MQA is Vaporware

[#Yoda#]

I don't know if anyone mentioned it before, but the labels have started a two-tier strategy for new releases as I expected in an other forum about a year ago. HiRes downloads are available only at basic HiRes recommendations 24/44.1 or 24/48. The MQA version is released based on a master in double or full resolution. I've noticed it at Kraftwerk 3-D The Catalogue that is available as download only in 24/44.1, using the TIDAL app, the Masters version shows with my DAC a resolution of 88.2 kHz. I think there are a lot more examples. Today the new Roger Waters albumIs "This The Life We Really Want" has been released as HiRes download to my great disappointment only in 24/48, for sure not the masters original resolution. I bet, we will see this album with better numbers as MQA on TIDAL, soon. 

[#Yoda#]

15 hours ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

Yes, I agree. I really don't understand the whole streaming business model. The artists make next to nothing. No streaming service anywhere has a made any profit to date. Yet steaming is the fastest growing segment of the entire record labels' income. Someone like an Apple can afford to lose many tens of millions of dollars per year on streaming and/or downloads, because they make it up 10x over in sales of their highly profitable hardware devices.

 

I think, nobody know if the streaming business model will ever be profitable for the providers, for most artists for sure not! 

 

For streaming providers it is an investment in an unknown future and most participants without a significant financial background will fail, especially when they address a small target group who still emphasize sound quality of their beloved music and perhaps perceiving an advantage of HiRes, MQA or even lossless streamed music.

 

If at all, MQA will only make sense as a streaming format, but even there it is gratuitous, IMHO. Customers with a high bandwidth access can easily stream original HiRes in 24/192, for those with insufficient internet infrastructure, MQA folded (compressed) files are still too much load.

 

The approach of OraStream looks quite sexy in this consideration but as we can see, Neil Young with the announced XStream service cannot find potent investors for his streaming project after PonoMusic failed unfortunately, IMO mainly because of the Pono promise and the foreseeable refusal by the labels. It is to be expected that HDtracks has issues to find investors as well, we will see. 

 

The labels don't want to sell their "crown jewels", the masters in high, or in best case the original resolution and format as reproducible FLAC/WAV/DSD files, finally. So MQA is a very welcome solution to solve this issue, even if there is no DRM mechanism implemented for now. When all the hype about MQA is obsolete one day, the labels can sell them a 2nd, 3rd time in real 24/96 and eventually again in 24/192 coated as remaster and perhaps for those who really think, they still can realize a difference, in DXD. 

 

As we can notice already, most new albums from major labels are released, if in HiRes, only in the minimum HiRes resolution 24/44.1 or 24/48. HDtracks and other vendors raised their prices for most new albums at any resolution significantly after a longer period of price reduction to nearly CD level. 

 

I wouldn't rely on the expertise of the American audio press very much in this case, most of them are trapped by their prior puff pieces about MQA. The European HiFi magazines in general have been much more cautious about the advantages of MQA. 

 

Highresaudio.com offers the very few reliable "MQA-Authenticated" albums as download and the demand seems to be extremely low, by the way.

[#Yoda#]

10 minutes ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

Hello Yoda,

 

Spot on, in my opinion. In 1989 the record labels (there were far more than just 3 back then) all simultaneously colluded to pull the plug completely on vinyl, despite it still having a 33% market share at the time. At $8 per LP, CD was vastly more profitable. Nearly 30 years later they are again happy to sell vinyl - at $30 per LP and $50 per "audiophile quality" LP.

 

If MQA takes over, once the hoopla dies down, I'm sure the record labels will be glad to sell the true high-res masters - but this time at $50 to $100 each. History likes to repeat itself.

 

Cheers,

Charles Hansen

 

Hi Charlie,

 

fortunately there are still some beacons of customer and music oriented behavior. Some artists are selling HiRes albums in best resolution as FLAC download in their web stores and some indie labels noticed the signs as well.

 

Cheers,

Thomas 

[#Yoda#]

8 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

No rock and pop, etc.

 

Unfortunately not, because the entire Warner catalogue is not reliable. Most current MQA albums are simple conversions from an existing PCM master to MQA and not really "MQA-Authenticated", a black box for resellers and customers. 

[#Yoda#]

1 minute ago, Digital Assassin said:

HI Yoda:

 

I was under the impression that HRS completely cut ties with MQA.

 

Not in general. They just refuse all MQA albums with an unreliable background. 

[#Yoda#]

18 hours ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

Hi Thomas,

 

Yes, one of my favorite artists is Sam Phillips (not Elvis's producer, but a female singer songwriter). She won a Grammy and then faded to obscurity. Her online shop sells things all the way up to 96/24 FLAC files - I think mostly because I helped sway Michael Hobson of Classic Records (another Sam Phillips fan) to re-issue her popular albums in high-res digital. But a lot of her offerings are unfortunately only in MP3. Still she's a fantastic artist and when selling semi-direct (there is some sort of fulfillment house in the middle), she probably makes enough money on music sales to stay alive. I think she still does live shows (I've only seen her once), but largely only in the LA area.

 

Clearly the times they are a changin' and the old ways don't work well in the new world. Cheers!
Charles Hansen

 

My first thought was your friend and ex business partner Neil Young with his store https://neilyoung.warnerbrosrecords.com/music-2/hd-digital.html

following his promise and philosophy to sell plain HiRes music and CD quality for the same price. 

[#Yoda#]

10 minutes ago, mav52 said:

 

That's ok yodo, Neil is going to start a music streaming company http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-preps-new-high-quality-streaming-service-xstream-w478281

Let's just wait and see .;-)

[#Yoda#]

Hi Charlie,

 

anyway if it is a primarily a WB  or NY store, it is currently the cheapest way to buy NY records in HiRes. I know all the history, I was a Kickstarter backer for the PonoPlayer and we already had some inspiring talks in the Pono community.

 

I'm not really a NY fan boy, in fact, I bought the player because it's circuits has been designed by Ayre. I don't think it was Apples objective to prevent a new competitor. I would rather call it a collateral damage and the reason of failure had been primarily the financial effects of the PonoPromise, missing financial strength and several other management issues.

 

Anyway, the basic approach of Neil Young is correct, IMHO. The very most albums today are produced in 24/96 or even better resolutions and from a cost perspective it would be best to sell the HiRes masters originally to the customers. DR shaping to "Mastered for iTunes" and downsampling to redbook standard are additional costs but in fact, selling an original master in an open format like FLAC means to sell it finally. A "No Go" for the marketing guys. For this reason they are very happy to have an alternative like MQA and for the time beeing until this will be the standard, they put us off with 24/44.1 or /48 downgrades in best case. 

 

Cheers,

Thomas

[#Yoda#]

23 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

Can anybody explain me the economic or other rationale of Stereophiles MQA unconditional endorsement?! Today another DAC review is up that sings the song of MQAs qualities.

 

More importantly even goes so far as to hit competing vendors for not including MQA:

 

"If you were contemplating the purchase of a new DAC, why would you not want it to include MQA processing?"

 

and

 

"Schiit's reference DAC would be my reference DAC—if only it had MQA"

 

etc, etc.

 

Audio reviews are audio reviews but this level of ignoring the wider discussion and including specific vitriol is astonishing. Why?!

 

I'm observing the internet publications about MQA since early 2015 and in my perception "The Absolute Sound" was the first HiFi magazine that hyped MQA exuberant. For me, Robert Harley seems to be the "high priest" of the "MQA cult".

[#Yoda#]

1 hour ago, Digital Assassin said:

I bet has Bob Stuart has a dedicated guest room in Harley's house.

 

Not necessarily. Beside Meridian/MQA the major labels could be the winner in this game. There is not longer any need to sell their "crown jewels" in an open format, having an alleged alternative in a closed folded (compressed) format, not to mention the  DRM capabilities of MQA. As we can already notice, the very most new albums are issued at only 24/44.1 or /48 and not in the resolution they had been mastered.

 

On 15.8.2017 at 6:12 AM, firedog said:

I think if you check you will find most albums are made in 24.44.1 or 48 and not higher resolutions.

 

Maybe ten years ago, you were right, but today the very most albums are produced in 24/88.2  or even higher resolutions simply because, as far as I know, iTunes requires a minimum resolution for incoming files for their store at 24/88.2.

 

Perhaps Robert Harley is someway a "useful idiot" for the major labels and Meridian. Useful idiot "was a term coined by Lenin (presumably in Russian) for those naive souls in the West who thought the Bolshevik revolution would lead to the new utopia and did the Russians' propaganda work for them." 

 

 

 

 

[#Yoda#]

42 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

iTunes doesn't require anything above 44.1. Apple asks for it, but that's it. 

 

44.1 is still the norm because the need for so many channels. 

 

From Apples "Mastered for iTunes" guideline:

 

"Best Practices for Mastering for iTunes

Our latest high resolution encoding process ensures that your music is transparently and faithfully distributed in the way you intended it to be heard. However, before you submit songs to iTunes for encoding, there are some best practices you can follow to ensure that your audio is optimized for iTunes.

Provide High Resolution Masters

To take best advantage of our latest encoders send us the highest resolution master file possible, appropriate to the medium and the project.

An ideal master will have 24-bit 96kHz resolution. These files contain more detail from which our encoders can create more accurate encodes. However, any resolution above 16-bit 44.1kHz, including sample rates of 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz, will benefit from our encoding process.

Don’t upsample files to a higher resolution than their original format. Upsampling won’t recover or add information to an audio file. Don’t provide files that have been downsampled and dithered for a CD. This degrades the file’s audio quality.

As technology advances and bandwidth, storage, battery life, and processor power increase, keeping the highest quality masters available in our systems allows for full advantage of future improvements to your music. Also, though it may not be apparent because there may not always be a physical, tangible master created in LP or CD format, the iTunes catalog forms an important part of the world’s historical and cultural record. These masters matter—especially given the move into the cloud on post-PC devices."

 

Not at least because of this, today most recording studios are able to record and master new albums in 24/88.2 or 24/92. 

 

@firedog: I'm using XiVero's MusicScope, an audio analysis tool, and If I purchased an album that is not correctly labeled, I complain immediately. Fortunately it is decreasing, even at Qobuz.com. 

 

[#Yoda#]

30 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Good. That pretty much says what I said. High res is a recommendation, not a requirement and studios are capable of high res, not necessarily using it. 

 

Anyway, it is obvious that a lot of artists who released their preceding albums in 24/92 or higher resolutions are now restricted to 24/44.1 or /48 for their new albums. I wouldn't wonder when we will see them as MQA file in a 24/96 or /192 equivalent, soon.

[#Yoda#]

You should consider that the excitement about MQA in HiFi publications and forums is primarily an US based phenomenon. In general in the European HiFi press or forums, MQA is not really a big deal, more a peripheral matter.

 

We shouldn't blow up an artificial bubble about a temporarily hyped trial to dominate and control music distribution. Mainstream customers do not visit this forum or notice other audiophile publications. It is essential to bring the bare facts about MQA to other popular media platforms and prevent guided misinformation.

 

 

[#Yoda#]

4 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Hey Peter. I am on my knees to thank you for this indirect hint. I thought I had everything from Yello.

When I read this post two days ago I had without much thinking Boris vd Lek in mind and noted the album for giving it a try. So 10 minutes ago I gave it a go and thought ... what ?!? Yello ? I checked and indeed.

I never knew the man also made albums on individual title ! Poor me.

 

Anyway, sounding great. And obviously I don't even know the normal Redbook version.

Thanks man.

 

PS: Cut the crap now. 

 

You should know that this is originally a 24/44.1 recording and Qobuz.com is still selling an upsampled version. Via a really good DAC with own adjusted digital filters better sounding than the MQA version on a MYTEK Brooklyn anyway.

[#Yoda#]

FYI: http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2017/10/mqa-dcs/

 

"The high end audio world is littered with Format-First Audiophiles who now more than ever shop with a “No MQA, No Deal” approach, especially when it comes to big ticket items like those offered by dCS."

 

I'd like to know who the mentioned audiophiles are. ?

[#Yoda#]

2 hours ago, realhifi said:

If it’s true I wouldn’t blame them one bit. I have an acquaintance that has all ARC Ref gear, gorgeous turntable setup, suberb Mac based digital into a  Metrum Pavane Dac into DeVore loudspeakers and obviously loves it. BUT, he recently wanted to hear what the fuss was about MQA so he purchased a Meridian Explorer 2 and started listening to the MQA files available on Tidal. He said it’s some of the best digital he’s ever heard and he said he can’t imagine getting a Dac that didn’t have MQA ability in it. He’s shopping.  

 

Maybe it is caused by the fact that Europeans are potentially not so much brainwashed by biased media like "audiophiles" on other continents because MQA is not really an important topic in the European HiFi press . Personally I know several "audiophiles" with absolutely sophisticated audio gear far above $ 100,000 and none of them ever wasted his time and money to think about to exchange his DAC because of MQA ability. 

[#Yoda#]

3 hours ago, Mordikai said:

I don't have a problem with the Pono player although I've never touched one. I will however trust my ears (and most other peoples) over some old rocker who listens to hi-res in a car.

 

This part of the marketing campaign for the PonoPlayer was a blemish for the in principle well-meant project and a great mobile audio device.You cannot perceive the subtle differences of HiRes audio or MQA in a suboptimal listening environment like a vehicle interior, not even with the best car sound systems. This campaign was absurd, not only in my perception. It was designed to address "green" potential customers used to listen only to mp3 files on creepy audio devices like smartphones with the benefits of HiRes. 

What you can notice is the superb natural sound quality of the PonoPlayer compared to build-in solutions or very most other DAPs, hooked on the AUX input, anyway if mp3, Redbook or HiRes 24/192. @Samuel T CogleyUsing IEMs is not really a proper condition for music listening in car traffic, by the way. ?

[#Yoda#]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

MQA was at first going to be used as the solution for Pono. Not sure what problem this solution addressed, but the team at Pono (when real businessmen ran the company, not Neil Young or his industry chronies) decided MQA didn't make sense. 

 

Maybe Neil Young, John Hamm or some other people in the PonoMusic Team or other related people simply noticed in this early stage of MQA the divergence between assertion and reality, respectively the negative impact to the initial impetus of Neil Young to bring music in real studio quality to the ordinary music consumers.

[#Yoda#]

HighResAudio.com announced on Facebook a new HiRes streaming service in Europe, using native 24bit FLAC and no lossy technology like MQA. Link:

 

"HighResAudio Streaming: we are bound to launch our subscription based streaming service in Europe! Stay tuned for a unique usability, feature-set and of course our pristine and fully tested, verified and native 24bit FLAC audiophile service. Highly recognized and well known German music journalist are on board to make the HRA streaming service the only serious choice. Pssst ..., the subscription price is a real winner!"

 

[#Yoda#]

45 minutes ago, synn said:

I hope Qobuz expands to more markets. Their sublime level sounds like a much better alternative to those with enough bandwidth over MQA.

 

Do you mean Sublime or Sublime +? 

 

I compared both, TIDAL HiFi and Qobuz Sublime, for quite a long period and in general I couldn't notice a difference in SQ.

 

In March Qobuz announced to expand their services to Spain, Italy and Poland until summer. As far as I know, this hasn't happen yet.

[#Yoda#]

9 hours ago, synn said:

The latter, of course!

Personally, I don't see any sense in Sublime + with a 50% extra charge on the basic HiFi streaming service.

 

Anyway if MQA or real HiRes, I'm using streaming services to evaluate music albums for a purchase decision and therefore I don't need to listen to the music superior to redbook quality.

 

Beside this, (basic) Sublime is a great offer for my needs because of the significant discounts on HiRes downloads with a final price that is for sure far below Qobuz own purchase costs and within very view months my annual subscription fee for Sublime is amortized.

 

For sure, I'm not the only customer with this behavior and we will see how long this loss-making business model will last until Xandrie SA pulls the plug, what means "Game Over" for Qobuz, finally and unfortunately, because less competition is always bad for the consumers. 

[#Yoda#]

1 hour ago, synn said:

I actually had an audio test done and can hear from 20hz to 18khz.

 

i would love to have younger ears though!

 18 kHz is quite good, even if you are a 40 years old youngster ?

 

My slightly older listening organs are able to receive up to 15 kHz sinus tone. However, my blind test hit rate on well produced and approved HiRes vs. the same files, downsampled with JRiver, is significant, using Audeze LCD-XCs or my KS-Digital near field studio monitors  with a frequency range of 48 Hz - 22 kHz. It is obvious that the perceptibility isn't necessarily a matter of frequency but may be more of sampling rate and the dynamic fortunes of the higher Bit-rate. I'm aware of the discussions on expert levels about this topic. For many listeners, the sonic influence of the listening environment, usually the living room, foils the fortunes of HiRes recordings, regardless how impressive the HiFi setup is, IMHO.

 

Concerning comparisons between MQA and HiRes files, usually you don't know the origin of the MQA version. I've done comparisons, but this is futile because the original master makes the real difference, finally. 

[#Yoda#]

5 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

Since Stereophile's Jim Austin is going to do a series on MQA technology I wrote him a letter on Audio Asylum.

 

Dear Jim Austin,

 

On October 21, 2017 you said you don’t understand the technology behind MQA and yet you are going to write a series about it?

Your series should make interesting reading because in that same October 21, 2017 response to stehno you called him an idiot “for not at least considering that they (Peter Craven and Bob Stuart) might understand things better than you do.” For you to be intellectually consistent you now have to consider others may understand things better than Peter Craven and Bob Stuart do.

 

In your series on MQA Technology I would like the following addressed at a minimum.

1.       I want you to look at the research supporting the technology of MQA and tell me if it supports the claims MQA Ltd is making. Next I want you to tell me if the math supports the claims MQA makes. To write objectively about the research and the math you will have to analyze both sides pro MQA and anti MQA.

2.       Moving on the filters MQA uses they are not new  so I want to know why MQA Ltd decided to use these filters when so many others have chosen not to use these types of filters. 

3.       MQA uses Peter Craven’s patented method for degrading files and reconstructing them. Why is this step necessary? Following this train of thought why aren’t other methods of file compression equally as valid as the method MQA uses?

4.       People in studios who were shown MQA found that it changed their masters in 2014. It took until last month at the AES convention in New York City for MQA Ltd to acknowledge the problem and promise a solution so engineers could hear how the final product would sound. I want to know why MQA needs to change the master when other high resolution files don’t change the master.

 

You have made a few comments defending the industry and the press for its lack of technical rigor concerning MQA. You actually indicted the industry and the press. This is why people outside the industry realized if the technology behind MQA was going to be examined that we would have to do it ourselves.  And we did on the Computer Audiophile site starting January 2, 2017.

 

Sincerely,

 

Stephen

Stephen,

 

we started a dispute about the weakness and issues of MQA in the PonoMusic Community already in October 2015. Probably not with the deep technological impact of the participants in this thread but finally with the same intend. ?

 

Tom

[#Yoda#]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

I wasn't following Pono closely back then (seeing it as a dead end). I'd be curious to learn what convinced them to abandon the proto-MQA they were being sold by Meridian.

 

Nobody outside the inner circle of PonoMusic knows what happened between Neil Young and Bob Steward. Anyway, there are a lot of audiophiles who pledged for the PonoPlayer on Kickstarter, not because of the weird marketing campaign, but to get a DAP, powered by Ayre Acoustic, to a bargain price and the vision of a download store for music, with the best available resolution, to reasonable prices and accessible in all major markets, globally. That was the idea, but unfortunately it was wishful thinking and the project bursts because of the reality of an international split market for digital rights, management failures and missing investors.

However in the still existing community, most people are geared about listening to music in the quality as the artists may experience it in the studio along with Neil Youngs statement (I know, it is just a slogan ?) and the ability to purchase the music in the best quality without any DRM obstacles.

 

MQA is anything else than that. Maybe, Neal Young and his team recognized the contradiction in Bob Stewards conception about MQA in this early stage, I don't know.

 

Finally, the idea behind the PonoMusic concept was the opposite to what MQA still wants to achieve: Make music available for any customer for one price up to the real studio quality in FLAC 24/192 without any restrictions. 

 

Realistically, it was predictable that this would encounter the resistance from the labels, but it's another story. 

 

[#Yoda#]

32 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Does anyone know if Xstream is actually MQA? Or something entirely different?

 

Xstream will be designed to be adaptive, and stream in the highest quality a user's connection will allow.

 

"Xstream is one file, streaming for all with 15,000 seamlessly changing levels of playback quality," Young said.

 

Old April 2017 article here: https://www.cnet.com/news/pono-is-probably-dead-long-live-xstream/

 

Edit: more Googling says it's different.

 

"That effort has led to a technology developed by Orastream, a small company in Singapore that we’ve been working with. Together we created Xstream, the next generation of streaming, an adaptive streaming service that changes with available bandwidth. It is absolutely amazing because it is capable of complete high resolution playback."

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-preps-new-high-quality-streaming-service-xstream-w478281

 

 

If XStream will ever appear, what is quite doubtful, it has nothing to do with MQA.

 

XStream is based on a streaming technology, developed by OraStream that can stream many different formats in their original resolution and adapt the signal to the  available bandwidth at the receiving device. That means, if you are at home with a proper internet access, you can get e.g. FLAC 24/192 or on the other hand, when you listen to your mobile device in the outback, the signal is adapted to current available bandwith, e.g. 128 kbps.

http://www.orastream.com