MQA is Vaporware

[GregWormald]

The best way I've found to manage payments is to have a debit card with a $0 balance and transfer in only the funds I need for the payments I authorise when they are due. No unexpected payments, ever.

[GregWormald]

I've heard Dr Rod Crawford (designer of some of Linn's great speakers) say he likes it. He has given me some great help in the past. However I can't see a technical reason to want it, and given the drastically mixed reviews, I honestly don't expect to spend the time and cost to do a test.

 

Maybe it'll die before it takes hold. It wouldn't be the first time something possibly good died young.

[GregWormald]

Unfortunately making money can be the main focus, rather than the music. At that point anything that raises profits is adopted.

[GregWormald]

1 hour ago, UkPhil said:

Latest strap line from the company, not sure if this is will wash with the consumers after this weekends video revelation,  now 66,000 views and counting. 

As a psychotherapist I had to learn how to unravel 'political speak' and words without explicit meaning.

 

Let me help:

wider world of audio--undefined,

improves--subjective not objective therefore unprovable.

quality--undefined,

high-resolution experiences--nonsense masquerading as something important.

 

I hope this helps. 

 

 

[GregWormald]

16 hours ago, Confused said:

I fell asleep before the end and had a funny dream about a white haired super hero saving  the world and then taking over the universe.  

That's all true! Santa will actually do it!

[GregWormald]

5 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

Just imagine the money that the record companies would have saved if they all decided to make music easily available rather than attempt to try and control it at every turn. They would probably make more money too.

 

Sort of off-topic but related to AD's quote—two stories. (anonymised)

 

I had a friend who worked for Warner music. She was also the local Warner liaison of a well-known artist. Warner's management of this artist's work was so bad that the work was taken away from Warner (in the artist's home country) and the artist managed it all through a home-brew internet site. The music sold well, and internationally. (BTW the Opera browser has an on-board free VPN where you can set the country of "origin".)

............

I queried my friend one day when I was unable to find a particular artist on Warner's website no matter how I searched, despite knowing that this was a Warner artist. She also could not find reference to this artist or any of his work using Warner's resources. I eventually found a copy of the CD I wanted on a pirate site. It was a Warner branded CD.

 

Sometimes the big companies are their own worst enemy.

 

 

 

[GregWormald]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

But, MQa will weasel its way around that by saying the original is the MQA format and FLAC compresses it losslessly. 

Unfortunately it not a weasel, it's what the words actually mean, and therefore it's also not illegal. It is misleading though, like many (if not most) partisan/political statements. 

 

Getting reality from carefully crafted statements can be extremely difficult. Just read a legal document to see the lengths that must be gone through to be precise and accurate. Enormous amounts of time are spent in court over just such concepts and wordings. The odds of the average person getting it right on reading such statements are very small.

[GregWormald]

13 hours ago, Dr Tone said:

MQA is encoded into PCM, which is then put into binary compressed FLAC container.

YES!

 

Please be clear that just because the source file is compressed using a lossless algorithm—in this case FLAC, (Wikipedia lists 17 common audio lossless algorithms!)—it DOES NOT MEAN that the source file is identical to the originally issued music file, or a downsampling to a 16/44.1 music file.

[GregWormald]

Actually I though Hans did a pretty good job of saying not much at all.

 

My takeaways were:

B.S. is an expert in some areas. (Hans is not claiming that that applies to MQA.)

Nothing that modifies music is lossless. (Sounds like a tautology to me.)

Decide what you like by listening. (Isn't that what we all do in the end?)

 

What's the problem? (Except the time spent listening to not much of course; but that's hardly unusual in audio.)

[GregWormald]

May I suggest that to be taken seriously we need to avoid the same denigrative tactics and exaggeration (lies?) that MQA has used. They are already having to back down from some of their more suspect claims due to the diligence of some "auditors". If that can be kept up they may well have to back down to just being a lossy compression algorithm that may sound better than MP3 .

 

Remember that while "fighting fire with fire" can be tempting, the real professionals mostly use water.

[GregWormald]

With a reported 60 million subscribers, Apple Music already kills Tidal at 4.2 million. It's hardly a fair fight.

 

Of course my martial arts teacher maintains that if you find yourself in a fair fight your strategy sucks.

 

It will be interesting to see how the user interface works. Apple traditionally hasn't integrated because Jobs  found other UIs to be sub-par.

[GregWormald]

May I suggest that much of the content since FredericV's post be also submitted to Wikipedia for the "dispute"?

10 hours ago, FredericV said:

Just found evidence on Wikipedia, MQA is trying to have "lossy" removed and thus hide the truth, and rewrite the narrative:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Master_Quality_Authenticated#Disputed

 

[GregWormald]

8 hours ago, vmartell22 said:

<snips>I do have a related question - do moderators have a duty to be impartial?  Well, I understand that the owner of the forum has the right to regulate content she/he wants on the forum - BUT, talking in general, if someone becomes a moderator, is that a reasonable expectation? 

v

As a moderator elsewhere my job is monitor the discussion and ensure it: doesn't get too far off topic, stays away from personal attacks, uses "family friendly" language, and isn't spam or outright advertising. It is not to the stifle discussion whether I agree or not with the views expressed.

I have never locked a discussion because it was popular or the topic had already been discussed.

[GregWormald]

If I had a piece of software that would compress hi-res music files and make them sound better than hi-res when played (REALLY) then I'm sure I could make money just selling it. Wouldn't you buy it?

 

Why would I need to foist it on everyone with no choice allowed?

[GregWormald]

3 hours ago, jparvio said:

To put our mouth where the money is; journalism is NOT DEAD, at least in the free World. Against normal protocols I decided to publish here this months Editorial from our Editor-in-Chief. Remove if necessary. For those who don't do Finnish (what a shame), headline translates more or less to "The scam of master proportions":

 

I've got a nice Finnish-->english translator that would work if there was a text version of that.

[GregWormald]

37 minutes ago, MaxBuck said:

Oh, great.  Do I also get to provide my opinion on Audioquest and its snake-oil product line?

Yes.

[GregWormald]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Something I just found ... enable English subtitles to follow,

 

 

He might be an expert in music production, but his knowledge and skills in basic logic could use some work!

e.g. Dolby is the same as mQa despite the fact that Dolby is "take it or leave it" while mQa appears to be a 'no choice' "option".

e.g. Transparent equals free to everyone.

 

Bah!

[GregWormald]

8 hours ago, JoeWhip said:

His description of the vocal on Getz/Gilberto was how can I say it nicely, laughable. Hyperbole much?

👍

Oh dear, "hi-rez" (can't spell or abbreviate), "phlegm-filled" sound (NO THANKS, must be a side effect of the covid) and analogies and descriptions that don't make sense (and some are just silly!)  Great review, NOT.

[GregWormald]

The 'hiring own musicians' pathway is nonsense. Copyright allows the use of excerpts for review and the A-->B comparison seems to fit that well.

 

Besides if MQA isn't straight forward with its claims I wouldn't trust their own 'before' processing.

 

And while MQA (maybe) doesn't harm the music, it sure harms the wallets of all but MQA.

 

For me it comes down to the old saying "put up or shut up".

[GregWormald]

11 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

A recent "Spotify vs. TIDAL" article appearing in Android Authority stated this:

 

"Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) promises high-resolution (96kHz/24bit) audio delivered via FLAC or WAV file. Any media labeled as MQA under Tidal means that the artist directly authenticated it."

 

True or false?

False, of course, and tremendously, obviously so.

 

Who's going to tell AA and will they listen and retract or are they already dead because "they drank the cool-aid'?

[GregWormald]

On 11/6/2021 at 2:08 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Let's cut over to Miles Davis and ask him about the sound ... oh wait. 

I have to assume that MQA has a reliable, built-in Ouija board. I can't understand why they wouldn't market it separately. Surely it would be a money-spinner.

[GregWormald]

18 hours ago, Confused said:

<snip>

So there you have it, exactly as the artist intended.

Thanks for that.

 

So who does MQA consider to be the artist? The composer, the arranger, the lead player, the band, the conductor, the recording engineer, the mixer, the person at the record company who figured out how to make money out the performance, the MQA designer, the MQA coder, or the MQA tech who pushed the recording through the process?

 

Man, now I'm really confused!

[GregWormald]

3 hours ago, T.S. Gnu said:

Beyond Hi-Res is not Hi-Res

 Exactly. "Beyond" does not indicate a direction. If you are going down then even 128K mp3 is "beyond hi-res".

 

It's easy to lie when you know how.

[GregWormald]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Just when you thought the defense of mQa could reach any lower, I direct you to this beauty from Dave Kelly - https://www.strata-gee.com/mqa-finale-both-anti-and-pro-forces-have-their-successes-and-failures/#comment-47519

So let me get this straight. Bringing race into the MQA defence when I haven't seen it anywhere near the MQA "attacks" is anti-racist?  Hmmm, not in my world—in my world that is racist in itself.

[GregWormald]

7 hours ago, dmackta said:

Chris I have bad news for you and your readers. Qobuz senior management in the USA are Jews. ;-)

NO! They're actually LIZARDS!!!!!!!!!! and are taking over the whole world. HUMANS UNITE!