MQA is Vaporware

[AJ Soundfield]

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

In this case the pro MQA people in the audiophile community are actually more helpful than the anti MQA people.

It's the same pro__  people, different day:

Quote

"An astonishingly short two years after writing that, I can report that digital audio has taken a significant step forward in its inexorable march toward superiority over analog. The development to which I refer is called High Definition (HDCD)."

" But, as you might also expect, the 24/192 two-channel (DVD-A) tracks sounded by far the best, and quite significantly so. Everything at 48kHz and below sounded pleasant if not terribly detailed, but when shifting into high gear at 88.2kHz, the resolution became transparent enough to hear the warts in the recording, and even perhaps the limitations of the hardware. And it sounded more liquid, as did all the high-resolution formats."

"Every Stereophile writer who has auditioned DSD under critical conditions—Robert Harley, Peter van Willenswaard, Jonathan Scull, and me—has found it both very much better than 16/44k1 CD and much closer to the analog experience."

"As compelling as the untreated hi-res file sounded, I literally laughed at the difference when the MQA version began. Not only did it feel as though a veil had been lifted, with far more color to the sound, but instruments also possessed more body. With more meat on dem bones, I also noticed less of a digital edge on the violin. I've heard Hahn in concert several times, and this was the closest to real I've ever heard her violin sound on recording."

[AJ Soundfield]

What exactly is MQA "fixing" with encoding sample rates >48k, which have been used in studios for what, 2 decades now?

[AJ Soundfield]

18 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

maybe this is a good time to ask about what would be a good SQ, easy to use head unit to play USB or Ipods in my car?

You'll have to wait until they come out with MQA car units. Otherwise everything is smeared. Even Hi Rez files.

At least that's what I've heard.

[AJ Soundfield]

8 minutes ago, mav52 said:

Could MQA be nothing more within its secret sauce is to correct overcompression mistakes or increase the DR range..  Just wondering.

No, it completely fixes the problems of "Redbook ringing" inside audiophile heads.

Now of course Stuarts AES "MQA prequel" paper used a concocted MATLAB filter with suboptimal dither, that doesn't remotely represent any AD filter used in over 20yrs, thereby proving you need MQA.

A good explanation of the "process"  can be found here http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/origami/ThereAndBack.html

There are quite a few things going on...

[AJ Soundfield]

9 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Please be careful commenting about another company's products. True, false, neither, or both, manufacturers commenting on another manufacturer's product is tricky territory. 

Apologies Chris, I did not think of MQA as a "manufacturer", but rather an entity that strictly licenses the "process".

MQA actually manufactures hardware? Regardless, did not think as loudspeaker manufacturer there would be conflict with being critical of the MQA process itself. Your site, your rules, no prob.

[AJ Soundfield]

8 hours ago, crenca said:

 

I would say there is a conflict, in that MQA is not just another "product" among products with whom A J is competing against or working with.  MQA is trying to become the format that A J and every other manufacture is forced to work with and for, to say nothing of consumers.

I don't think this is correct. It might be if my speakers had only digital inputs, because the proprietary nature of the MQA signal might not work with the internal DSP processors. That would certainly be an issue.

But my speakers are either passive, or active with analog inputs, so I don't see possibility of conflict there.

My "issue" with MQA is the "science" presented and the fact that I am a music lover and would rather not have to support such a specious process purported as "improvement", of stereophonic soundfields no less!

[AJ Soundfield]

2 hours ago, fung0 said:

This sounds like the actual situation

Yep.

MQA didn't run over my cat or anything. My friend has a Brooklyn and a pair of my creations, so I've "heard/experienced it" extensively, per audiophile First Commandment.

My main criticism is my usual standard, the scientific nonsense surrounding it...and as JGH might have said, the mindless acceptance of it. It does zero to advance "high fidelity" as it once was defined (again, see JGH), but of course is the next great elixir for those susceptible to such things.

No care in the world about the hardware, who is signing up, etc, etc

[AJ Soundfield]

I missed this bit of MQA comedy previously:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/jason-approaches-finish-line-laas

 

Quote

 

the sole attendee (besides me) in her room on a slow Sunday asked for a non-MQA/MQA comparison on her all-Meridian system. After no more than 45 seconds—it could have been less, but certainly not more—the man asked to switch to the MQA version, listened for a much shorter time, stood up, declared the whole thing was a sham, and marched out the door. It was almost as if the comparison had never happened.

Just the day before, when John Atkinson and I shared breakfast with Bob Stuart of MQA, Bob had told us, "No A/B demo can be done effectively in 45 seconds, or against prejudice, or on the basis of one trial. Frankly, it makes it a non-event.

"According to ECG measurements around content with and without components above 20kHz, the brain needs 100–200 seconds to process information before it can effectively move from A to B. We at MQA infer this is primarily a response to more or less temporal smearing, and therefore probably also applies to comparisons between grades of higher rate content." (footnote 1)

 

Well, I read footnote 1 and that's when it became even funnier:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00093/full

They repeatedly state numerous times and reference studies, that Hi Rez is inaudible . Ouch.

Median age of the subjects 20.6 years old, a couple decades off the average audiophile/HF hearing acuity 

As Archimago points out in comments, they are simultaneously viewing a CRT, with the speakers very nearfield (1.5m) to maximize the possibility of >20k content to reach their ears, so nothing remotely like typical audiophile listening conditions.

Conclusions:

Quote

 

It remains unclear what kind of advantages high-resolution audio might have for human beings.

Our findings have some limitations. First, because we used only a visual vigilance task, it is unclear whether high-resolution audio can improve performance on tasks that involve working memory and long-term memory. 

Third, it remains unclear why there was a time lag until the effects of high-resolution audio on brain activity show up, and why this effect was maintained for 100 s after music stopped.

 

There is a huge amount of speculation about what the results mean, but essentially, there is zero correlation to what Bob Stuart is pitching, because they are using 24/192, NOT MQA "remastered" files with who knows what amount of HF aliasing distortion and HF re-EQ going on.

Quite frankly, this is more nonsense like Oohashi (and subsequent 2014 follow up finding "Negative Hypersonic Effects" ), with the same highly inconclusive and speculative results based on a test regime with no connection to reality.

Amazing that Stuart would cite this, but alas...

[AJ Soundfield]

Music has been encoded at 24/96 (or more) for around 2 decades now.

If 16/44 containers for playback create psychogenic melodrama for a tiny fringe of society and there is some need for bandwidth reduction, then stream in 24/96 FLAC, which is minimally larger than a 16/44 WAV file http:// http://dsd-guide.com/size-comparison-chart-various-formats-dsd-wav-flac-mp3#.WUcKyejyvIV

"Problem" solved. No new fandangle format needed

[AJ Soundfield]

Black Sabbath definitely needs more than 16bit of dynamic range above the room noise floor and I'm sure many 70+ year old audiophiles will enjoy the >20kHz content, even with large panel electrostats

[AJ Soundfield]

Can't wait to finally hear the unsmeared version of those electric guitars after 47 years of suffering. I'm starting to feel more relaxed already.

[AJ Soundfield]

29 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

You SPECIFICALLY asked Mansr what platform he did his tests on and when he answered you this was your response? 

LOL, yep, those goalposts can shift when necessary 

[AJ Soundfield]

17 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Perhaps you missed this thread:

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30572-mqa-technical-analysis/

 

Fake news. Plus I don't see any credentials. When in doubt (i.e. the technical stuff is way over my head), I trust higher authority.

[AJ Soundfield]

Hang on...

[AJ Soundfield]

23 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Plus I don't see any credentials. When in doubt (i.e. the technical stuff is way over my head), I trust higher authority.

Told ya 

[AJ Soundfield]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

I am willing to believe everybody, as I rarely venture beyond Redbook.

Well, there's no such thing, since 44.1k filters aren't real and what's left is totally smeared

[AJ Soundfield]

10 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

Yes, but as this thread clearly demonstrates, there will always be individuals who believe the marketing claims over the measurements...

[AJ Soundfield]

7 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I'm only relaying what the MQA video said and what Bob said at the LAAS. That I agree with him that there is no music above 50kHz and what is above 50kHz is of little significance. 

 

Bob had told us, "No A/B demo can be done effectively in 45 seconds, or against prejudice, or on the basis of one trial. Frankly, it makes it a non-event.

"According to ECG measurements around content with and without components above 20kHz, the brain needs 100–200 seconds to process information before it can effectively move from A to B. We at MQA infer this is primarily a response to more or less temporal smearing, and therefore probably also applies to comparisons between grades of higher rate content." (footnote 1)

 

Footnote 1: In subsequent discussion by email, Bob referred us to four papers, one of which can be found here. The others are "High-resolution music with inaudible high-frequency components produces a lagged effect on human electroencephalographic activities," by Ryuma Kuribayashi, Ryuta Yamamoto and Hiroshi Nittono (Clinical neuroscience, 2014); "Multidisciplinary study on the hypersonic effect," by Tsutomu Oohashi, Emi Nishina, Manabu Honda (International Congress Series 1226), and "Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect" by Tsutomu Oohashi, Emi Nishina, Manabu Honda, Yoshiharu Yonekura, Yoshitaka Fuwamoto, Norie Kawai, Tadao Maekawa, Satoshi Nakamura, Hidenao Fukuyama, and Hiroshi Shibasaki (The American Physiological Society, 2000).

 

Ummm, do you know what all those papers he referenced say about >50kHz content? 

Did he really say that?

[AJ Soundfield]

12 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

I only have access to that one linked and don't understand much of it anyway, but saw this: "high-resolution audio with inaudible high-frequency components induces a relaxed attentional state without conscious awareness."

They all say >20k is inaudible, but may (still speculative) cause a more "relaxed" state.

IOW, absolutely nothing like MQA sound quality claims.

 

Quote

So MQA agrees with parts of what is referenced but disagrees with other parts?

That would depend on degree of desperation.

With regards specifically to the purported >50k statement made, here in a nutshell

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0095464

Quote

As for the positive hypersonic effect, HFCs at around 80−88 kHz induce the maximum activity of Alpha-2 EEG. Such frequencies are within the ultra-high frequency domain, which is far beyond and not contiguous to the 20 kHz upper limit of the human audible range. The authors had not anticipated that human brain activity would sharply respond to such ultra-high HFCs. Furthermore, the application of even higher HFCs, such as 96–112 kHz or even over 112 kHz, which are extremely faint in power, also increased Alpha-2 EEG no less than did HFCs of 40–48 kHz and 48–56 kHz. Such data imply the existence of unknown human sensitivity to high frequency air vibrations, which may further contribute to discussion in the basic neuroscience field in light of the discovery of the hypersonic effect

[AJ Soundfield]

5 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Does this mean it's impossible to say who is right about any of this stuff (importance/effect of >20k), at present?

 

No. MQA/BStuart (and cheering section) claim it is audible and every study he cites says its inaudible. Nothing ambiguous there.

Now if one is unconcerned with audibility and want to alleviate the "tension" and other drama caused by the sight of Redbook, then the cited studies say you should apply band filtering >20k ~ 32k to avoid a "negative" effect, then apply a lot of power >32k, especially around 84kHz, to a rather super supertweeter.

Of course, if one is in good mental health, one could conclude this Hyperbolic Effect business is all but a tempest in a teapot and hit play on that 16/44 player. YMMV. 

[AJ Soundfield]

37 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

"24/96 is vaporware" 

Eh? That has been the near minimum standard of encoding for 2 decades or so. It's quite real..and sensible.

Now, it's also real that 70+ yr old audiophiles with say large panel electrostats like MLs, will claim to be able to hear >20k content (despite all evidence to the contrary) and be "limited" by 16 bits as offered by >16/44 playback files.

So then the questions are, ok what is your rooms broadband noise floor, let's see what happens when you apply >16bits of dynamic range + noise floor to those stats, specifying exactly what recordings used, that presumably have >16bits dynamic range. Maybe post on Youtube, the arcing, explosion and smoke.

[AJ Soundfield]

25 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Interesting, of course with HQPlayer or XXHighEnd (which I can upsample to 768k on a celeron), the fixed cost is very low, and it works with my entire library... 

Why is that interesting?

[AJ Soundfield]

10 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

However, without blind ABX testing

There's that crazy talk again...

 

I have access to the Chord and some other fairly high end DACs (Berkeley, Lampi, Ayre, etc), some of which can decode MQA. In all the informal sessions so far, the Chord has been spanking the MQA DACs, but as you say, it most definitely must be done controlled, for any sort of validity.

In Nov I'll be doing something a bit different. I'll be comparing the MQA output of a Mytek Brooklyn vs a 16/44 loop version of itself. That might be interesting. 

[AJ Soundfield]

8 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I'm suggesting that not all measurements really matter. That's not crazy talk. 

I thought you were suggesting ABX testing as quoted. That is crazy talk! For some at least.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

I'm waiting to buy the 4th version of the same Black Sabbath music I already own, before making any decision on the wonders of unsmearing and relaxation, with crunchy electric guitars