Apart from the audio reproduction quality, from a Collector's Point of View, you would not want your collection to be dependent on a propriety technology. FLAC can be converted to other formats but MQA... well, that output is 'protected' and if the technology 'dead-ends' so does your collection.
@Reluctantaudiophile
Жыл бұрын
MQA has always been a solution in search of a problem.
@chebrubin
Жыл бұрын
Exactly. And they could not explain it. And with Silicon Valley Bank gone how long can you convince some investors to keep paying for something that has no purpose.
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
I saw someone say that it's a 2015 solution to a 2005 problem.
@Nearest_Neighbor
18 күн бұрын
@@kdksevenLiked that statement.
@joenovak6393
Жыл бұрын
Goodbye MQA. That was Snake Oil.
@ThinkingBetter
Жыл бұрын
Lossy compression is a no-no for audiophiles…
@blkwolff
11 ай бұрын
does that mean that Tidal Hifi Plus is worth it now?
@cbgaming08
Ай бұрын
Is Tidal good now once again?
@GreenHoleSun
Ай бұрын
Well, it was worse than snake oil. At least snake oil doesn't do anything, mqa, on the contrary, is not lossless and add unwanted noise...
@cbgaming08
Ай бұрын
@@GreenHoleSun Now that they are finally removing all MQAs and Dolbys, will it be good to use once again?
@ptg01
Жыл бұрын
My understanding is MQA is most likely dying.... In some type of financial pickle...
@jimtekkit
Жыл бұрын
From what I understand, the main investor pulled the plug and it sent MQA Ltd into receivership. Probably going to see MQA licensing fizzle out as a result.
@bikdav
Жыл бұрын
If that’s MQA’s behavior, does that give me permission to stick to CD?
@SantanKGhey1234
Жыл бұрын
MQA will be dead
@jonathandavis9507
Жыл бұрын
They refuse to say how it works in any meaningful way, using stupid terms like “neuroscience”
@deloaded
Жыл бұрын
Good news! The less snake oil salesmen in this world, the better.
@Extremesam43
8 ай бұрын
Thanks Paul, I never knew MQA was lossy. I'll stick with the WAV's and FLAC
@doctormidnight
Жыл бұрын
I have about 16 TB of local storage just for music. FLAC is the way to go. With the miniscule cost of storage these days, it's a no-brainer.
@bkkersey93
Жыл бұрын
Or you could just go for WAV with that kind of storage since in my experience, WAV files aren't the gigantic size difference from FLAC they're made out to be.
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
@@bkkersey93 In my experience FLAC is around half the size of WAV. That is proven easily: just convert one of your WAV files to FLAC.
@colanitower
Жыл бұрын
FLAC files can store more metadata than WAV, making FLAC more convenient when searching file collections based on metadata.
@richardt3371
Жыл бұрын
@@bkkersey93 Though there's no reason to favour WAV over FLAC, both are lossless digital formats. Look at it this way: it's the same as folding a T-Shirt to put in a drawer compared to putting the T-Shirt away unfolded; both are exactly the same T-Shirt, the folded version is easier to store. FLAC also has better metadata options.
@-ver6459
Жыл бұрын
I wish I live in a country where "storage is cheap".
@mythos5809
Жыл бұрын
Excellent. Absolutely agree. Just from a logic view you don't want to lose anything.
@hansoosterwal4073
Жыл бұрын
Thanks for educating! Let nobody critisize you for not liking something. We live in a free world. Everyone has the right to have their own opinion. I love your videos.
@edfort5704
Жыл бұрын
To quote the late and great George Carlin: "Oh yeah? Well I have a right to my opinion, and my opinion is that you have no right to your opinion!"
@hansoosterwal4073
Жыл бұрын
@@edfort5704 Yes... I capitulate.
@JoJo-edge
Жыл бұрын
Well said!!!
@maxhirsch7035
Жыл бұрын
I have Luxman's flagship disc player, bought a couple MQA discs (my unit is enabled for optimizing them) - one being a Shostakovich recording by DG & the other being Zenyatta Mondatta (The Police). Neither one sounded the slightest bit superior to standard cd & the classical one may have been slightly worse (but unlike Zenyatta I couldn't compare it with the identical recording in another format/codec). Oh, and MQA is a 'proprietary format.' I'd long suspected MQA was simply hype. Well, my modest comparison did zero to change my POV on it.
@LuxAudio389
Жыл бұрын
MQA is the audiophile's (me included) Budweiser. 😅
@fx-studio
11 ай бұрын
MQA is a format that was designed to replicate the studio sound experience with Time Smearing Correction up to 10M away from the speakers. Most people don't have a studio to listen to there music in, and don't have a set of hi-end studio monitors - so they can't hear the benefit of it. I have a studio system and MQA sounds amazing on it compared to FLAC which sounds flat and 2D like. kzitem.info/news/bejne/pKJru4CkkWannIo
@Justice_Hammer
Ай бұрын
@@fx-studio😆🤣
@glenncurry3041
Жыл бұрын
There is a very major surface level way they are different. Yes they are both data compression schemes for audio. MQA does it's work by attacking higher audio frequencies while still in the analog domain during the conversion to digital. Thus directly manipulating the sound to reduce the information it contains in order to reduce bandwidth needs during streaming. While FLAC has nothing to do with the actual audio. FLAC is a mathematical process performed after the analog has been converted into a digital file already that just reduces the digital file size. It is digital file compression/ expansion and not pre and post analog audio processing.
@sermerlin1
Жыл бұрын
Basically... MQA is just shit.
@thegrimyeaper
Жыл бұрын
"Lossy scheme" is a good description.
@DunarRaynor
Жыл бұрын
This is good to know. I did cancel my Hifi Plus membership on tidal which had MQA and moved to "lower" and cheaper Hifi Flac..... So im not regretting after hearing this
@bkkersey93
Жыл бұрын
Same here. Plus, I've started just buying straight up FLAC files. So I won't be using Tidal much anymore anyways.
@DunarRaynor
Жыл бұрын
@@bkkersey93 how expensive does it get like this> ?
@SajqaliRuiZamin
Жыл бұрын
You still will listen to the downgraded version of MQA because the HiFi tier also has tons of Master.
@ramsaybolton9099
Жыл бұрын
I love the sound of MQA.
@dolall5470
Жыл бұрын
I love sound of 96 kbps mp3. It seams to be deviant love, but still love...
@goodsound4756
Жыл бұрын
In a Reddit Q&A last April 10, 2023, Tidal CEO, Jesse Dorogusker, revealed that the streaming platform will soon be supporting FLAC in their Hi-Res format for HiFi Plus subscribers, days after MQA files for Appointment of Administrator, which is equivalent to bankruptcy in the US.
@spandel100
Жыл бұрын
Hasn't happened yet...
@goodsound4756
Жыл бұрын
@@spandel100 yes, he left open if its weeks or months
@yannis7815
Жыл бұрын
what tidal really needs to fix is when you click on the lyrics to get to that part of the song and the audio of the song does rewind, but the visual lyrics keep going and don't follow from where you just clicked
@sermerlin1
Жыл бұрын
I hope tidal will completely remove MQA and just replace it with flac for CD audio quality (hifi) and those hi-res format for hifi plus subs.... I don't care much for hi-res format but I want pure CD audio quality untouched. As paul said... I don't want someone messing with my stuff.
@spandel100
Жыл бұрын
@@sermerlin1 100% agree,I find red book or cd quality sounds amazing,and it always will.
@martineyles
Жыл бұрын
Never had enough storage to make my portable library FLAC. Always had to settle for MP3. Hopefully as memory cards expand, I can change that, but it will mean re-ripping everything! Still, MQA seems to sit in an awkward middle ground. It doesn't reduce the bandwidth and storage requirements enough to compete with MP3, but it reduces the quality too much to compete with FLAC.
@corbinangelo3359
9 ай бұрын
In the early 2000's I ripped all of my CD's to 320kbit mp3. And I'm Sooo glad I never parted from my original CD collection nor my vinyl's. Nowadays I mostly just stream from Amazon hd though. So far I haven't considered re-ripping my cd's to flac. My flac collection is growing however from buying files directly from artists.
@richardramorino3319
Жыл бұрын
The real issue with MQA is not whether it is good or not. It's how the very mention of the topic makes so many audiophiles apapleptic. Probably most people with a strong opinion about it have never heard it. Likewise, I would guess the overwhelming group of people screaming online about how great Hegel amps are, have never heard one. What is it about audio, that so many people, with so little actual experience, have such strong opinions.
@TheDanEdwards
Жыл бұрын
You are totally ignoring that MQA is a proprietary format. And now the MQA rights holder has filed for bankruptcy protection.
@JingoLoBa57
Жыл бұрын
Totally agree, now let’s talk about cables shall we? What are the best cables for transporting MQA? Silver copper fiber or other? 😅
@PartyMusic775
Жыл бұрын
@@TheDanEdwards OMG I just found out all music I listen to is proprietary, under copyright by the artist who did it! I'm switching to open source royalty-free MIDI files only now.
@fx-studio
11 ай бұрын
Musicians and a love of music seems to be mutually exclusive to having Critical Thinking skills. They always display emotionally based Ladder of Inference thinking. And when you think about it that makes sense. Because music is historically more of a social farming community thing than a Neanderthal hunter thing. The hunter also needs very good auditory spatial skill processing as well, whereas the farmer doesn't. The lack of Critical Thinking Skills can be seen in the high percentage of people involved in music who got the clot shot. Which was set as a test for Critical Thinking...
@TommasoPaba
4 ай бұрын
@@PartyMusic775that's a different issue. Not only is MQA proprietary, but the algorithm is also secret. MP3 is proprietary as well, and also not free (commercial encoders must pay royalties), but there will always be a free codec available as the algorithm is published. So you see the problem, right? Now that we discovered that MQA is a scam, that it's lossy despite the lies they were saying, now that everyone is abandoning it, new hardware won't support it (no need to pay royalties if not even the company who created it is using it anymore), software won't be updated, and you'll be stuck with a library encoded in an obsolete secret proprietary format. This will never ever happen with flac.
@chungang7037
Жыл бұрын
Goldensound's channel tested MQA. MQA will be going the way of the dodo.
@isaacsykes3
Жыл бұрын
Based on my ears, I prefer MQA. From the files to the MQA CD's. The audible difference to me is significant. Also, the MQA stands for MASTER QUALITY AUTHENTICAED, not "Assurance" which is, in my opinion, a jab at the format. That aside, the one important factor, often left out, when detractors of the format speak about it, is that in addition to being a compression method, MQA is also, a certification or validation, that what you're hearing from that file is taken from the studio master. A flac file can be created from any source, regardless of the quality, and could have been manipulated or changed several times before one hears it. The point being that, I can make a flac file of this video, which we know is compressed and altered, so just because it's supposedly "not altered" doesn't make it the better sounding music file.
@trajan350
Жыл бұрын
This was an insightful comment that I really appreciate.
@philipheyes607
Жыл бұрын
MQA authenticated nothing other than an unknown source ( often a standard CD ) had passed through a lossy codec & been marked up to a higher price.
@deloaded
Жыл бұрын
Lots of factual errors in your statement. Please refer to why Neil Young took his music off Tidal. They converted his FLACs to MQA; he never gave them his masters to work with, so in no way whatsoever is MQA only ever taken from studio masters. It is, however, marketing and snake oil.
@deloaded
Жыл бұрын
@@zakkazz1201 Good to know; thanks for the heads-up! 🙏
@BoredSilly666
Жыл бұрын
MQA HAS GONE IT ADMINISTRATION / BANKRUPTCY
@dipanjanbiswas6580
Жыл бұрын
Completely agree. The argument against UHF centers around audible frequency range but has anyone been able to establish that waves outside of audible frequency range do not impact sonic quality?
@AraCarrano
Жыл бұрын
Listen to classical movements that have moments of silence. Lossy codecs love to freak out during the transition from barely audible to silence and back.
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
Freak out? What do you mean?
@thedynamicd85
Жыл бұрын
Yeah, that's when you start to hear that weird water x electricity sound.
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
Ah. Thanks for clarifying.
@martineyles
Жыл бұрын
Does VBR help?
@varun.b3
Жыл бұрын
Read about MQA going into administration so it may soon become history
@randomtube8226
Ай бұрын
Now that MQA is gone. I've noticed that it must have been in somewhat higher quality. It's seems the same tracks that used to be in high quality are now in CD quality at best now. The sample rate has gone down too. I'm confused 🤔
@kuntador1359
Жыл бұрын
Hi Paul. Thanks for the videos… I have a question. Carpet or no carpet? I have wooden floor. I am wondering if to place a carpet where I sit and listen to music, probably half the area between the sofa and speakers, not the whole floor. Would that help? Or is it better to place a long and narrow carpet underneath the speakers? Thanks again.
@Paulmcgowanpsaudio
Жыл бұрын
I prefer carpet, personally. Not sure about under the speakers, but certainly between you and the front of the speakers, a big throw rug can really help.
@SteveWille
Жыл бұрын
To function maximally, MQA requires support at all levels of the reproduction “stack”, from recording all the way through the playback DAC. This inflexibility is not sustainable since the licensing of this proprietary technology is a tax leveed at all levels of this stack. MQA design drives licensing revenue with, as Paul states, only subjective benefits in return. FLAC, on the other hand, is a free and open standard and, consequently, will always have strong support. FLAC’s place in the reproduction stack is compartmentalized and its scope is limited: FLAC is no concern in the recording process and, likewise, also not in the playback DAC. FLAC makes no decisions about what you can hear or how it will be played back.
@ThinkingBetter
Жыл бұрын
There is no point in lossy compression of audio nowadays. I can stream 90 million songs in LOSSLESS FLAC in CD quality or up to 192kHz 24 bits from my Amazon Music HD account with each song available in a second costing me US9.99 per month. I’m not sure what more I can want in terms of media availability, audio fidelity or cost??? Besides, my internet connection is optical to my house with 1Gbps and I can stream 100s of audiophile streams in parallel if I had the need for it. MQA is history at this point.
@StrangeBrewReviews
Жыл бұрын
Streaming services have terrible variety unless you only listen to popular music. But for most it's OK.
@ThinkingBetter
Жыл бұрын
@@StrangeBrewReviewsTechnically speaking, streaming services move your music data over the internet and can support much high resolving audio codecs than CD media. You can reliably stream a bit-perfect master version of your favorite music without any negative effect at all. Personally I use Amazon Music HD where FLAC is used to deliver completely lossless audio to my DAC in up to 192kHz 24 bits. The audio quality is excellent for the highest fidelity music. Of course your system needs to be with proper handling of the stream without introducing additional sample rate conversion or other lossy processing.
@StrangeBrewReviews
Жыл бұрын
@@ThinkingBetter sure but they only carry a few popular albums from artists I like...I prefer cds and lps....most my collection is not on streaming services anyway.
@PartyMusic775
Жыл бұрын
@@ThinkingBetter Are you sure it's getting to your DAC in 24/192 lossless? Amazon sends it through the OS mixer so you're getting upsample/downsample artifacts on an order of magnitude more lossy than MQA. Hope they solve that issue soon.
@ThinkingBetter
Жыл бұрын
@@PartyMusic775 I am running in exclusive mode bypassing any SRC. Yes I’m sure. In fact the Mac OS version of Amazon Music has an on/off switch for exclusive mode. It also means you can’t control volume in Mac OS as it maintains the original PCM sample values without level attenuation.
@frankenstudio22
Жыл бұрын
*Master Quality Authenticated - not Assured
@youuuuuuuuuuutube
Ай бұрын
Makes sense because "assured" would have been a lie.
@sandgroper1970
Жыл бұрын
I went with FLAC and have ripped my entire CD collection except for some SACD discs and BluRay audio discs. But I still have all of my original discs available to play, just easier at night to just stream my music. I can just lie back , turn on my receiver, use the remote and either stream from my own library or use Qobuz. Actually use my Qobuz subscription to listen to albums from artists, to see if it is worthwhile purchasing the album in CD format myself.
@brandonburr4900
Жыл бұрын
Never been a mqa fan either as a long time tidal premium subscriber. Now that mqa is dead, it should be interesting to see what tidal uses to replace it. I would be totally fine if they did what Apple is doing with their higher resolution content (just normal hi resolution and not the spacial audio stuff). Thanks paul!
@Bambam21476
Жыл бұрын
Never mind that MQA alters the sound to make it better, it costs 10 dollars more per month on Tidal to hear it. I'm with Tidal, and did have MQA but dropped the MQA and still have CD quality songs, and I'm still completely satisfied with Tidal, how it sounds. I'm thinking Spotify is stalling to up their quality of sound for the same reason. Very few of us are purists.
@sermerlin1
Жыл бұрын
MQA never altered the sound to make it better. It made it worse, always.
@PartyMusic775
Жыл бұрын
@@sermerlin1 FALSE. I live in an AirBNB and the random AB I do on even non-audiophile people, for curiosity, always comes up MQA as better, even on my fairly modest audiophile stack.
@sermerlin1
Жыл бұрын
@@PartyMusic775 compared to what? 160kbps?
@manitoublack
Жыл бұрын
Never listened to an MQA file. Seems i never will😅
@shipsahoy1793
Жыл бұрын
MQA was just somebody’s wet dream; doomed from the start .
@gwine9087
11 ай бұрын
Oh, how I wish I had ripped more of my cd's, in FLAC, instead of just a few.
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
I'm in the process of re-ripping all my music in FLAC. I had still been using all the MP3s I ripped back in the early 2000s. It's about time. I didn't even rip full albums because of storage limitations, so it really needed to be done. It's actually been fun. Been listening to a lot of music I hadn't heard in a long time.
@PartyMusic775
Жыл бұрын
You confuse the meaning of lossless. All audio playback is always lossy, let's start there. There is storage, and in that case all digital files per se are lossless. Then there is compression and in this case only FLAC is a lossless compression method. MQA if used to compress a FLAC is what you might call "lossy" by deliberately throwing out inaudible frequencies. But the main point of MQA isn't to compress some other format that was lossy to start with (FLAC is hardcore lossy in the original A-to-D recording phase.) The main point of MQA is to fight the lossyness that happens during recording in the A-to-D. So here we have a comparison of apples to oranges. FLAC is lossless compression and transmission of a seriously LOSSY A-to-D recording, whereas MQA loses FAR LESS than WAV/FLAC in the A-to-D recording process. If MQA is used only for compression of a WAV/FLAC, it will lose some of the useless/garbage info created during the faulty A-to-D of the highly lossy WAV/FLAC recording process. So in that respect can't ever get better than FLAC. But in the respect of a Mic-to-Speaker complete start-to-finish recording, MQA is by far the least lossy of the two formats. Hope that explains it better.
@StuffJason437
Жыл бұрын
Uhm, I don't bother with flac or MQA, and instead use wav. I pretty much don't bother with compression anymore as storage is cheap enough you don't really need it.
@bkkersey93
Жыл бұрын
Even though you can't hear any audible difference between FLAC and WAV, but I agree with going with WAV if storage is of no issue.
@StuffJason437
Жыл бұрын
@@bkkersey93 You won't hear a difference unless the source is mastered lossless without compression and then over to wav, and these days it's such niche' thing. Storage is so cheap it's almost illegal!.
@michaelturner4457
Жыл бұрын
I'd never heard of this MQA until quite recently. And with the bankruptcy, I'll likely never here of it again. All my musics are in FLAC and WAV
@farty81
9 ай бұрын
I'm sad about the demise of MQA the company. I think it sounds superb, I hope it endures in some shape or form with the new owners. Bob Stewart is a good guy, he was trying to make things better, it wasn't a conspiracy.
@TommasoPaba
4 ай бұрын
They lied. For years, they lied about it being lossless, they used ambiguous wording to suggest that it was lossless without actually saying it, and kept the algorithm secret. Once people were able to gradually discover some information, truth emerged. It was a scam and they lied to consumers, plus they were only seeking for profit. They created a format that was not needed by consumers, but allowed them to get royalties from the hardware that supported it, increasing the price of streamers and receivers as the manufacturer had to pay royalties to support the format. Now they are getting what they deserve...
@TommasoPaba
4 ай бұрын
They lied. For years, they lied about it being lossless, they used ambiguous wording to suggest that it was lossless without actually saying it, and kept the algorithm secret. Once people were able to gradually discover some information, truth emerged. It was a scam and they lied to consumers, plus they were only seeking for profit. They created a format that was not needed by consumers, but allowed them to get royalties from the hardware that supported it, increasing the price of streamers and receivers as the manufacturer had to pay royalties to support the format. Finally, one of their main targets with this format was to prevent piracy and enforce DRM, so for example an MQA file cannot be converted into a bitstream, it can only be streamed between MQA licensed devices. Basically, they control the whole chain that reproduces the file in a way that the file can never be altered and they lied on this as well, saying that it was for consumer's sake as they had the guarantee that the file was equivalent to the original master (yes... equivalent to a lossy compression of the master, but they forgot to specify this!), while the real purpose is to control the entire chain that manages the file, ensuring that every device would support MQA and DRM (and getting more royalties). A very clever scheme that luckily failed as their lies became evident. How can you believe they did it in good faith?
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
Yup, it was a scam.
@kautkascitadaks
Жыл бұрын
Agreed 💯 with you. Had to actually search for a place to buy non mqa flac of simply red blue eyed soul, most places had only mqa for some reason, thank god for qobuz. Don't want anything to do with mqa.
@mr.d3102
2 ай бұрын
Tidal is now all MQA
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
Actually, tidal now offers PCM in addition to MQA, since MQA is basically dead.
@sergiomarques1442
Жыл бұрын
Is Qobuz in Flac, and so, better than Tidal?
@davidclarke6658
Жыл бұрын
The MQA guys say how much better it sounds. They have all these graphs and wording to explain how it purifies the music that I try and understand what they are doing. At the end of the day I think Qobuz sounds better than Tidal. But others say other way around. I guess MQA was great for streaming where you want to keep Hi Res file sizes to a minimum.
@thepracticalaudiophile
Жыл бұрын
After several months i canceled Tidal because the MQA was fatiguing to me. I thought Amazon and Apple lossless sounded better.
@CORVUSMAXYMUS
Жыл бұрын
FLAC ALWAYS WILL BE FIRST CHOICE.
@-ver6459
Жыл бұрын
I don't know. My DAC glows differently when playing MQA and it looks cool. So I'm not gonna delete my MQA just yet. (Also, I can't hear any difference.)
@williamevans9426
Жыл бұрын
I've heard that MQA is on the way out. Is this true? (As a Qobuz subscriber it makes no difference to me but for those using Tidal... .)
@edfx
Жыл бұрын
One would argue it's like comparing WAV and MP3 of same size. One is 8bit/11kHz "lossless" wav, other is lossy 16bit/48kHz mp3. Both have same bitrate. Which is better?
@makiboy8958
11 ай бұрын
Wav 8bit = bit lossy (not lossless)
@MilonKhan-yy4sf
3 күн бұрын
Walker David Brown Steven Hernandez Jose
@birgerolovsson5203
Жыл бұрын
Only place I see any meaning with MQA is for "radio/TV" where they can give as much as possible with as little data as possible.
@birgerolovsson5203
Жыл бұрын
@@zakkazz1201 I meant the sound for regular TV and radio broadcast.
@wyup
Жыл бұрын
I discarded MQA without trying it from the first day because I knew future available bandwith would allow for streaming Hi-Res FLAC at low enough birates. MQA is doing tricks, yeah, but it might prove its point saving bitrate to allow better quality than say 44.1/16 (~500-800 kbps FLAC or 1.41Mbps WAV). But today with Netflix 4k/HDR/DV at 17.98Mbps, it becomes irrelevant, we can have 96Khz/24 bits FLAC at 2789 kbps that is half regular youtube bitate, so MQA is no longer worth the hassle. I remember HDCD in 1995 was a similar ill-fate technology. Only a handful of CD were released and I didn't notice anything.
@jwrice743
Ай бұрын
I guess that's why Tidal recently dropped MQA.
@dolall5470
Жыл бұрын
As I do not agree on many subjects or more on way you do it I fully agree about negative opinion on presenting something worse in a way to make it looking as precious gem insted
@youuuuuuuuuuutube
Ай бұрын
MQA is like a JPEG with 85% quality, and FLAC is like a TIFF (or 32bit PNG) file. Some people might prefer MQA the same way that some people prefer JPEG... they must be people who like those artifacts.
@michaelturner4457
Жыл бұрын
Maybe the liquidators or administrators of MQA Ltd, the former UK company that licensed this technology will open source it?
@nicktaylor7680
4 ай бұрын
Funny he doesn't talk about sound quality.
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
Well, he basically said that MQA sounds like crap (i'm paraphrasing).
@dr.jamieadamspleasantph.d.1609
Жыл бұрын
CD is better than all of them!
@Metalface912
Жыл бұрын
CD = Flac.
@shipsahoy1793
Жыл бұрын
Oh, by the way, all you comment artists, .. I don’t think Paul really cares if you agree with him or not; he is probably highly entertained by all the critiques to his comments. I would be.
@WSS_the_OG
Жыл бұрын
MQA sounds decent, but as you said, it's lossy. Some of the claims made by the MQA folks set of red flags for me too. FLAC is lossless, so it seems like a non-argument just from that perspective alone. MQA fans, to me, are sort of saying "I prefer the sound through my equalizer than I do without it." That's fair, and it's fine, but we have to acknowledge that MQA takes liberties, whereas an lossless CODEC, by its very definition, does not.
@PartyMusic775
Жыл бұрын
You confuse the meaning of lossless. All audio playback is always lossy, let's start there. There is storage, and in that case all digital files per se are lossless. Then there is compression and in this case only FLAC is a lossless compression method. MQA if used to compress a FLAC is what you might call "lossy" by deliberately throwing out inaudible frequencies. But the main point of MQA isn't to compress some other format that was lossy to start with (FLAC is hardcore lossy in the original A-to-D recording phase.) The main point of MQA is to fight the lossyness that happens during recording in the A-to-D. So here we have a comparison of apples to oranges. FLAC is lossless compression and transmission of a seriously LOSSY A-to-D recording, whereas MQA loses FAR LESS than WAV/FLAC in the A-to-D recording process. If MQA is used only for compression of a WAV/FLAC, it will lose some of the useless/garbage info created during the faulty A-to-D of the highly lossy WAV/FLAC recording process. So in that respect can't ever get better than FLAC. But in the respect of a Mic-to-Speaker complete start-to-finish recording, MQA is by far the least lossy of the two formats. Hope that explains it better.
@WSS_the_OG
Жыл бұрын
@@PartyMusic775 No confusion. Lossless isn't an esoteric concept. Zeroes and ones go in and get compressed. If exactly the same zeroes and ones are reproduced without any changes at decompression, that is what is universally accepted as lossless. Perhaps a better term than lossless (and on this I will agree) would be "unchanged." MQA makes changes. People may like the changes it makes, so in a sense, perhaps that's not "losssy" in a subjective sense, and could in fact be "additive." But the point remains; MQA data is different after decompression as compared to prior compression. That's what is generally termed "lossy."
@StephenBrennanGuitar
Жыл бұрын
Flac is decompression/ recompression algorithm and MQA ventures into the field of sound processing. MQA is odd and quite possibly a scam. They license this to manufacturers - it became a badge for a while that some bespoke streamers and amp making companies wanted on their hardware - but hard-line analysis shows that the original inventors claims were, at best, his personal preference which had most people fooled, for a while.
@dannybourne_
Жыл бұрын
Yeah, I would simply say that MQA stinks of fraud.
@sermerlin1
Жыл бұрын
What do you mean fooled? Nobody was fooled. Everyone knew exactly what MQA is. A scam. First claim was that MQA is "lossless" format then after scientific test with test files specific to check for bit compression/decompression and turns out it is not only lossy as bits were lost in the process but also it just added noise and weird stuff to it. It messed with the file itself. So as soon as that was debunked.... They changed to "perceived lossless". Pure bullshit.
@natevirtual
Жыл бұрын
FLAC FTW!
@ranseus
Жыл бұрын
You can compare the two directly, Tidal uses MQA, Amazon Music uses FLAC. With the same track on both services, both at 100% volume with a AQ Dragonfly, the most obvious difference is that Tidal is louder.
@spandel100
Жыл бұрын
Turn off normalisation in Tidal,it messes with the sound quality.Thats also why its loud.
@shangrilaladeda
Жыл бұрын
iTunes is even louder
@boostedmaniac
Жыл бұрын
@@shangrilaladeda yeah for sure. I hate when switching to apple iTunes and tidal. I get blasted in my car when switching.
@shangrilaladeda
Жыл бұрын
@@boostedmaniac sorry to hear that, I have to find a way to get jriver to work off of my wifi so I could use my library on the go just like iTunes
@MrPINKFL0YD
10 ай бұрын
A lot of people were lied to, Inc Me. We bought MQA DACs and subscriptions because of the lies.
@gotham61
Жыл бұрын
With storage costing just pennies per gigabyte, there’s no longer any good reason to compress files at all. Just store them as uncompressed WAV files.
@TuanMinh-sv2gq
Жыл бұрын
Since flac is completely lossless that would simply be a waste of storage and streaming bandwidth. The quality is 100% the same so even though the waste is relatively small these days, it is still a waste. Why would you prefer WAV over FLAC?
@gotham61
Жыл бұрын
@@TuanMinh-sv2gq The DAC has a lot less computation to do, and many feel that it sounds better because the processor has a much lighter workload. We have been playing WAV files for over 40 years. It's a well understood task.
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
@@gotham61 For streaming there are advantages to use FLAC, because it uses half the bandwidth. Also the DAC does not do the computation for unpacking the flac, the computer or the streamer (generally more powerful than a DAC) does. On top of that unpacking a FLAC is costing so little cpu resources that the sound difference compared to WAV can not be heard in blind listening tests anymore. Maybe 30 years ago when computers where much less powerful. Today this is a complete non issue.
@TuanMinh-sv2gq
Жыл бұрын
@@gotham61 thanks for your explanation. I'm going to have to go with Andy here though.
@seanjoell
Жыл бұрын
If you really want the file copied straight off CDs, it is better to use AIFF files in sted, it has superior metadata capabilities.
@dannybourne_
Жыл бұрын
Totally agree with Paul, MQA is trash.
@LeonFleisherFan
Жыл бұрын
Now this is a no brainer to agree with. Did some blind testing after an electrical engineer sent me a bunch of comparison files, and preferred the high-resolution files in 100% of the examples, which is saying something, because other than in comparisons to MP3, one rarely even gets 100% right in the first place. Having said that, I do like the Christian Eggen (Nielsen) and Radka Toneff albums, which to my knowledge were never high-resolution to begin with - there, I would say what one hears in the remastering is an artistic choice, and that makes sense to me.
@user-ow6go6by3i
Жыл бұрын
Maybe MQA is similar like DVD-A, will disappear not so far.
@martineyles
Жыл бұрын
Well, they both use Meridian compression tech. However, DVD-A uses the lossless MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing), which will basically sound the same as FLAC but with licensing costs.
@jpatrickmoore5158
Жыл бұрын
In the late pre-digital days, DBX put out equipment that decoded special records that were encoded before the masters were cut and the records pressed. Despite being an improvement, music-wise, the advent of digital recording doomed the technology, which probably would not have been all that popular in the long run. Lesson: beware of proprietary technology.
@michaelturner4457
Жыл бұрын
I'm sure DBX was doomed from the start, not only because of the special record pressings, but also the special and expensive DBX decoders that were required to to play them. But on the other hand some proprietary technology can be very successful, I'm thinking of Dolby B noise reduction for cassettes, that was supported by all manufacturers.
@jpatrickmoore5158
Жыл бұрын
@Michael Turner beyond the proprietary records, they had some interesting products - expanders that helped restore some of the dynamic range that was used in the recording process to limit the loudest sounds to enable successfully cutting a record, and to amplify the softest sounds so that they would be above the noise floor of the tape machines that they used, first to capture the separate tracks, and then to produce the master tape that was fed into the cutter for the lacquer master disk. There were albums that were recorded digitally but pressed on vinyl before the standard for CD's was agreed upon; those still had compression but no background hiss from tape. You still had to deal with the noise artifacts from records - pops from dust and the wear and tear on the vinyl groove. Carver's autocorrellator sought to cancel out the record noise and was actually fairly effective. DBX probably would have thrived except for CD's killing the market for expanders.
@NoEgg4u
Жыл бұрын
@0:57 "...MQA is a lossy scheme." The bits that are tossed are beyond any human's hearing. They toss those bits in order to save streaming bandwidth. The savings are substantial. MQA does not touch any frequencies below 20,000 Hz. MQA allows the customer to hear both the high resolution version of the song (i.e. 176.4 kHz) or the CD version of the song (44.1 kHz) from the same file -- depending on whichever version your DAC supports. From where do they source their content remains a mystery. I have never seen any official statement from where they obtain/source their music files. Years ago, a youtuber explained in a video that the MQA process uses their own mixing and mastering process -- implying that they have access to the initial capture tapes. But I never saw confirmation on the above. If it is true that they have access to the initial capture tapes, then it is possible for them to make their own masters, and do so correctly. Alas, who knows?
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
Some sources state that MQA is sourced from the original master tape for whatever album is available in the MQA format. Some sources state that a 24-bit Wav file was used as the master source from which the MQA file was made. I don’t know which one is correct, but I assume that the 24-bit WAV files sound better than the analog masters due to the latter’s deterioration over time. I also read that the MQA process corrects electrical issues with the analog gear used to record and master the album. As far as the mastering gear is concerned, the electrical issues are evident on the SACD layer of Hybrid SACDs created at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab.
@NoEgg4u
Жыл бұрын
@@caleguillory5451 "Some sources state that MQA is sourced from the original master tape for whatever album is available in the MQA format." If they are using the master tape, then it kind of defeats the "better sound quality" effort. The master tape is created from lord-knows how much destructive mixing was done. To achieve the best possible sound quality, you have to get your hands on the initial capture tapes (the raw recordings heard by the microphones). You then use those tapes to mix and master a new master tape. "I also read that the MQA process corrects electrical issues with the analog gear used to record and master the album." I forgot about that. The digital equipment used in the studios, to convert the analog sound into digital files, is flawed. Not necessarily terribly so. But like any digital gear, it does not do a perfect job in lining up the digital bits. Supposedly, the MQA process knows which piece of analog-to-digital gear was used, knows that gear's flaws, and corrects the bits to undo the flaws.
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
@@NoEgg4u So the initial capture tapes are would have been the multitrack masters, right?
@NoEgg4u
Жыл бұрын
@@caleguillory5451 That is my understanding.
@gustavsp.1304
Жыл бұрын
I agree Paul, 100% true MQA is a lossy format I also don't like it . Didn't like since the das one .
@SantanKGhey1234
Жыл бұрын
MQA is worse... just like running your audio signal through an equilizer..... altering the original file....
@CORVUSMAXYMUS
Жыл бұрын
EVEN TIDAL HAVE PLANS TO QUIT MQA.
@joshuarosen465
Жыл бұрын
There is no reason to use lossy compression if all you are doing is storing the files. Audio is tiny and disks are huge now. A CD was only .6 gbytes. You can buy a 16 terabyte disk for a couple of hundred dollars, thats 32000 uncompressed CDs. Use a lossless compression algorithm and you can store 60000 CDs. The only place where lossy compression is still used is streaming and Satellite. Satellites have limited bandwidth and they would rather cram more channels into it then to have good sound. Streaming services could use lossless if they wanted to but it costs them more money so most use lossy compressors.
@martineyles
Жыл бұрын
Lossy compression has a purpose for portable music. At home you can have unlimited storage and bandwidth. It's unlikely you will have more than 1TB of storage when out and about, and as network quality varies hugely, you might have no data coverage at all in some places.
@stimpy1226
Жыл бұрын
I'm not a fan of MQA as I was subscribed to it as well as Qobuz. There was something missing in the SQ of MQA. I canceled my MQA subscription within a month after the comparison.
@shreddherring
Жыл бұрын
If you use uncompressed files, then you dont need to worry about this stuff
@zackw4941
Жыл бұрын
Pistol grip preamp in his system at all times. You can be messing with other audiophiles' stuff, but you can't be messing with Paul's!
@Chunksville
Жыл бұрын
You cannot use MQA yourself anyway so it's an irrelevant question and answer, MQA is (or was) a just a streaming format and was not intended for consumer home use.
@Scott-DJ
Жыл бұрын
Well...the fact that MQA is now facing bankruptcy & Tidal has dumped it completely should be a pretty big clue what the majority of audiophiles think of that snake oil "Magic Origami" format. Just no such substitute for a large file-size true hi-res FLAC file.
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
If Tidal completely dumped MQA, then why are current Tidal users like me still able to find MQA files and play them?
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
@@caleguillory5451 The existing Tidal MQA's are probably still there. If Tidal will add new MQA's is highly doubtful, since they have announced they are going all in for lossless hi-res FLAC files. Also, as far as I know, Tidal was the only provider of MQA files. For now you are still good with MQA, For the future not so much. Maybe you don't like to hear that, but don't shoot the messenger.
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
@@andymill8552 Well, then, are 24-bit FLAC files the easiest way to listen to music exactly as the artist originally recorded it?
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
@@caleguillory5451 Yes, why not? Unpacked they are bit for bit equal compared to the original (PCM/WAV) recording provided by the record company. You can't get any closer to the original, because it is exactly the same as the original. Further more FLAC is completely open source and license/royalty free. I don't see any disadvantages here.
@caleguillory5451
Жыл бұрын
@@andymill8552 So in this case is “original” a reference to what the microphone heard in the studio or does “original” refer to what was heard on playback after the recording was completed?
@andygilbert1877
Жыл бұрын
MQA or FLAC? 🤔 I’m going with WAV. 😉
@TuanMinh-sv2gq
Жыл бұрын
Why? It's identical in terms of quality but bigger. What's the upside?
@andygilbert1877
Жыл бұрын
@@TuanMinh-sv2gq Because I want to and it’s one letter shorter.
@TuanMinh-sv2gq
Жыл бұрын
@@andygilbert1877 alright, well, can't argue with that :p
@bkkersey93
Жыл бұрын
As long as you don't claim it's "superiority" then have at it lol.
@jonathandavis9507
Жыл бұрын
One format is filing bankruptcy, the other isn’t 😂
@eprpop
4 ай бұрын
I love MQA.
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
Sorry.
@SandraYoung-j5b
10 күн бұрын
Jones Angela Davis Sarah Taylor Christopher
@leonidbreshnew401
Жыл бұрын
Of course, mqa isa another lossy format like Mp3, no offence, it is nothing extraordinary. I would also choose FLAC or DSD, they are superb!
@bluesky6361
Жыл бұрын
Hardcore CD/DVD/BLU-RAY user here. No interest in streaming music at all. I will be a hardcore silver disc fan until the format or I dies, whichever comes first. Yes I know DVDs use a lossy codec.
@barney6888
Жыл бұрын
Due to being whatever # comment I am, I win free PS Audio, free delivery. YAAAAAYYY!!!
@tomekichiyamamoto2177
Жыл бұрын
Still that discussion ??? 😅 MQA is not the choice. Undisclosed, hidden fonctionnement, useless in term of storage space.
@JingoLoBa57
Жыл бұрын
But it sounds better… than Flac. DSP DSD PCM all change the signal… Paul you left out the science of MQA, beyond the DRM issues
@bkkersey93
Жыл бұрын
No it does not sound better.
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
An altered lossy (MQA) which alters the original sounds better than the unaltered lossless (FLAC) original? Please explain and try to keep it factual.
@JingoLoBa57
Жыл бұрын
@@bkkersey93 lol yes it does, are you here for the 30 sec argument or the one minute argument?
@fresanlow
Жыл бұрын
If you do not like MQA, don't use it.
@hanspetscher5770
Жыл бұрын
I do not want to open this can of worms any further, but we shall compare the compression schemes as the question was interpreted. There I agree, a lossless compression I always prefer over one that is lossy. There we should end the discussion because MQA is not just a compressor. First, it is lossy only for frequencies beyond hearing. So if you are having a DAC which is only licensed as that, you will not hear any difference, as many of the commenters attest to. It is different to HiRes files though. The reconstruction of the higher frequencies, or unfolding in MQA terms, using the full MQA DAC, does not create any time smearing, and this you very well can hear, especially on good piano recordings. For me, this is valuable. An equal listening joy I only experience with DSD files, for that matter. But we are talking about streaming here. There, MQA is superior to any other HiRes file. Audibly.
@michaelturner4457
Жыл бұрын
Seems to be that any debates about proprietary MQA are rather irrelevant now, given that the MQA Ltd. is bankrupt.
@hanspetscher5770
Жыл бұрын
@@michaelturner4457 That may be so. For the time being, Tidal is still distributing MQA streaming files. For some to enjoy.
@hanspetscher5770
Жыл бұрын
@@zakkazz1201 Granted. No begging required. For everybody else, something to think about.
@michaelturner4457
Жыл бұрын
@@hanspetscher5770 I don't use Tidal myself, but I did look at their website today. And seems to be mainly about streaming in lossless FLAC, with no mention of MQA. So I'm guessing Tidal's MQA distributions are now ceased. Of course FLAC is free and open source, while MQA was proprietary and restricted, and meant them paying $$$ to MQA Ltd in licensing fees. And watching to this video, it sounds like PS Audio no longer supports MQA in their products.
@DeenaMilkers
7 ай бұрын
MQA seems like an unhappy medium. What 'audiophile' wants a lossy format? What normal user wants to figure out what MQA is, find a device that decodes it, find a service that offers MQA files, and then hope that it doesnt get killed off?
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
Why would _anyone_ want a lossy format when storage isn't really a problem anymore, at least for audio? It won't be long before we can store uncompressed Cds as WAV files for _all_ our music. Also, MQA is dead.
@spacemissing
Жыл бұрын
Lossless --- or forget it.
@j7ndominica051
Жыл бұрын
MQA is not cool enough now that the company has folded and people suddenly feel free to be critical about it.
@slerched
Жыл бұрын
MQA is "unfolded." FLAC is uncompressed. Please stop saying that a compressed file is unfolded. Yes, it's a pet peeve. :D
@shipsahoy1793
Жыл бұрын
When are we going to get over compression? Loss is loss and a scheme is a scheme .. get over it and just pay for the damn bandwidth and storage space lol I do some streaming around the house, but I BUY & OWN music if I like it enough. Seems to me there’s a lot of people that want to store all the world’s music in the palm of their hand and walk around listening with little IEM’s. That is the antithesis of audio purism. I would call that budget audio enthusiasm at best. Another Caveat: You can get run over if you don’t pay attention out there.
@davidfromamerica1871
Жыл бұрын
They have been trained that way dating back to the first battery pocket AM radio 😀👍😎
@shipsahoy1793
Жыл бұрын
@@davidfromamerica1871 🤣 You know what , I never really thought of it that way, but you’ve got a very good point there.. I don’t know though if I think about it bc most of the people that you see doing that stuff aren’t really senior citizens, they are younger, but that was a funny comment. And there always does seem to be forces at work manipulating the masses, and quite successfully.😉
@davidfromamerica1871
Жыл бұрын
@@shipsahoy1793 I am 73 years old. Lived through the ups and downs of hardware and music artist. I take a simple approach. Whatever floats one’s boat. There are those that have cylinder music players, Gramophone players, old 78 collections, old tube floor standing radios, V-Disc and V-Disc players, out of print albums, concerts that are out of print, they uploaded on their KZitem channels I listen to all that. The history of music and its hardware from the past. I can listen to the famous radio DJ’s from the past around the Country on KZitem. If I took music Audiophile technology too seriously, I would be missing out on entertainment of the past I get from KZitem.
@shipsahoy1793
Жыл бұрын
@@davidfromamerica1871 well, you’ve got the right attitude / you take from it what you like / it is almost strange how many people out here don’t know the difference between opinion and fact /sometimes they’re very passionate in their ignorance / hence, it’s a mind boggling scenario when you think about it, but you’ve got the right idea / those things are around for enjoyment / nobody should be running around saying we are going to do this and only this because this is deemed perfect by the powers that be. I don’t agree with certain modes of operation, but I know that’s only my opinion and I’m not a purist by any means, so those kinds of things always surprise me. I don’t mind if somebody wants to have an MP3 player in their pocket and cheap IEM’s in their ears, just don’t be rude about it around others. Same with those goddamn smart phones.😉
@davidfromamerica1871
Жыл бұрын
@@shipsahoy1793 Smart phone’s LOL. I see couple’s sitting in restaurants, each with a phone, their head buried in their phones. They don’t even talk to each other..😀 They are talking to someone else on social media. 😀 I don’t ever remember phone number today.😀 it’s all in my contacts. If I ever lost my contacts on my phone. I would be screwed 😀 I was watching Google I/O 2023 conference yesterday on KZitem. It’s mostly about Google’s AI algorithms technologies. 😳 My brain was in WTF mode watching it.. 😀
@guyboisvert66
20 күн бұрын
FLAC is lossless, MQA is lossy AND proprietary... no need to add anything more... And no, "stripping ultra-high frequencies" isn't what it's all about... I'm glad it's dying.
@mesonto
Жыл бұрын
There's no controversy between mqa and flac... MQA is lossy and FLAC is not. MQA changes the recording, while FLAC is a true representation of the recording. MQA is a proprietary money grab, FLAC is an open sorce compression tecnology. How anyone can possibly support or recommend MQA is beyond me.
@AluminumHaste
Жыл бұрын
By definition lossy compression CANNOT sound better than lossless, as you're literally throwing out information. It's gone.
@SantanKGhey1234
Жыл бұрын
MQA is dead....
@Gary_Hun
Жыл бұрын
How dare you talk down at the format i'm hearing about for the very first time here?!..
@GuiltyRocker
21 сағат бұрын
Funny how I never liked MQA 😂 😂 😂. And now it's dead. Good riddance.
@dilshodtojiddinzoda
Жыл бұрын
Paul completely misunderstood the meaning of MQA. He doesn't even know how abbreviation "A" is spelled ("Authenticated"). MQA doesn't throw away anything from the file. It "burns" the ultrasonics above the audible range and expands that back when a decoder is implemented. While FLAC's main function is to compress file, MQA's goal is to deliver the analog sound in the best way, no matter what are the numbers. So, folding-unfolding staff is a bonus feature for streaming services and to reduce carbon emissions. The main staff are implemented filters which remove pre- and post-ringing.
@TommasoPaba
4 ай бұрын
MQA's goal is to control the reproduction chain, ensure that every device pays royalties to them (and thus costs more to consumers) and enforce DRM. No one needed this format, it has no advantage to consumers (or very little, in terms of file size) with a lot of disadvantages.
@shdvf767
Ай бұрын
MQA is on bankruptcy. Look at you lol.
@dilshodtojiddinzoda
Ай бұрын
@@shdvf767 are you from the past?
@kdkseven
Ай бұрын
Hahaha spoken like a true snake oil salesman.
@mintchocchap
Жыл бұрын
Wav is great It’s not compressed like flac or mqa formats are.
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
There are different forms of compression. Flac is lossless compression (a bit like a ZIP file), MQA is lossy compression. In other words a decompressed FLAC is identical to the original WAV. MQA is not because it throws away data during compression. Paul explained this clearly in his video.
@mintchocchap
Жыл бұрын
@@andymill8552 sure thing. I’m not challenging what Paul is saying. I guess my point is Paul didn’t mention wav, which he has mentioned in previous videos. I think he mentioned decompressing a track requires processing which may create electrical noise. I’m no expert in any of this and not suggesting I am here. I’m simply mentioning wav is an alternative
@andymill8552
Жыл бұрын
@@mintchocchap Oh, I am sorry I misunderstood. I thought you where claiming that, compared to WAV, FLAC and MQA are both inferior because of compression. Sorry for the confusion.
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