MQA is Vaporware

[daverich4]

Tidal is slowly coming around….

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/tidal-labels-mqa-flac-tracks/

[MarkHH]

Stereophile October 2023 will feature an "Industry Update" on MQA written by Jim Austin. The article will most probably be available online at stereophile.com soon.

For frequent readers of this forum the article doesn't contain any new information at all as the article focusses on MQA entering adminstration and the company's filings at UK government's website (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history).

The only interesting part of the article is the first chapter where Jim Austin writes:

Quote

Some well-informed readers will read that headline (“Is the end near for MQA?”) and laugh out loud—especially members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start. Of course the end is near for MQA, a broad sampling of blog and social media posts suggests. Those posts may well be correct, but based on information available in early August, there may still be some hope.

Curious to know how Jim Austin found out that a majority of audiophiles is in deep deep love with MQA. It might even be a hugely, bigly majority, biggest ever!
 

[firedog]

2 hours ago, MarkHH said:

Stereophile October 2023 will feature an "Industry Update" on MQA written by Jim Austin. The article will most probably be available online at stereophile.com soon.

For frequent readers of this forum the article doesn't contain any new information at all as the article focusses on MQA entering adminstration and the company's filings at UK government's website (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history).

The only interesting part of the article is the first chapter where Jim Austin writes:

Curious to know how Jim Austin found out that a majority of audiophiles is in deep deep love with MQA. It might even be a hugely, bigly majority, biggest ever!
 

 

Just another example of his lack of perspective. He's been an apologist for MQA from the get go. His position was that even if it was bad for audiophiles, it was "good for the industry" - so we should accept it. In other words, if the "industry" people he's connected to could make more money from it, we should go along with it no matter what. 

IMO, an insulated and even sick POV. 

 

The line "members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start", also makes me laugh. What minority? On what does he base the claim? On the face of the known evidence, the opposite seems to be true. How many people signed up for Tidal Masters? A small percentage of of Tidal users, and thus an tiny percentage of all audiophiles. So that would clearly seem to be "the minority". 

If "the majority" had actually wanted MQA, it would still be a viable business. 

[MarkHH]

20 minutes ago, firedog said:

The line "members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start", also makes me laugh. What minority? On what does he base the claim? On the face of the known evidence, the opposite seems to be true. How many people signed up for Tidal Masters? A small percentage of of Tidal users, and thus an tiny percentage of all audiophiles. So that would clearly seem to be "the minority". 

If "the majority" had actually wanted MQA, it would still be a viable business. 

100% this. Everything is wrong in that "members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start" line. "Minority" is unproven, to say the least. And nobody "rooted against MQA from the start". On the other hand I happen to know some people in the stereophile industry who believed now-proven lies such as "lossless" (or even "better than lossless") from the start.

 

[DuckToller]

33 minutes ago, firedog said:

 

Just another example of his lack of perspective. He's been an apologist for MQA from the get go. His position was that even if it was bad for audiophiles, it was "good for the industry" - so we should accept it. In other words, if the "industry" people he's connected to could make more money from it, we should go along with it no matter what. 

IMO, an insulated and even sick POV. 

 

The line "members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start", also makes me laugh. What minority? On what does he base the claim? On the face of the known evidence, the opposite seems to be true. How many people signed up for Tidal Masters? A small percentage of of Tidal users, and thus an tiny percentage of all audiophiles. So that would clearly seem to be "the minority". 

If "the majority" had actually wanted MQA, it would still be a viable business. 

I'll find it interesting how far & divisive some Audio Industry publications have gone with their pro MQA stance

 

Obviously, any ideas about the importance of trust in your reviewer's objectivity have vanished in their view on their relation with their readership.

They even don't pretend anymore.

 

I wonder how BS could have hit&run them so fundamentally that they are selling off any credibility (outside the Audio bling industry).

 

Otoh, it sounds to me like an attempt to keep frantically their Industral relationships on a working level, bc they can't survive on readership.

 

In some ways that's sad, and JA2 has gotten the short straw, while JA1 is on the better off side of history.

[skikirkwood]

Just discovered Stereophile has a link in its bottom nav bar to all articles tagged "MQA" https://www.stereophile.com/category/mqa Really entertaining reading articles from 2018 like this one: https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

[botrytis]

MQA - wannabe but not

[botrytis]

7 hours ago, MarkHH said:

Stereophile October 2023 will feature an "Industry Update" on MQA written by Jim Austin. The article will most probably be available online at stereophile.com soon.

For frequent readers of this forum the article doesn't contain any new information at all as the article focusses on MQA entering adminstration and the company's filings at UK government's website (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history).

The only interesting part of the article is the first chapter where Jim Austin writes:

Curious to know how Jim Austin found out that a majority of audiophiles is in deep deep love with MQA. It might even be a hugely, bigly majority, biggest ever!
 

 

Wishful thinking on his part. The audio press is so out of touch with reality. They literally shot themselves in the foot on this one.

[botrytis]

4 hours ago, MarkHH said:

100% this. Everything is wrong in that "members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start" line. "Minority" is unproven, to say the least. And nobody "rooted against MQA from the start". On the other hand I happen to know some people in the stereophile industry who believed now-proven lies such as "lossless" (or even "better than lossless") from the start.

 

 

Just like religious zealots, they can't see that there is more than one way. They believe that everyone should believe them, but we have people who have tested and found MQA seriously lacking.

[Fx Studio]

On 9/3/2023 at 10:40 PM, rickca said:

Wonderful irony if MQA files become pirated.

 

Its been possible to download MQA files from streamers like Tidal, as FLAC container MQA files, and store and play them from memory on an MQA device independently since about Aug 2021. So that's why its never going away because there are literally millions of downloaded MQA tracks purchased and otherwise residing on peoples computers and devices.

 

Of course the MQA encoder and final DAC decode data isn't available.. as yet.

Judging by the financials of $50M+ total losses I doubt MQA as a company is coming back from the dead anytime soon.

Clearly not the big money maker as claimed by so many!

 

With the additional cost to the chip makers of physically keeping MQA on the chip die being negligible at this point, its unlikely they will remove it as a feature especially if there is no company left to pay royalties to.

 

In time the Encoder software may get leaked, seeing as parts of the process are in others hands already - namely the DAW emulator VST plugin with the top studios, and Encoder software that is in the hands of the major publishers.  

[Currawong]

5 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

Its been possible to download MQA files from streamers like Tidal, as FLAC container MQA files, and store and play them from memory on an MQA device independently since about Aug 2021. So that's why its never going away because there are literally millions of downloaded MQA tracks purchased and otherwise residing on peoples computers and devices.

 

And they are all junk, as the unadulterated (non-batch processed) originals can be downloaded instead, and don't require special equipment to "unfold".

 

20 hours ago, MarkHH said:

Some well-informed readers will read that headline (“Is the end near for MQA?”) and laugh out loud—especially members of the vocal minority that has rooted against MQA from the start. Of course the end is near for MQA, a broad sampling of blog and social media posts suggests. Those posts may well be correct, but based on information available in early August, there may still be some hope.

 

(NB: The above quote is from Jim Austin, and this forum software doesn't allow me to fix the quote attribution easily.)
Jim's "from the start" is a flat-out lie. At the start, people asked for more information about how MQA works. The more that was revealed, the more the claims started to fall apart. That is when people turned against it.

A vocal minority has been rooting for MQA from the start, despite a majority of players in the industry who looked into it and realised how flawed it is, even those who implemented it (and in some cases had to trick MQA into approving their products, despite playback issues). More so, this minority were rooting for a company that, of all their claims, all but one were total lies. 

[botrytis]

7 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

 

Its been possible to download MQA files from streamers like Tidal, as FLAC container MQA files, and store and play them from memory on an MQA device independently since about Aug 2021. So that's why its never going away because there are literally millions of downloaded MQA tracks purchased and otherwise residing on peoples computers and devices.

 

Of course the MQA encoder and final DAC decode data isn't available.. as yet.

Judging by the financials of $50M+ total losses I doubt MQA as a company is coming back from the dead anytime soon.

Clearly not the big money maker as claimed by so many!

 

With the additional cost to the chip makers of physically keeping MQA on the chip die being negligible at this point, its unlikely they will remove it as a feature especially if there is no company left to pay royalties to.

 

In time the Encoder software may get leaked, seeing as parts of the process are in others hands already - namely the DAW emulator VST plugin with the top studios, and Encoder software that is in the hands of the major publishers.  

 

Why would they continue this travesty of garbage.

 

But why complicate chips with a useless feature that the majority of audiophiles don't like?

[Fx Studio]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

 

Why would they continue this travesty of garbage.

 

But why complicate chips with a useless feature that the majority of audiophiles don't like?

Because in chip production its more hassle to remove it than to leave it on, the unit cost of additional materials is negligible and it means a DAC/ amp manufacturer is more likely to spec it in just because it has additional features. The chips that don't have MQA like the one Topping uses are really intended for commercial applications like audio mixers and also used in home theatre surround sound processor/ amps. So I don't see MQA getting removed from DAC chips any time soon. 

[Fx Studio]

3 hours ago, Currawong said:

 

And they are all junk, as the unadulterated (non-batch processed) originals can be downloaded instead, and don't require special equipment to "unfold".

 

 

(NB: The above quote is from Jim Austin, and this forum software doesn't allow me to fix the quote attribution easily.)
Jim's "from the start" is a flat-out lie. At the start, people asked for more information about how MQA works. The more that was revealed, the more the claims started to fall apart. That is when people turned against it.

A vocal minority has been rooting for MQA from the start, despite a majority of players in the industry who looked into it and realised how flawed it is, even those who implemented it (and in some cases had to trick MQA into approving their products, despite playback issues). More so, this minority were rooting for a company that, of all their claims, all but one were total lies. 

 

I am only talking about recently made level 3 tracks (not-batch processed) those can be played as FLAC on any device - but additionally can be unfolded for the full MQA sound using a player (with a MQA DAC) running an application like Uapp with the MQA extension. Then the sound is quite different with deeper bass and time smearing correction of the vocals.

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

 

The recently made ones level 3 (not-batch processed) can be played as FLAC on any device - but additionally can be unfolded for the full MQA sound using a player (with a MQA DAC) running an application like Uapp with the MQA extension. Then the sound is quite different with deeper bass and time smearing correction of the vocals.

Stop just making stuff up. 

[botrytis]

38 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

 

I am only talking about recently made level 3 tracks (not-batch processed) those can be played as FLAC on any device - but additionally can be unfolded for the full MQA sound using a player (with a MQA DAC) running an application like Uapp with the MQA extension. Then the sound is quite different with deeper bass and time smearing correction of the vocals.

 

RIGHT - I guess you don't realize it is easy to just cut two little wires, on the chip, to take it out. The Chip fabs do it all the time with CPU's as that is how lower versions of CPU's are often made (Intel and AMD did this many times to make lower core products). Now with chiplet technology it is even easier, take out one chiplet and done (that is how AMD Ryzen CPU's APU's are made as is their newer GPU's).

 

You obviously never talked to a chip designer - I had a friend who worked with early on with AMD.

[botrytis]

40 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

 

I am only talking about recently made level 3 tracks (not-batch processed) those can be played as FLAC on any device - but additionally can be unfolded for the full MQA sound using a player (with a MQA DAC) running an application like Uapp with the MQA extension. Then the sound is quite different with deeper bass and time smearing correction of the vocals.

 

Time smear is a function of MQA not preventing it. I think you need to look at Golden Ones and Archimago's deep dive into this. The filters used with MQA ARE THE CAUSE, nothing more.

 

The BS that is MQA marketing is amazing. They really sold you a snake oil product, which would have eventually made music cost more without any benefit to the consumer, only to the people who made MQA and the record labels since it had a built-in DRM system.

 

If you enjoy MQA, great, but to the rest is is nothing more than just a marketing ploy.

[Fx Studio]

19 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

RIGHT - I guess you don't realize it is easy to just cut two little wires, on the chip, to take it out. The Chip fabs do it all the time with CPU's as that is how lower versions of CPU's are often made (Intel and AMD did this many times to make lower core products). Now with chiplet technology it is even easier, take out one chiplet and done (that is how AMD Ryzen CPU's APU's are made as is their newer GPU's).

 

You obviously never talked to a chip designer - I had a friend who worked with early on with AMD.

These chips are not made as chiplets that's advance large scale processors only on 5-4nm processes - DAC  chips are older way way lower tech just one single die. So no benefit in removing it unless they were doing a complete redesign.

 

[botrytis]

12 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

These chips are not made as chiplets that's advance large scale processors only on 5-4um processes - DAC  chips are older tech just one single die. So no benefit in removing it unless they were doing a complete redesign.

 

 

It is still easy to cut two little wires. I guess you never had any Intel chips that were supposed to be 12 core, only to find they cut 6 cores out to sell a cheaper chip.

 

Also, many use FPGA chips, which are programmable. One would just have to program that feature out.

 

Please stop - you do not know what you are talking about.

[Fx Studio]

25 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

It is still easy to cut two little wires. I guess you never had any Intel chips that were supposed to be 12 core, only to find they cut 6 cores out to sell a cheaper chip.

 

Please stop - you do not know what you are talking about.

 

Thats a whole different ball game - its where the process is so advanced that failures of different modules occur so they design the chips so they can be downgraded if that happens and sold as a lower spec part. Its Advanced Semiconductor Ultraviolet Lithography made using machines manufactured by the Dutch company ASML.

 

DACs are very simple in comparison and are made using years old well proven manufacturing technology.

 

FPGA are programmable so there is no MQA hardware on them - just a stock part that's programmed by DAC/ amp manufacturer if they want to add extra features like upscaling. The same FPGA part could be in any number of different products like a TV doing upscaling.

[Currawong]

8 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

 

I am only talking about recently made level 3 tracks (not-batch processed) those can be played as FLAC on any device - but additionally can be unfolded for the full MQA sound using a player (with a MQA DAC) running an application like Uapp with the MQA extension. Then the sound is quite different with deeper bass and time smearing correction of the vocals.

See my previous, long post with all the "evidence" you said we didn't have. The 2nd and 3rd unfolds would require a 32-bit file according to MQA's own description. They don't exist. Any fold after the first was up-sampling. 

The "deeper bass" is simply more bass. And, again, see how minimum phase filters destroy the timing of the music. What you're hearing is worse, not better. You're just deceiving yourself now. 

[Fx Studio]

6 hours ago, Currawong said:

See my previous, long post with all the "evidence" you said we didn't have. The 2nd and 3rd unfolds would require a 32-bit file according to MQA's own description. They don't exist. Any fold after the first was up-sampling. 

The "deeper bass" is simply more bass. And, again, see how minimum phase filters destroy the timing of the music. What you're hearing is worse, not better. You're just deceiving yourself now. 

 

It could be that the bass is just "more" - because listening to the track Starfire by ABT its very similar on the drum intro, though that has higher frequency components. My subs are the 21" Eminence NSW6021-6 in sealed/ lined concrete chambers which go down building shaking low on that track.

The vocals are definitely different though with the 3D vocals everywhere. I will try to do some more comparisons between the 3 types of file - the original hi-res FLAC, the MQA container FLAC folded, and the fully unfolded version on the Uapp. It should be noted that the Uapp MQA extension does require the setting "Bit Perfect" to be set and then feeds the twin DAC's directly.

[Fx Studio]

8 hours ago, Currawong said:

See my previous, long post with all the "evidence" you said we didn't have. The 2nd and 3rd unfolds would require a 32-bit file according to MQA's own description. They don't exist. Any fold after the first was up-sampling. 

The "deeper bass" is simply more bass. And, again, see how minimum phase filters destroy the timing of the music. What you're hearing is worse, not better. You're just deceiving yourself now. 

I have just done another test using a FLAC Hi-Res and MQA of the same track - Dreams (feat Lanie Gardner) 2020.

The bass is cleaner, tighter and a bit more detailed on the FLAC, but weak on the 21" sub.

The FLAC vocals are detailed but definitely emanating from each speaker with the sound very centered - which I guess in a small room wouldn't be noticeable.

The MQA sound is everywhere in comparison, just hanging in the air more like a natural sound and much more pleasant to listen to on a big PA system in my studio.

 

But I get that If I had a smaller HiFi system in a small room then the FLAC with the greater detail would be the better choice.

 

It just depends what system people have, what space they are playing it in, and possibly their ability to perceive time domain information which may have a genetic component.

 

 

[Currawong]

2 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

I have just done another test using a FLAC Hi-Res and MQA of the same track - Dreams (feat Lanie Gardner) 2020.

The bass is cleaner, tighter and a bit more detailed on the FLAC, but weak on the 21" sub.

The FLAC vocals are detailed but definitely emanating from each speaker with the sound very centered - which I guess in a small room wouldn't be noticeable.

The MQA sound is everywhere in comparison, just hanging in the air more like a natural sound and much more pleasant to listen to on a big PA system in my studio.

 

But I get that If I had a smaller HiFi system in a small room then the FLAC with the greater detail would be the better choice.

 

It just depends what system people have, what space they are playing it in, and possibly their ability to perceive time domain information which may have a genetic component.

 

 

That track is mostly digital, and and the vocals are very heavily processed. There's nothing remotely "natural" about anything on it. You don't seem to understand that the result of genuinely time corrections are audible primarily on recordings of acoustic instruments in a single space, where you get the genuine soundstage of the event -- correct depth and width, as you'd actually hear it if you had been present. In a well set-up system, the speakers disappear and the instruments appear in their actual space as they were. There's nothing to correct with the kind of music you are listening to, if it's all like what you just mentioned, as it's all electronically generated, aside from the voice.

[JoeWhip]

Isn’t it obvious by now that most of the audiophile “press” should be ignored, except Chris and me of course? 😎