MQA is Vaporware

[charlesphoto]

16 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Which brings up the import of the Tidal MQA link.  What if there was a cost, say $5 or so a month for MQA?  Well, I think the vast majority of those Roon users would be paying.  In other words my sense (from time spent on the forum - I'm a Roon lifetimer as well) is that the majority have if not completely bought into the MQA message, are at least "curious" enough to support it.  Many (most) of them are also typical "subjectivised" audiophiles, and my sense is that they "hear" the alleged advantage of whatever Audiophildom puts in front of them.  In other words Bob S and MQA understand the Audiophile well and have to a real extant succeeded in their mission to sell it, even if there is also real blowback as well...

 

Roon/Tidal user here and I could care less about MQA. So far most I’ve heard sucks the life out of music compared to 16/44, a bit like upsampling to DSD (for me). If it’s only available in MQA then that’s another matter, and is what it is. Sounds like Tidal have much bigger fish to fry at the moment than MQA anyway. if they don’t then it’s going to be a moot point as it is. 

[charlesphoto]

So far all of the MQA (Tidal) I’ve compared to 16/44 (rips or Tidal) is all smoothed out and cuddly, and no matter how “good” it’s supposed to sound, MQA just seems to suck the life out of music. I think these guys, with their “bargain” $250,000 horn speakers (yes, a quote from a recent show report in Stereophile), have had their head so far up the bass port of six figure manufacturers for so long they don’t recognize bad or good sound anymore, and have distanced themselves so far from the actual music and artists to be nothing but a joke, and the proof is in the lauding of MQA. 

 

There’s been a big trend in photography, the so called megapixel race, so that consumers focus now on how clear, sharp, and big they can blow up the image. Fine, but you can’t also translate that into what’s come before. Should we clean up all that pesky film grain of Cartier-Bresson’s? Look closely and a lot of his images are soft - better sharpen it up - the guy didn’t know how to focus!  

 

Life’s not perfect, and it’s all the warts and bumps that ultimately make it interesting. These MQA guys have earned all the scorn they can reap, as the actual scam is right there for anybody to listen to. If you like it better, fine. But it shouldn’t even be bantered about as a new industry standard. It’s nothing more than a flawed solution looking for a problem. 

[charlesphoto]

38 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Guys - Two things.

 

1. Thanks to @mansr for sending me links to all the DSD posts that can be moved to another thread.

 

2. I found a great use for MQA. When searching Roon for an album, when I see the MQA logo it usually means there's an unmolested high resolution version available from Qobuz. Makes browsing for real high resolution easier.

 

One thing I haven’t found anyone discussing is processing power needed for MQA vs straight up hi-rez in Roon. I just switched from Tidal to Qobuz (with 100% crossover of 1700 titles!). An MQA runs at about 2.5X on my NUC (or less), whereas a 24/192 from Qobuz more like 70X (the lower number meaning more processing). We have nearly 100mb download speed on our internet so bandwidth is not an issue, but I’d prefer my NUC not having to work so hard - esp as I’ve found MQA to not sound as good as hi-rez, or even 16/44 for that matter (in many cases). So it seems to be a solution for a non-problem (bandwidth) that brings up another issue (processing power). Easy enough now to vote with your choice of streaming service. 

[charlesphoto]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

This is an analogy that is too simple and misleading.  You cannot look at this solely on an individual consumer's experience and make the claim when the whole thing is about distributing music at scale.

 

Running a streaming service requires lots of bandwidth and lots of storage.  While individually both are cheap, there are many issues that these services face at the vast scales they work in.  Look at amazon or netflix.  Many times the video will stutter at night when bandwidth is heaviest. As for downloads, Qobuz hangs up on me all the time although I have fiber-optic speed.  24/192 I think requires around 9 mbps download speeds.  It's provable that many areas in the country don't have that.

 

As long as these problems persist, you cannot argue that file size compression is an idea whose time "has come and gone."

 

And I suppose it’s ’provable’ there’s thousands of audiophiles in these underserved internet speed areas just clambering for compressed 24/192 streaming? So many that it’s worth trying to monopolize on music delivery? Give us a break. Most people could care less about hi-rez (or even regular cd rez) as it is, and if their internet is so poor, I’m pretty sure they have bigger issues than audiofooldom (like streaming basic Netflix for one). Yes, there will always be outlier cases for anything, but this sounds like yet another straw man argument to try and and kidnap an entire industry. 

[charlesphoto]

8 minutes ago, beetlemania said:

I voted with my wallet and cancelled Tidal. Buh-bye POS MQA!

Qobuz is missing some albums I like but I'll just buy those.

 

Same here. And when I was with Tidal, most of the MQA I tried sounded ‘dead’ to me in comparison to the basic 16/44 they were meant to replace. 

[charlesphoto]

To me MQA has always seemed like a solution looking for a problem, as a way to dominate and potentially monopolize the source material for a niche hifi market. I know many people who could buy a complete dCS system at the drop of a hat but are perfectly content with the music channels through their TV, and maybe step up to a Sonos system and find it the end all be all. I know even in my own house, when my wife or kids want to start an after dinner dance party, it’s not about navigating the vageries of Roon and my boutique streaming set up to find the perfect resolution and master of an album, but “Hey Alexa! Play that “I Don’t Care” song” to the Play1 on top of the microwave in the kitchen. Sounds execrable to me, but everybody has a good time which is what most people have always wanted from their music. 

 

So in the big picture, hi rez and even cd quality streaming is a still a very small market and will probably always remain so, with not much pie to cut up. How many times have you mentioned Tidal to someone at a party and drawn a blank stare? Even I’m on the fence with my Qobuzz subscription whether I really need the hi-rez sub or not as I don’t find that much difference. 

 

What I find most abhorrent is there’s no need to give part of this already small pie to a bunch of software sham-sters when the artists themselves already receive so little. People who stream hi-rez do so full well with the knowledge they are doing so (and paying for it), and  typically don’t need it compressed or dumbed down, only to have to have special hardware to unpack it. It’s a rights grab to make money off the backs of others pure and simple, which is why we should all be outraged about it. 

[charlesphoto]

19 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Back home to snow and cold 😢

 

We're needing some of that here in the PNW. Our skiing is being severely compromised (not to mention snow pack for more important reasons).

 

We go to Kauai in mid February. Go every year - first the Big Island, then our friends moved to Kauai three years ago. We don't stay with them, just visit.  Kauai is lovely, but can be a bit rainy. Big Island has lots of variation, and things to do, so maybe try that next. More driving though.

[charlesphoto]

On 4/2/2021 at 7:34 PM, ARQuint said:

 

Cookie Marenco is a respected engineer and producer with 5 Grammy nominations. She has recorded Brad Mehldau, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Mary Chapin Carpenter and uses her real name. It's highly doubtful that "Ishmael Slapowitz" has any qualifications as an audio professional and has exactly one criterion for who is worthy in the field and who isn't. Most, me included, recognize that Slapowitz gets his jollies by riling people up and is here for his entertainment value. But I also feel it doesn't reflect well on AS for an especially conscientious and generous member of our industry like Marenco to be subject to preadolescent name-calling.

 

It also doesn't help the case of more thoughtful critics of MQA.

 

Andy Quint

 

 

Plenty of so called 'respected' individuals that have bought into another version of Q as well.... humans of all stripes and colors are easily manipulated in many ways if sufficiently sold a bill of goods by charlatans. 

[charlesphoto]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

P.S. I’ve always thought the Ever Given was sabotaged. Those boats all have auto pilot to keep them where they’re supposed to be. 

More like some pilot (lets call him Bob) decides they're more clever than autopilot and tries to do it themselves. Failure. 

[charlesphoto]

Just now, KeenObserver said:

 

 

Stereophile seems to have a problem differentiating mathematical from perceptual.

Well, they are a magazine that regularly refers to $10k items as being 'inexpensive.' 

[charlesphoto]

32 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Here is just one example of Atmos Spatial Audio where the producer and recording engineer of the original album was the one who created the Atmos version. I’d say highly involved. 
 

 

Yeah, but both you and I well know these guys are an 'industry' unto themselves and will always have control and are not beholden to their label. Other artists not so much - they just roll over when the label says roll. And what if the artist and engineers are dead? 

[charlesphoto]

8 hours ago, Currawong said:

 

  They don't want to burst that bubble, especially if it exists among their staff.

They also don't want to rub it in the faces of their advertisers who were conned into paying for MQA capability, and maybe even have gone so far as to put an ugly "MQA" logo somewhere on the device. Sad. 

[charlesphoto]

3 hours ago, bogi said:

 

You state you can hear MQA time smearing correction on A SET OF ALCONS PA RIBBON SPEAKERS + POWER AMPS. Anyone else can state anything else. It's nothing more than one of millions of subjective standings about sound. There is no way to distinguish which subjective standing is correct. Everybody has his own personal "truth" about "correct" sound. Personal listening experience is not so easily transferable to others like you probably think.

 

What you like can easily be some MQA specific distortion which has nothing to do with time smearing correction. Give some objective confirmation that a time smearing correction is happening on A SET OF ALCONS PA RIBBON SPEAKERS + POWER AMPS.

Nailed it. I would consider myself an 'objectivist' (yes, I've heard sound differences in cables and digital replay/networking gear) but far too many people are like "I added x/y to my setup and now it sounds amazing!" or " There's no way x/y could do anything because the sound of my setup is already amazing!" Well, both statements can be simultaneously true and false if there's no baseline to compare to. And there's nothing wrong with thinking your setup is endgame - for you. I know mine is - for me - mostly because I don't/can't want to spend anymore money on it. And that's okay. But I won't go around making pronouncements about things because of hearing what I hear (only it's a shame Audio Physic speakers aren't better well know outside EU/Germany). 

[charlesphoto]

Hoo boy, I think we found the Q in MQA with this FX guy.

 

"Just do the research..." lol. 

[charlesphoto]

2 hours ago, JoeWhip said:

Boy, that Infigo review! Holy Moly Batman and for the low low price of $55k.

No kidding. The ironic thing I find about Stereophile, is that I know of no writers, in any genre or medium, that could afford (flawed at that) $55k amps, let alone the auxiliary gear used to play it. Do they get paid like $100/word to spout their nonsense? 

[charlesphoto]

Borderline... or somebody invested too heavily and is now losing it. 

 

We all heard it. i could hear it on my decidedly low end Sonore/Naim/Audio Physic system that I hobbled together for a paltry $8k. It sounded HiFi!! and all sparkly, but became really fatiguing after awhile. I even had a free sub to Tidal and switched back to Qobuz. 

 

[charlesphoto]

21 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Those who talked about it as the greatest thing ever, will create a market for old mQa products and pirated recordings and endlessly talk about how great it was during the salad days of mQa. 

Dusty Topping DACs stacked on top of even dustier Betamax and Laser disc players. 

[charlesphoto]

@firedog Yep, hubris will always get you in the end. 

[charlesphoto]

@StephenJK Funny, we just bought a house built in 1987 that has literally hundreds of feet of cheap speaker cable run everywhere, inside and outside. Slowly but surely losing it all. 

[charlesphoto]

I think FTX's consistent use of "EDM" and "PA" is all we need to know about how he hears (or doesn't) music - and why the fatiguing, yet more 'HiFi!' sounding MQA appeals so much to him. Probably has better system synergy as well with flashing led's, disco balls and smoke machines...😉

[charlesphoto]

44 minutes ago, Currawong said:

That means that now you're just trolling. 

I think you could drop the 'now' part of your statement above.