Has anyone bought/tried UHQCD/MQA discs on their MQA enabled Meridian system?

For example, Supertramp’s ‘Breakfast in America’ is available in this format.


Imported from Japan to UK, the album costs £21.

Plus the shipping charges and any customs hit!

I’ve just ordered two Dire Straits MQA CD’s. Should be here in a couple of days...

FWIW, 16-bit MQA on these CDs is *not* the same as the 24-bit FLACs which no doubt will be streamable very soon. I thought that "MQA is MQA" until I talked to a member of the MQA R&D team at The Shard MQA launch. To paraphrase his words: you have a third less space, so something has to give; there is no free lunch. Presumably this will manifest as lower dynamic range, though how much of this is audible, who can say. In any case, I won't be buying any MQA CDs.

Good point. I guess when they said MQA would offer maximum quality at CD bitrates, they meant greater quality than the original at the same bit depth and sampling speed.

Incidentally, I’m still waiting for the CD’s to arrive, although I’ve been sent a VAT bill for twice what I paid (and then a ‘collection’ fee on top)... buyer beware on both of the above!

If you use amazon.jp, you can opt to prepay the duties. Best to use Google Chrome to translate the site for non japanese speakers.

I have used cdjapan in the past and sometimes you get away with it sometimes not. Expensive when you dont!

I used CD Japan as they seemed the only place I could find the MQA version of Dire Straits CD's.

I'm now trying to sort out the issue of being charged VAT twice, but language is proving a slight barrier! Good to know you can prepay with Amazon, as DHL have just made £22 in fees for collecting the VAT (I think delivery companies charging these rates is ridiculous for what is a completely automated system).

I think it's worth noting for anyone considering this path that CDJapan promise shipping in 1-2 days, but, in reality, it took them a week to ship items marked as 'in stock'. I also paid for 2/3 day delivery, but DHL say it's going to take another week for the CD's to get here.

Unfortunately, by that point I'll be overseas...

We don't even know what masters were used for the Dire Straits CDs!

Dire Straits indeed
Hector

Be nice!

I always choose surface mail. It's a lot cheaper, and you are kidding yourself if you expect anything to arrive quickly from them. And you don't always get charged the import duties, although, as I said, it's a bit of a lottery.

But using DHL or the other bigger guys, you will definitely get charged import duties and 'collection' fees.

Does this mean that the MQA authenticated light still comes on but with 8 bits less resolution? What is "true MQA"?

I've discovered this video on one guy's recent experience on buying and playing these CD's.

A couple of observations on that:

*100% Dinosaur as described in Ratbert's recent thread...respect!
*Total envy for his uncompromising wall of hi-fi
*Didn't do his due diligence on MQA playback compatibility
*No understanding of MQA, it's goals or where it's aimed
*No apparent awareness of burning his discs and playing back via Roon for MQA at rather less cost than the kit he mentioned
*Most importantly, a Tangerine Dream MQA disc was shown on the website page he reviewed, which has absolutely made my day! At last!



George

Possibly Dinosaur memory issues on this one! Comment based on the certainty that I'd bought the CD of Amy Duncan "Undercurrents", ripped it and have the resulting MQA via Roon, but since I can neither find said CD, not have it in iTunes (where I'd have burned it), I can only conclude that I bought it as a download!



George

PS And Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, as shown in the video, isn't on Tidal as MQA yet.

Has anyone tried ripping these MQA CDs yet? If I use my normal method of ripping to FLAC using dBpoweramp and then importing into Sooloos, my 218/DSP7200SE only seems to recognise them as standard 16-but 44.1 kHz files. However if I rip directly using the Meridian Control:PC app to Sooloos then they are correctly identified as MQA files.

Problem is I also want to be able to play the files on my MQA-capable portable music player. Any ideas why dBpoweramp is not retaining the necessary MQA data (I've disabled any 'DSP Effects' in dBpoweramp and using level 5 FLAC compression)? I'm using the latest (16.4) version of dBpoweramp.

What happens if you do a native export of the MQA rip from Sooloos?

Probably down to FLAC tagging (or lack of it).

Good thought, forgot that feature was there, as never used it. Mixed results though.

I tried exporting three of the MQA CDs back out of Sooloos. Dire Straits 'Brothers in Arms' still only recognised as 44.1 kHz FLAC by my Pioneer XDP-300R; same for Free's 'Fire and Water'. However Queen's 'A Night At The Opera', tracks 1, 7, 8 and 10 are showing as 44.1kHz FLAC but the rest of the album's track are showing as MQA 88.2kHz!

Maybe contact dBpoweramp they may need to update the app, you could ask MQA but I wouldn’t hold your breath!

More words about MQA CD from Bob

Very interesting and very very clever. However, it's still a compromise and I have no desire to buy any MQA CDs unless there is absolutely no alternative for something I really want.

All the salient music-related information exists inside the Orange triangle, which MQA protects very strictly.

Very happy to live in the ORANGE TRIANGLE

Many thanks to Meridian, McLaren and Gerry Heeley of Phase 3

Hector

It’s too orangie for crows 😂

Who's Counting Crows?
Never seen an Orange Crow but "Orange is the new Black" is not disputed here.
RAL 2009 Gerry Heeley Phase 3 and McLaren (7200.1)
RAL 2005 Luminous Orange Meridian and McLaren (5200SL)
Volcanic Orange Meridian and McLaren (5200SE)
but My Orange Triangle Zones
Hector

Hi,

I’ve just received my 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (LP+ 2CD) of the Doors “Waiting for the Sun” album. The CD remastered version is MQA encoded and I’ve sucessfully imported it into Sooloos.

The import plays back as MQA.176k on my SE speakers via my 218.

I’ve also played the CD directly from my DVD player (Pioneer DV79) to the optical input on the 218 with the same results.

Brian

I remember that!!!!

It's just for me and my dog!

I'll be your daaaawgggg

Actually the MQA meta data is in the LSB of the 16 bits signal (at bit 0). In a 24 bits signal it is in bit 8 (so the same bit). Every sample pair gives 1 bit of meta data.