Prestige is same word in English, but it is not really the same as state of the art.
Prestige means it has widespread respect whereas state of the art means something that has reached the pinnacle of development at this present time. I’m not a car person, but would suggest an Austin Healey is a prestige car and Tesla is a stateofthe art car.
I doubt any of the products you mention are really state of the art. I used to hate the adjectives sales and marketing men gave to products I developed at work as I felt it gave clients false expectations. I use to urge them to stick to the facts.
Perhaps use the term Statement as the implication is it is the best a company can do fits the products you list.
What ,…that’s why you have a super-car…the driving experience and the driving pleasure.
The feeling of speed,.when you in a controlled cord gases out of a curve.
With such a setting as above,.well then you might as well retire. I’m not going to be an old man who needs auto pilot, never, never, never.
@Innocent_Bystander,…But during this decades,.so you can have incredibly fun with a supercar .
Nowadays the super rich has a A380 fitted with all those Statement Amps etc in one of the rooms. They typically also owns a 60ft with another set of exotic hifi as well as many many others. They probably dont subscribe to Tidal as they probably have someone setup their music and movie library everywhere…
Did not realize Warner and Universal are on board (in bed) with MQA … surely IF Sony (record label) follows it is game over for those like Naim, Chord … also just realised some of the Sony Walkman range has MQA already …
Not surprising the record companies like it as they can use MQA to force people to either accept the rubbish sound of non-decoded MQA data or have to buy new copies of their MQA encoded music at any time in the future that they choose. (And before you ask: they can do this by deprecating the licence for MQA V1 - read the published bits licence agreement and you’ll see that it actually allows them to force removal of MQA V1 functionality from existing products, should they choose so to do! I think this information was actually released in error and I think it’s disappeared from the net now.)
Sounds like Sony has partnered. I see a couple of Sony playback devices. Independent Merlin has also partnered. I have edited out the direct links from the original article.
MQA confirms Sony Music and Merlin as hi-res audio partners
More hi-res audio music is on its way to streaming services, after MQA confirmed deals with Sony Music and indie specialist, Merlin.
MQA has been something of a slow-burner but is now making its mark on the streaming music industry.
The technology enables hi-res audio files to be packaged in smaller sizes, ideal for streaming services, and has enabled Tidal to add hi-res streams in the form of [Tidal Masters]
And now Sony Music and independent label specialist Merlin have been confirmed as partners, agreeing to make their music available in MQA audio.
The multi-year Merlin deal promises to help some of the world’s best-known independent labels encode their master recordings in MQA, while Sony Music has also been confirmed as an MQA partner, joining big-label rivals, Universal and Warner Music.
The long and the short? Expect to see more MQA-encoded hi-res music coming to Tidal
I don’t own supercar, as far as I know that was Mike Mercury. I only use my small electric car for essential journeys and am happy it knows to stay inside white lines, keep its distance from other vehicles, break automatically and park itself. Driving for the sake of it seems strange to me. Why drive if you don’t have to? We have a 20 mph in the village and most people observe it. Cars on auto pilot don’t exceeded speed limits and are far less likely to cause accidents.
People rushing everywhere If they only slowed down then they might find something there
I have a washing machine too so I guess I miss out on thrill of washing my clothes manually. Bring back the mangle.
And that has cost Tidal a subscription for me… I have crossed over to Qobuz.
Interestingly many Tidal MQA masters are available as equivalent PCM lossless Hidef masters on Qobuz… and the latter is musically so much better and enjoyable to listen to.
To me that does suggest many MQA masters do start life as regular PCM Hidef before they are MQA processed… thankfully Qobuz seems to have access to these Hidef lossless masters before they are MQA mangled… and they are very good.
Just listen to a well recorded drum kit or piano and compare between MQA and Hidef lossless… it really is quite apparent which is which…
That adds a worry that releases from the adobe companies may start to be MQA coded from the start, which could adversely affect their sound quality compared to simply making them in hi res. If so that would seem to be a retrograde step, though perhaps unsurprising as not all record companies are interested in the best sound quality, but will accept less in the interests of what they perceive as marketability, for which some may read hype.
It is a real shame that the why doesn’t Naim implement MQA thread was closed down, presumably due to the unpleasant behaviour of some contributors. It carried a lot of info both about what the process really is, and people’s opinions who had heard (at a variety of levels). It seemed to me from those who reported their experiences that the changed sound was a matter of taste, some people liking and some people disliking, but overall it was clear that changed it was.
Thanks @Xanthe very interesting, i agree and have said early on after comparing and despairing over MQA it is a money making scam, BUT for mobile streaming i must admit i have been won over purely by the unfolding giving upto 4 times the SQ.
I agree, for online streaming it does make a lot of sense - it does for HiRes what MP3 and Ogg Vorbis did for CD res sound.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s, downloading an uncompressed CD res track over an analogue modem wasn’t a practical proposition, however MP3 and Ogg Vorbis made ‘near’ CD quality accessible over band limited channels. MQA makes HiRes more accessible over band limited channels.
When the bandwidth of the internet channels increased (ADSL / ADSL2) the necessity for MP3 and Ogg Vorbis effectively disappeared and they became a cost / quality choice: in due time with the take-up of fibre technologies the same will happen to MQA… unless people are already locked into it by the record companies using it to control the market, in which case they won’t have any other choice other than the crap undecoded MQA.
4 times the sound quality is a phenomenal step up! I don’t recall anyone picking that up in the closed thread… Given the generally applicable law if diminishing returns that suggests that in whatever system played the MQA version sounds as if it is through a system costing maybe 8 times as much, or more!
I always thought that “state of the art” merely meant using the very latest technology - which does not necessarily mean anything about the quality. So when MOSFETs were new, they were state of the art, for instance.
Similarly I built a Texan 2020 which was state of the art - it used loads of integrated circuit opamps. It was OK, but not high quality.
I agree that most of the MQA Masters these days are mostly existing PCM Hi def and the record companies have gone back to the originals where they exist and reprocessed them as MQA. I am seeing more new releases every week of new material that is MQA, but its clear that most music companies are harvesting their prior archives.
I definitely hear the difference also between Hi def and MQA. The only difference is that our ears/systems/rooms/hearing seem to prefer different results. I am still hearing the best music ever. My ND555/PSU555 is sold and I have migrated to the MQA sound. Perhaps with a 552 and a second PSU555 and a Melco my results would have been different. Too many boxes and too much $$$.
I am sure that your new DAVE will bring a big uplift. It certainly addresses the reconstruction part of the problem, albeit a little different than MQA.
Hi, I note a lot of new pop, rock and rap releases that are MQA in Tidal appear as 44.1/24, 48/24 or 96/24 PCM in Qobuz. A tiny handful also appear as 192/24
As far as DAVE, hopefully not long to go now.
I see the same thing. Most pop, rock and rap releases in MQA are 44/48/96 indicating that the original master tapes were not hi rez or they are saving the hi rez version for a second release to increase revenue. Makes sense when you consider that most of those genres are listened to on car radios and mobile phones.
The ones that are 192/354/384 are jazz, classical, country, etc and usually very high quality.
What 
I’m not going to be an old man who needs auto pilot, never, never, never.
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