MQA is Vaporware

[skikirkwood]

I have to say, this is one of the most interesting threads I've seen on any audio forum.  Lavorgna threatens to cancel the accounts of dissenting opinions on Audiostream, but just gets destroyed here.  Charles Hansen calling out Bob Stuart as dishonest, and a quorum of folks calling MQA for what it is - a financial grab using a lossy, DRM scheme.  Wow.

 

And now, 83 people have just done a blind testing of MQA for me and the results are what I expected: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/09/mqa-core-vs-hi-res-blind-test-part-ii.html

 

Glad I bought a Schiit DAC with no wasted expense on MQA.

[skikirkwood]

This thread is so impressive that it is even referenced in the Wikipedia definition of MQA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated

[skikirkwood]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I suppose a die hard MQA supporter could suggest that the mqa filters aren't as bad as everyone says they are with results like that :~)

 

I would love to see him do some similar test of 320 AAC vs Redbook vs high resolution, just to see the results. 

Archimago did (MP3, not AAC) back in 2013: http://archimago.blogspot.ca/2013/02/high-bitrate-mp3-internet-blind-test_3422.html

 

Makes me not feel guilty about preferring Spotify over Tidal.

[skikirkwood]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Interesting.

 

I wouldn't feel guilty about preferring anything :~)

In every listening test I have done I couldn't hear a difference, other than the occasional dropout by Tidal.  But where I do believe there is a huge difference with these services is the ability for the two sites to help with music discoverability.  

 

Spotify has put a major R&D effort into developing proprietary machine learning algorithms that are behind their "Discover Weekly" and "Daily Mix" personalized playlists.  And they work incredibly well for me.

 

I was an early user of Pandora and loved its personalized station concept, but found that over time it had too much repetition with tracks I was already familiar with.  Not the case with Spotify.

[skikirkwood]

44 minutes ago, realhifi said:

 

No dropouts for me with Tidal but it’s integration with Roon is why it won the day for me. It’s unfortunate it costs more than Spotify but hey, $10 a month more; i can swing it. 

 

PS. I too dug Pandora (and wife still uses it) but the repetition got old. They may have improved that.  It also is the one place you can hear ECM tracks. 

I did a free trial of Roon when it first came out.  I liked the UI, but there was a bug where it turned the volume of my Kef speakers in my home office up to 100%.  Still recovering from that.  Sure that's been fixed, but once was enough for me.

[skikirkwood]

Has anyone looked at the Wikipedia article on Meridian, the MQA part specifically?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_Audio

 

I think the article is in need of some editing to make it more accurate. I have a Wikipedia account, guess I could take the first crack at it.

[skikirkwood]

On 3/6/2018 at 6:12 PM, skikirkwood said:

Has anyone looked at the Wikipedia article on Meridian, the MQA part specifically?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_Audio

 

I think the article is in need of some editing to make it more accurate. I have a Wikipedia account, guess I could take the first crack at it.

 

Looking at the history of the Meridian Audio post on Wikipedia one can see that Richard Elen did the majority of edits recently.  That's interesting because Elen is a consultant to MQA!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Relen

 

I think it's time to have the MQA section on Wikipedia to be more "fair and balanced".

[skikirkwood]

1 hour ago, skikirkwood said:

 

Looking at the history of the Meridian Audio post on Wikipedia one can see that Richard Elen did the majority of edits recently.  That's interesting because Elen is a consultant to MQA!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Relen

 

I think it's time to have the MQA section on Wikipedia to be more "fair and balanced".

 

Well, I stand corrected.  People have already done my job for me.  The Wikipedia post on MQA is dramatically different than the last time I looked at it:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated

 

New content such as "MQA encoding is lossy", and a large "Criticism" section with links to this very forum.  Nice!  

[skikirkwood]

1 hour ago, mcgillroy said:

I guess my next DAC will be a Schiit...;)

 

I picked up a Schiit Modi 2 Multibit a few months ago.  Amazing value for $249!  Caused me to pick up a Schiit Freya preamp when my 23-year-old Bryston preamp developed problems.  Just got a Schiit Fulla 2 to drive my Oppo PM-3's.  When you select the Fulla 2 output from a Mac you choose "I'm Fulla Schiit" in the audio popup.Definitely going all in on Schiit - love their products, and love their attitude.

[skikirkwood]

4 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

MQA will end up as a chapter in marketing textbooks - as an example of the consequences of underestimating your audience.

 

 

To be fair though, I think Bob Stuart deserves a lot of credit.  He invents a lossy, DRM-enabled audio format that degrades the sound quality of any music encoded with it, and gets the bulk of the audiophile press to publish glowing reviews of it.  Robert Harley writing "The most significant audio technology of my lifetime." Jason Serinus writing " ...I was astounded at how much more colorful and undeniably brutal the sound was with MQA engaged."

 

That's marketing genius. And it almost worked!

[skikirkwood]

It's 2018 and hi-finews.com doesn't yet have a responsive design for mobile devices.  For me, that sums up the state of this group.

 

 

[skikirkwood]

This is kind of funny.  The press release on Audiostream for the acquisition has two links - neither of which work.  Wonder if this was broken intentionally or this represents the technical competence of the parties involved.

[skikirkwood]

KEF just posted this on their blog:

 

https://www.kefdirect.com/mqa-basics

[skikirkwood]

4 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

 

From crenca, regarding anyone at a print magazine with something positive to say about MQA

 

<< Art Dudley and all the rest will be gone before we all know it, and we will remember them for the things they got right...no matter how short the list >>

 

From Kelly Sadler, regarding John McCain

 

<< Sadler joked that McCain's opposition to the president's CIA director nominee doesn't matter because "he's dying anyway." >>

 

I'm kind of surprised that Brinkman Ship hasn't suggested that crenca and Kelly Sadler are actually the same person. Seems pretty obvious to me

 

Beyond the apparent ageism here (older people's opinions are inherently inconsequential) there are some glaring inconsistencies, in terms of who gets singled out as clueless due to their vintage. To name two audio engineers well past 55 that I admire greatly, there's Andreas Koch and Mark Waldrep (when I was chatting with Mark at AXPONA, he noted proudly that he'd just received his Medicare card.) Because they agree with you, they're sage elder statesmen. On the other hand, Bob Stuart, John Atkinson and Robert Harley are, to you, obviously past their sell-date and should gracefully exit the stage. At any professional meeting I've ever been to, it's the senior people who have been productive and creative over a lengthy career that those of all ages are most interested in hearing from. That's how any discipline achieves continuity and growth—by acknowledging the value of experience and long-term perspective.

 

I'll emphasize once more that I am not a pro-MQA partisan. As I've been told here is Chris Connaker's position, I'm still watching from the sidelines. What I continue to be appalled by and will continue to comment on is the escalating vitriol from a minority of those who don't like the technology.  You don't see Archimago calling Stuart, Atkinson, or Harley names, not publicly, at least. You can't change minds if people are turned off by hostile personalized attacks on those with an opposing viewpoint. Consider the possibility that assaults on individuals that enthusiasts like and admire—Peter McGrath, Art Dudley— can potentially undermine the most cogently argued position on MQA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree the comment about Art Dudley is unfortunate.  That said, I think it should be easy for anyone to understand the "escalating vitriol" here to the established audiophile press.  I am 60 years old, and last time I checked I could not hear above 15Khz.  Hearing in humans peaks between 18 and 24 and it's all downhill from there.  Why should anyone "trust" the ears of people approaching 70?

 

As a computer scientist I was amazed to read the glowing reviews of how $1000 USB or Ethernet cables could greatly enhance the sound quality of a system. The magazine you write for, TAS, is one of the worst offenders.  The anger here has been building up over time by having a small number of pundits in TAS, Stereophile, Audiostream, etc. deceive their reader base. Pretending to present objective information to help guide consumer audiophile purchases, when in reality you are only beholden to your advertisers, high-end audio manufacturers, at the expense of consumers.

 

MQA was the final straw that got people organized on forums like this, and the tides are turning. Audiostream was among the worst offenders of perpetuating this fraud, and look where they are now.  TAS and others will be next, unless a dramatic turnaround occurs, and these publications start creating content that is helpful to their readers instead of promoting $1000 USB cables and total scams like MQA.

[skikirkwood]

5 hours ago, Jim Austin said:

What are you folks still on about? Still assuming that all sampling theory ended with Shannon? This place is obviously a massive circle-jerk, but your posts are visible to the outside world, so you run the risk of embarrassing yourselves (those of you not hiding behind a pseudonym, that is). So I'll do you a favor--I'll present some quotes from scientific literature. Then you can dig them out yourself if you care to educate yourself; I don't expect that, but maybe it'll at least convince you to think twice before posting ignorant things. 

 

 

 

 

 

[skikirkwood]

On 5/12/2018 at 6:13 PM, crenca said:

 

You know what one of the important takeaways of this picture is?  If there is anyone in it below 55 (including all the people in the background) I will eat my socks.  

 

These folks are set in their ways, and trying to disprove their Art & Wine Voodooism is vanity.  Art Dudley and all the rest will be gone before we all know it, and we will remember them for the things they got right...no matter how short the list 

 

Edit:  Recently I have been spending a bit of time at some HP/personal audio/value "high fidelity" (vs. art & wine "high end") sites and it is a real pleasure not to hear much about Stereophile, TAS, or much of anything of "high end", and when they are mentioned it is almost always to laugh at the absurdities.  These folks are in a hole they are never going to get out of and I am increasingly coming to a "let the dead bury the dead" attitude towards them...

 

I think you guys are just taking this MQA stuff too seriously.

[skikirkwood]

12 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

I'm not sure why you'd believe this post would be deleted. Stereophile (and the publication that I write for) delete online correspondence if the poster becomes defamatory or otherwise descends into incivility. Opposing views are heard and responded to—if they are delivered without flames. That contrasts significantly to CA's "Vaporware" thread where any visitor (or member) perceived as being even remotely pro-MQA can count on hearing from the same ten guys who will attempt to bully him into departing, or provoke a comment that gets him banished.

 

When Michael Lavorgna ran Audiostream he banned a number of people - for disagreeing with him - and nothing else.  He threatened to ban me and I believe he did actually ban Archimago.

[skikirkwood]

29 minutes ago, mansr said:

Getting banned by Lavorgna was practically a badge of honour or rite of passage or something. Whatever are we going to do now that he's been "banned" by the new owners?

 

Up until a few years ago I naively believed everything I read in the audiophile press.  But I started to look into things that didn't make sense to me, and the more I looked, the more I discovered how much misinformation was being spread by the major magazines/blogs.

 

But it wasn't until Lavorgna personally emailed me and threatened to ban my Audiostream account that I realized I was on to something. And it was reassuring to see some like minds on this forum, who have the intelligence and initiative to question what they read.

[skikirkwood]

4 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

There is something to be said about the "personal" touch...?I know more than a few AudioStream readers that were emailed by Lavorgna, and those emails contained not only banning threats, but profanity.  So..don't take it "personally"...?

 

I'm quite proud of the personal reachout - more than once actually.  I obviously hit a nerve - and therefore confirmed my suspicions that so much of the stuff on Audiostream was crap to appease their advertisers - at the expense of consumers.

[skikirkwood]

10 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

It's not fair to insist that all positivity regarding MQA comes from the press. Archimago's "Internet Blind Test" demonstrated that half of the CA members who participated had a preference for MQA-encoded files when the comparator was a high-resolution PCM file. That preference was usually slight and, of course, didn't begin to approach statistical significance when the entire group was considered. But audiophiles are used to putting a value on small perceived differences that can be considerable. What makes perfectionist audio such a great hobby is that there are so many possibilities when it comes to achieving a musically satisfying end. That variability is informed by ones prior experience with live music and recordings, as well as the fact that different people hear (and listen) differently. So those who conclude that MQA-encoded music sounds "better" shouldn't be hostilely dismissed as lousy listeners or as having a nefarious agenda.

 

 

You are misinterpreting the results of Archimago's test.  He forced people to choose which sounded better - MQA or PCM.  He did not give a third option to let people vote that they sounded the same. He then also asked them their confidence level of the difference in sound, one option of which was "Essentially no difference".

 

As he wrote in the posting of the results: "With the data from all the tracks put together, whether unweighted or weighted with confidence data, it's pretty much a 50:50 "guess" along with "An exact 50:50 coin toss even within the group of listeners who thought they heard significant differences to a moderate or obvious degree. Again, there is no preference towards MQA Core or just standard hi-res PCM playback."

[skikirkwood]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

P.S.  of course @ARQuintis misinterpreting those results...*sigh*...

 

 

It's possible it was an honest mistake.  It's also possible monkeys might fly out of my butt. 

[skikirkwood]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

This just in:

 

 

Wow, you might get a bunch of us started on wild photoshop hacking after seeing this.  I was concerned about my Darth Vader / MQA Death Star hack, but I now know I have to up my game.

[skikirkwood]

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Did you see the part where an EPA spokesman calls a reporter a 'piece of trash' in the part that wasn't Photoshoped ?  And Andrew Quint is worried about what has been said about Robert Harley and The Absolute Sound. 

 

As a very progressive/liberal person living in the United States, this is a really strange time.

 

But, not to bring up politics,  I believe there is a connection between MQA and Trump being elected. 

 

During the final round of email exchanges I had with our friend Michael Lavorgna, which was before Trump got elected, I told him that the bigger issue I had with what I concluded with the high end audiophile press was that there was a large amount of anti-science and anti-intellectualism being promoted by professional audio pundits.  And that was part of a larger trend, at least in the United States, where not enough people were trying to seek the truth and understand the facts in political issues.  Not enough questions were being asked.  

 

So while I had no issue with some wealthy fool spending $1000 on an Ethernet cable because he was conned into believing it would give him better sound quality, the real issue was that people were being fed a pack of lies and being trained to not look for facts, data, and use logic to determine the state of things.  That behaviour enabled Trump to get elected.  And I see exactly the same thing happening with MQA and other topics in the high end audio world.

 

I didn't mention to ML that I thought Audiostream was the Fox News of audio publications, but perhaps I should have.

[skikirkwood]

2 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Don the best we can hope for is for journalists to walk away from MQA. Let me tell you about a concept called “talent acquisition.” This is where journalists are paid to mention products in the stories they write. It is prevalent in tech and financial reporting. The Huffington Post has fairly elaborate procedures in place to stop it they say. I say they did a pretty good job of slowing it down but it is a pervasive practice.

 

 

 

 

Have you ever noticed every "review" in Audiostream by Steve Plaskin has a huge number of mentions of Synergistic Research and Shunyata Research products.

 

Quote

The Asus laptop was plugged into a Shunyata Research Hydra DPC-6 v2 distribution center to firewall the noise generated by this computer from contaminating my AC line.

The Asus was placed on a Synergistic Research Tranquility Base UEF grounded with the Synergistic Research High Definition Ground Cable / Grounding Block as was the computer. A G-Technology 24 TB G|RAID Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.1 drive was connected to the Asus that stores my audio files. The G|RAID Thunderbolt drive was powered by an HDPlex 200w linear power supply plugged into a Shunyata Denali 6000T power conditioner. The G|RAID Thunderbolt drive and its HDPlex power supply were placed on a Synergistic Research Tranquility Base.

The C5+ was plugged into a Shunyata Triton v3 with a Shunyata Sigma NR AC cord.

 

1

 

[skikirkwood]

14 minutes ago, rickca said:

Except you run into a problem when your talent has blown their credibility.

 

There's also the product placement idea in film and TV.  A manufacturer pays the producer to prominently display their product in a scene.  The luxury goods companies also give samples to celebrities so magazines will publish pictures of your favorite star with your handbag or whatever. 

 

It's all looking for the halo effect of associating a product with somebody cool.  Under Armor recently released The Rock shoes ... sold out in 30 minutes.  So product endorsements are big business and I guess talent acquisition is a similar concept.

 

I worked at Silicon Graphics when the movie Jurassic Park was released.  There's a scene where they zoom into the SGI logo on a workstation.  We always talked about the PR value of that one scene to our business.

 

While we didn't pay the movie producers for that scene, we did send an engineer onsite during the movie production to create some custom software for a few of their scenes, and this was the payback!