Master Quality Authenticated

The MC200 Media Core on loan from Australian distributor Cogworks came loaded with a folder of MQA tracks. MQA is the container developed by Meridian (but now licensed by a separate ‘MQA Inc’) to do two things — first to reduce the file size required for high-res audio, and secondly to ‘authenticate’ the recording as being a true studio master, hence the name ‘Master Quality Authenticated’. File-size reduction is useful primarily for high-res served from online (e.g. Tidal), whereas in the home that side of MQA might just save a bit on storage space. The ‘authenticated’ brings the hope of banishing dodgy high-res recordings — of which Sound+Image discovered many in the early days of high-res through our reviews conducted in collaboration with the UK’s Hi-FiNews&Record Review. Those who are following the widely reported debates on MQA may have heard much about MQA being a back-door for licensing fees and record company control… this is hard to judge. What we can say is that the two times we have heard merit specifically in MQA files, it has been the improved master quality that delivered the key benefit, though MQA also claims benefits in delivery of timing information by knowing details of the preceding production chain.

Whatever your view, you can be assured that you’re getting the full MQA experience through Meridian’s 251, confirmed by a green light to show an MQA stream or file is present and identical to that of the source material, or an exciting blue light to indicate ‘MQA Studio’, a file which has either been approved in the studio by the artist/ producer or has been verified by the copyright owner. Rather disappointingly only three of our 42 MQA tracks lit the blue light, and those were tracks of Debussy, Ravel, and a piano version of an old Scandinavian Christmas song called Mittjerte alltidvanker. Delightful recordings, to be sure, but from this selection it seems the MQA Studio side of MQA could benefit from wider implementation.