MQA is Vaporware

[psjug]

4 hours ago, esldude said:

I don't remember for certain.  I think I saw it mentioned first by JJ Johnston.  I also have seen it in a paper by Robert Stuart

It is included in the Bob Stuart Q&A (Sterophile): https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-questions-and-answers-tutorial-temporal-errors-audio

 

His equation says Fs but he must have meant Nyquist because he says the result is 220picoseconds

[psjug]

17 hours ago, mansr said:

Nobody knows.

 

17 hours ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

I have read some of the references - but what is the 10x figure related to air, mean - why is it important ?

Thanks and regards,

Shadders.

 

Because air attenuates ultrasonic frequencies transmitted >3m.  So a terrible problem (sarcasm).  See Page4 here

http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20171005/17501.pdf

[psjug]

48 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

Thanks. So, does this mean that they have equalised the ultrasonics such that if you are 1m away from your speakers you have a lot of ultrasonics, and if you are 3metres away from the speakers, you receive the ultrasonics as if you were 1metre away ?.

If ultrasonics are so important, then surely this will distort your perception, in that, the closer i am to the speakers, the greater the overdose of ultrasonics which would be unnatural ?

Also, if there were a guitar player (example) in the room, and i am 3 metres away from them, as is probably the case for people and the distance to their hifi speakers, then the ultrasonics would never reach me anyway (or will be significantly attenuated).

Regards,

Shadders.

I think (someone correct me if this is wrong) it is just some arbitrary comparison for MQA.  They say that the "blur" with MQA is similar than "blur" caused by 10m transmission through  air.  So, no they are not correcting for the ulltrasonic losses in air.

[psjug]

10 hours ago, FredericV said:

For those listeners in the rear rows of the hall, all the ultrasonics are gone. Sarcasm indeed.

 

Thanks for that.  I admire what you are doing with opening up MQA.  Point taken that I missed with the sarcastic comment.

[psjug]

The number of titles available in MQA is only one end of the vaporware question.  There is also the delivery.  And how many consumers are equipped (and engaged) for playing MQA.  If streaming is the main delivery, they really need to get Apple and Spotify on board.  These services strike me as not caring much about high quality music or else they would already be doing 16/14.4 FLAC.

 

If you multiply fraction of titles, fraction of streaming customers, fraction of customers with MQA playing equipment, then what do you have?

[psjug]

1 hour ago, FredericV said:

The first unfold is the clever part of MQA, usable for a limited time in a world with limited bandwidth in some parts. 

 

MQA may be clever, but in a Rube Goldberg sort of way.  As Miska pointed out a long time ago, why not just use 18/96 Flac?

 

[psjug]

9 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Tidal sucks - they use Class D amps!!

I don't get the joke...?

 

But I did not like Tidal much when I tried it.  Nothing to do with sound quality, I just thought the Tidal  player apps  seemed not very good compared to the competition.

[psjug]

1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

May I ask, what you deem competition ? (IOW, does this really have to do with Tidal ?)

I was talking about Tidal not MQA so I meant all the other music streaming services.  I'm using Deezer Elite/HiFi (better than Tidal I think but I'm not completely happy with Deezer either).  I was put off that I had to buy a Sonos Connect to stream Deezer FLAC but I've come to like Sonos.  (This was last year due to exclusive Deezer-Sonos deal that is ending)

 

I agree that this is straying from the topic.  I'm happy to talk about it in a new thread if anyone wants to start one.

[psjug]

6 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

I am sorry. I was not hinting at that at all. It is just that Tidal "player apps" should refer to the Tidal produced playback software (at least that is what I got from it), but which may s*ck according to you because of the SQ streaming implies (for the worse).

But there is more playback software around.

 

Thanks.

No, I was saying my gripes are unrelated to sound quality. Biggest problem for me was Tidal's poor way of managing offline music on my phone (for listening on long drives).

[psjug]

7 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

What's wrong with China?

I have a pair of Usher V601 speakers.  I love how they sound and they did not cost very much.  Usher is Taiwanese, and they get a hand with engineering from Joe D'Appolito (at least that's my understanding).  So not mainland Chinese, but I don't see any reason a mainland chinese audio company would not be accepted if they did similar.  With or without without western collaboration, as long as the product is solid.

[psjug]

3 hours ago, synn said:

Hi Charles,

 

thanks! I find this approach quite satisfactory for my needs. This is also why I personally find the “Hi Fi” Tier for most streaming services not worth the cost. I don’t need to listen to every track I stream at high quality. Additionally, many commercial recordings (also dependent on the Genre) are produced rather unexceptionally that any improvements that one might hear above the 320kbps that Spotify streams are marginal at best.

 

 

I think this is fine if you are happy.  I have a different way of looking at it though.

 

I really like hifi/lossless streaming and to me the small price difference is completely worth it.  I also love vinyl, even though I think digital sound quality is superior to vinyl.  With hifi redbook flac streaming, I feel free to purchase vinyl knowing that almost always I can just stream the redbook digital version.  So now I never buy cds, pretty much just vinyl, and most of this is at shows where I get it signed by the artist.  Then I might play the LP or I might just stream the digital version. (Getting even more off topic, I think it's a bummer that the norm is including a mp3 download with vinyl, instead of a flac download or cd).

 

I think spotify plays gapless but one thing I hated with Rdio (maybe the only thing) was that their handling of 320AAC was not gapless.  Other than that, though, I agree that 320kbps sounds really good; I don't know if I can tell the difference between that and redbook.

[psjug]

18 minutes ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

One thing that left a really bad taste in my mouth with Usher was their deceptive advertising practices. The had a stand mount monitor called the "Dancer" or "Tiny Dancer". It was claimed to have a 1" beryllium dome tweeter and engraved on the metal faceplate was a large "Be" the chemical symbol for beryllium. Be offers many performance advantages over virtually all dome materials, but is quite expensive.

 

It turned out that it was a flat out lie, and the dome was simply painted titanium (about 1/20 the cost). I'm unimpressed with the corporate culture that disrespects its customers so blatantly. YMMV.

Did not know about that - that's pretty bad.  The V601 that I have are the lower end stuff - I only paid $400 for the pair and they are nice for that.

[psjug]

3 hours ago, Indydan said:

I have linked a video

So the crappy power cord only allows a burst of 500 amps?  How much does your amplifier's transformer want?

[psjug]

Sorry, I can't take the time to do better right now, but my point was I don't believe your system will ask you to pull  500A through your amplifier's primary winding, and I doubt it is possible for that much current to flow in the primary winding's path anyway.  Maybe I'm wrong.

[psjug]

10 hours ago, crenca said:

 

I suppose this might be true because of Tidal, but simply because the X number of MQA processed albums are up on Tidal does not mean that these are having any real impact.  Are they leading to $sales$ of some sort, such as Tidal subscriptions (because of MQA) or DAC's purchased specifically for MQA?  I suspect besides some bleeding edge audiophiles, very very few are specifically ordering MQA DAC's because of the MQA capability of said DACS.  It might be a feature, but it is not actually attracting real sales.  

 

Anyone have any hard data?

Well Tidal is tiny and losing market share.  And of the Tidal subscribers, a couple million at most, I doubt very many are specifically wanting to stream MQA.  Maybe a couple hundred thousand at most? 

 

Notice that Tidals introduction of MQA streaming (beginning of 2017) did not give any bump.  In fact Tidal's trend looks worse than the overall industry for first half of 2017.

 

If Deezer follows through with offering MQA it will help (MQA) but you could still they will be in the vaporware realm.

 

From https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/

[psjug]

5 minutes ago, synn said:

I am the person whom he called an armchair asshole an idiot and so on.

 

i have not called him any names. I have only criticized his general unpleasant behavior and he holier than thou attitude. Life has taught me that the smartest guy in the room never has to proclaim repeatedly that he is so. 

 

i did not ask him to be banned because I can take some heat, especially when it is dished out by someone too insecure in their own shoes. But I respect @The Computer Audiophile‘s decision and hope that Mr.Lucey finds more productive things to do with his free time.

 

onwards with MQA, then?

There was also the McDonald's drivethrough comment and saying that a robot could just as well  do his work.  Clearly the insults flowed both ways.

[psjug]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

Amazon Prime Music is part of the bigger Prime package. I suspect many, if not most, subscribe to Prime for other reasons than the music streaming.

Amazon Prime members get a discount but still have to pay $7.99/mo for Amazon Music Unlimited (in addition to the prime membership fee).

[psjug]

50 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Holy crap, look at Youtube!!!  The actual blog post that graphic comes from is here.

 

And I didn't expect to see Amazon Prime Music ahead of Apple Music for streaming.  Overall, this is a really depressing bit of truth for audiophiles.

Also, the chart doesn't include Pandora Premium, which is too new for that timeframe.  I think Pandora Premium is probably #5 already, even though it only streams at 192kbps max!   I do worry that high quality is so unimportant to most people that CD quality  or better streaming might go away in a few years if Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, etc can't make money to stay afloat.

[psjug]

11 minutes ago, mansr said:

Amazon Prime Music is not the same as Amazon Music Unlimited. The former is part of the Prime package and gives access to a limited catalogue. The latter is a separate subscription (with a discount for Prime members) and includes their full catalogue.

You are correct.  Thanks for catching that.  Similarly, I think what I saw for Pandora subscriber numbers probably included their lower cost services along with Pandora Premium.

[psjug]

13 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Ha!  You used the word "elegant". This in no way helps your cause to convince us that you are not an anti-consumer shill for the industry.

 

Even better he said it was an elegant business model.  That is what I said in response to JA using the word, but I was intending to be a smart-ass!

[psjug]

Archimago's recent blog entry on "ringing" 

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/01/audiophile-myth-260-detestable-digital.html

[psjug]

58 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

Remember Deezer (with over 6x the subscriber numbers of Tidal) has MQA coming.

 

Maybe, but I wonder if Deezer is backing off.  They haven't said anything about it since September.  Here is what they say on the Deezer Community forum:

 

I can't share any info just yet and we don't know for sure if and when MQA will be available with Deezer tracks

[psjug]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Michael Lavorgna, banned for telling someone to go fuck his mother.

Have you seen this? To be fair, it would be hard to make this kind of video without coming off looking like a tool.  But besides that, his listening room sounds like an echo box. 

 

 

[psjug]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Michael Lavorgna, banned for telling someone to go fuck his mother.

ML's own mother?

[psjug]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

You really think you can make a serious audio judgement from a youtube video?

Look at the room - nothing on the walls or windows.  Also, why do you hear the echo in his room but not on what was recorded  outside?