Popular Post Josh Mound Posted March 27, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted March 27, 2019 I’ve been following this thread (and the MQA debate, more broadly) for years now, and it’s striking to me how MQA defenders have tied themselves into knots with ever-shifting justifications for the format. The “lossless” to “audibly lossless” or “data saving” to “superior sounding” moves discussed here are perfect illustrations. In another notable example, the head honcho over at ASR (putting aside his other debatable flaws) has defended MQA using arguments (subjective preference, appeals to authority, etc.) he otherwise rejects, resulting in a bizarre thread that had to be closed because his own followers were slamming him. I’m neither fully subjectivist nor fully objectivist. For example, I think some DACs that measure “worse” sound better (in part because I don’t think the existing suite of measurements capture all of the relevant info about DAC performance). So, when MQA was introduced, I approached it with an open mind. I was fully willing to believe that there was something to the time domain claims. However, my own critical listening (making sure that masters and levels were the same, etc.) made me skeptical of the format. MQA sounded “different,” but it largely sounded like some type of digital processing that boosted a portion of the high frequencies. It sounded more digital, not less digital, to me. Reading more about the mechanics of the format, including Archimago’s posts here, made me even more skeptical. As time has passed, more and more questions have been raised and few good answers have been offered by MQA’s defenders. Instead, we’ve received a shifting array of justifications. As is unlikely to surprise those of you who’ve read my TBVO columns, the thing that worries me most about MQA is that good masterings may become trapped in the format. For example, as I discuss in the update to my Aja TBVO, the mastering on the new MQA CD is unique and very good. But I’d like to be able to hear it in DSD or PCM (it apparently was transferred in DSD) to compare it to the MQA format. Choice doesn’t bother me. If some people prefer MQA, that’s fine. But once new transfers and masterings start getting released in the MQA format alone, it’s time to worry. tmtomh, Currawong, The Computer Audiophile and 8 others 7 3 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted March 27, 2019 Share Posted March 27, 2019 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. Samuel T Cogley 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted September 29, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 29, 2019 After the MQA thread over at ASR had to be locked months ago because Amir was getting pilloried by his own followers for his blind appeals to authority on behalf of Bob Stuart, Amir has unlocked the thread in order to post more blind appeals to authority and specious arguments on behalf of Rob Harley (and against Archimago). Got to love a proprietor of an audio “science” forum who defends MQA! Thankfully, @mitchco called Amir on it over at ASR. rwdvis, MikeyFresh, crenca and 1 other 2 1 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 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.") 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted September 29, 2019 Share Posted September 29, 2019 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. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted September 29, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 29, 2019 1 hour ago, Dr Tone said: I may or may not have had something to do with that post. 😉 1 hour ago, mansr said: He was some sort of manager in the Microsoft audio group around the time WMA failed rather miserably in the marketplace. He was an executive involved with WMA, DVD-HD, and Zune. If you Google his name with each of those keywords, you’ll find some interesting stuff. Same with searching for his name in the emails made public during the MS DOJ antitrust suit. A quick summary of ASR is: The guy who oversaw MS Zune and WMA retired rich and is now asking people with less money than him to send him money to run a site where he calls other people bad engineers. Had he stayed out of the MQA debate, or come out against it, he could have the veneer of consistency, at least according to his own quixotic definition of “audio science.” But his tedious MQA defenses demolish even that. rwdvis, MikeyFresh, The Computer Audiophile and 1 other 3 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted September 29, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 29, 2019 28 minutes ago, Archimago said: Interesting! Seems like Amir (Chief "Fun" Officer indeed) is getting a little too engrossed in the concept of "authority" and what that means for hobbyists. I don't think anyone is questioning Bob Stuart and his academic CV (okay, maybe a few of you have some concerns with his recent work 😉). Nor has anyone questioned the fact that Harley has been around for awhile and has been involved in many audiophile magazines. However, neither of these things - "academic authority" nor magazine editor experience/"authority" - need be that important when determining if 2+2=4 or MQA is any good as judged by some facts we can all have access to and verify for ourselves if we look around (especially thanks to the work of others like @mansr). Can't we not have "faith" in these "authorities" when evidence shows otherwise? In my world, those who are truly respectable are usually too humble to accept that the word "authority" needs apply to themselves. They speak up for themselves and bring facts along for the discussion. Able to accept, learn, and change when they're wrong. Yes. If you’re out at a bar with a science teacher and a lawyer, and they’re debating what’s in the periodic table, you should listen to the science teacher. But the science teacher should be more than happy for you to Google it when you get home. Expertise is an indicator of knowledge, not a substitute for knowledge. It’s a problem if an expert wants you to trust them blindly. rwdvis, mitchco, crenca and 4 others 6 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted September 30, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 30, 2019 22 hours ago, Archimago said: Well... Leaving AES aside :-)... I remember the first time I heard about Amir was when he was debating the late Arny Kruger about hi-res audio. It's been awhile since I've seen that thread but in general I agree with this Audio Investigations entry. No doubt Amir is a smart guy, I can't help but feel there's some ego there that I'm uncomfortable with. I enjoy reading his measurement reports (like recently the PS Audio DAC and the much-ballyhooed-by-various-audiophiles Totaldac - no surprise there are issues with these devices) nonetheless. From the Audio Investigations link: “Reading Amir, it is clear he is very smart and is a very technically qualified professional audio designer. I believe he is honest and not a shill. However I think he makes poor and sometimes ugly arguments (often to authority, and sometimes to his own authority, and often discrediting the authority of others) far more often than Arny does. He also seems to me much more to be a tireless bully.” 21 hours ago, crenca said: Well, the various principles at SBAF (many of whom do their own extensive measurements) have detailed how Amir, let's say "fudges" (to chose a word) his measurements according to his various agenda's (one of them being anti-Schiit). I am only mildly interested observer in this however and have not dived in to make a determination myself, but I wonder about Amir's work. On the other hand, nobody has ever accused the SBAF boys of being ego free themselves. Of course, I openly wonder about JA's work as well, not only his philosophy-asserted-as-fact around minimum phase but even his objective measurements. It's a niche hobby so we more often than not don't have several authorities measuring the same piece of gear, so IMO it's best to take them for what they are: data point(s) from a single flawed individual who usually has an agenda/ego/"philosophy"... SBAF’s atmosphere can be in-your-face, but Marv (unlike Amir) is very explicit about what he thinks is audible. Likewise, AtomicBob is very consistent in what he says he thinks matters in audibility (and why), and his measurements are always apples-to-apples. Amir wants to dismiss Marv as a Schiit shill, but he has no commercial relationship with Schiit beyond site advertising and is happy to be critical of a product when it’s warranted. Bob is truly independent: just a private audio engineer who posts on many sites. He also likes many DACs praised by “objectivists,” such as the ADI-2. On the Yggdrasil, in particular, Amir was the outlier among five measurements, and I think it was clear that his were incorrect. Most of the issues Amir identifies with DACs aren’t audible according to most realistic listening scenarios. Moreover, considering that he’s identified $99 DACs and headphone amps that are “perfect” beyond audibility, I don’t see the point in the ASR continuing to publish measurements. We should all buy a Topping whatever or Modi 3 and be done with DACs! With MQA, he’s running into a weird contradiction about the importance of audibility. If the flaws with MQA aren’t audible, then surely the “horrible” measurements of Schiit’s Multibit DACs aren’t audible, either. MikeyFresh, rwdvis, The Computer Audiophile and 2 others 2 2 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted October 1, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 1, 2019 Congrats to @firedog for raising Amir’s ire to such an extent that he decided to investigate your profile on the well-known “police state” that is Audiophile Style. 😉 Apparently one needs to have designed a codec in order to critique MQA. Of course, by this definition, Amir should not be critiquing DACs. opus101, Currawong, MikeyFresh and 4 others 2 1 4 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted October 29, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted October 29, 2019 On 8/8/2019 at 10:58 AM, Ishmael Slapowitz said: somebody mentioned Brian Lucey a few pages back, and I see we have a plea to agree MQA distorts the sound.. Well a quick google search turned up this reply to Jim Austin's part 2 article: WOW! Music is Distortion, not Perfection. Submitted by Brian Lucey on August 8, 2019 - 2:27am I'm late to the party it seems. Working daily in the studio will do that. MQA is a rude, cynical business losing millions, it's a harmonic scheme for money, it's sold as lossless which is a lie (although Austin is giving cover for that early claim of a lossless patent by saying "who cares?"). MQA is sold as Mastering Engineer Authenticated, meaning approved ... which is the lie to end all lies. Also sold as "correction" which is tough to believe someone would say with a straight face. They are bulk processing back catalogs to create a market, so MQA has zero integrity, yes Bob I mean you personally. MQA processing of approved masters is altering, meaning damaging/changing/stepping on client/producer/label/manager/artist approved work to make money for these guys. No one needs it, except Stuart and the team of greedy people on board. As a mastering engineer it's offensive without words. These men at MQA lost their Meridian business to DVD. Sorry gents, that is rough, and I feel for you ... yet do not go putting your greedy, manipulative, authoritarian fingers into the Recorded History of Music with this offensive bull sharkey. Certainly there are subjective cases of "preference" for the 'Sound of MQA', because like mp3, or Mastered for iTunes or a DA or speaker ... everything has a sound. People are people, the ego likes to have a vote. MQA processing to my ear, listening to my work pre and post MQA, has some harmonic distortion and maybe even a volume boost as a result just big enough to help win an A/B. Louder is better ! I understand audiophiles can be suckered. The mastering engineers who like this artifact might as well wave a banner saying "I can't craft untouchable masters on my own, I'm inept, so I need this artifact, randomly, all over my shoddy work!" The rest of us are 100% against this travesty for profit. And please, don't talk about the vetting. Of course one division of a major label (accounting) will overrule another (content producers), that's just corporate greed. In principle, "correction" of music is a fallacy. There is no perfection in music or music playback. Rooms, temperature, humidity, we the listener, are all in flux. Mastering finds a repeatable result knowing it's in flux. Also ... what is the personal insecurity of those of us who seek perfection with music? Music is organized distortion, from room compression to the massive additive distortion happening today with everything produced except maybe classical. We add distortion to recordings, like we alter the EQ of mono tracks in a mix ... we love distortion ... for the emotional impact. And by the mastering stage, we coalesce this cocktail of artifacts with supreme precision. Everything interacts. And it's signed off on by all parties. MQA steps on all of this. Dear folks at MQA, 16 bits is not a small file. People who care will download the larger files, not stream. And faster streaming gives MQA a death date just like DVDs, did you not learn anything? If you want to make serious money and change the world, build a better mp3. We all would love that and you would make billions. Finally, and slightly off topic. 44.1 is not inferior to 88.1 or 96k or 192. Therefore getting 192 down to 48 by (insert BS term here) is not anyone's goal who understands music production. The "more samples is better" myth is built on the notion of music as perfectionism. Conversion QUALITY is four things: Analog path, clock, converter chip and filter. 44.1 can be great. 96k can be bad. It's about the hardware in total. Perfectionism and "fixing" after mastering ... could not be more naive (giving Stewart the benefit of the doubt) and thus dangerous. Music intends four things: Intimacy, Connection, Community and Elevation. There is nothing perfect needed, possible or part of the listening transaction. In fact, we like the imperfections. The humanity. Please, stop the madness, it's rude and dumb and set to die in time anyway. The ONLY FILE that matters is the native sample rate of the mastering session. It cannot be improved in any way by anything that changes it. The rest is lies for money. Like this article, many people making money here. Even from the controversy. Get a real job. Go make some art. Create something. Or at the least, don't be complicit. I was contacted by Mytek to represent MQA in LA, along with Bob Ludwig who they hoped to represent on the East Coast. They processes my work in the best way they can, and I have since heard some of my work catalog post processing. Yuk. If I wanted that distorting in there, I would have added it in the first place. https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold#OuSFKFQrkGOShLt3.99 Wow. Great stuff from Lucey! tmtomh and troubleahead 2 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 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. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 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? 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted February 8, 2021 Share Posted February 8, 2021 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... 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted February 10, 2021 Share Posted February 10, 2021 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 . .. . Very interesting. I’m going to have to investigate these in @pkane2001’s software and some other tools. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted February 10, 2021 Share Posted February 10, 2021 On 2/8/2021 at 9:01 AM, KeenObserver said: If you are accepting a MQA recording as the best that can be had, then you are accepting the contaminated brandy. What happens when the only version of a mastering is an MQA version? It’s a horrible reality. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted April 13, 2021 Share Posted April 13, 2021 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. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted April 16, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted April 16, 2021 @GoldenOne is doing the lord’s work here. I see he’s taken his evidence over to ASR, too, where Amir has previously defended MQA. I’ll summarize the tenor of the conversation with a meme: Confused, GoldenOne, lucretius and 3 others 4 2 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted April 20, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted April 20, 2021 Not sure whether this is better placed in this thread, the thread on @GoldenOne’s video, or the ASR thread, but: 1) Over at ASR, John Atkinson is claiming that Golden’s test is invalid since everyone knows a lossy encoder (we’re now apparently conceding that MQA is lossy) can’t handle the signals Golden encoded. This is the same claim Amir made, and if you look at John’s “likes” at ASR, he’s “liking” every post criticizing Golden’s test and defending MQA. 2) Amir has just given a response that completely negates the point of every measurement he’s ever done: The Computer Audiophile, UkPhil, Ishmael Slapowitz and 3 others 6 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted April 21, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted April 21, 2021 5 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said: Ok, so let me see if I'm following this logic: Amir literally makes a name for himself by...... using test signals to test DAC performance. Not music, TEST SIGNALS But test signals are suddenly not suitable to evaluate the performance of an audio CODEC I call shenanigans!!! We know a lot about the performance of CODECs such as MP3 and AAC because..... TEST SIGNALS!!! This has always been the infuriating part of his defense of MQA. What’s the point of seeking ever-greater SINAD scores or sharp attenuation filters on a DAC if you’re going to feed it MQA? Amir has said he decided to start ASR because he was so upset with the “poor” measurements of the original Schiit Modi. But based on what Golden’s tests show, if fed lossless PCM the original Modi surely would sound better than a “state of the art” measuring DAC fed MQA! The Computer Audiophile, lucretius, botrytis and 3 others 4 2 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted April 22, 2021 Share Posted April 22, 2021 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. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted April 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted April 22, 2021 51 minutes ago, danadam said: Did you infer that, for some reason, from what he said about testing lossy codecs? Or did he actually said this about testing gear? Got any links to that? Is it still the same "fanboyism" that charlesphoto was talking about: Or does not bashing equal being a fanboy nowadays? Do you have any examples? All I'm aware of are only listening tests on hydrogenaud.io but they use music samples. Apparently there are some AES papers about testing codecs, but they also use music samples: https://www.audiosciencereview_AUDIOPHILESTYLE_IS_CHILDISH.com/forum/index.php?threads/mqa-deep-dive-i-published-music-on-tidal-to-test-mqa.22549/post-753835 Unfortunately it is amirm's post, so it probably doesn't count on this forum. It's funny that you wrote that in this thread in particular :) I don’t think we need to read to deeply into why Amir has a soft spot for DRM schemes. From the DOJ’s antitrust case against Microsoft: bambadoo, Currawong, Ishmael Slapowitz and 2 others 2 3 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Popular Post Josh Mound Posted April 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted April 22, 2021 16 hours ago, JoshM said: I don’t think we need to read to deeply into why Amir has a soft spot for DRM schemes. From the DOJ’s antitrust case against Microsoft: To provide a little context for this, Zune and MS’s competitor to the iTunes Store used a DRM version of WMA designed by Amir. This was also part of Amir’s vision for MS’s video codecs, which caused him to be taken to task by Cory Doctorow, among others. Archimago, The Computer Audiophile, MikeyFresh and 1 other 4 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted April 23, 2021 Share Posted April 23, 2021 50 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said: Here’s some info on it. https://opengovwa.com/labor-industries-contractor/MADROD*877JR Well, it exists enough to have received $180k in PPP. https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/loans/hometechusa-llc-6118618500 MikeyFresh 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted April 23, 2021 Share Posted April 23, 2021 On 4/23/2021 at 1:13 AM, Archimago said: More? American tax payers are awesome. https://www.federalpay.org/paycheck-protection-program/hometechusa-llc-bellevue-wa 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. MikeyFresh 1 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted April 24, 2021 Share Posted April 24, 2021 2 hours ago, Dr Tone said: Interesting content from Danny @ Roon, it turns out that MQA gets payed per track played using software decoding. Those still using Tidal and software decoding are continually feeding MQA money. That’s fascinating. Do you have a link to his comments? 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
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