MQA is Vaporware

[smartin]

Really??? That's not what their bios say. Are you accusing them of fabricating their credentials?

 

This is a good example of another pitfall of comment sections (and car wreck forum threads...). People get so fired up they stop using their brain and rush to post without actually reading...

 

He was saying that exploring WHY their data showed that would be a good PhD dissertation...

[smartin]

Bob Ludwig on his Gateway Mastering Studios Facebook page says there are 6,000 MQA songs on TIDAL January 24, 2017.

 

Pal Bratlund (former TIDAL as of September 2016) posts there are 6,000 albums on TIDAL. “But TIDAL may not share the view that you need to see the sample rate as long as it’s the original and that it sounds great.”

 

My question would be does this mean the albums they don’t share the sample rate are not hi-res?

 

When Bob’s post was copied to the MQA Facebook page Alex Gorouvein shared his list.

 

I would like to thank Alex for posting a list of the 1,262 albums MQA available on Tidal January 25, 2017. Roon gets my thanks too for its export capability to create his spreadsheet.

 

As of January 25, 2017 I believe Alex is correct and TIDAL needs to add only 8,739 more albums to get over my vaporware number of 10,000 albums.

 

At a scientific conference on GMO's a couple of years ago, inside there was debate over GMO's merits/dangers. In the market, GMO's continued to find their place. Outside the conference a guy had a poster saying it should be GAO (Genetically ALTERED Organisms) instead of GMO. Neither the market, nor the scientists inside the conference, cared.

[smartin]

Why do people care if a process is lossy (strictly definitionionally) if it is audibly transparent?  I think there is intellectual dishonesty on both sides.  As a consumer, I usually see lossy used derogatively, i.e. I prefer Tidal because it's not lossy like Spotify.  While it's possible a person saying that is objecting to the mathematically superior reproduction of Redbook over MP3, I suspect that sentence is more commonly used to convey an opinion about the sound quality.

 

Yes, MQA is mathematically lossy, but why does that matter at all in and of itself.  There is nothing inherently wrong with that.  The only aspect of 'lossy' that should matter (IMHO, and perhaps I am missing something) is how it effects sound quality.

 

I suspect people that say for example 'we don't need a lossy, DRM loaded, compression scheme' as part of a critique of MQA, use the word lossy fully knowing that for many people the 'lossy' part will be evaluated as an adjective describing its sound characteristics, and not purely as a statement of mathematical precision, devoid of subjective value.

 

In any event, I think this part of the discussion of MQA is pointless.  It's literally just arguing semantics.

[smartin]

2 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

No, no "come on" here

 

Really, that is the thing about the ground you walk on - it effects everything because well, it is the ground you walk on.  Your question is too broad for a comment box - which part of everyting do you want to discuss - and why because it is already discussed endlessly here on almost every thread?

 

Behind the context of a subjectivist "why does it matter - I only care what it sounds like and if I can't here it then it does not matter" is an entire engineering world where math matters...

 

 

 

I actually think this is where the intellectual dishonesty comes in.  From a purely mathematical standpoint, MQA is lossy, but it is nearly certain that is it audibly transparent, not subjectively, but mathematically.  Using an objectivist argument to convey a subjective assessment that is objectively false...

[smartin]

1 minute ago, crenca said:

 

Dishonesty right back at you - it is the opposite of what you say, it is not "audibly transparent" at all!

 

So, how do we tell the truth?

 

Well, one way is empirically (you know, math and "objectivist" stuff like that) and where do we find that...oh yea, in the encoding method...so it does matter after all.

 

Not interested in your subjectivist "certainties" - this hobby is already filled with that crap - I am interested in one of the few areas where we can agree (or not) on empircal grounds...

 

On what are you basing your statement that is is not audibly transparent?  I'm not basing my statement on anything subjective.  Based on what mansr has posted (granted he has added the caveat that he can imagine a scenario where it might not be, albeit he has not seen that), and Archimago's analysis, mathematically (objectively) I am very dubious of any claim of difference, either positive or negative.