 With the introduction of MQA, the concept of time smearing was put in the spotlight. Judging on the questions I get, the concept of time smearing is somewhat difficult to grasp. Let's try to shine some light in the darkness. Let's first see what causes time smearing. Essentially it is due to the slowness of the electronic circuits or mechanics. The latter is perhaps the easiest to understand. When a signal is applied to a speaker, it does need some time to get in motion. But once the kinetic energy in the speaker has built up, it is even harder to stop it from moving when the signal is removed. In essence, the speaker moves over a longer time and since the energy is spread over a longer period, the amplitude must be lower. Let's make it even more real world. We all know the blessing of the speed bumps that are laid down to have you reduce speed. Often the top is made of tarmac and if no maintenance is done, the bump will get lower and spread over a longer piece of road, due to the heavy traffic passing over it. You will notice it in your car since the upward movement is less steep and less high. This is a good analogy for what happens with the sound when it passes mechanics or a circuit that is slow. Analog filters as used in tone controls, loudspeakers and digital recording, to name a few applications, all cause time smearing. And with analog filters this cause natural time smearing as you expect by the slowness of a circuit. With digital filters this is not always the case and in digital audio filters are used that cause time smearing that is ahead of the signal. Or actually seems to be ahead of the signal, in reality the signal is delayed due to the propagation time of the filter. But let's not go there. It's important though to know that the steeper the filter the more time smearing. If filters cause time smearing, then why use them you might think. Well that's because of what electronic engineer Harry Nyquist has discovered. If you limit the bandwidth of a signal, you can then fully describe that signal in numbers, if you measure or sample it twice as often as the highest frequency. He managed to prove this based on previously established statements. This is called a theorem and is thus purely theoretical. But this theorem still stands today and has never been proven wrong. Since it dictates that the bandwidth has to be limited to half the sampling frequency, we need to use filters to achieve this and very steep filters at that. So the time smearing will be severe and this is next to jitter why digital audio can sound, well, digital. Time smearing in general is hard to recognize as such. I can hear it on the right hand of a grand piano, the tonality of the bass, a blacker background and more lively feel, more transparency and overall more musicality. But now I ended up in high end lingo and that is hard to relate to if you are not following the subculture over a longer time. But it is impossible to play music over Youtube with the objective of letting you hear the difference. So I have tried to simulate time smearing. It's not exactly what it is and some bad luck the loosely encoding and leveling of Youtube might ruin it to some degree too. But let's see if I can get the message across. The first sample is a bass drum. First you hear the original 8 times then the time smearing simulation and then the original again and so on. Again this is an approximation of what time smearing might cause, nothing more. But it's better than nothing. Then I prepared some keyboard. Here the odd ones are the originals and the even ones are the simulation. I don't know to what degree you have heard the difference and whether it gives you the feel of what to look for in normal music. Perhaps the best is to use in-ear monitors since then there is no acoustics that might master the phenomenon. Don't get me wrong, in a proper stereo setup you will certainly be able to hear the difference between music that is played back with lower time smearing and the time smearing we know from digital audio. Again, judging on the questions I see on the web, I also need to talk about what MQA does and doesn't. Everyone focuses on the possibility to have compact hi-res files but to me this is the less interesting part than the time smearing correction it can apply. This happens both at a mastering in a studio and when playing back. But for playback you do need a digital to analog converter that is fully MQA enabled or an MQA rendering enabled digital to analog converter combined to software that does the decoding. If you just use the decoding software you can get hi-res music from compact files that might sound better than a CD due to the advanced mastering. But it does not compensate for the time smearing caused by the digital to analog converter. Watch my video where to get MQA files and how to play them for more information. See the comments for the link. So using audio player software that can decode MQA files is great. But it is then sent through to a non-MQA digital to analog converter chances are the filtering there might cause time smearing again. If a digital to analog converter is MQA enabled, it is analyzed for the time smearing it causes and a special module that corrects this is added. Whether you will hear the improvements depends on how well your stereo is set up and perhaps also on how sensitive you are to the phenomenon. I have also been asked whether time smearing and jitter are the same, they are not. Jitter is a time variance of the bitstream and even the smallest timing error can result in distortion. That might lead to a harsh sound, lack of sibilance control, less tonality in the lows, poor stereo image and so on. Watch my video connecting your DAC number 2, how digital can go wrong for more information on jitter. Again, see the comments for the link. I want to thank the people that asked these questions, for it makes my life easier. Otherwise I have to dream up subjects. Now, if you have asked me a question and I haven't responded in an answer or a video, it might be there were more questions that I could handle, that I need to investigate the question or that I need inspiration for an understandable answer. Still, it might pay to subscribe to this channel or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. If you liked this video, please consider supporting the channel through Patreon or Paypal. Any financial support is much appreciated. The links are in the comments. Help me to help even more people enjoy music at home by telling your friends on the web about this channel. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.