Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music Multichannel MQA

MCH (at least 5.1) on MQA would seem to be a natural application since DTS Neural already provides a pretty good and robust decoder by burying digital "download" code in analog stereo signals that can even pass through FM demodulators on NPR, and is in use by American Public Media and other classical music webcasters. It would seem to me that such an "un-zip" coder could share the 8 bits that MQA uses to "de-blur" the A/D conversion error without much of a headache. Even if it is not 100% efficient, it still could offer 5.1 HD streaming with about 2 mb/sec rates - well within many distribution channels, and significantly less than the 8-10 mb/sec rates required with conventional technology.

Why is this important ? Well, despite Robert Harley's enthusiastic review in TAS and Atkinson's lukewarm endorsements, there is a lot of skepticism about and pushback of 2-channel MQA for a couple reasons. 1) Nobody is enthusiastic about spending more $ to recreate their entire library of 2-channel audio just to have it encoded with MQA, and 2) the theoretical basis of MQA has not been described in any detail by Meridian (probably for IP reasons), and so has been seriously questioned by the entire non-Meridian digital planet, particularly the computer audio community who has worked hard to debunk the entire MQA "fairy tale" from day one. (The DSP algorithms that provide "apodizing" analog reconstruction with no "pre-ringing" are generally accepted, but the encoding part and the additional 8 bits required to accomplish it appear to be the issue.)

The "killer app" for this technique is multi-channel (MCH) streaming with Meridian's time-accuracy based digital filtering. The reason for this is because almost every major symphony orchestra in the world is archiving every performance they perform in 5.1 digital audio, usually at 48KHz / 24 bits or better resolution. This particular music format (large-scale acoustic) has the most to benefit from BOTH accurate digital reconstruction, and multi-channel playback.

The Berlin Philharmonic has an excellent 5.1 / HD video streaming service using H.264 technology that I subscribe to using my Oppo 105D media player. It sounds surprisingly good, and the video is exquisite and adds to the enjoyment of the entire experience. These webcasts can even be watched "live" and give the feel of being in the hall and the audience. I can only imagine how much better it would be if they used 5.1 MQA for these webcasts in the future. I only hope that Bob Stuart has watched one of these broadcasts and considered how good a fit his technology would be for this particular application.