MQA is Vaporware

[bmoura]

I think Tidal is going to charge you something extra to stream MQA. I was told by MQA representatives at RMAF 2016 that it would cost $40 a month.

$40 a month including Standard Tidal service - or $40 per month on top of Standard Tidal ?

[bmoura]

With respect to content, it will help put this into perspective if we compare MQA to DSD. Not technically, but the amount of content. You said, "As of today there is no music in the genres 80% of American buy, Rock, R&B/Hip Hop, Pop and Country. Add Latin and EDM and you are at about 9 out of ten people buying music in America have no MQA encoded music to purchase." I believe we could replace the letters MQA with the letters DSD and end up in the same place.

Acoustic Sounds lists their DSD Downloads by genre/category. They are indeed listing DSD titles in those categories, and more....

 

DSD Downloads By Genre (28)

=======================

Classical (252)

Jazz (244)

Pop/Rock (88)

Blues (44)

Female Vocalists (22)

Folk Rock (21)

R&B/Soul (12)

World (10)

Soundtrack (6)

Guitar (4)

Easy Listening (4)

Country (4)

Folk (3)

Alternative (3)

Vocals (3)

Organ (3)

Christmas/Holiday (2)

Bluegrass (2)

Blues-Rock (2)

Piano (1)

Metal (1)

Singer/Songwriter (1)

Swing (1)

Male Vocalist (1)

Percussion (1)

Sampler (1)

Zydeco (1)

Latin (1)

 

Vinyl Records, SACDs, DVD Audio, Audiophile Equipment|Acoustic Sounds

[bmoura]

My main thought about MQA is that in the couple of years they have been trying to get their act together computer audio has progressed further and I wonder if their window of opportunity hasn't passed by already. Now I see them scrambling to try and find a use in today's market for their old tech.

The continuing drop in storage costs does make encoding systems like MQA questionable in value and need.

[bmoura]

And then already long ago removed DRM from the music content in order for the iTunes music store to really take off...

 

I have purchased new, non-DRM protected hires Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, etc music content, no MQA either, don't need it.

 

I don't need "authentication", especially because I can already see from the few MQA hires files I have that some are plain upsamples of 44.1k content. I also especially don't need technologies that are designed to prevent things like digital room correction, digital headphone cross-feed/3D processing, etc.

 

Plus, comparing the original non-MQA versions to the decoded MQA versions, one can conclude that it is lossy and really obviously not the original. Even more, without decoder there's quite severe quality degradation.

With 44.1k content, that defeats the original purpose of MQA which was said to offer a way to encode and then decode PCM files recorded at resolutions above 44.1k (88.2k, 96k).

[bmoura]

On 1/18/2018 at 7:50 AM, Dr Tone said:

I just found the following snippet in the Stereophile review of the Aurender A10.

 

We discovered that prior to applying the MQA firmware update earlier this year, MQA had recommended that we adopt using MQA up-sampling for all content in order to eliminate possible issues with click or pop noises when switching between non-MQA and MQA content. After some discussion with Alan at MQA about this, he had the following comment: 'The MQA decoder provides an optional up-sampler for PCM to simplify implementation and to enable a smooth, clean, click-free user experience. The reason this is offered is that the implementer may not know if the incoming stream is MQA and so the decoder is used to detect MQA and to provide a seamless switch to the usually higher output rate. By using Upsample Always, the user-experience is guaranteed to be accurate from the first sample of an MQA song and also to be free of clicks and pops if the user skips within a song or if there are cross-fades between songs.

Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/aurender-a10-network-music-playerserver-measurements#hQJtAPr6yk2L6e6T.99

 

Might be better to stay away from any DAC that does MQA period.

 

That sounds like very good advice.  Stay away from any DAC - or any DAC's ROM upgrade - that does MQA.

(Also explains why PS Audio is handling MQA in their Bridge product vs. in their DirectStream DAC).

https://www.psaudio.com/askpaul/mqa-is-it-any-good/

 

[bmoura]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

As promised, I connected my iFi Nano to a logic analyser and took some captures with firmwares 5.20 and 5.30.

 

First, I looked at the I2C bus controlling the DAC and headphone amp. For all the plain PCM and DSD formats, the exact same settings are used with both firmware versions. The PCM data also reaches the DAC chip unchanged. In other words, non-MQA playback is not affected by the firmware update (aside from the loss of the highest rates on the micro iDSD).

 

Moving on to MQA, it is handled by placing the DAC in digital filter bypass mode at 384 kHz and applying the MQA resampling filters using the XMOS processor. By tapping the PCM input to the DAC, I was able to extract the impulse responses of each of the 16 MQA filters. As the MQA resampler dithers its output to 20-bit resolution (at best, most real files ask for 16-bit), I averaged a few hundred impulses to improve the accuracy. Comparing these impulses responses to those from the Bluesound firmware, they all match to better than 23 bits precision. What a surprise, two devices using different DAC chips (DSD1793 and PCM5122) and different line drivers somehow end up with exactly the same uniquely tailored filters. What are the odds of that? Surely the expensive calibration process isn't just a sham.

 

From the firmware download page for the iDSD Micro BL and iDSD Micro, it says that the downsides of changing from 5.20 to 5.30 are: 

• SPDIF output deleted (MQA does not do SPDIF pass through).
• For optimised DSD512/PCM768, please use firmware v5.20.

I'm wondering what happens with the future iFi Audio products like the iDSD Pro where they presumably will be released with 5.30. 

 

Does that mean no "optimized" PCM 768, DSD 512 and above features?  

Hmm....

 

[bmoura]

26 minutes ago, mansr said:

This is either incompetence, laziness, or overreaching by MQA. Of course upsampled MQA won't be output over S/PDIF, but there's absolutely no reason to remove this feature for non-MQA input. With MQA input, the natural thing would be to pass it through to the S/PDIF output while upsampling for the analogue output. For a company like iFi/AMR that's constantly bragging about their engineering prowess, this firmware release is nothing short of an embarrassment.

 

It means no PCM 768 or DSD 512 at all. I suppose that can be seen as a special case of "not optimised."

 

That's what I was wondering.  Are PCM 768 and DSD 512 not "optimized" (probably wouldn't want to use such features unless they were optimized) or are they gone altogether?  From your research, it looks like they are gone altogether. 

 

Not what I would consider being a ROM "upgrade"!