Meridian to Dem MQA at Audio High Thursday

Bay Area high-end audio retailer Audio High (165 Moffett Boulevard, Mountain View, California) has been chosen as the first Meridian partner to introduce its revolutionary MQA audio coding system on Thursday April 16, from 6pm–9pm.

As John Atkinson wrote last December, MQA is a backward-compatible codec that reduces the size of a hi-rez audio file by three quarters. When played back on a standard DAC, it plays as a conventional 16-bit file sampled at 44.1kHz or 48kHz, but when decoded by a DAC offering MQA, it plays back with higher resolution and the original sample rate.

As well as representatives from Meridian, veteran Canadian pianist Robert Silverman will be at the Audio High event, as Audio High is premiering the first set of his new Beethoven piano sonatas cycle. As part of Audio High’s ongoing fundraising efforts for the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Audio High have recorded these sonatas, and will be available at the event (for event attendees only) at no charge.

Mark Willsher (who produced the music for the Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit trilogy, and many other films) recorded Silverman for Audio High and will be at the event to talk about his impressions of MQA. The evening will also feature MQA-mastered recordings given to Audio High by Herbie Hancock.

Please RSVP to (650) 964-4000 or email info@audiohigh.com.

COMMENTS
spacehound's picture

Last thing 'The People' (which of course includes us) wants is a 'New Music Format'.

Meridian? Full of BS. None of their products have ever been better than 'middle of the road' despite Stuart's endless 'White Papers' and their high prices. They are not even of any significance in the UK, where they are made (and where I live).

cas's picture

Aston Martin is not that popular, too

spacehound's picture

Nor is Ebola or going to the moon. So what?

SNI's picture

I think you are right.
What happened to HDCD anyway?
I guess that it will be possible to stream 24/96 in a few years without any problems or dropouts. And the hardware is already there in both studios and many private set-ups.
Also storage is now cheaper than ever, so disk space is also no problem in the long run.

spacehound's picture

Whether I am or not (assuming you were thinking of what I said) is irrelevant.

Streaming is a 'bandwagon' often 'pushed' by audiophile editors. Should we care why they are doing this we can ask them. My suggestion is they have to fill their space somehow, being paid to do so.

It has little current relevance, often changes ownership, and 'titles' can suddenly disappear (see Taylor Swift).

Meanwhile disk space cost, even on 'pocket' devices, is tumbling and continues to do so. Thus streaming becomes less and less relevant a very short time after it just got started.

I certainly won't bother with it , now or in the foreseeable future.

Glotz's picture

Please God, make MQA work for the music industry! Amen.

James Bond 007's picture

Believe that MQA will be acclaimed by all. I downloaded few files from 2L for free and played them in my DAC which does not decode MQA, what I heard was stunning! I never heard voice so nice and so tender in any system in my life anywhere. I can't wait to listen to these same file with full MQA capability.
I do not understand why people reac so negatively without even try it, it is ridiculous.
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