MQA is Vaporware

[Fx Studio]

3 minutes ago, Skirmash said:

This is clearly nonsense. The digital audio data that goes in is completely reconstructed on the way out. 

  

You think FLAC sounds like you were there at the recording?

 

[Skirmash]

2 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

  

You think FLAC sounds like you were there at the recording?

 

If you believe that the current standards for capture of digital audio do not accurately capture all that is necessary to recreate the live event - all power to you. Interesting point of view - but not what we were discussing. Please do not move the goal posts!

 

Whatever you compress in the FLAC container is 100% retrievable. It is the MQA encoding process that is lossy. Now - you might argue that the loss is not perceivable because it is below some real-world achievable noise floor - but it is lossy by the broadly accepted definition. 

 

Ash

 

PS: Anyone please feel free to correct me where I am mistaken.

 

[stefano_mbp]

28 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

ALL formats are lossy including FLAC because of the lack of time smearing correction.

Are you smoking something good?

[Fx Studio]

2 minutes ago, Skirmash said:

If you believe that the current standards for capture of digital audio do not accurately capture all that is necessary to recreate the live event - all power to you. Interesting point of view - but not what we were discussing. Please do not move the goal posts!

 

Whatever you compress in the FLAC container is 100% retrievable. It is the MQA encoding process that is lossy. Now - you might argue that the loss is not perceivable because it is below some real-world achievable noise floor - but it is lossy by the broadly accepted definition. 

 

Ash

 

PS: Anyone please feel free to correct me where I am mistaken.

 

 

FLAC never sounds like the vocalist is in the room singing - the vocals are flat 2D like.

 

While with MQA the sound is everywhere like 3D - so yes, it does sound like the vocalist is live in the room.

 

IF you have a sound system that can deliver that.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

All this talk about how great MQA is and its altruistic origins is like Hostess selling Twinkies as a health food. 

[MikeyFresh]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

I also think that as a hi-fi company, they won't be able to convince their competitors to work with them and give them proprietary info about their products. 

I even assume some companies will now take MQA OUT of their products for just this reason.

 

That's a good point and originally I was thinking about that the other way around, i.e. would Lenbrook wish to continue licensing MQA to other CE manufacturers who are effectively their competitors? Upon further refection it's probably a bigger concern for those current CE manufacturer MQA license holders that they are now going to be handing their product details to a direct competitor. I suspect many will not want to do that unless Lenbrook relaxes that requirement. 

[garrardguy60]

6 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

 

The info from the press release indicates that they believe in MQA and fully back it as a format.

Of course there may be secondary reasons that we can guess at, but this is the primary reason given at this stage.

 

"Lenbrook said its primary objective in this acquisition was to provide certainty for business and technical developments that were underway prior to MQA’s administration."

 

"We are excited to have the opportunity to clarify the narrative and build on the technology in ways that can better demonstrate [MQA's] true value"

 

Anybody who (pretends to) believe press releases is either being willfully Scoggins, or you just don't understand how business works.  

[watts]

2 hours ago, Currawong said:

.........However, TIDAL is a bit player in the music industry......

That is clever. 

Wait- was that supposed to be a play on words? 🤔

[MikeyFresh]

26 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

 

FLAC never sounds like the vocalist is in the room singing - the vocals are flat 2D like.

 

While with MQA the sound is everywhere like 3D - so yes, it does sound like the vocalist is live in the room.

 

IF you have a sound system that can deliver that.

 

 

 

Wait I thought it was only audible with recent 2021-23 MQA VST plugin-produced EDM, and only with PA ribbons and a light show?

 

Now there are vocalists live in the room as if it were the original acoustic space? COOL - on what album titles can we hear that on and when can we watch it in a YT video with a light show?

[MikeyFresh]

6 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

"We are excited to have the opportunity to clarify the narrative and build on the technology in ways that can better demonstrate [MQA's] true value"

 

So far they've clarified nothing, and spewed the very same time smear correction BS and advanced sampling theory based on neuroscience garbage as usual, just like you do.

[Fx Studio]

22 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

So far they've clarified nothing, and spewed the very same time smear correction BS and advanced sampling theory based on neuroscience garbage as usual, just like you do.

Just because YOU can't hear it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

No one here can tell me which sounds better the FLAC or the MQA ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eh5gqnkmW8tcoI0u2O_EHl04FhIM1KAi/view?pli=1

[botrytis]

18 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

All this talk about how great MQA is and its altruistic origins is like Hostess selling Twinkies as a health food. 

 

WAIT? They are not? Twinkies were invented in the Midwest 😁

[firedog]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

I didn't say "lossless." With all due respect, I think you didn't comprehend what I wrote: "While it is true that the bits in an MQA-encoded file are not the same as those in the original hi-rez file, this does not necessarily mean that the format is 'lossy' in the manner that MP3, AAC, etc are lossy."

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

Hi John-

Yes, I understood what you wrote. But the context was you responding to someone that called it lossy. So essentially you were trying to shoehorn it into being lossless, as it were, by responding to that. 

Simply put - it's necessarily lossy by the accepted definition of the terms "lossy" and "lossless". 

 

Yes, less lossy, but can't truthfully be called lossless. 

 

As I've written before, if MQA had presented the format as "a new form of hi-res compression which reduces file size and is perceptually lossless", no one would have had a problem with it. We would only have debated if we thought it was perceptually lossless or not. 

 

Instead they touted it as "lossless" (false); improves upon the original master by deblurring it (highly debatable, at best, false at worst); authenticated by the artists (false in the vast majority of cases). 

 

Why your publication and others make strenuous efforts to avoid these simple truths is really hard to understand. 

 

The thinking audiophile public simply figured out that the emperor had no clothes and MQA was a commercial failure. I highly doubt Lenbrook or anyone else will be able to resuscitate it. 

[firedog]

8 hours ago, Fx Studio said:

 

They can be bought here:

https://shop.2l.no/collections/all/hd-file-distribution

https://www.highresaudio.com/en/mqasm

https://www.prostudiomasters.com/featured/format/mqa

https://eudorarecords.com/catalogue/

https://bluecoastmusic.com/store

https://www.hdtracks.com/

 

And the playlists can be downloaded: https://www.androidbrick.com/how-to-download-tidal-mqa-albums/

All of that is proof of how irrelevant it is. That's about 0.0001% of the market.

[Fx Studio]

1 minute ago, firedog said:

All of that is proof of how irrelevant it is. That's about 0.0001% of the market.

 

You obviously missed the significance of this one:  https://www.androidbrick.com/how-to-download-tidal-mqa-albums/

[firedog]

Fx Studio:

 

1. Please look up the definition of lossless. FLAC fits the definition; MQA doesn't. Case closed.

 

2. Please give us an actual definition of "time smearing" and what MQA corrects. Regurgitating MQA newspeak that actually doesn't mean anything doesn't count. MQA never did actually define "time smearing". Guess why? They didn't want their claims to be tested.

 

If time smearing is a thing, it can be technically defined and tracks can be tested for it. If you can't tell us how that can be done, then you are talking about something which apparently is part of the vapor of the vaporware. 

[JoeWhip]

29 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

Just because YOU can't hear it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

No one here can tell me which sounds better the FLAC or the MQA ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eh5gqnkmW8tcoI0u2O_EHl04FhIM1KAi/view?pli=1

Just because you claim it doesn’t mean it is true.

[Fx Studio]

3 minutes ago, firedog said:

Fx Studio:

 

1. Please look up the definition of lossless. FLAC fits the definition; MQA doesn't. Case closed.

 

2. Please give us an actual definition of "time smearing" and what MQA corrects. Regurgitating MQA newspeak that actually doesn't mean anything doesn't count. MQA never did actually define "time smearing". Guess why? They didn't want their claims to be tested.

 

If time smearing is a thing, it can be technically defined and tracks can be tested for it. If you can't tell us how that can be done, then you are talking about something which apparently is part of the vapor of the vaporware. 

 

I can test for it with my ears in 3 seconds - and I kept hearing it BEFORE I had even heard of time smearing.

[JoeWhip]

55 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

 

FLAC never sounds like the vocalist is in the room singing - the vocals are flat 2D like.

 

While with MQA the sound is everywhere like 3D - so yes, it does sound like the vocalist is live in the room.

 

IF you have a sound system that can deliver that.

 

 

Does this sound system contain copious amounts of mind altering drugs? Wondering for a friend.

[The Computer Audiophile]

37 minutes ago, Fx Studio said:

No one here can tell me which sounds better the FLAC or the MQA ?

You sure you phrased that question correctly?

[MikeyFresh]

22 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

Does this sound system contain copious amounts of mind altering drugs? Wondering for a friend.

 

Actually now that you mention it, Fx forgot to stipulate that smoking ayahuasca to the point of hallucination is another prerequisite, along with the PA ribbons and light show.

[John Dyson]

10 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

Actually now that you mention it, Fx forgot to stipulate that smoking ayahuasca to the point of hallucination is another prerequisite, along with the PA ribbons and light show.

 

The humor is well deserved..

 

I'd suggest kindly that the problem isn't really chemical 'drugs', but the missing 'drug' of knowledge and too much of the 'drug' called 'expectation bias'.

(I am not intending to be tutorial for most reading this -- most who read these forums tend to intuitively or actually understand what is going on.)

 

Perhaps the confusion factor for many is subjective preference.   Certain distortions can actually sound 'prettier' or seem to enhance detail.  What sounds 'prettier' to someone might not sound 'prettier' than another.   Sometimes subjective preference changes in different situations,   This syndrome even INCLUDES listening for correctness and listening for errors/quality problems.   It tends to be easier to listen for quality problems (errors, noise, glitches), even though perception is still untrustworthy, and mistakes are easy to make.

 

To truly subjectively evaluate for quality, it is very important to use very clean material, close to a studio mix, and not what is normally sold on the market.   BTW, the guy (Mario Martinez?) who a year or so ago offered classical samples offered actual unaduiterated recordings.   His stuff is very high quality, no 'enhancement', compression or whatnot.  Use THAT kind of stuff as a starting point, but even that effort would still be mostly wasted because -- subjective evaluation is fraught with problems, no matter how hard you try.

 

On my project,  the most challenging problems have been expectation bias and variations in perception.  No matter how focused or whatever my intentions -- INCLUDING intending and wanting to be critical, not just listening for 'good sound', it is SOOOO frustrating...

 

Primarily trust the math, electronics, physics or whatever.   Avoid the temptation of 'sounds good', it will often lead you astray.

 

John

 

[Archimago]

I usually don't post a mid-week blog item but for this news, let's get into it early and hopefully (for me at least) this will be the last time I post an MQA-specific page.

 

IMO, Lenbrook made a bad marketing decision not because they bought MQA Ltd.'s stuff, but continued to hype the scam product and allowed themselves to be associated with it in the press release. And presumably happily allowed the audiophile press to run with it. Stereophile continues to do the disservice.

 

MQA codec is basically a failure among audiophiles everywhere you look among forums, YouTube, social media, etc. and IMO the press should be respectful and reflective of this position for their own part in creating all this unhappiness.

 

RIP MQA codec? (Yeah. On Lenbrook Group's acquisition of bankrupt MQA Ltd.)

 

I guess it could be interesting to see what happens to SCL6/MQair down the road. But that "MQA" acronym must be allowed to die and for those who like it, "grieved" over. Those of us who have been against MQA need to see if we can find "forgiveness" towards the role the audiophile media played and those guys I hope learn to make peace and not hold on to some "higher than thou" audiophile high priest position as if "we know better" when in fact they are no better listeners than any audiophile who has done his homework. IMO, they need to recognize that they're in fact often in a worse position to know the truth because of the surrounding Industry influence and marketing hype.

[GregWormald]

If the MQA process was so undeniably better than any other transmission/reproduction process why didn't the music industry immediately rush in and rescue the company, rather than just buying the corpse? And why did such a solid gold process need rescuing in the first place?

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, GregWormald said:

If the MQA process was so undeniably better than any other transmission/reproduction process why didn't the music industry immediately rush in and rescue the company, rather than just buying the corpse? And why did such a solid gold process need rescuing in the first place?

Come on, don’t ruin it for those with an MQA victim complex.