Tidal + MQA

[PeterSt]

What you see below went a kind of automatically (I made the screenshot for some reason, outside of our interest). But it could be introduced as a standard feature, perhaps. It would allow to see what we are going to listen to ...

[PeterSt]

[acg]

All,

Suppose that you have been trying that Division Bell album and thought "hmm, not much difference to what I am used to !" ... then this was correct; After quite some days of "fighting" and puzzling what could be wrong (because things did not look as expected), it was just found out that the internal Tidal ID of Phasure was not MQA enabled.

So if you *now* want to listen to the undecoded MQA version you can retry and you'll have the real thing.
Remember : UNdecoded is not good in itself, but it could tell how bad it really is (I did not listen yet).

If you look below ... things change regularly and the one named "24/96 download" or whatever it was, does not exist any more (or I don't see it any more). You'll want the right one (mind the left one which shows red whatever between the mouths and which is just 16/44.1. So if you get the other one it should show 24/48 (with the notice that it will be something like 16/48 "net" (without MQA decoding) but that's another story).

Peter

PS: Don't mind the {} number you see below; this is new in XXHighEnd.

Hi Peter,

Probably a stupid question, but I do not see any MQA results for "The Division Bell" when I search Tidal on XXHE 2.07-05.  Should I?  Or is this something that only you can do with your beta XXHE?

Regards,

Anthony

[PeterSt]

Hi Anthony,

Now I don't get how you'd see "MQA results" as such ? ...

If you - at this moment - type
the division bell
in the search field for Album Name / General, the MQA one comes up (but you won't know it). When you'd type
the division bell*
in there, the other one also shows (denoted "Remastered").

Notice that you can only see the 24/48 when you press Play on a track of it. Thus,
Load album
Play
then after some "Prepare" it starts playing and you see the 24/48 if you have the right one. If that does not happen, let me know.

Regards,
Peter

[acg]

Hi Peter,

If I type in either of those searches just the single album appears which is the Redbook version.  No remaster and no MQA it seems.

Regards,

Anthony

[PeterSt]

But Anthony, if that is so it has to be what's provided for Australia. So that too matters. Nah ... What can you find in the Windows Desktop App (mind you, only this one !) ? Via Search I mean, and then look in the right hand border.

Anyway, I see no normal without the "Remaster" text. And the other one (with normal text) is MQA.

Peter

[acg]

Yes, of course, I should have known.  I checked the tidal app and only the redbook version of "The Division Bell" is available.  I downloaded "Killing me Softly" as a master and played that today.  Nice.

[manisandher]

At this moment, what counts for me, is how we can unleash the forces of MQA via XXHighEnd and beyond, knowing that there is one and one only software player which suits 100% exactly what's MQA's goal : no ringing with the Arc Prediction filtering which thus exists nowhere else. If this is combined with the inherent vehicle that drives MQA, you will indeed see that the result will be unheard.

Hi Peter, has your thinking on MQA advanced any further?

FWIW, I've compared the MQA version of 'The Division Bell' (HD 24/96 Download Version) to the CD rip I have, and I believe it does indeed sound different. But here's something weird...

In my office, I use Roon -> HQPlayer -> NOS1a pretty much exclusively. If I play the MQA version from my hard drive, it sounds very different to the MQA version streamed directly from Tidal. In both cases, a 24/48 file is being outputted by Roon, which is then upsampled to 768 705.6 in HQPlayer before being sent to the NOS1a. The Tidal streamed version sounds substantially 'cleaner'.

Because both files are 24/48, I'm assuming there's been no unfolding of the MQA file in either case. So could the difference in SQ be attributed solely to the means of accessing the file (i.e. from a HDD on my music server vs. streaming from the internet), and the respective associated noise profiles of each mechanism?

Mani.

[PeterSt]

has your thinking on MQA advanced any further?

Hi Mani,

Not only thinking, also many hours of work.

Assumed that your Roon version supports MQA (and the screenshot seems to tell so), the streamed version will be unfolded. Your HDD version will not because you don't have the right XXHighEnd version for that (haha). So via XXHighEnd you will be listening to 24/48 and via Roon to 24/96.
Also via Roon you miss a stage of so-called "unfolding" because you need hardware to do that. Next, if you'd have the hardware, you can't use the software any more because this is not allowed. Also, you would not be able to use any of the filtering (of HQP or XXHighEnd, etc.). These things I never see told and only insiders (me) know it.

I have the hardware here but I am not sure what to do with it because it requires the usage of a pre-amp or other attenuator, because without that - not allowed again.

MQA, by now, is a missed chance, if it had any chance in the first place; its technical merits brought it to its own grave.
I just have not been able to listen to it in the way it is meant, because as you know, any attenuator kills the sound (for me) right away and so the apples and oranges difference will be huge because of that already. There is just no way out.

What I can do though is the same as you do with Roon but then via XXHighEnd, and there is no way I want to listen to that (after trying hard, I mean). Of course this starts with the good old sh*t that it all so necessarily needs to be Hires of the same sh*t kind as we are used to from all the falsifications from everywhere, although I notice that most of the masters are different. Different, but still no Hires to be seen anywhere (XXHighEnd 2.08 automatically generates the spectrograms for you, which I made for the very purpose).

Of course there's much more going on ...

Regards,
Peter

[manisandher]

Assumed that your Roon version supports MQA (and the screenshot seems to tell so), the streamed version will be unfolded. Your HDD version will not because you don't have the right XXHighEnd version for that (haha). So via XXHighEnd you will be listening to 24/48 and via Roon to 24/96.

Thanks Peter.

I don't this is important really, but let me just reiterate that I didn't use XXHighEnd at all in this comparison - I was using HQPlayer in both cases. I don't think there was any unfolding going on because HQP was showing a 24/48 input in both cases. Yes, the HDD screenshot shows 'MQA 96kHz', but I have no idea why - Roon is not capable of doing any unfolding... yet. Maybe it means 'would be 96kHz if unfolded'?

MQA, by now, is a missed chance, if it had any chance in the first place; its technical merits brought it to its own grave.

OK, this was what I was really after. In a way, I suppose it's a bit of a shame because we can only work on 'half of the equation'. But on the other hand, when regular 16/44.1 files sound as good as they currently do, I'm not that upset.

Maybe non-ringing ADCs will become the standard in the future, in which case we won't need MQA anyway.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Maybe it means 'would be 96kHz if unfolded'?

What it "officially" says is that the native file is 24/96. Whether the 24/48 can be "unfolded" to that is something else (and if Roon can't do that then apparently it can show this data from the file (already)).

Peter

[manisandher]

Yep, I think that's exactly the case.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Hi All,

Let's say that strange things are happening;

Yesterday was the 3rd day that I could listen to MQA without any disturbances of explicitly preparing an album, not being sure whether it played correctly and all kind of more things that can distract. IOW, I have MQA playing as should, and this includes the Prepare from Tidal which is like a breeze now. In other words : find album in MQA version, Prepare it, play it.
In reality this goes a bit different, because one can spend quite some time in finding MQA versions of the albums or artists you like. So it is hit and miss for say 75% when you try to find one album of one of your beloved artists, but if you do this on the couch with the tablet and XXHighEnd at the other end set for that (on the Music Server PC now), then the time spent goes unnoticed and the PC is doing the work for you in the background. So this is how I last Sunday Prepared 20 or so MQA albums, which I can still benefit from tonight (but almost ran out so I need to spend some time again).

Back to the strange thing :
At first I was sure that MQA sounded different but that I did not like it at all. It was even ear-hurting IMO. I never expressed so much about it, although all what you may have read from me (mainly elsewhere) is hints which allowed either direction (so I'd always be right later ). But in fact I did not like it at all, and one of the strange things is that I held on.
I didn't count the hours spent, but it really ain't few. And, say that I left off 2 months or so ago because things got a bit difficult and I faced the hurdle of formalise all or get rid of it (the get rid of it is still in my ToDo as a fact), ... I sat down to eliminate all for you (from the XXHighEnd software I mean) and ... instead I thought of finishing it because of the wasted time otherwise. Additionally it seems that nobody is really able so far to bring an MQA player forward on the Windows platform, so that motivated me to accomplish it after all.

Maybe it is because I made it all neat and formal with MQA icons and blue and green (or no) lights and everything, and maybe it is because I really liked the result of it, also observing that what XXHighEnd can do, others won't be able to (haha) ... but when I then pressed play I only heard good things.
Is it psychological ?
I can't imagine that I can be fooled by that, but maybe I can after all.

Maybe it is because I never compared or looked back at normal Redbook (CD), which btw in itself is because I wanted to explore the next MQA album (). But anyway, with the first one coincidentally a success and the success continuing, at this moment I "don't know better" and because I am not disturbed I continue. On the other hand, I am a little bit afraid for all the albums I played 3-4 months ago, and which I each for each did not like at all; they had potential but I didn't like them. So at this moment I avoid those ...


I am not trying to bail out by any means, but there is something else which - I am confident - is highly related. Thus, I have applied something new and this improves all over vastly. And the stupid thing is, I am able to reason out how what I heard from MQA previously, is now not a problem any more. I find it unbelievable myself, but I think this is just so. It is only that the guys at MQA don't know about this, nor could they anticipate it.


With all of it together, there's an unbelievable clarity to the sound which - in my thinking - only leads to less inherent distortion. But it is very difficult to think that for real.
For now it motivates me, though.

Peter

[acg]

Sounds promising then?  I'm looking forward to what comes of it Peter.  There are some guys in my part of the world that love what they are hearing from their MQA dacs and players, but I take all that with a grain of salt...after all they are already starting from behind us regarding SQ.