Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Amazon Hi-Res Streaming

What about those who have 218’s?

iPhone/Android phone/Tablet into 210 into 218

I am sure other solutions are possible....

In the settings pane of the Amazon Music app, there is ‘connect to a device’ (like the Spotify app). Here, there are just 2 choices: AirPlay, and Alexa.

Other than listening to Amazon’s hi-res music offering via a wired DAC on one’s iPhone/iPod Touch, I’m uncertain on how Amazon intends such music to be playable to its full capability on external audio systems.

Not particularly; it's all about the marketing message.

Of course they haven't heard of it and nor should they be expected to. What is disappointing is that the studios aren't obviously pushing MQA as their "premium offering". If we believe the MQA marketing, it's all about connecting fans to the music, something which SHOULD be sellable either via marketing ("I want to try that out") or via experience ("wow, that sounds great"). Connecting to the music is a good message, but I'm only seeing it from MQA Ltd and not the studios. Playing Devil's Advocate, what does TIDAL Masters really mean to non-cognoscenti? Also, IMO, most MQA sounds non-HiRes, because most of the encoded masters are crap, and I think that's a more serious problem for MQA's reputation.

One would not expect MQA to improve the reproduction of all recordings to the same extent. Since it is about restoring phase relationships to the master recording's accuracy and since not all recordings have been messed around to the same degree from the master (which itself may not be a unique mix) then there may be simply less for MQA to do with one recording versus another. HiRes should provide you with information that a lower res path is not. In that sense it should always be better. MQA's ability to cram extra data into a stream should always get you that benefit over lower res but the degree of phase restoration (to the master) presumably varies depending on how mucked around the master has subsequently become - not necessarily in frequency response but in phase coherence.

It’s been called into question whether MQA does actually cram in additional information. There’s been close examination and nothing found from what I’ve read. I think if there were, it would be quite easy to demonstrate and I’m not aware it has been. I’ve no skin in this game but I’m not sure the benefit of the doubt is due to either “side”.

I know there is much criticism of MQA, though I have only skimmed some of it. The critics often exhibit a fervour that makes me suspicious of them and their motives. However, I was careful to say in my post that a higher RES route 'in that sense' should carry more information (I mean in the mathematical sense). Whether it does or not or needs to or not obviously depends on whether there is information present to be conveyed by higher RES that can't be conveyed by lower RES.

I have been fascinated by HiFi for nearly 60 years. When I was younger I could hear up to 22kHz. Now I can only hear up to about 16kHz. My perception of live music has not changed in all that time. Neither, for most of that time, has my perception of the sound produced by the best quality HiFi equipment. 60 years ago that was evidenced by Quad amplifiers and ESL57 loudspeakers, for example. Now there is a very wide choice of outstandingly good equipment and, while they may sound different, they are all good to my ears. However, they are miles away (all of them) from a live performance unless you can hear them in a really big hall when all the ambience that even the best recordings (and microphones) seem not to capture becomes restored somehow by the hall's own acoustics.

BUT when I first heard an MQA restoration I was blown away. It was the first time I had heard a step forward in sound reproduction in all those 60 years that I could truly say was a big step forward in my listening experience over my best reference equipments. By the way, it was of a Mono recording of Louis Armstrong singing. The MQA version was streets ahead of the normal supposedly remastered version.

Why might this be? Well, I speak as someone who originally studied physics and that helped me understand the role that frequency response and phase probably have in our hearing. Evolution demonstrates that frequency response is only important up to a point - if that were not so (consider bats who live or die by having a very extended frequency response) we would have a more extended response than we do.

On the other hand, you would expect that we are extremely sensitive to phase. It is phase differences between our two ears that allow us to locate sounds in space around us, even when things are behind us (for phase think of the time of arrival of sound wavefronts to each of our ears at the frequencies we are able to detect).

Having a very acute ability to detect phase differences (hence the location of sounds) must have been very important to our survival over the millennia: think of that sabre toothed tiger behind you that, unfortunately for it, rustles a leaf just before it attempts to pounce on you. Your spatial locating ability saves your life.

There is no doubt that electronics distorts (smears in MQA speak) the phase relationship of sounds and, worse still, does it in a frequency dependent way. I think this is an important reason why recorded music just doesn't sound as lifelike as it should even if it is 'clear' (good frequency response) and its individual wave forms are not distorted in shape (harmonic or intermodulation distortion).

MQA claims to restore phase relationships back to those of the master recording. How much it may need to do this must depend on the extent to which the phase relationships have been smeared (so MQA will not improve what you hear to the same extent in each case). My experience is that it does do this and I like it very much.

But back to the original topic. Are Amazon right to overlook MQA? Probably they are, sadly. Marketing is about selling people what they believe in and their target market does not listen to music in a terribly discerning way. They will understand High Resolution (even if they can't hear the difference - the words speak for themselves because High Definition video really does look better as any fool can see) but they will have turned to their smart phones to find something more interesting before the first few sentences of an explanation of MQA have been uttered - and they are just not listening to the music that carefully.

Never mind though. Fine art (in all its forms) has never been a mass market product and Amazon wants a mass market.

I just hope there are enough of us to keep MQA viable.

This is my favourite post on MQA.

Your feelings when you first heard MQA are very similar to my own at the time.

My thoughts remain the same about MQA becoming the de facto standard. Sadly, the Amazon announcement is a step away from that. It wouldn’t be the first time the best format has lost out, as we all know, to the detriment of movie/music lovers.

The sad fact is that most people don’t really get music. It’s background and dance at best and whatever Spotify has to offer will do. They don’t actually listen to it in any sort of focused way. They will go to gigs if someone is famous not necessarily any good, then they go with the herd.

We heard today from Lexie Green who played the Little Rabbit Barn last month and is incredible, that she only had four people show for a gig in Cambridge. Only 4 in Cambridge... where are these music lovers?

She would rather have come to see Shelly Fairchild and Morganway with us but she made the mistake of honouring her commitment.
Only we can prevent empty venues, by turning up and dragging people along or we face a world of Spotify.

Amazon is a big deal, but in the West it’s all too easy to ignore the East...

Forgotten already?

That is very sad. I support my favourite art forms by going to the opera, classical concerts and the cinema as often as I can, although the first in particular has become an expensive treat these days!

Very true. And hopeful.

Have any of the streaming providers in Japan picked up MQA? It's always seemed to me that the Japanese market values quality in sound reproduction formats (although I have no idea whether that's objectively true).