Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems ‘Something is coming’ vs 861v4/ID40

All recent (since 568?) Meridian processors upsample and resolution enhance PCM as part of their architecture iirc. The HS flag then controls the output rate, but for PCM, it's still been upsampled/REd for internal processing.

Understood Carl, but my point was that SE DSP speakers apparently seem to have a way of manipulating an MQA signal in the digital domain to apply (effectively) forms of room correction. Yet we are told that the signal must be bit-perfect and that the MQA goodness cannot survive digital room correction or DSP systems like Trifield. It is the apparent contradiction that is worrying me.

Why should it worry you?! If anything, Meridian are the ones who should worry if anything they are doing plays around the edges of their agreement with MQA. However, I think it more likely that the specific DSP tone controls and boundary settings in the SE loudspeakers have known implications for time domain response and either do not have any implications, or are corrected for and approved by MQA.

I sincerely hope you are correct and believe this must be so, however the Tidal situation is of more concern as to the future of MQA.
This is a worry for all who have made an investment, from technology developers to equipment manufacturers to consumers to artists to majors in the reproduction of music business.

Hector

Because contradictions irritate me. If EBA can be MQA compliant, then why could not a next generation MRC or Trifield DSP be? I think this is fully on topic with respect to Bobfett's original query.

Hi Jon,

There is no contradiction it's a matter of implementation:

- DSP implementations that are not "MQA aware" break MQA.
- DSP implementations that are "MQA aware" do not break MQA.

Now don't ask me the ins and outs ... I've no idea.

Regards,
Carl

EBA was probably created as part of the same studies in time alignment that resulted in MQA. I see no issue with MQA and other processes like EBA that try and correct for such things.

The issue is with passing fully decoded / unfolded signals between boxes. For obvious reasons that is avoided and always has been.

Decode and do stuff in a box is OK afaik. Look at the updates for dCS as case in point.

No technical reason whatsoever for Trifield. The problem with generic room correction is that the time domain response is going to be different for every room and measurement set. How does that work with an MQA accreditation process...?

A synthesis of Carl's, Nick's and Joel's comments make sense re MQA and other MQA-aware digital processing within a closed (e.g. Meridian/MHR) architecture, including MQA-aware room correction.

There will be those whose room demands correction more than MQA (and I think, based on past comments and conversations, Joel is one of those). That seems to point to a theoretical integrated Meridian MQA/MRC solution. But implementing that, and the fact it would have to work across all analogue, all DSP, and mixed speaker solutions, and across multiple multi-channel (5.1, 7.1, etc.) and multiple object-based speaker layouts is clearly highly complex.

These debates really do help me (and, I hope, others) understand why we are where we are. Thanks for your input.

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts!

Makes for some interesting reading.

Regards,
Bob