It's not difficult to understand the principle of MQA if we know the HDCD. Both of them compress the high definition music into standard low definition format. Without a MQA decoder, music is played normally in standard definition. However, with a full MQA decoder installed, it can output much higher sampling rate music up to 768KHz. The key difference is that the MQA was designed in a more commercial way. They issue licenses to music makers, online-music suppliers, device manufacturers and software developers for different levels of decoding. It is a full business ecosystem.
It's true that the MQA is not a 100% lossless format though they call it master quality. However, after carefully listening to the MQA music files that I downloaded from 2L on my MQA DACs, I found:
1. The sound quality of high sampling rate MQA music is better than the standard lossless 44.1/48KHz CD format.
2. The sound quality of the MQA music is very close to the high sampling rate original music file.
By considering MQA could be the only master quality music source we can access for our daily music listening experiences (for example, Tidal...) so far, I have to say I'm really happy with MQA. The only problem I'm having now is that the MQA is limited to the analog output of the MQA DAC itself, I can not play MQA music on my favorite DACs and my other digital music devices. That's really not very friendly to our audiophiles. So, here is the question:
Is it possible to get a full decoded MQA digital output by adding an adapter board to a MQA DAC?
The answer would be YES from the technical point of view, There is no difficulty to design an adapter board adding to an existing MQA DAC to tap off the fully decoded high sampling rate digital music signals from the DAC. By installing a HDMIpi and optional FifoPi to this adapter board, it will have a very high quality lower jitter MQA digital output signals. But now, we got another question: is it legal?
To be honest, I don't know the answer, but I can list some of the facts:
1. The adapter board itself has nothing to do with MQA so it has no business with MQA licence.
2. The MQA DACs do have the licence to decode MQA streams.
3. The end users own the MQA DAC, so they have the right to modify the hardware whatever they want.
4. The fully decoded digital music signal is no longer in MQA format.
5. There could be some limitations to the digital output when MQA issued a license to the DAC manufacturer, but the end users don't have any contract with MQA so the limitations may not apply to the end users.
6. There will be no such question if we don't play the MQA music on the DAC over the digital output.
I'm looking for suggestions and comments
Regards,
Ian
DigitalOutputAdapterPCB by Ian, on Flickr
It's true that the MQA is not a 100% lossless format though they call it master quality. However, after carefully listening to the MQA music files that I downloaded from 2L on my MQA DACs, I found:
1. The sound quality of high sampling rate MQA music is better than the standard lossless 44.1/48KHz CD format.
2. The sound quality of the MQA music is very close to the high sampling rate original music file.
By considering MQA could be the only master quality music source we can access for our daily music listening experiences (for example, Tidal...) so far, I have to say I'm really happy with MQA. The only problem I'm having now is that the MQA is limited to the analog output of the MQA DAC itself, I can not play MQA music on my favorite DACs and my other digital music devices. That's really not very friendly to our audiophiles. So, here is the question:
Is it possible to get a full decoded MQA digital output by adding an adapter board to a MQA DAC?
The answer would be YES from the technical point of view, There is no difficulty to design an adapter board adding to an existing MQA DAC to tap off the fully decoded high sampling rate digital music signals from the DAC. By installing a HDMIpi and optional FifoPi to this adapter board, it will have a very high quality lower jitter MQA digital output signals. But now, we got another question: is it legal?
To be honest, I don't know the answer, but I can list some of the facts:
1. The adapter board itself has nothing to do with MQA so it has no business with MQA licence.
2. The MQA DACs do have the licence to decode MQA streams.
3. The end users own the MQA DAC, so they have the right to modify the hardware whatever they want.
4. The fully decoded digital music signal is no longer in MQA format.
5. There could be some limitations to the digital output when MQA issued a license to the DAC manufacturer, but the end users don't have any contract with MQA so the limitations may not apply to the end users.
6. There will be no such question if we don't play the MQA music on the DAC over the digital output.
I'm looking for suggestions and comments
Regards,
Ian
DigitalOutputAdapterPCB by Ian, on Flickr
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Hi, Ian!
Let's stand from basics.
MQA really more a compression format, and, yes, in a very agressive business.
I'd not say it's a better sounding, moreover it can be just better mastered, or, being a more accurate, other formats can be mastered poorly for same release.
So, first question, what exactly dac are used. Well-known chips accepts limited list of formats and we can easily understand its working mode in any (even MCU controlled) unit.
So, if it's PCM, ok, you can pick and use it as PCM. If decoded stream is a DSD, ok, pick and use it as DSD.
ATRAC dead on a licensing road, suppose MQA with agressive marketing will too. This is just compression format, something like Apple lossless, maybe with additional cryptokeys and watermarks.
Basically there are not too many ways to digitize/quatize analog signals.
@BesPav
Based on my real test results, fully decoded MQA streams are in standard PCM format. Many of them are in 384/352KHz 24bit. So external DACs can use that PCM signals directly if there is a digital output.
My MQA DAC is an ES9038 Pro DAC.
Ian
Based on my real test results, fully decoded MQA streams are in standard PCM format. Many of them are in 384/352KHz 24bit. So external DACs can use that PCM signals directly if there is a digital output.
My MQA DAC is an ES9038 Pro DAC.
Ian
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So, just a compression math.
Sadly... I wish it could be something really new, but looks like just marketing.
Please, could you estimate compression ratio? Something inbetween 5x (like FLAC or other lossless) and 10x (~320 kbps MP3) reduced to RedBook 16x44.1?
It seems we was there with HDCD and DVD audio, but again and again...
Yes, i understand that musicians should be paid, but those greedy producers and studios leave them nothing.
Plenty of bandwidth to provide sophisticated high-order noise shaping and every possible digital filtering.
Now you can just record such a stream and compare decoded MQA with thats PCM release/remaster. Let me predict some principal changes.
😉
Heh, just time align masterclocks/streams, but you have some experience about this.
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I made a new YouTube video:
How to Play TIDAL/Local MQA music on a Raspberry Pi via Volumio
How to Play MQA music on a Raspberry Pi via Volumio - YouTube
Ian
How to Play TIDAL/Local MQA music on a Raspberry Pi via Volumio
How to Play MQA music on a Raspberry Pi via Volumio - YouTube
Ian
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The concern I would have about hi-res is that there was originally only one DXD recorder on the market. All the hi-res files I downloaded sounded the same in one particular way, rather sterile. The original recordings shouldn't sound all the same in that particular way. So far my suspicion would be that the DXD recorder was designed by measurements only, without including critical listening tests. Maybe there is some other explanation, don't know.
Do believe that well recorded CDs can sound very, very good converted to DSD and played on a very painstakingly designed AK4499 dac. Better, I would say, than the hi-res PCM I tried.
Do believe that well recorded CDs can sound very, very good converted to DSD and played on a very painstakingly designed AK4499 dac. Better, I would say, than the hi-res PCM I tried.
TIDAL MQA could be so far the only official most updated Hi-Res music source for your daily listening experience...
Ian
Ian
My thoughts are that I would like one 🙂 am I correct in saying that when playing MQA on an RPI and outputting over GPIO, we dont get the hi-res file unless it is parsed by such a device first, along the way to the dac? otherwise the only way to access from PC or RPI is over USB to an MQA enabled DAC?
Tidal Connect on a Pi
I recently tried moOde as an alternative to Volumio. It's not quite as polished, but things like bluetooth and airplay are standard, sadly no Tidal. It turns out installing Tidal alongside moOde works very well.
With moOde already installed, SSH into the pi with user "pi" and password "moodeaudio"
1) run this command to install Tidal Connect-
"curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shawaj/HiTide/main/install.sh | sudo bash"
2) Optionally modify a configuration file to set a custom name for the service-
"sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/ifi-streamer-tidal-connect.service"
modify as you like the name you want to give to the service using parameters "-f" and "--model name"
I changed the names because I have two setup and I wanted to be able to differentiate the services on the Tidal GUI.
3) Configure the service for automatic startup at boot:
"sudo systemctl enable ifi-streamer-tidal-connect.service"
I've setup two Raspberry Pi 4b this way. One connected via ethernet and configured with Ian's ConditionerPi and FifoPi Q3 outputting i2s to an external Sabre DAC. The other connected via wifi and configured with FifoPi Ultimate and ES9028Q2M Dac Hat into a tube I/V stage.
Playing Tidal MQA streams register on the DACs as 96kbps streams which is what I understand to be expected with the first "unfold" being done by the Pi.
my linux skills are pretty basic. Much of the above comes from this link, just removed the device setup as thats all configured through the moOde GUI.
matt
I recently tried moOde as an alternative to Volumio. It's not quite as polished, but things like bluetooth and airplay are standard, sadly no Tidal. It turns out installing Tidal alongside moOde works very well.
With moOde already installed, SSH into the pi with user "pi" and password "moodeaudio"
1) run this command to install Tidal Connect-
"curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shawaj/HiTide/main/install.sh | sudo bash"
2) Optionally modify a configuration file to set a custom name for the service-
"sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/ifi-streamer-tidal-connect.service"
modify as you like the name you want to give to the service using parameters "-f" and "--model name"
I changed the names because I have two setup and I wanted to be able to differentiate the services on the Tidal GUI.
3) Configure the service for automatic startup at boot:
"sudo systemctl enable ifi-streamer-tidal-connect.service"
I've setup two Raspberry Pi 4b this way. One connected via ethernet and configured with Ian's ConditionerPi and FifoPi Q3 outputting i2s to an external Sabre DAC. The other connected via wifi and configured with FifoPi Ultimate and ES9028Q2M Dac Hat into a tube I/V stage.
Playing Tidal MQA streams register on the DACs as 96kbps streams which is what I understand to be expected with the first "unfold" being done by the Pi.
my linux skills are pretty basic. Much of the above comes from this link, just removed the device setup as thats all configured through the moOde GUI.
matt
Hi ya‘ll…
before you dive to deep into this MQA thing,
You should watch this video:
I published music on Tidal to test MQA - MQA Review - YouTube
It was a real eye-opener ….
before you dive to deep into this MQA thing,
You should watch this video:
I published music on Tidal to test MQA - MQA Review - YouTube
It was a real eye-opener ….
CD quality streaming is fine so long as it can be turned into high quality DSD256 (or higher). SQ mostly depending on how good the original recording was done.
Also, a lot of hi-res stuff doesn't sound as good a good CD. Its something like upsampled CD or maybe downsampled from newly recorded DXD, which may have been digitized with rather sterile sounding ADCs.
Also, a lot of hi-res stuff doesn't sound as good a good CD. Its something like upsampled CD or maybe downsampled from newly recorded DXD, which may have been digitized with rather sterile sounding ADCs.
...Qobuz...
...just kidding...😀
i have no idea, i don´t do streaming, i just listen to cd´s
what i have read is, they all sound different, i think ultimately you have to
check for yourself.
and only a small part of the music on the streaming platforms is in
CD-Quality and an even smaller fraction is in HiRes.
Markw4, is right, what matters is the quality of the original recording
and i think it´s a good thing that you are trying to get MQA to work
in a diy enviroment, it doesn´t matter that MQA is shady company.
Apologies for the late reply, I ended up in this thread via the search function because I got curious about Markw4's opinion on MQA.
You really should read Bob Stuart's reply to the video, and the open access article "A hierarchical approach to archiving and distribution" by Bob Stuart and Peter Craven, AES convention paper 9178.
https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/
Basically MQA tries to make the impulse response of the whole signal chain as short as possible. To achieve that, anti-aliasing and decimation filters (as well as interpolation and reconstruction filters) are adjusted to the properties of the signal. That can go very wrong when the signal has far more ultrasonic content than any normal music signal, especially when an automatic encoder is used and only a short fragment has the ultrasonics.
I still haven't figured out if MQA is crazy, only good for marketing or a stroke of genius. Peter Craven's articles usually fit in the last category, though.
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It seems that I'm the only one who has the real listening experience on MQA digital output so far. Just hope other community members can share the similar experiences.
Ian
Ian
One thing that's a bit peculiar about "A hierarchical approach" is that they claim that humans might be able to hear the envelope of ultrasonic signals and then refer to two references. When you look up the abstracts, one is about barn owls and the other about cats.
I don't even hear the difference between an apodizing and a steep filter at 44.1 kHz sample rate, so if I had any experience with MQA, it wouldn't mean much anyway.