Oh it will be cd quality I didn’t know that. I was probably not going to use it any way, but cd quality is sometimes the best there is for some stuff, so idk it might be worth looking at if you use streaming rather than buying them and using foobar or another player.
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Age and hearing damage matter. I’m 55 and have pretty nasty tinnitus and a bit of hearing loss due to an entire adult life of using headphones, going to live music shows at small clubs and working for 28 years in professional motorsports.
So, I’m far less sensitive to the difference between high-bitrate and Spotify than younger folks with fully intact hearing.
That said, I can tell the difference between 320 kbps and lower bitrates on Spotify.
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I’m right there with ya. My ears are pretty screwed up, too. Multiple surgeries on both ears just to save my hearing. What’s left isn’t so great, so I’m gonna try and get the best input I can. But I appreciate all of it and am grateful for what I can hear. This new equipment is pretty amazing. It’s given me a whole new enjoyment of music.
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Well, day 2 with Amazon HD service. I have to say I’m really impressed with the quality of the music. I used be pretty skeptical of “HD” audio, but now that I have embarked on this audio journey I understand much more than I used to. This gear seems to be receptive to the digital signal coming in and is producing beautifully clear sound. I’m actually kinda blown away. I believe I will be keeping the service after the trial for sure.
SMSL SU8 / DA-8S stack, XLR interconnect, Neumi BS5
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loool dms made a video just for me how kind!!!
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I appreciated the video. I wish more would have been said about how Tidal’s MQA requires specific hardware to fully unlock. Qobuz, Deezer, and Amazon do not require any special hardware. It feels a bit incomplete without that, if helping viewers become fully informed was the goal.
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I did trials of Qobuz, Tidal and Amazon Music HD about 15 months ago. Qobuz was the best in terms of library, no MQA, great liner notes, high-quality tracks available, app and playlists.
No contest. Almost a clean sweep of every category for me.
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I feel similarly. I used Tidal for months before Qobuz was launched in the US. It didn’t take long to realize Qobuz sounded better. I did the 90 day trial of Amazon HD and felt like it needed some more fleshing out…their lack of a true exclusive mode even now is odd, IMO. I stuck with Qobuz. Their library had some holes early on but have filled in nicely in the 2 years they’ve been live in the US. I also use Spotify for casual listening. It will he interesting to see how their upcoming lossless tier either does or does not change things.
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what is mqa? i read that it stands for Master Quality Authenticated but it didnt help me understand it and with hardware you mean dac/amps’s?
Short version it’s proprietary lossy compressed audio format, coupled with some exclusive remasters.
The big question is why we need another lossy compressed audio standard, and I can’t think of a good answer.
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It’s Tidal’s version of high resolution files (greater than 16/44.1, the pushback against it is that it doesn’t “add” anything to the consumer. It can be used to enforce copyright, it is lossy (by definition) and requires specialized hardware that costs more despite it not offering any tangible advantage over a std. Hi-Res file format like 24/88 for example.
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In addition to @PolygonHell and @db_Cooper points, I think MQA was originally conceived as a way to pack higher than CD quality sound information (like 24 bit 96 kHz) into file sizes at or near CD file sizes. The streaming service Tidal liked this because it keeps bandwidth and storage space down as compared to streaming an uncompressed 24/96 audio file or FLAC file (flac is compressed, but not lossy, smaller than wav files, but not much smaller). The catch was to do that new dac designs were required to do the unpacking.
My issue is that for many, streaming bandwidth and storage space aren’t the issues they once were. Even an uncompressed stereo 24/96 wav file takes up much less bandwidth than a Netflix video stream, for example. Additionally, Qobuz, Amazon, Deezer, and soon Spotify have all figured out how to stream hi-rez audio in file sizes not much bigger than CD files and do it in a way that can use any generic dac. To me that leaves MQA to functionally just be a type of DRM and licensing fee sponge. I’ve said before and will say again here, MQA is a bad solution to a fictitious problem.
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That was a choice by the creators, they could do a completely digital player side unpack of the files, but then they couldn’t charge DAC manufacturers a license fee to include it.
That is fundamentally their business model.
It’s claim to fame is that you can play an MQA file with no decompression at all it just looks like a WAV file, because all the “extra” information is in the lower bits of the signal, but that means you lose dynamic range over conventional CD audio.
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I am no expert, but I can say that however Amazon is delivering their HD stream, it’s wonderful. This SMSL stack is producing a sound field that is enveloping me in this kind of bubble around my desk. I swear it’s like the musicians are in the room. Honestly, I don’t think I need much better than this!
Amazon HD, SMSL SU-8 / DA-8S stack, Neumi BS5s w/ 2" isolation pads on the desk
alright thank you all guys!!
Stop right there, leave this forum and simply enjoy where you are now. It will save you thousands of dollars. 
At a number of steps along my audio journey, I’ve had that same feeling… that it can’t possibly get any better than “this”. Well, I’m here to tell you, it can and it does get much better.
It’s just very expensive, and perhaps completely unnecessary, because the feeling you’ve got right now is the very same feeling that someone that spent ten times your budget has. So you got you’re experiencing that very same euphoric feeling for 1/10 the cost! So quit while you’re ahead!
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An Audiophile re-write beginning…
Well I remember every little thing
As if it happened only yesterday
Sat by my desktop
And there were no other headphones tonight
And I never heard a sound
Sounding any better than that did
All the kids at school
They were wishing they were me that night
And now my headphones are, so close and tight
It never sounded so good, it never sounded so right
And it’s sounding like the synergy’s on the edge of a knife
Sounding like the synergy’s on the edge of a knife
C’mon, just right
Well, c’mon just right
Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark light
I can see paradises by the Mullard tube light
LOL
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I love it!
Words of wisdom, Mr. Cooper! I agree 100%. To be clear, I know that the system can be taken to any number of “next levels”. I also realize that to make that next jump the cost will be considerable, and that is something that I cannot do at this time. So I will enjoy what I have built here and be happy.
Perhaps in the near future I will re-evaluate my head phone solution and address that. As of now my little Topping MX-3 is doing a fair job, especially when I pair it up with these BT8200 phones. I am shocked by how nice they sound together!
I am under no illusions that I am done. I am quite sure that at some point the search for “better” will continue! But for now I’m pretty happy.
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