The presentation about MQA by GoldenSound is pretty good.
You know theyāll just respond, if at all, with the same smoke and mirrors, lies and deceit since the beginning.
Iāve enjoyed GoldenSounds reviews, etc. Heās got a great voice and way about it that resonants. Iāve never liked what MQA did to the sound nor their attitude when challenged.
Props to PS Audio for resisting them, save for the BridgeII under customer pressure, and I presume the chip maker, ConversDigital?, was adding to the firmware anyway.
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This is an awesome presentation with good, hard facts to counter the hype. I had originally subscribed to Tidal because they had more of the music that I like, and I couldnāt say that there was a difference in the sound. After watching this, I re-upped my subscription to Qobuz and did some more comparisons. I could hear some of the things pointed out by this presentation. So, I will be dropping my Tidal subscription.
Iāve posted in a couple threads where measurements can help to make decisions easy. This is an example where I have solid evidence to back up what I may or may not be hearing. I love it!
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Tried Tidal a few months ago using non-MQA and it sounded really weird to me. Very unnatural. Didnāt even make it a week and switched to Qobuz. The above video confirms that there are issues (MQA modifies even their non-MQA materialā¦and sounds like ass).
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Interesting (I skipped to the MQA āresponseā).
Also - thatās a synthesised voice, right?
Edit - or possibly speeded up slightly (not by pitch) it actually sounds a bit like a timestretch routine with <100% time stretchā¦
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This supports what my ears have been saying all along.
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MQA-free audiophile household here. Glad I ignored the hype.
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Was never very thrilled with it myself. I didnāt have a completely bias free view though because from day 1, Paul was a bit less less than enthusiastic about it to say the least. This forum doesnāt let me write some of the adjectives heās used over the years.
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pg13 here
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seems like rubbish to me - at least MP3 was honest about it being lossy (and you could download the encoders to do your own comparisons).
reminds me of the blockchain hype a few years ago.
or Theranos - and that didnāt end well 
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Blockchain āhypeā? Not sure I follow.
Glad I happen to be a Qobuz customer and never got involved with unfolding thing.
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About four years ago, I āunfoldedā my wallet to buy an MQA Btrooklyn, DAC from Mytek as few other MQA capable DACās were available. It took exactly a week for me to evaluate it and to take a pass on the hype. I sold the DAC after a few months at a loss and moved to the PSAudio family. Iāve never looked back. Except in scorn at MQA proponents.
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At one of the last AXPONAs I sat in the Wilson room while the Bob Stuart and MQA cadre went through their explanation of what it is, how great it is, and how great it sounds. They then did a āno MQA / MQAā demonstration. They asked for peopleās thoughts. I observed that I didnāt like the MQA version of what I heard. I was then told āWell, youāre not in the right seating position to hear the MQA playback properly. You need to be sitting here (they pointed to the some apparently special seat)ā. I wondered how everyone else who peed in their pants at how great MQA sounded - who werenāt sitting in that ideal seat - could hear what I couldnāt hear. So the person in the perfect seat let me take it. I listened to the same selection and told them I still liked the non MQAād version better. I was summarily shunned out of the room. I guess Iām not that good a listener. 
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folks were saying blockchain was the answer to every problem that cropped up at the time, when actually it has only so far had very narrow range of applications (and some significant scale limitations).
Theranos (possibly a better example) kept pulling in cash (from investors and public) and used it to stave off any actual investigation of the technology (which didnāt work).
Theranos is worth a google if youāve not read the story 
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Honesty has its price.
MQA started with good intentions as a means of streaming HD music when domestic broadband and wifi struggled with the speeds required. I remember this, being an early user of Qobuz when it was limited to 16/44, at the same time buying lots of HD music. Unfortunately for Mr Stewart broadband speeds improved rapidly and MQA was looking for a reason to exist. As far as Iām concerned, there isnāt one.
Itās not even as if MQA offered anything to the audiophile market. It was aimed squarely at the mass market and extracting licensing revenues therefrom, which it has singularly failed to do. At least 2-channel DSD has an audiophile following that may sustain it for a while yet, even though as a mass market format it failed about as fast as MQA (so fast I didnāt notice it at all - I was playing with my kids).
Iāve never listened to an SACD as Iāve never owned a SACD player, I bought 5 DSD downloads for which I owned a DSD DAC for a few months, and Iāve never listened to an MQA file. Iāve never had an issue with PCM and, as this video says, PCM master files are all you should ever need. Audiophiles dream of better formats - itās just not something Iāve ever engaged in - and nor has the music industry generally.
This sound quality issue may soon become all very academic as MQA is dependent on Tidal, which was recently bought by Square, Inc. The thinking behind this is Tidalās strength in the black/colored music market, which is a prime focus for Square, Incās cash apps. The idea is to cut the main record labels out of the music food chain, which is disastrous for MQA, as those record labels are their shareholders because they want to be part of the food chain.
So I donāt see how any of this sound quality argument has any relevance any more. Itās just about money.
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Iām tempted to call it another form of [curses silently] DRM.
Anything that tries to extract royalties from me (and record companies so again me when Iāve paid extra for the product) and tries to say it is āauthenticatingā (again, smells like DRM) - sucks.
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Well Iāll be the contrarian here. Of course, that may make me a contrarian among contrarians, but in any event . . . .
Iāve been a fan of MQA and still am. Now I freely admit that I have no way to know how it measures or whether it does half of what it claims. If it adds audible ānoise,ā perhaps the noise is in frequencies that I find euphonic given my musical tastes and the fact that my system isnāt particularly revealing. But in any event it certainly sounds as good as 16/44.1 to me, and often somewhat airier.
Also, as a contrarian, could someone explain to me why the GoldenSound reviewer went to such elaborate efforts to attack something he doesnāt like anyway? Perhaps it is explained somewhere in the podcast. I jumped around a bit and may have missed it.
Iāll also note that with my DS Jr. it was easy to use MQA, while with the Pro-Ject combo settings on Roon have mattered quite a bit, and Iāve had to spend some hours tinkering. Also, Iāve had issues with WiFi to the Pro-Ject at times when it comes to MQA, so I am switching to ethernet.
This was pretty eye opening. I tried streaming and the sound quality was not what I was hoping for so I stopped. It is not about convenience or access to more music for me. As soon as i had to have an MQA device I was out.
I am a big fan of SACD and DSD and have two DACs for improving the sound of one disc spinner and one for my computer for DSD files. Once I heard this I cannot go back.
There are some great sounding Redbook CDs, but more often than not they and LPs are a compromise for me. I think that if you have a $10K Turntable rig you are hearing a great deal more than I am. I am happy for you.
My 4 Sony SACD players from 2003 stopped playing the SACD discs, but still play CDs and 2496 files burned on DVDs. I am retiring them one at a time as gifts to friends who are way behind the audiophile game. It is sad that to get into the SACD game to day it starts at $2K. That is what makes DSD from the computer so important. My old Yamaha S-1800 SACD player from 2007 is still humming along and I am grateful for that. I am guessing it was made very well.
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