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Incredible work. I hate to claim I have heard a difference because it could be sooo many other things, but Tidal never sounded that good compared to FLAC on my

by ipspam 5y ago

Incredible work. I hate to claim I have heard a difference because it could be sooo many other things, but Tidal never sounded that good compared to FLAC on my hifi. I currently use Qobuz and Chord Qutest and I can't hear a difference between a FLAC locally, and Qobuz streaming. As a citizen of the internet, FLAC is all I could ever ever want. Ive never put much thought into MQA except to express skepticism, and to make a conscious choice to never use it. This article is very cool. I was never going to get around to the nuts and bolts of why MQA folding is short of perfect. I just knew it wasn't perfect.

hakfoo 5y ago
If we're going in directions other than "fidelity as its own goal", it's interesting that they don't lean into it more. People go mad for tube gear, because it's inaccurate, but inaccurate in ways people find pleasing. Similarly, there used to be significant differences in the "voicing" of different brands of amplifiers-- a Harmon/Kardon would sound quite different from a Yamaha of equivalent paper spec. And, since both were claiming "1% distortion" much of the difference had to be in how it handled that 1%. The modern equivalent would be codecs which are designed to degrade gracefully at their limits. I could imagine being able to tag a section of a recording as "clipping" and having the codec have special rules to handle it, or even user-adjustable voicing to process it differently.
- ipspam 5y ago
  It's a bit hard to say out loud, "We've distorted the music for your enjoyment" I have had the privilege of being introduced to the notion of "only as good as the weakest link", and "train your ear neutral" around the time I transitioned from headphones to speakers. Since then, 7 years ago, I have been putting a couple hundred dollars a month into my hobby. It's always tempting to take a shortcut to audio bliss, but it's a dead end. One transgression, and progress can come to a dead halt. Any comparisons, A/B's, and purchases are forever tainted. I will only purposefully add coloration or distortion in one single part of the chain. For me, that's the "warm", "green" filter on my Qutest DAC. It could also be a Tube amp in the future. But I'm certainly not going to waste it on MQA. MQA is not "free" (even if I don't have to directly pay for it), and even if it were, and were equal to FLAC, I still wouldn't use it. The computational power required for the best folding means more money must be spend to isolate the electronic noise generated by the processor. And even if I did that, I would then have to have a more powerful processor, which would cost more money to have a higher voltage Linear Power Supply. I spend a lot of money. There is zero chance I would purposefully introduce an abhorationn like MQA, even if it were free. I would pay dearly chasing perfecting that was tainted in the D/A realm.

by ipspam 5y ago

hakfoo 5y ago

If we're going in directions other than "fidelity as its own goal", it's interesting that they don't lean into it more. People go mad for tube gear, because it's inaccurate, but inaccurate in ways people find pleasing. Similarly, there used to be significant differences in the "voicing" of different brands of amplifiers-- a Harmon/Kardon would sound quite different from a Yamaha of equivalent paper spec. And, since both were claiming "1% distortion" much of the difference had to be in how it handled that 1%. The modern equivalent would be codecs which are designed to degrade gracefully at their limits. I could imagine being able to tag a section of a recording as "clipping" and having the codec have special rules to handle it, or even user-adjustable voicing to process it differently.

ipspam 5y ago
It's a bit hard to say out loud, "We've distorted the music for your enjoyment" I have had the privilege of being introduced to the notion of "only as good as the weakest link", and "train your ear neutral" around the time I transitioned from headphones to speakers. Since then, 7 years ago, I have been putting a couple hundred dollars a month into my hobby. It's always tempting to take a shortcut to audio bliss, but it's a dead end. One transgression, and progress can come to a dead halt. Any comparisons, A/B's, and purchases are forever tainted. I will only purposefully add coloration or distortion in one single part of the chain. For me, that's the "warm", "green" filter on my Qutest DAC. It could also be a Tube amp in the future. But I'm certainly not going to waste it on MQA. MQA is not "free" (even if I don't have to directly pay for it), and even if it were, and were equal to FLAC, I still wouldn't use it. The computational power required for the best folding means more money must be spend to isolate the electronic noise generated by the processor. And even if I did that, I would then have to have a more powerful processor, which would cost more money to have a higher voltage Linear Power Supply. I spend a lot of money. There is zero chance I would purposefully introduce an abhorationn like MQA, even if it were free. I would pay dearly chasing perfecting that was tainted in the D/A realm.