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MQA is Vaporware


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4 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Aja has been a bit of a white whale for me for decades.  So much that I've been able to track the tape dropout in the words "you were high" in Black Cow in masterings from the original LP to all the masterings since (the tape dropout is more pronounced with each successive pass).

 

I haven't heard the MQA CD as I have no way to decode it.  And besides, I thought MQA CD has mathematically less resolution than Redbook CD (is this incorrect?).

 

From what I understand, yes the MQA CDs are lossy, just like MQA, more broadly. Unfortunately, it’s not a dual-layer situation, where there’s a redbook layer and an MQA layer. You can rip the CD in XLD, but the result is an MQA FLAC. All you do is change the filename extension to make it “unfold” in Audirvana, for example. 

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2 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

Interesting update @FredericV. Curious how large the conference/show is? 

 

So is Hans Beekhuyzen a well-known figure among the Dutch audiophiles over the years and before his YouTube videos? He seems to be one of these guys who have lots of words and his main job is to spread uncertainty by generalizing about "cheap" vs. expensive parts, push certain products, and scare people about "jitter" and such. Funny how he's starting to equivocate about the generalization he has tended to hold about switching vs. linear power supplies in recent video on "What makes a good DAC?". I cringe every time I hear him say at the end of his videos that supporting him financially keeps him "independent and therefore trustworthy". I think those are very different things.

 

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

+100, no matter who the person is. 
 

Independent = Independent 

Trustworthy = Trustworthy 

 

There’s no other equation or logic to use that involves both of those and includes a causal relationship or correlation. 
 

 

 

Exactly. We can debate whether advertising or donations is more likely to facilitate independence, but there's nothing inherent in donations that creates independence. If that were so, all politicians' views would be completely independent! In the case of donor-supported internet publications, donations can potentially incentivize playing to the prejudices of donors, just as advertising might potentially lead to favoring the products of advertisers. (IMHO, the former is the case with ASR's Schiit-bashing and general disdain for anything perceived as popular among "audiophiles.")

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9 minutes ago, mansr said:

I suspect Amir's bizarre stance on MQA is due to some kind of misplaced sympathy rooted in his own failure to gain traction for WMA combined with an absurd notion that every venture somehow deserves to succeed, no matter how insane. Like Lee Scoggins, he keeps talking about "business" while completely ignoring the technical realities he (unlike Scoggins) otherwise purports to espouse. As jarring as the dissonance is, perhaps his system is not sufficiently resolving for him to perceive it.

 

kenan thompson set your phasers to oh snap GIF by Saturday Night Live

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I’m not sure whether here or the comments on @Archimago’s article is the best place to ask this, but is there a definitive answer on if and how resolution is compromised on MQA CDs if one doesn’t allow any “unfolding”?
 

My understanding from the rest of this thread is that MQA-CDs are effectively 15/44.1, with that last bit being used for the MQA gobbledygook. So if one doesn’t unfold it, is the compromise just the loss of potential dynamic range by sacrificing the 16th bit? Or is the MQA encoding process doing some deeper damage?

 

I ask because I’m disturbed that quite a few very good masterings now exist only on MQA-CDs. In the past, I suspect they would’ve been issued in dual Redbook/SACD formats. 

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13 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

I have found the UHQCD's to be hit and miss really. And why put a lossy compression up against CD. If I had wanted a lossy system, instead of CD's, well MP3 is the way to go AND I don't have to have specialized software/hardware for it.

 

Do you see how stupid the idea is?


Yes. For me, at least, I think the trouble becomes how to understand what an MQA CD is doing relative to a Redbook CD. Hence my original question. 
 

When the original source is Redbook or hi-res, and it’s converted to MQA, we know it’s using perceptual compression to throw away information. When the only source is an MQA CD, I just don’t quite understand what is going on with regard to the data. It’s lossy versus a hypothetical Redbook CD. But how lossy?
 

Is the MQA CD essentially a 15/44.1 CD if one doesn’t unfold it — meaning that we’re losing some dynamic range, though not a catastrophic amount? Or is something even more damaging going on? I know I prefer the sound of the MQA CDs un-decoded, largely because I don’t like the minimum phase/perceptual encoding/etc sound of unfolded MQA.
 

But I’m very curious about how different the data on an undecoded MQA CD is versus if it were a simple Redbook CD. Have you dug into this @Archimago

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3 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

How do you know "they've successfully identified" anything?! Is that any different from 320kbps MP3 also "successfully identified" all the content that's inaudible such that in fact in blind tests, most people would not be able to tell a difference?

 

Since MQA-CD is not hi-res or even equivalent to 16/44.1 resolution, the real choice for physical media is actually between CD and vinyl these days for many albums. SACD releases are rather few if you're into new music.

 

If we ever lose the choice of just a standard unmolested CD and only have MQA-CD releases, that would be a rather tragic situation. And one that anti-MQA folks have been warning about since the beginning.

 

 

Show me ONE example of a MQA-CD that has "lossless-like performance up to 96 kHz". If you honestly think this is factually true, you obviously do not know what you're talking about.

 

The difference between undecoded MQA-CD and decoded MQA-CD was shown here years ago:

MUSINGS: On DRM, MQA, the (supposed) Techno-Libertarian opposition, and Honesty... [Plus a quick look at MQA-CD]

As completely predictable, MQA-CD does not actually decode anything of value beyond 22.1kHz (much less up to 96kHz). There's not enough bits to encode even lossy content. All it did was use the poor filters to allow imaging distortion to seep past Nyquist to make it look like there might be something up there in the so-called "rendering" process. Cough... Cough... Scam... Cough...

 

 

What's happening to the sound is simply a good remastering process at best (Radka Toneff's Fairytales might be such an example), and distortion added to the encoding at worst. Nothing here that a 16/44.1 RedBook CD could not achieve with a good playback DAC that doesn't bow to MQA's filter dictates.

 

As for time-domain "correction". First, there is simply no need anyways since standard 16/44.1 resolution already has 110ps resolution. Whether MQA encoding is actually capable of improving time-domain performance then is academic, and even there we cannot get answers from MQA themselves.

 

To believe that 16/44.1 is incapable of complete, perceptually "perfect", time-domain performance for human hearing (when properly decoded with a good DAC of course) is an extraordinary claim. To use a fun analogy, it's like saying that all of us music lovers/audiophiles living in this community did not notice for all these years that in fact Bigfoot has been prowling around our neighbourhood and he's causing us troubles; that's why we don't "love" the neighbourhood as much as we should! Apparently, MQA claims to have captured Bigfoot and even figured out how to "fix" him from causing troubles for us all! :-)

 

As a skeptical paranormal investigator, all I see at best is a system that ultimately is a type of 24-bit 44.1/48kHz PCM-compatible data format with some instructions for a proprietary lossy decode that results in 96kHz PCM output, noise shaping, and dithering. And a "rendering" process that plays with different types of malformed filters with impulse responses as demonstrated here to upsample stuff to 176.4/192+kHz. [At worst, it looks like 16/44.1 MQA-CD that wasted at least one of our bits in the 16-bit data and still used those malformed filters in playback!]

 

Notice that NONE of these impulse responses show linear phase behaviour. So by definition, we are looking at phase shifts (time-domain anomalies) being introduced into the playback in the "rendering" process. How MQA then achieve even better time-domain performance out of doing this is a mystery that MQA (aka the "Bigfoot fixers") will need to provide evidence for.

 

For years, all I've seen from MQA are badly degraded bear/deer/moose/mountain goat footprints in the snow. But MQA and folks like Peter Veth among the neighborhood still insist that Bigfoot has in fact been caught and "fixed"!!! Yet they refuse to even release a high-res photo of Bigfoot much less a strand of hair for DNA analysis! I think they're just wishing that the skeptical paranormal investigators would give up at this point...

 

"MQA-CD is going to be the only high-res format available" - Again, MQA-CD is not hi-resolution. By definition it cannot be. I don't know why you don't seem to (or want to?) understand this.


Thank you for linking to your post. It looks like not decoding/“unfolding” MQA CDs allows for using a steep linear filter, thereby avoiding aliasing (and phase issues).


What I’d like to know is what differences exist between the same mastering in Redbook versus undecoded/“unfolded” MQA CD? How much resolution are we losing?

 

Are there any MQA CDs out there that also exist in a Redbook version so that this can be compared?

 

Right now, I’m just disturbed and frustrated that there are some really good masterings of Steely Dan, Dire Straits, and a few other artists I like that seem to only exist on MQA CDs. 
 

I have an MQA CD of Donald Fagen’s Nightfly coming in for one of my TBVO columns, and I believe it’s from an existing mastering. The question is whether it’s a mastering that’s been released on Redbook CD to allow for a comparison. We shall see...

 

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On 2/8/2021 at 9:26 AM, Cebolla said:

 

Yes - there are some free individual track downloads that you can compare (as well as 'standard' hi-res MQA & other formats/resolutions), available from 2L's hi-res test bench:

http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html

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Very interesting. I’m going to have to investigate these in @pkane2001’s software and some other tools.

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3 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

Given how they dodged questions and attempted to desperately divert the conversation in your 2018 rmaf talk (which I discuss a little in the video, hope you don't mind), I didn't really expect anything different. Hence why I made backups :) 


Congrats on this brilliant maneuver. I see you’ve already shared on Head-Fi, and your posts are making the rounds on other sites, too. I can’t wait to watch your video.

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9 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

The facts, and JA's own words point to the scenario that they through "journalism" out the window, and provided zero critical thinking to the snake oil that was being peddled. It also clearly showed that Atkinson and his cohorts had their interests aligned with the industry, and not the consumer.

 

Let's re-examine a few beauties....if we may..  Many more can be found.

 

"I believe that this time-domain behavior is responsible for the superb sound quality I heard at the Meridian dem. As I wrote, I have sent Bob some of my own hi-rez files for MQA mastering, so that I will be able to compare the sound of the MQA version both with the original files and with the "Red Book" baseband version on a non-MQA DAC."

 

"As MQA needs to be applied at the mastering stage in a recording's production, it doesn't improve the sound quality of your existing CD collection. It is really only relevant to downloads."

 

"...the impulse response of the complete system, from ADC to DAC, had been adjusted to be of the order of the sensitivity of the human ear-brain"

 

He DID get one thing right!!

 

This is conjecture on my part but there is a huge commercial benefit for the record industry with MQA that is not true about FLAC etc: the record company will no longer be selling a duplicate of their master.."

 

All above from the comments section of his infamous post where he heard "the birth of a new world".

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ive-heard-future-streaming-meridians-mqa

 

 

 

 


Did JA ever get the files back? Was that comparison ever written up?

 

I’m still just struggling to understand how anyone believed processing existing PCM into MQA was going to create something better than the input file. 

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On 4/23/2021 at 1:13 AM, Archimago said:


I’m a proud pinko who supports a generous welfare state for individuals, but it’s pretty clear PPP provided opportunities for businesses to game the system and wasn’t very effective at saving jobs. The goal was to prevent employers from laying people off, even temporarily, which would’ve spiked the unemployment rate. However, it arguably would’ve been better to just let the unemployment rate go up. If that was to be avoided at all costs, there were “paycheck guarantee”-type options that would’ve sent money from the government directly to employees while requiring businesses to nominally keep them on the payroll and begin paying them their previous salary when the pandemic’s effects ebbed. In short, color me dubious that PPP “saved” jobs.  

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