Merry Christmas & Happy 2024! A year in review, final MQA sales, and have a very Spatial Christmas. 🎅

Hey everyone, I want to post a holiday greeting and retrospective as we end off 2023 and as I wander off for some R&R down south. This has been an interesting year I think in the world of audio. In my journeys through audiophilia, it's the year I'll remember as one of continued evolution in the fidelity of various components and further maturation of technologies available to consumers at very reasonable prices - specifically amplifiers.

2023 also marks the point of crossing 10M hits to this blog according to Google's analytics which is I think a significant numerical milestone. Not bad I think given my pace of sub-weekly posts, dealing primarily with topics that attract a relatively small group of hobbyists. While some of these technically-oriented articles probably are a bit beyond the interest of many audiophiles, I do hope that in time, the "average" hobbyist will see them as presenting some foundational knowledge that we should all know about the technologies we buy, and expressing a worldview that those who assess the audiophile hobby more objectively would tend to focus on.

Let's have a little recap of some articles and ideas shared over the last 12 months...

This year, I explored a number of Class D TI TPA amplifiers starting with the AOSHIDA A7, the Fosi Audio TB10D (Upgraded), and AIYIMA A08 PRO, culminating in the recent Topping PA5 Mk II+ with its much higher fidelity performance. IMO, the quality we can get at such low prices on amplifiers these days is very impressive. Most recently leading to the holiday season, I've seen lots of positive opinions on the WiiM Amp (~US$300) which I think looks great as a combined streamer+amp based on the TI TPA3255 chip design paired with a respectable, but older ESS ES9018 DAC chip. Check out some measurements here showing typical performance from these Class D chip amps, although low frequency distortion seems higher than expected. Might grab one of these for a listen/test next year.

I didn't look at DACs much this year. To be honest, with the performance I've been seeing over the last few years, I'm not sure I have any concerns nor desire for greater performance. Heck, since the release of the Topping D90 series (I had a look at the Topping D90SE in 2021), I believe we've gone well beyond anything that's meaningfully audible. Sure, we can measure even more linear DACs, even lower noise floors, even better THD+N/SINAD. But so what? There will always be hype at the latest and greatest, but when it comes to a proper shoot-out, IMO, don't worry about DAC performance these days. I'll be on the lookout for innovative features and DSP options going forward rather than claims of "fidelity".

For those curious about who "we", audiophiles, are in 2023, check out the results of the demographic survey. The data also includes the streaming services we're using and while most have access to streaming services (Qobuz, Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Music the main ones for readers here), 25% of my visitors still have their own music server library.

I had a look at the benefits of a couple of USB isolators this year - the Topping HS02 (USB2) and Intona 7055-C (USB3) - both worked quite well. Nice that the Topping HS02 was compatible with the E1DA Cosmos ADC which helps improve my measurement system's ability to resist ground loops.

Pacific Audio Fest 2023 was fun, earlier this year in June! Always interesting to be in the presence of really expensive stuff and hearing for oneself what the current "state-of-the-art" is capable of. Speakers like the Børresen M6 were a treat to listen to. Audio shows are also a great place to experience the importance that the room makes as you dart in and out of spaces of various sizes and variable amounts of room treatment! Recognition of one's room itself as an integral "component" in the sound quality is one of those key points to be aware of as audiophiles even if we're smitten by expensive speakers, source components, etc. Plus, at audio shows, one gets to meet interesting folks like Taylor and his detailed ideas on "The Different Types of Subjectivisms in Audiophilia (and how to get rid of them)"; nice work man!

The Hidizs AP80 PRO-X is a fun little digital audio player (DAP) to consider. It measures well, sounds great, is well built, and worth considering if you're interested in this class of device. IMO, a nice update basically in every way compared to my old Pono Player. Despite the ubiquitous smartphones, I presume these days there's still interest in this class of device. Many DAPs still available on sale and I see an upcoming crowdfunding opportunity for the Tangara. (As we've discussed in the past, be careful and know the kinds of risks that might be involved before putting money down on crowdfunding pre-sales.)

In August, I spent some time examining the Bluetooth transmission system with comparisons of various codecs - SBC, aptX, AAC, and LDAC. Also a specific look at AAC encoded through Android, Windows, iPhone and Mac. Clearly, Apple has done a great job with their AAC encoder implementation. I've since updated to the Google Pixel 8 Pro phone in November with Android 14 - haven't checked if AAC is any better yet on that.

Although I've done a bunch of computer upgrades lately, including the nVidia RTX 4090 graphics card on the high-power side of computing, it's good to see ongoing improvements in performance with the low-power miniPC class of devices like the Intel N100-based Beelink EQ12 with DDR5 RAM. These IMO will make for an excellent audio streamer with plenty of power for running reasonably complex DSP including AVX2 if you like HQPlayer upsampling. Yes, they will cost a little more than something like a Raspberry Pi, but there's so much more computational ability in these little Windows PC's plus they can be quite capable 4K/HDR video playback boxes.

Among my musings (like this and this), this year has been for me one of increasingly transitioning to listening beyond the traditional equilateral triangle stereophonic playback. This includes explorations in crosstalk cancellation with ambiophonics (thanks STC) that can improve the sound from the collection of standard 2-channel stereo accumulated over the decades (as explained by Ralph Glasgal). Furthermore, I've been increasingly appreciating multichannel/Atmos content which has generally brought improved dynamic range (over typical stereo standard and hi-res releases) and the expansion of the spatial auditory experience moving beyond 2-channel limits sitting in the sweet-spot. These kinds of changes in sound quality are way beyond anything you'll experience with upgrading your streamer or DAC regardless of expense.

There's nothing wrong with the 2-channel standard since wide availability in the 1960s, but if this hobby seeks to progress, then IMO we need to be open to exploring beyond 2 channels and embrace true-to-life sounds as "surround" events both as recognition that this is what "reality" sounds like and to give artists an expanded 3D canvas for their creative expression. Multichannel can be encoded in various forms - discrete multichannel (like 5.1 or 7.1), TrueHD+/-Atmos, EAC3-JOC, DTS, Sony 360 Reality Audio, Auro-3D, etc.

Oh yeah... Remember, Bits are Bits, as another round of testing with various digital sources continue to show that they really make no difference when paired with a good DAC.

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After much controversy, this year also marks the foreseeable demise of the MQA codec; a source of much debate online since 2015, never broadly embraced, much lauded among certain YouTube/magazine subjectivist reviewers and editors, available basically only on TIDAL. As you know, TIDAL is currently still in the process of divesting itself of their remaining MQA content.

Here are the final sales amounts for MQA's assets transferred to Lenbrook based on the bankruptcy report (see "Notice of administrator's progress report", Nov 9 2023 on the gov.uk Companies House):

Sold for £100,000, or about US$130k. An absolute "steal" for the technology. That's not even enough to buy a single WADAX Atlantis Reference DAC at MSRP! 😲

Considering that investors poured millions into the company over the years, this is literally "pennies on the dollar". I'm sure there were good yearly salaries for those that ran the company though. Maybe Lenbrook can still get some residual licensing income from the purchase to offset the "MQA Technology Assets" paid. For £20,000, Lenbrook secured the SCL6 codec for their announced headphone products at least; we will see if these products show up in 2024. I'd be surprised if Lenbrook would even retain the acronym "MQA" going forward given the negative brand image.

Furthermore, "MQA Ltd." has now been renamed to "Wave Realisations Ltd.".

I believe it's good that audiophiles have been able to see beyond the propaganda and roundly condemned this unnecessary tax on music and hardware, recognizing the nonsensical mistruths of what was being sold. At the start of 2023, even as Mike Fremer congratulated MQA-CD as the "best" sounding version of an album, everything obviously changed with the declaration of bankruptcy by April. Thus ends this sad, but perhaps necessary, chapter in audiophilia as we see opportunistic companies like this push for controversial ways to benefit financially from otherwise mature digital audio technology, but bringing nothing of value to consumers.

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Alas, unfortunately this year we don't have an entry from Allan Folz's Christmas playlist series. However, in the spirit of a more multichannel future (for me anyways!), here are some interesting holiday compilations to check out:

Christmas In Spatial Audio playlist - Apple Music

Holiday in Spatial Audio - Amazon Music

 

Ultimate Christmas: Dolby Atmos - TIDAL

 

Christmas in Spatial Audio - TIDAL 

Qobuz, it's great that you finally entered Canada this year! Would be even more awesome if you could join that list with expanded multichannel content next year. 🤔

From a tech evaluation perspective, it's interesting to have a listen to the compilation content including the variety of songs that have been remixed selected across the decades. For example, in that TIDAL Christmas in Spatial Audio playlist, the sound quality of an Andy Williams "White Christmas", or "Silent Night, Holy Night", both recorded back in 1963 with the technology of the time clearly retains the nostalgic, some would even say "analogue" characteristics of a tape recording presented mainly with the front L-C-R speakers. Vocals nicely planted in the center channel. Rear and Atmos height channels used for a little bit of ambiance to give the impression of space. Clearly the sound is dated but it's charming. Compare that to the more modern mixes like the Pentatonix tracks "White Winter Hymnal" or "That's Christmas To Me" where the vocals are spread around the room including rear channel background voices, not just ambiance effects. I enjoy this kind of 360° presentation as it utilizes the extra speakers to present a more complex, nuanced, sound that's not squeezed into a smaller soundfield with typical loud dynamic compression employed. [Of note, Pentatonix's That's Christmas To Me stereo album from 2014 shows an average of DR8, in comparison, the two multichannel tracks above are DR12 and DR11 respectively.]

Speaking of classic Christmas carols, Kelly Clarkson's "White Christmas" multichannel remix from Wrapped In Red (2013) is clearly a very different stylistic effort from the Andy Williams noted above. Technically, we can easily hear the improved fidelity (eg. lower noise level, better vocal clarity) as well as choices made in the studio around the "immersive" nature of the song. While sonic fidelity is clearly related to modern technical advances, obviously the choices around how the mixes are created and the immersive elements are subjective, and artistic in nature. Likewise, each audiophile/music lover can choose his/her own preference of singer and arrangement (including the 1942/1947 Bing Crosby of course!).

See you in 2024. As usual, for the sake of developing knowledge and understanding, I believe the audio hobby needs to take a more objective stance in how devices are evaluated, and hobbyists continue to maintain skepticism to weed out snake-oil products; remaining rational when we communicate with each other.

Wishing you and yours peace and good tidings.