–Jeepers, Wally…
I kinda like Tidal MQA even though I can only do the first unfold.
It often sounds better than my AIFF rips.
Is there something wrong with me?
–The Beav
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Who invite this guy? Mqa lover. Lol.
Like I said sometimes it works sometimes not. But in the end inwould be ok if it was gone.
Thanks everyone for cake day wishes
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Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a different, deliberately “sweetened” master, before any of that MQA data compressing lark is done.
Ultimately though, whatever sounds cool and makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck is the best system, whatever the science, orthodoxy, or chicken bones say is the best way 
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I finally get a device that does 16x unfolds, whatever that means, and they react accordingly.
I wanted to be last.
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The potential fade of MQA reminds me of an interview with Parasound’s founder Richard Schram about exiting the AV pre-pro market.
I’m likely way off on this but I think the decision was influenced by the ever-changing HDMI protocols and/or surround formats.
If someone has a more accurate memory of this, please post.
Looking at Denon’s current flagship AVR and all it supports does seem a bit nuts.
- DTS HD Master
- DTS:X
- DTS:X Pro
- DTS Neo:X
- DTS Neural:X
- DTS Virtual:X
- IMAX Enhanced
- Dolby TrueHD
- Dolby Atmos
- Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization
- Dolby Atmos Music
- Dolby ProLogic Ilz
- Dolby Surround
- Auro 3D
- 360 Reality Audio
And then there’s video:
- HDCP 2.3
- HDR
- HLG
- Dolby Vision
- HDR10+
- Dynamic HDR
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One DTS and one Dubly would do the trick for me. I never reached beyond 5.2. I don’t pay any attention to video codecs. As long as it plays. My Anthem AVM60 passes all video through. No video processing is offered or needed. My previous prepro, an Anthem Statement D2, processed all video, thankfully. The time between DVD and Blu-ray was messy. Directv didn’t know what it wanted to be. Video was a mess. But these days a 4k Firestick in addition to the still useful Directv takes care of things. My Oppo whatever gets used for one disc every three or four months.
Sadly, my Elcaset recorder doesn’t power up. And my Nakamichi cassette decks aren’t asked to. I did have a fully functional Wire Recorder for a long time. I had dozens of spools of music wire with mostly Talking Heads albums on them. It sounded awful. I have no experience Wax cylinders.
I still love CD and I am really happy vinyl returned to glory. I have listened to a lot of MQA, it doesn’t seem any different to me than high bit rate PCM.
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Not many of those still around I wouldn’t have thought - I know (the musician) Hainbach has one, he also records sound onto paper card Mag strips
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All that, yet no AoIP.
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Good riddance… Please do let the door hit you in the way out.
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Dont forget this is done via the does it all one chip they buy. The list makes it sound complex, but the code is just a UI to pick and the chip does the rest. Not like they have a “Ted” making changes.
So till date Redbook CD is the only lossless music standard available that plays on any disc player, goes through any DAC and is available from any streaming system. Basically we are still enjoying 1982 quality in 2023.
That is progress or were the Sony and Philips Engineers geniuses? I give the latter the credit as I conclude that playing CDs still produces the best “affordable” sound quality on my EUR 10k Stereo system in the living room and EUR 3k Stereo system in my home office.
Those Redbook CD developers should be nominated for the Nobel Price for unifying the world of digital music, without regional coding and making music available to those that can affort EUR 39 CD players from Ali Baba.
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Usually first wins. Other areas the market dictates, sometimes based upon bad business decisions by the company who owns the IP on the tech. Can anyone remember Betamax was first? Should have made cheap license, instead VHS kicked its but. Betamax had better specs. Nobody else was even close. And they certainly were not $39 when it came out in the 80’s. DVD, Bluray, and 4k (which is really nice no regions) all standards world wide.
The advancements in D to A conversion and transports has made it possible for Redbook CD to be competitive with any format including vinyl records and analog tape.
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You are comparing apples with oranges. CD introduced not only a medium (disk) but also a global file format.
BlueRay and DVD are each far less wide spread medium that contains a plethora of sound formats all differently decoded which benefit only very few particular AV processors.
DVD and BlueRay are AV media, not Audio media, like the CD. SACD, based on DVD is far from widely accepted as CD.
Since CD the Audio industry has no been able to come up with a equally wide spread improved media and file format. Not for more than 40 years, now comparing to video format: not even VHS standard lived as long as Redbook CD does till date.
Only analog Vinyl predominately IAA converted, can top digital CD.
Don’t forget, porn helped. 
VHS had the temerity to be first to offer pre-recorded porn tapes. Sony didn’t want to cross that line. The rest, as they say, is history.
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I agree with most of what you said except for the part about not topping vinyl. Everyone is far to forgiving of all the limitations of that playback media.
Not really. A format is a format. CD happened to be the FIRST digital anything. My point is would not matter if it was 2" bigger or SACD first before PCM… it would most likely have won. It was a big advancement in music reproduction. Also helped the Philips and Sony owned many record labels… or did that happen after the CD?? Not that old.
Plus now everyone so worried about copy protection, we might be hitting the next age of not owning the IP. You dont get a copy, you rent access to the library. Look at streaming movies. I certainly hope we dont end up there.
VHS also offered stereo and betamax while better video quality was I believe mono only.
That’s not the case. There were a number of good Betamax HiFi stero machines back in the day. In fact those were often used to record audio. Some said it was better than cassette. I tried it myself in those days.
Efficacy and necessity aside, I have a hunch that this is not the beginning of the end for MQA. If the referenced “negotiations” are successful, MQA Ltd. may well continue to be a going concern. Time will tell.