MQA vs FLAC, read more: samplerateconverter.com/mqa-vs-flac About 32-bit FLAC: samplerateconverter.com/content/32-bit-flac-audio-converter Links to free MQA files: samplerateconverter.com/educational/hi-res-audio More music by Yuri Korzunov: samplerateconverter.com/24bit-flac
Choice of MQA or FLAC does not depend on your needs! But depends on availability! You can’t produce MQA files! Tidal is moving away from MQA! Whereas if you have any digital sound file, you can make a FLAC file, and FLAC is lossless!
In my opinion MQA was a (at the end not so clever) idea to make money. First claim was that Audio CDs could use MQA and still being compatible with normal CD player which not have MQA without any quality loss compared to normal Audio CDs. If that would be true (which is not the case) it would make sense to produce every Audio CD using MQA. For producers of Audio CDs that even would have the advantage that MQA supports DRM... Next step in the "plan" - if most Audio CDs would be produced using MQA many customers would want a CD Player which supports MQA to get that "better" quality and of course would prefer buying MQA CDs instead of normal Audio CDs - increasing the pressure for the remaining producers of audio CDs to use also MQA And at that point you would be able to make a lot of money by selling MQA licenses.
The best is flac as it's actually lossless for 16bit 44.1khz. Hd flac covers the higher resolution tracks and is also lossless. Mqa is a lossy format. The company has been dishonest about its claims and went into administration a few months ago. The rights to the flawed mqa tech has been bought by lenbrook unfortunately so it will be continuing to darken our doors for sometime should lenbrook choose to make use of it. Mqa has high frequency audible artifacts and noise throughout. It sounds sharp, overbright and artificially embossed to my ears. This was proven out through testing done by golden sound a couple of years ago. Tidal was the main user of the mqa format but they have stopped using it in favour of flac and hd flac thankfully. Their library will be entirely scrubbed of the mqa rot in the next few months. Mqa is the biggest mainstream snake oil gimmic, audio has seen since quantum treated cables. Xx
Bunch of nonsense or do all the best recording engineers and rights’ holders not hear something you do as most of the major groups have authorized MQA processing. Poor marketing by MQA and Tidal has created the loss there. Still some titles and of course all the fantastic 2L sessions in Tidsl and Qibuz are in MQA. Tens of thousands have found it a superb process and will await the new company which will market it better. Most naysayers never heard it as they never mention the equipment or the particular album they auditioned. Pink Floyd and Yhe Beatles sound more lifelike in MQA as they have obviously heard to authorize it, by the was using Flac which is a container codec as is Wav.
Quality of recording/mixing/post-production stands ahead format. From technical point of view, FLAC is better MQA because it is true lossless in any mode. Apodizing filter is not indisputable thing. However, each listener has own audio world. And the listener can get better sound form source, that is not better "objectively".
@@YuriKorzunov absolutely... but since data transfer speeds are increasing each year and the cost of transferring such amounts is dropping proportionally, I personally see no need for mqa anymore. When listening through tidal with the ifi zen on various sets of headphones, I always felt the 16bit 44.1khz (flac) was superior. I got tidal specifically, over covid, to listen to this new mqa malarkey as it was touted as being a method for getting hi-res without having my router cook. I tried for months to convince myself it must be better, but eventually, I realised I was fooling myself. That's when I went on line to see if anyone else had thought the same. That's when I found the golden sound vids. The original mqa marketing, said the 'folding and unfolding' process was lossless. They lied... then changed it once the fuss was kicked up. Please go and watch the 'golden-sound' mqa debunk videos. 2 vids. I think you will find them interesting xx
@@chidancerwith regard to sound quality of a file storage format.. flac is lossless. Mqa is lossy full stop. Mqa themselves, marketed the format as lossless in the literature on their own website but had to change that once their game was up. Other people share my opinions on the bright etched (grainy in some cases) sound. There are already plenty of lossy formats to chose from in the world. Why do we need another? Dac Companies, over a year ago, began to stop producing equipment with built-in mqa decoding.. because of the dislike of the format. I am not alone. If you like mqa then I'm happy for you. You two can ride off into the sunset together on an aliased unicorn 🦄 Discussion over xx
AI voice better speaks in English than I. Unfortunately, deblurring is a dubious superiority: samplerateconverter.com/educational/ringing-audio#the-role-of-apodizing-filters-in-reducing-ringing Video was intended for maximally short reviewing. But, probably, you are right. It will be good to add.
In the article ( samplerateconverter.com/mqa-vs-flac ), "What is MQA?" section, link to benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa
@@YuriKorzunov The article you referred to does not say MQA is 17-bit, 96kHz lossless. In fact, it is impossible to have 17-bit, 96kHz data packed into 16-bit, 44.1kHz/48kHz file and remain lossless for random data.
@@stephenwong9723 "MQA is NOT Lossless" section, quote: "At best, the MQA system losslessly conveys 17-bits at 96 kHz.", the scheme is above. **"At best"**
