MQA is Vaporware

[opus101]

2 hours ago, Shadders said:

I have yet to simulate an 8th order elliptical filter - so i assume that this is what MQA is supposed to address - the temporal smearing of the signal due to the phase changes across the frequency band ?

What are you using for simulation? I've simmed some elliptic filters (7th order) in LTspice, one or two examples are shown in this thread - http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?8858-Digital-that-sounds-like-analog&p=154399&viewfull=1#post154399

[opus101]

17 minutes ago, Charles Hansen said:

Like I said Chris, we must live in different worlds.

 

I take it as axiomatic that everybody does indeed live in their own perceptual bubble. A single over arching 'world' must of course exist but nobody knows anything at all about it.

[opus101]

1 minute ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

We sure do. I can't imagine living a life dealing with all of your business partners as if they were "the enemy" and out to get you.

 

'That's perfectly normal paranoia. everyone in the universe has that' (Douglas Adams).

[opus101]

4 hours ago, FredericV said:

They use an FPGA and forward correction to do this. This creative argument has also been said about MSB, one Dutch designer who is well respected told me the measurements of MSB are impossible. The select DAC claimed to do something like 26.5 ENOB, which is very close to Metrum's -155 dB SNR. I don't have the lab gear to verify these measurements.

 

 

And neither do they as they seem to be based on a mis-reading of an FFT. Its common to find even fairly experienced engineers reading the FFT spat out by their AP and pointing to where the 'grass' is and saying that's their noise floor. They're blissfully unaware that the figure they get depends on the bin width in their FFT. 26.5 ENOBs sounds quite feasible if the bandwidth under consideration is narrower than 2Hz. Ditto for Metrum's claimed '-155dB' SNR.

[opus101]

9 minutes ago, mansr said:

He got defensive when a bunch of people here jumped all over him telling him he sucked because some recent pop releases he mastered didn't have a DR rating of 17 or more. Yes, he was a bit angry. Any reasonable person would be in that situation.

 

Ah this must be some strange new usage of the word 'reasonable' that I wasn't previously aware of.

[opus101]

8 minutes ago, beetlemania said:

 

So, yes, it's reasonable that he was angered.

 

Not with any normal meaning of the word 'reasonable'.  A reasonable person can be reasoned with - that's being reason-able. An angered man cannot.

 

Uninformed criticisms of a professional's work are simply laughable to any reasonable person. Not to be taken seriously enough to elicit anger.

[opus101]

7 minutes ago, esldude said:

You are leaving out his saying those who disagreed with his mastering were old. 

 

And snobs too. He appeared to have an inability to accept differences of taste. To him, a person saying a particular artist or art form wasn't to one's taste meant in his world that you despised (rather than merely did not choose) that option. That's a fairly pernicious perceptual distortion.

[opus101]

7 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

  I will try to talk to Bruno and get his concerns as well.

 

Bruno's already made his view clear on Facebook, and his post has been copied around. For example here on Gearslutz (3rd post down) : https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/1182692-mqa-practicalities-print.html

 

Snippet from Bruno, 'these folk' are MQA :

 

These folk are trying to have their cake and eat it. Either aliasing doesn't matter because there is no signal in the transition band and then the precise shape of the transition band doesn't matter either (ie the ring tails have no conceivable manifestation) or the absence of ring tails is critical because there is signal in that region and then the aliasing will result in audible components that fly in the face of MQA's transparency claims.

[opus101]

11 hours ago, Fokus said:

Given a 192kHz recording. It will have ringing at 96kHz, because it has been produced with an industry-standard half-band AA filter in the ADC.

 

Its important to recognize that this ringing isn't a given. There's the theoretical possibility of ringing because of the steepness of the AAF, but to get ringing in practice you need to have frequency content at the ringing frequency in the material to kick it off. Bells need to be struck in order to ring and ring-y filters need to be struck with the right frequency.

 

The upshot is - if there's no 96kHz content in the recording there will be no ringing evident.

[opus101]

Just now, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I don’t believe this is how it works.

 

Who do you get your beliefs from?

[opus101]

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 That is a bit like saying we don’t like DSD because it is pulse width modulation.

 

Are you aware that it isn't PWM?

[opus101]

2 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 I said MQA encryption is part and parcel of the folding.

 

I can't see how this can be, would you be able to explain? Seems that we'd need noise-like characteristics for the lowest 8 bits so that undecoded playback isn't affected much (though truncation to 16bits would probably work even better) but how does folding entail encryption?

[opus101]

1 hour ago, Fokus said:

But in MQA's view the ringing is a given. After all, they are the Ring Busters.

 

Right. So let's see if Lee can have a shot at answering this point. @Lee Scoggins, are you following along? You've already said you believe our view (that would be mine and Fokus' view, along with Bruno and most probably Rob Watts, I see esldude has 'liked' my comment so let's include him too) is mistaken, how have we mis-grasped this please?

[opus101]

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 And MQA is not worse than CD quality.

 

As its fewer bits-worth when not decoded, on what basis are you making this claim? Some support for this (to me outrageous) claim would be appreciated.

[opus101]

6 hours ago, Fair Hedon said:

If you want some laughs, see his latest posts on his Hoffman thread. Hysterical. he is asking for "logic" based arguments with "evidence".  LOL.

 

I just did, agree - the irony is particularly rich. I've asked a few direct questions requesting precisely those things from him in the past day or so and the crickets have been deafening, the tumbleweeds so engaging...

[opus101]

2 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Our insights saved them $50 per quarter...

 

As far as I can see, changing their coffee supplier likely could have netted them more.

[opus101]

That's certainly a large difference to an engineer, 120dB.

[opus101]

34 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

Your posts have become beyond ridiculous. 

 

More ridiculous than the posts themselves is the lack of posts - i.e. complete absence of any answer (even an acknowledgement) to the highly pertinent question of ringing.

[opus101]

Yet seemingly content to introduce complete irrelevancies (such as his customers' savings as a result of his consulting work).

[opus101]

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Hey jackass, that was a direct response to a comment about my consulting work.

 

That makes it relevant to a thread on MQA? Really?

[opus101]

10 minutes ago, firedog said:

Look, he was asked about it so he answered.

 

I see no question in the post that comment appeared in, merely one or two statements akin to 'consultants are parasites'.

 

I also see no 'need to attack him personally' but I feel its important to highlight the inconsistency in his behaviour evident here - that Lee has time and energy for what seem to me to be irrelevancies and yet no time and no energy for the relevant questions.

[opus101]

I guessed it could just be yet another irrelevancy. Or perhaps a typo for HDMI (even though the keys I and S are separated by half a keyboard....).

[opus101]

6 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 Earlier my competence as a consultant was questioned.  Given that my consulting work has no bearing on the discussion, why is this necessary? 

 

Why not just ignore the irrelevancies if you find they're bothering you? You're showing on here you're perfectly OK about ignoring things which are highly pertinent. So what gives?

[opus101]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

HDTracks has been very successful.  I have known them since the early 90s and they are good people.

 

FWIW, my customer service experience with them wasn't particularly positive.

[opus101]

10 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

It's become a bit distracting jumping between forums on this subject, so I am posting mostly on Hoffman for now.

 

 

How's the researching going? What resources are you turning to to enhance your knowledge of digital audio?