experience as initially intended.

[Confused]

I struggle to find anything I want to listen to that's been issued on 24bit or even SACD. I'm not optimistic that this will ever be of much interest to myself any time soon.

[Morten]

I struggle to find anything I want to listen to that's been issued on 24bit or even SACD. I'm not optimistic that this will ever be of much interest to myself any time soon.

Hmm, just downloaded foo fighters new album from HD tracks, I have always liked the music but this is by far the one with the best sound

I also liked the new Cohen album in 24 bit, not to mention Porcupine Tree fabulous live album Atlanta in 24 bit. But it is of causes a matter of taste.

Br Morten

[Pim]

Guys,

Mark Waldrep from Real HD sends an email out every day to which I subscribe. In the past few days he's written about MQA and how it works. His posts can be read here http://www.realhd-audio.com/?cat=45

Cheers,

Pim

[Music or sound]

Mark Waldrep does not have much information either. It seems to be a semi-lossy compression scheme for higher than 44.1/16 files. It could be a major breakthrough for the distribution of hires music but more likely only another confusion of the market.
If it will be really an improvement on existing file formats Devialet needs to address that file conversion (hopefully possible through software updates).

[GuillaumeB]

Personally I thought their quality/convenience graph was more a marketing device than having any basis in reality.

Interesting article specifically discussing the Meridian graph:

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=3874

Thanks again to Pim for referencing this resource.

Guillaume

[amabrok]

HiFi+ article about MQA

http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/mqa-its...=email-323

it seems they will focus on/target hifi streaming with the new format/codec

[Music or sound]

There is new report/explanation http://www.stereophile.com/content/merid...impression.
If it is really a breakthrough in digital sound quality as indicated in this report it will be important that also Devialet is on board! I hope it only requires software update!

[GuillaumeB]

There is new report/explanation http://www.stereophile.com/content/merid...impression.
If it is really a breakthrough in digital sound quality as indicated in this report it will be important that also Devialet is on board! I hope it only requires software update!

Very interesting. I must say I'm very excited by this new format. I believe there's a lot more to come with digital reproduction.

Guillaume

[NickB]

Call me a cynic (or an IT professional) but I am unsure how making the original digital file take up less space ( some obviously misguided people might call this compression ) can make the original file "sound" better. But maybe Palpatine does have a new uniform.