MQA is Vaporware

[HalSF]

I don’t think this has been mentioned earlier in the thread, but David Denby, a writer for The New Yorker, contributed an online article about hi-fi gear last month and included a section about MQA that seemed to credulously cite all of the MQA marketing bullet points together with his own enthusiastic endorsement as a listener, with not a word about any controversy or dissent from the pitch that MQA is a revolutionary technical innovation in sound quality. This may be the most notable example of uncritical MQA coverage in a non-audiophile publication to date.

 

Quote

You can’t, at the moment, listen to high-res on your iPhone, but help may be on the way, for there’s still another, recently developed high-resolution digital format that has possibly revolutionary consequences. It’s called MQA, which stands for Master Quality Authenticated. The engineers go back to the master tapes of a given recording and recode the information digitally in a new way: the information is compressed (as with MP3s) to get it through the Internet, but then magically reopened, like a field of flowers after rain, by a server at the receiving end. In addition, the information is stripped of certain common digital artifacts—it’s de-blurred. Jay-Z’s streaming service, Tidal, offers MQA recordings—some classical, much R. & B. and soul, Latin, and everything else, including (surprise) Beyoncé. In MQA streaming, on a good system, the woman is there, right in front of you.

At Sound by Singer, at 242 East Twenty-seventh Street, I heard a relatively modest system ($22,000) delivering the goods by MQA and other streaming formats, controlled by an iPad and running through the Aurender A10 and the (Italian) Norma Revo 140 IPA Integrated amp ($8,000), and ending with a hearty and fatigue-free pair of speakers, the Endeavor E-3 MkII ($8,000), which are the best-sounding speakers I’ve heard in that price range. But all of this is possibly just the beginning of the MQA bounty. The major record labels have agreed to allow their master tapes to be re-coded. And the founders of MQA—don’t ask me to explain this—claim that the new codec could be applied to old recordings, which could then be streamed or downloaded to portable devices outfitted to receive MQA. In other words, not just great availability but extraordinary sound could be lodged in your hand.

 

[HalSF]

15 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

I read that. It was not a great piece of writing. I mean, the way he waxed poetic was a little sickening. BUT, and this is the big thing, it wasn't a review but a report on the audiophile hobby.

True enough, but even though I’m someone who thinks people have been unjustifiably losing their minds over MQA as a supposedly monstrous scam, I found the presentation of MQA’s sonic wonderfulness and scientific glory as settled facts to be over-the-top and mildly alarming. It definitely seems like a win for audiophile magical thinking even if it has no real influence one way or another in the long run.

[HalSF]

4 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Source(s)?

 

The source is the Damon Runyon dialogue from the gangster planet episode of Star Trek.

 

[HalSF]

33 minutes ago, fung0 said:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong... but I seem to recall that, once upon a time in this thread, a number of people claimed that such a thing as an "MQA CD" would never exist. Just goes to show that "never" is never as far in the future as we might hope.

 

"...With no MQA designation on the album cover or disc..."

 

Just gets better and better.

For the first time I'm not just skeptical about MQA but I'm sort of aghast — the horribly confusing and unlabeled insertion of MQA into the context of an historically important classical release mastered by someone as esteemed as Bob Ludwig seems like a big deal, and not in a good way. It has a hint of the looming force-feeding that MQA alarmists have been kvetching about. A line is being crossed. 

 

Reading the Jason Victor Serinus review heralding this and then the comment thread that unsuccessfully tries to untangle how the heck MQA is operating on this CD is a total utter trainwreck. Every attempt to straighten this out and explain what MQA is doing and how comes across like guesswork and gobbledygook. 

 

Not to mention that Serinus's implication that the 99% of buyers who are going to listen to this CD without an MQA DAC will be hearing an inferior version seems like the opposite of a good sales pitch, assuming it was true. 

[HalSF]

5 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Of the many many qualities of MQA, one is that it is just PCM. Why would you tell the consumer anything otherwise? 

 

...

 

If MQA gets any traction at all there are going to be a lot more I told you so's...

So you understand what's going on with MQA on this CD? Please explain it to me because I couldn't be more confused. 

[HalSF]

17 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

MQA's sights are set on much larger targets now. Think 10s of millions of users with each licensee.

 

 

I still think that ship has sailed, foundered, hit an uncharted reef, and is dead in the water.

 

But maybe you know something we don't know? I hope not!

 

Every couple of months I take these rumblings of imminent MQA hegemony via a major MQA licensing play to heart, and go searching for indications that something is about to break. Just now I spent some time Google searching, looking at MQA's own News and Events page, checking out the Community posts at Spotify, etc.  

 

Crickets.

 

Where is the MQA streaming that 7digital was building for Hdtracks, for example? I can't find it. Will it ever launch?

 

Or the exciting alliance with Oppo? Oops.

 

Meanwhile, it's difficult to imagine any responsible music or streaming corporation doing its due diligence on MQA and not recoiling from the level of toxic skepticism and hostility MQA attracts. 

 

At a certain point this thread is going to have to actually believe that MQA really is vaporware and always will be, declare victory, and call it a day.

 

If you look at the facts, and set aside anxious hypotheticals, what am I missing?

 

 

 

 

[HalSF]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

I believe I do. 

Yikes.

[HalSF]

14 hours ago, Ajax said:

[Mark Waldrep}:

It's true that some of the strongest advocates in the audiophile press still cling to their "I just like the sound" subjective positions but I've noticed even some of them have recently pulled back....

It's time for those that initially hyped MQA to take another look, read the technical and scientific analysis and back off their unreasoned support. MQA is NOT needed, doesn't deliver fidelity improvements, and actually takes the music distribution business backwards. 
 

 

Art Dudley is covering the Munich show for Stereophile and takes a "controversial" [his word] stand in favor of the "I just like the sound" school of subjective MQA boosters Waldrep is referencing. Art is all in with a fairly ringing endorsement calculated to inspire a renewed Brinkman Shipstorm of ridicule in this thread:

 

Quote

 

Knowing that Wilson Audio brought to Munich a full three pairs of the company's new Alexia 2 loudspeaker ($65,000/pair; watch for John Atkinson's review in the July Stereophile), and hopeful of hearing at least one of those pairs, I steered toward the room sponsored by digital specialists dCS ltd. My reasoning: on that system, I would also be able to hear back-to-back comparisons of MQA and non-MQA versions of the same music files, derived from recordings made by Wilson Audio's Peter McGrath.

 

The less controversial of my two take-aways: driven by a Dan D'Agostino Momentum stereo amplifier and fed by a dCS Rossini DAC ($24,000) and Rossini clock ($7500)—the system also included the brand-new Rossini SACD/CD transport ($22,000)—the new Alexias sounded effortless, and harked back to the unapologetically pretty tonal balance of Wilson's Sophia 2 loudspeaker, which until now was my favorite of the brand's creations: I left the room thinking more about the music I had heard than the gear.

 

The conclusion that may sit less well with some: all of the four abbreviated selections I heard—two different piano recordings, a string quartet, and a recording by Renée Fleming, with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, of one of Strauss's Four Last Songs—sounded better in their MQA versions. The two piano recordings seemed to benefit the most—the sense of touch was more apparent, and more human—and although the Fleming-Tilson Thomas file also sounded more focused, musically and spatially, I also admit that the music making was so over-the-top gorgeous that the sonic distinctions, though real and in MQA's favor, mattered less to me. Still, in four out of four cases, MQA's aptly described de-blurring was an unambiguous improvement.

 

Speak of the devils (just a figure of speech!), here are Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio (left) and Bob Stuart of MQA (right), seen here taking a break from all things audio and chatting about another mutual passion, photography.

 

Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/arts-thursday-munich-part-two#qvtTYf0kHyvrQfCl.99

 

 

[HalSF]

10 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I recently heard something so surprising that I'm trying to back it up with other sources. Trust me, if I can back this up, it isn't good news for MQA. This is the opposite of the other news that I hinted at that would be great for MQA. 

Currently experiencing severe cliffhanger anxiety. 

[HalSF]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

They definitely are willing to fight for their turf, their perceived authority.  One good thing that I think is coming out of their MQA overreach is what Chris C. is reporting - behind the scenes and off the record the vast majority of these trade publication customers (i.e. the manufacturers and service providers who advertise in Stereophile, TAS, typical Audiophile web zine, etc.) are not liking what MQA is and what it demands of them on just a business level - to say nothing of its lack of technical substance.  

 

I really feel for these manufacturers, as they are between a rock and a hard place.

I'm getting a bit of mental whiplash envisioning the hi-fi makers who advertise in Stereophile and its cohort — the same advertisers repeatedly depicted in this thread as powerful agents of corruption whose shilling the magazines must do at the expense of their readers — now portrayed sympathetically as hapless casualties of the MQA juggernaut.

 

There definitely is a crisis of audiophile authority, however. The same loop keeps playing over and over again: MQA makes extraordinary claims; seems incapable of offering extraordinary proof beyond abstruse jargon and scientism; while subjective audiophiles insist MQA sounds amazing in brief, carefully controlled show demos; as MQA defenders making drive-by rebuttals focus on technical quibbles and the bad manners of MQA opponents, but decline to engage directly in good faith with sincere critics on the substance of their dissent. In this context Jim Austin's fundamentally noncommittal dispatches just punt the controversy until next month's issue, and nothing definitive is ever clarified.

 

The only two things that would make this impasse break in MQA's favor — strong peer-review endorsements by independent audio engineers and a wave of un-hyped enthusiasm from hi-fi listeners — are things MQA seems incapable of making happen. And an MQA end run via some major licensing  deal imposing MQA from above would likely be a Pyrrhic victory, further poisoning the atmosphere and exacerbating the crisis of trust.

 

No wonder everybody is getting more edgy and irritable.

[HalSF]

15 hours ago, Jim Austin said:

MQA may be an illusion--the test is in the listening--but if so it's a far more sophisticated, plausible, and intellectually compelling illusion [edit: than the Intelligent Chip].

 

I'm still struck by the way that @Jim Austin is ferociously arguing against the railroading of MQA but remains, as far as I can tell, agnostic about whether or not it actually sounds better — as I said in an earlier post, he's fundamentally noncommittal about its ultimate validity as a hi-fi SQ innovation. How someone can be so passionately invested and argumentative while also shrugging, "MQA may be an illusion," is a deep mystery. 

 

Man, you chill for a couple of days away from the "MQA Is Vaporware" thread and suddenly the Mother of All Audiophile Flame Wars breaks out while you were gone. 

[HalSF]

1 hour ago, Jim Austin said:

if the payoff is high enough--incontrovertibly superior sound--then I personally would be willing to make the sacrifice, and I think a lot of other people are, too

 

I can't stop harping on the weirdness of you putting this crucial matter of MQA sound quality in the conditional tense.

 

"If"? If at this late date you of all people can't ante up and endorse MQA having "incontrovertibly superior sound," what's the point of fighting for it and about it? It's the ultimate factor that determines good faith in this whole stupendous debate. 

 

I see that the ancillary issues @crenca is mentioning are also important, but actually taking the "setting aside the unresolved question of MQA SQ" approach seems nuts to me. 

[HalSF]

4 hours ago, fung0 said:

 

Mr. Atkinson, many of us greatly appreciate your willingness to engage with the discussion here. But you should understand that when confronted with seemingly irrational behavior, it is very tempting to come up with irrational explanations.

• The instantaneous whole-hearted acclamation of MQA by the audiophile press was hard to understand on any rational basis.
• The ongoing readiness of the audiophile press to accept MQA claims at face value is equally difficult to explain, especially when the company has - for years now - failed to provide the obvious double-blind A/B testing data that might provide a shred of empirical support for its extravagant theoretical claims.
• The ongoing refusal of the audiophile press to engage with, let alone publish, legitimate technical criticisms of MQA borders on the bizarre. One manufacturer after another adopts a restrictive, secretive technology, yet only CA has published a proper technical critique.
• The often over-the-top emotional responses of MQA-supporting journalists, when challenged on this forum, have been odd, to say the least. To be sure, flames will beget flames. But it is not usual to see professional journalists so personally invested in what is, after all, just another commercial, proprietary technology.

Personally, I've never believed that cash changed hands. But there is something happening here that can't be readily explained by the workings of traditional journalism.

The one thing I find slightly irrational about this list of irrationalities is the idea that @John_Atkinson, who has a long well-established, and exhaustively explained skeptical hostility toward double-blind testing as an tool for evaluating hi-fi technology, should be concerned about MQA failing to sponsor double-blind A/B testing of its sound. That's on MQA, not John Atkinson.

[HalSF]

18 hours ago, fung0 said:

 

Wouldn't reviewing high-tech products while maintaining public "hostility" to basic scientific methods be even more irrational than anything on my list?

You may disagree with him, but @John_Atkinson has written and spoken in great detail about what he thinks are the flaws in double-blind testing of hi-fi gear. His arguments are quite interesting, though I know that saying so doesn't fit the Heroes and Villains gamesmanship of the thread.

 

Like the weather, everybody talks about double-blind testing but nobody does anything about it. Because it's *incredibly* difficult and expensive to do it even half-right.

[HalSF]

I'd like to hear more about how double-blind audio testing of hi-fi technology is not only the scientific gold standard, but is easy to routinely design and execute in a way that filters out all unwanted variables, and is a practical and cost-effective way for for-profit consumer publications to evaluate audio hardware and software. And why Computer Audiophile, for example, is not a worthless hack site for failing to exclusively use an ABX standard in evaluating audio tech.

[HalSF]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

 

you and HalSF and JA can start a new thread on how to design DBTs properly - in your preliminary Literature Survey, please cite the work done by Magneplanar, JBL, and various famous designers who have used these controlled listening tests

Speaker manufacturers are an interesting subset of blind testing because designing speakers is one case where even the strictest objectivists tend to acknowledge that good speaker sound is as much an art as a science. Measurements and accuracy as the ultimate arbiters of performance can quickly get complicated by preferences and matters of taste and tuning.

[HalSF]

6 hours ago, Don Hills said:

 

Journalists tend to have certain character traits. One of them is to never admit being wrong.

 

I admire the way this invective retails a beloved trope of authoritarians and cynics everywhere — that the practice of ethical journalism is inherently corrupted by a depraved characterological tendency toward dishonesty and lack of accountability. Basically that there's a professional license to lie, and no meaningful mechanisms for self-correction.

 

The audacity is embracing this box-of-rocks obliviousness in the face of the millions of routine and major corrections and apologies that incessantly pour out of news organizations, not to mention successful libel lawsuits, firings of bad reporters, and scandals when journalists get major stories wrong.

 

But if beating MQA requires sliming good journalists everywhere, go for it.

[HalSF]

22 hours ago, crenca said:

 

 

Are you a journalist HalSF? ?

 

I agree with you here, I don't see a crude narcissism as a character trait more common in journalists than say, cooks - on the contrary.

 

Guilty as charged. I was a magazine editor (The New Yorker, Outside) for many years and continue to write for various (non-audio) rags 'n sites. I started as a fact checker at The New Yorker and acquired quite a few gray hairs trying to help reporters get things right.

[HalSF]

Just jumping in to do one of my periodic reality checks, asking what new inroads or signs of wider adoption or success MQA is achieving. 

 

Last time I did so, about six weeks ago,  @The Computer Audiophile replied that he had heard about an imminent deal that would be a major step forward for MQA.

 

Unless I missed something, however, nothing significant has actually happened since then.

 

Things can turn around in an instant, or course, but my guess is that with every passing week and month that MQA merely treads water, the less likely any kind of great leap forward becomes.

[HalSF]

11 hours ago, shtf said:

I’m curious.  Whatever happened to Sterophile’s Jim Austin?  It’s like he appeared briefly 6 weeks ago to sway or conquer, failed , then disappeared just as quickly. 

 

Come to think of it, I get the impression that like Austin, some others from the magazines behave in much the same manner.  Kinda’ like a Muhammad Ali strike and move damage controlling strategy.

 

But I’ve no doubt they’re all reading every post in this thread just waiting for the next opportune time to strike.  And of course then disappear again. 

 

I have my own speculations but I’m dying to know what really has motivated the magazines to behave in this highly unusual way.  Can anybody think of any other product or technology introduced to high-end audio where the magazines developed what seems almost like a swat team tag team mentality?  We're talking long term mind you, like 3.5 years long thus far.

 

 

To be honest things in general have been pretty slow in this thread lately — a good thing IMO, insofar as it reinforces the probability that MQA has run out of new moves and is dead in the water

[HalSF]

The problem is, there’s no MQA news to talk about, protest, extoll, get exercised about, or vilify. 

 

[HalSF]

MQA — “It’s Toasted"

 

[HalSF]

Just did my latest perodic check-in at the News and Events page at the MQA website, along with a general online search for notable developments, coverage, and discussions (including this thread's recent non-urgent, meanderingly off-topic circlings around the fate of this technology). A blanket of amotivational syndrome has descended. 

 

My confidence that MQA is kaput is currently at an all-time high.

[HalSF]

With maximum skepticism, I can barely maybe imagine Apple *acquiring* MQA if they thought the engineering and SQ were legit, and were willing to demonstrate why. 

 

What I seriously can't imagine is Apple embracing MQA licensing, thus siccing the entire rabid global horde of the Apple tech press on the so-far obscure toxic scandal vibe surrounding MQA, blowing it up into a major controversy about audiophile snake oil and yes, vaporware.