MQA is future of high-quality portable music

MP3 is not the best format to store digital music in terms of quality but it is small and perfect for mobile devices. MQA stands to improve on digital audio quality without sacrificing the “compactness” that MP3 provides. Image INQUIRER.net

While the MP3 is still the most basic file format for digital music files, it doesn’t exactly provide the best quality output. But with MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), things could change drastically.

MQA is not so much a file format as a process whereby only the most critical parts of the recorder music is retained and served to users in a much smaller file size compared with current lossless audio formats like FLAC and ALAC, Tech Radar reports .

As far as file size is concerned, a high-quality Direct Stream Digital sound file that’s at 305MB can be scaled down to just 40MB using the end-to-end technology of MQA without losing a single bit of quality from the “compression.” For comparison against FLAC, the same 305MB audio file can be scaled down to 73MB at 24-bit/96kHz quality with some quality loss from the format conversion.

As mentioned, MQA is not a format itself to replace FLAC. Instead, it’s an audio file in MQA form tcan be packaged into high-quality containers like FLAC but at a significantly smaller size than the current FLAC encoding techniques. The smaller file size also means that mobile devices like smartphones and dedicated multimedia players can store more high-quality content without the need to ramp up storage capacities.

The MQA is still in its infancy and may take a while before it gets widespread adoption. It does, however, offer a bright new possibility for the future of high-quality portable music.  Alfred Bayle