Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems CES Q&A with Bob is back!

When MQA material becomes availablele will it be mainly streamed or physical media? I think the answer to this may help to decide the best upgrade path.

Thanks

Will there be a quantitive and/or qualitative increase in sound quality for non-MQA PCM material played (from CD, from MDMS, from other digital sources) in a Meridian MQA-enabled ecosystem, compared with a non-MQA Meridian ecosystem?

Complementary to that question, will MQx encoding be applied to analogue sources connected to a Meridian MQA-enabled ecosystem and thus preserve the analogue benefits of timing?

Note: I'll edit these questions/post as we approach CES 2015.

1. Meridian's view of supporting Atmos/Auro3D/DTS Immersive Audio decoding from bitstream in a unit like HDxxx (previous HD621).

2. How many height channels is enough in a 7.1 home theatre for all-corners immersive audio? 2, 4, 6?

3. Is virtualization of speakers like the Trinnov Altitude 32 performs desirable to offer speaker placement agnostic regardless of input immersive audio format material?

4. Meridian's view of bringing multichannel FLAC support to Sooloos? (861vx/ID4x).

5. Is a multichannel USB input that hard to fit into an 861?

6. Would it be beneficial to convert 128x DSD to MQL? Could Meridian see themselves releasing a one-way converter to facilitate this into the public domain or just into the M/Sooloos eco-system?

7. Can DSP8000SE really output MQA 768k?

If the new research underpinning MQA indicates that people are sensitive to audio timing down to 5 to 10 microseconds, how close can the non-SE DSP's (3200s in my case) get to this (with appropriate firmware) i.e. what is the resolving power of non-SE DSP's in the time domain.

Cheers
Tony

Great question Tony. I would extend the question to ask what is the typical time domain response of "high-end" analogue loudspeaker systems (including pre and power amps).

Edit: And headphones of various types.

Please will you explain how this can be so? Thanks.

If we accept that MQA is superior to other hi-res recordings, how do we view BD high res from DTS and Dolby? Will MQA have a role to play in developing the quality of home cinema sound (or commercial cinema come to that)? Thanks.

I think there are a ton of analog questions.

I would look for clarification that given the new MQA tech is all the more sensitive, time alignment at certain frequencies is all the more important. Thus why the larger SE DSP loudspeakers sound better? If in the analog environment, one can apply the same level of channel separation at the DSP level, they should see similar results?

The D/A processors in the new SE's push the upper limit's of oversampling. Are these traditional processors or has there been modification to these that is proprietary to M?

What part of the food chain in MQA does M look at as proprietary and what do they see as being available to other manufacturers.

As for where the MQA process occurs and whether its hardware vs software? Gives and takes of each option? Further, where in the chain, does one get the best sound quality?

I ask all this as I think broad industry adoption is the only way this is accepted.

Any reason to believe that MQA won't end up on Sooloos?

Could MQA be used for live capture and transmission of music events? Presumably the bandwidth may be too much for everyday broadcasting today, but what about MQA as a broadcast standard?

In a theatre over the weekend, I wondered similar, except for the internal shows amplification and wireless mics which I assumed had all been transmitted and mixed digitally before broadcasting to some of the audience on wireless headsets.

Ludwig may have some thoughts on whether MQA could influence a concert setting, or is it still mixed/distributed with good old analogue techniques. If so, maybe MQA will bring opportunities for concerts to be distributed digitally. Imagine how cool it would be to take home a memory stick of the concert that you just listened to live!

What is MQL? Is it an alternative name that was considered for MQA?

Would Meridian be able to produce some test MQA material for determining if analogue equipment has adequate time resolution for MQA? i.e. The same master, starting with a deliberately smeared time response and gradually increasing the time resolution up to the full MQA experience. So, if you can keep hearing an improvement, then your analogue equipment has good enough time resolution at each stage.

If MQL is a future product ... (see rules 3rd point!)