Music files: What is MQA?

esuhl

I was looking at buying an old CD album, and had a quick search to see if I could buy it in FLAC format. I came across this apparently legit online shop, which has FLAC downloads, as well as files in "MQA" and "MQA Studio" formats.

https://www.7digital.com/

Apparently MQA stands for "Master Quality Authenticated". I've looked at the promotional material and the Wikipedia page, but I'm still completely baffled as to what it is and how it works.

http://www.mqa.co.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated

It seems to be some kind of additional layer of lossy encoding that is retrospectively extracted from the individual tracks of the source recordings and applied to the originally mastered (lossy or lossless) file... I think...

Apparently there's MQA-enabled hardware that can process the encoding accurately, but the files are also backwards-compatible with non-MQA systems and still result in a significant improvement in audio quality. Whaaaat?! How?!

The MQA thingy is itself lossy, but can be applied to both lossy and lossless file formats (such as FLAC), so... it can improve a FLAC file...?!

This sounds like some kind of dark-art musical wizardry to me. The more I read about it, the less I seem to understand it.

Has anyone else of heard of this?! Can anyone explain it in simple terms?

Fightsback

Probably more audiofool technobabble. Not much use if:

1) You are trying to hear it over wind noise and a revving engine on the M1

2) Have spent years in nightclubs or on building sites and trashed your hearing

3 ) Haven't spent thousands getting your listening environment perfectly arranged to avoid standing waves etc

4) You don't believe everything an audio salesman who's better off home flogging old crud on the antiques roadshow tells you.

5 ) Use earbuds.

6 ) Ad infinitum

The truth is it's probably a means of stitching up jo public to extend copyright another [strike]50[/strike] 75* years on the original audio recording by calling it a remaster.

* thank Clifford Richard for that, add that to his crime sheet of making vomitus records.

Sadly the Grand Master Audiophile (Sir Stanley Unwin) passed away in 2002, he'd have explained it better and been more scientifically accurate:

kwikbreaks

You forgot to mention the £300+ special mains lead....

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Isotek-Evo3-Elite-Mains-Power-Cable-2-0m-UK-to-IEC-15-/391468567157

AndyPix

While you at it, may aswell pick up some decent speaker cables ..


These are a snip at a mere $45,000


https://www.thecableco.com/Product/Siltech-Emperor-Double-Crown

cookie365

The references in the wikipedia article are clear self serving pseudoscientific shilled BS.

I wouldn't go anywhere near a music store that's cashing in on this scam.