#mqa

[zephemeral]

Murder At Queen's Abbot by Zephemeral, Mist

Five old friends reunite after a long year to mourn the death of the author that brought them together.

I've been threatening to make a visual novel for years and I've finally done it. My good friend and I worked together to get this completed for a November game jam, and here it is!

Come chill out in the graveyard and watch some old friends catch up.

[likethehorrormovie]

Hello Horror,

My brother forced me to read My Quirkless Academia and so far that was the best decision he has ever made (including if he should study for exams [the conclusion being no]).

I thought you would like to know that.

Also please tell me if Mikumi will be alright? I worry for her and Bakugou.

SnjsAJAJAJSJJSSS I'm sorry I'm absolutely reeling at the fact that Ur bro would convince you to read my angst fest omlll that means sm I'm 😭😭😭🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 I'm so happy you both like it djdkjdjdjd 🥺🥺🖤🖤🖤

I can't say any spoilers but the tag "Angst with a happy ending" is there for a reason 🖤🖤🖤

[reddragdiva]

Oh no! Snake oil “hi-res” audio company MQA is going broke.

Oh no! Where will I pay well over the odds for a 13-bit FLAC now?

and in conclusion: lol.

[meadow-dusk]

any idea what happened with tidal and neil young? on friday I saw his older albums had disappeared, then they returned this week... ? I couldn't find anything explaining this, although it seem the same thing happened in early 2021 🤔

anyways I'm relly happy he's back on tidal, I don't feel like moving to yet another streaming thingy again so soon!

hi! oh yeah this was a fun weekend, huh? 🙄 I was just about ready to up and leave all over again too...

Nothing official was ever said this time, so we can just speculate. But since what vanished was everything he did on the Reprise label and everything from his '80s "experimental period" stayed behind, my best guess is that it was a contract thing between the label and Tidal. [My first guess was actually that it was an April Fools' joke. I'd put nothing of the sort past him at this point, and after what went down in January it would have been kinda funny in like a sick way.]

But Neil does have a "history" with Tidal. He's pulled stuff on a couple occasions, most significantly when Tidal incited his ire by calling their HQ streams "Master quality" and of course, they're not the real Masters (I've always wondered how they got away with calling them that, but I guess not everybody lets them get away with it...). I'm guessing that's probably why his whole catalogue is still not there (Harvest Moon, Zuma, and his self-titled debut are among the most tragic absences, imo).

It's why when it comes to Neil, the only places we can really count on him to be are on the Archives or on physical media.✌️❤️

[jmciii57]

Starting the winding down of my day with The Modern Jazz Quartet’s album “Lonely Woman” in 24/192 MQA stereo off Tidal via Audirvana Pro 3. All I can say is “WOW!” For digital, this is among the best I’ve heard. No, it doesn’t equal the vinyl LP (which I have), but it comes closer than many analogoplogists would be comfortable with. For those MQA doubters, listen to this through a good MQA DAC and keep an open mind (I know, I know, not easy for an audiophile to do). The snap of the drum, the crystalline clarity of the vibes, and the depth and heft of the bass are outstanding. #MQA #tidal #streaming #highresolutionaudio #24/192 #jazz #music #audio #album #stereo #highend #audiophile #digitalmusic https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq-0Fn0Afg-/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=29amnouqh4e7

[taww]

What’s up with MQA? 🤷‍♀️

Oh no, yet another post on MQA! Grab your popcorn! 🍿😬

I honestly haven't paid too much attention to Meridian’s MQA (Master Quality Audio) format, for the simple fact that it doesn't affect 90% of my listening. While I do have a Tidal Masters subscription, most of my material still comes the "old fashioned" way, via music I've purchased either via physical media (CD) or online download. And from a sound quality perspective, I fail to see what all the hype is about - at its core, MQA is about trying to get hi-res (i.e. 24/96) quality to people using a standard 16/44 amount of data. Despite all the talk of "revealing every detail of the original recording" or whatever, it's not giving you any more than what you could get by downloading a hi-res file to begin with. So it's primarily of benefit to people who want to critically listen to music via streaming sources, which of course is an entirely valid use case, particularly for economical reasons. (You can stream Tidal Masters for a month for less than it costs to purchase and download a single 24/96 or DSD album.)

Anyway, my current playback flow - Roon + PS Audio DAC via Bridge II network interface - does finally support full MQA playback, and judging from rumors on the internets there’s a decent amount of consumer commotion about MQA in general. But there's still a ton of confusion what hardware + software it takes to get the full benefits of MQA, and what those benefits even are. 

What MQA decoding looks like with Roon 1.5 and PS Audio Bridge II

Given my level of personal commitment to the format (near zero), I’m really trying to avoid researching and writing a treatise on this. And don’t ask me for comments on sound quality - I haven’t conducted any listening tests yet. But I do feel some obligation to at least understand it a bit, so here's my current "MQA for dummies" takeaway:

At its heart, MQA is a bunch of different technologies  - lossy compression, sampling and filtering techniques, encryption, etc. - packaged together to get hi-res content in a standard-res package that is backwards-compatible with regular hardware. It's an end-to-end solution that covers original encoding, packaging of the data, and decoding all the way to the final analog signal in your living room.

"Unfolding" vs. "full decoding": Unfold is one of the major steps to parse out and decode the hi-res data encoded in an MQA file/stream. Roon, for instance, will do the first unfold for you in software, then pass along this signal with the rest of the MQA encoding intact to your DAC. 

Full decode means getting to the final analog signal with the original resolution of the master. This requires integration with the DAC hardware, and cannot be accomplished with software alone. Some view this as a sneaky attempt at digital rights management (DRM) because it avoids exposing the full-res uncompressed stream, but it is what it is.

The highest res "master" signal you can get is 24/96 for software decode/unfold, and 24/192 if you do full decode in hardware. However it's unclear to me if you can get to a full 24/192 master decode with the software unfold/hardware decode route as with Roon + PS Audio Bridge. Reading posts like this though, It might not matter much to final sound quality, plus I haven’t been able to find anything higher than 24/96 on Tidal anyway.

For a simpler explanation of the playback options, I found this post to be reasonably clear and useful:

https://www.audiostream.com/content/mqa-decoding-explained

More or less confused now? 🤪 Hit me up with questions/comments/excoriations on our Facebook page!

[talesofdrunkennessandcruelty]

MQA explained: Everything you need to know about high-res audio

[milestrumpet1]

Now Streaming