This Deserves More Attention From Audiophiles

So I'll be the first to admit I'm not in complete agreement with every single one of Logan's claims with regards to FLAC files and things of that nature. Audio is complicated, but what we can all agree on is that beyond a certain point there are huge diminishing returns when it comes to audio bitrate.

That's why I think MQA is super interesting. Apparently the one thing analog still pretty much holds over digital is the timing-resolution. Human ears can't really hear over 20khz and only when they're young, but as crumbly old folks we're able to detect insanely small differences in timing between our ears. The microscopic differences in timing can account for the way even high-bitrate MP3s just seem to lack a little "texture." I'm not insanely savvy with audio terms, but apparently even in blind back-to-back tests people can almost universally recognize MQA as superior over high-bitrate MP3s.

I can't get anymore technical than that, but this old dude can, and it's awesome to hear about this stuff even if it's insanely dry.

OLD DUDE TALKS ABOUT MQA 1

MORE HANZ, ACTUALLY REDONE VERSION OF PART 2

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Thank you! While the codec and it's implementations currently seem to be at their infancy and the fact that this won't really help with things that are already out there (well apart from Hi-Res possibly).

From what could be gathered from the videos MQA seems to have a lot of advantages, especially with reducing time smearing and other phase artefacts and for that it's really interesting to see how far and wide it can spread! (sadly not an open codec though)

Yeah, if it were open it would likely be getting a lot more exposure. I grew up with a pretty hardcore audiophile for a father so I'm probably a lot more familiar with Meridian as a company than most people my age, they don't really make anything in the "sensible" price range. They very rarely jump on a bandwagon until something is well established and provably superior though, so there's that to consider.

I rather enjoyed Hanz's explination but in reality I still cant tell the difference between 16-bit 44.1 kHz files and 24-Bit 192 Khz files. This while listening on a pair of Sennheiser 600's in a near silent room powered by a "Shiit Stack" version 2 which is obviously not fancy as far as audiophile setups go but if there was a differnce I assume I should have heard it. There are certain tracks that I have tried comparing that I have listened to thousands of times and I can simply not detect any difference in a blind test. So really at that point it comes down to a cost-reward equation where one must compare the practicality of both paying for and storing the more expensive and larger files simply to satisfy ones knowledge that they are of a higher quality (imperceptible though it may be).