MQA is Vaporware

[John Dyson]

17 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I wasn't going after Pro-Tools so much as the engineers who just record in 24/44 or 24/48.  Joe Palmaccio in Nashville and many others have been railing about this for over 10 years.  As someone who likes the best possible sound, I have been discussing this on the Hoffman board for a similarly long period of time.  My view is that 24/96 or better is ideal.

For processing --  for the best quality you really need more than 48k for the general case (where you don't know what kind of processing is being done.)  96k (or 88.2k) is the next higher sample rate that makes sense.  48k/44.1k sample rates are okay for delivery or simple applications, but lock you in to some problematical issues.  (Of course, you -- or the processing product -- can do up/down conversion, but that isn't really a good thing to do if can be avoided.)

 

Nowadays, with HW being so common, and plenty of disk space available, I don't see any reason at all for production not to use anything at 88.2k/96k or above @ 24 bits no-lossy compression involved.  Actually, 32bit floating point is better -- opens up some dynamic range mistake recovery during processing.  192k is nice, but mostly overkill for audio (real audible audio) applications, but other than overhead, really cannot hurt.  Also, the integral up/down conversion to 192k isn't too awful -- just best to avoid. There are a few minor additional degrees of freedom when using 192k sample rate (I am speaking of the DSP issues), but I would hope that most competent developers can avoid problems with processing at 96k.  48k is less easy/more trash can be left in the audio.  44.1k is simply ludicrious to try to do certain kinds of processing directly.  Also, there is a VERY VERY slight spectre of some Gibbs effect when up/down converting to/from 44.1k -- but NOT for linear applications.  Things like limiters/compressors have to do their duty carefully to avoid the sidebands wrapping around Nyquist rate.

 

The big problem with 48k (or 44.1k) is NOT problems for listening purposes, but one problem is there are some kinds of processing that produce sidebands in the audio -- those sidebands can easily (very very easily) create aliasing.  Linear processing -- no problems -- even doing up/down conversion (other than the well known issues.)  For nonlinear operatoins (like limiters/compressors/clippers/etc), best to avoid the lower sample rates.

 

[John Dyson]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The limitation is usually the total bandwidth required. 96 or 192 is great unless one needs a ton of tracks/channels. 

Maybe, in that case upconverison/downconversion might be appropriate.  However, at 192ksamples/sec * 4bytes/sample*16channels is 13Mbytes/sec.  If/when you REALLY need 16 or 24 channels and not just playing around, that isn't all that much.  A computer HDD is capable of 100Mbytes/second, and whenever processing those channels in HW, one would USUALLY do it in parallel, so the bandwidth per channel isn't all that big a deal.

I can acknowledge that 192k is probably excessive, especially for pop music,  so 96k might be a reasonable tradeoff.

 

My software is incredibly 'dense' with signal processing (it is difficult to describe the amount of processing -- but it is written absolutely the most efficiently as possible, and takes 3 cores of a Haswell CPU -- 3.3/3.4MHz because of the SIMD instructions throttling the CPU -- to run realtime.)   Very LITTLE procesisng in audio (unless maybe something neural net based) would need ANYWHERE near as much CPU.

 

For example:

(My software for resources for 2 channels each:  does over 200, different 300-1024 tap FIR filters, 64 different 1024 tap (super accurate) Hilbert transforms using DP math  & BLACKMAN 92 windows to maximize accuracy), and that only takes 3 Haswell cores realtime.   I doubt that many situations require this much processing in REALTIME @ 96k samples/sec for the entire chain!!!  Additionally, the timing is tracked perfectly, so that the input/output files or realtime output is accurate sample per sample!!!

(BTW, the code runs well over 98% of the time in SIMD instructions -- LOTS of math.)

 

So, it seems to me that generally working with 16channels at 96k/floating point samples is not beyond the capability of a workstation.  (Running my software 16 channels in realtime on a normal workstation might not be practical , however running at 48k and less quality only doubles the speed) Additionally, more than 4 cores is regularly available nowadays.  I am, of course, assuming  moderately efficiently written code.

I'd suspect that very few channels for very many applications need nearly as much processing as my software in most cases.

 

John

[John Dyson]

7 hours ago, tmtomh said:

 

On consumer playback of various sample rates: As usual, you are a gigantic and complete un-self-aware hypocrite. You ask for peer-reviewed studies on claims others make, but are content with a bald-faced assertion like "24/96 sound way better than 24/48," which not only has zero peer-reviewed evidence to support it, but also is an assertion you could not back up yourself if subjected to a blind test. "I cannot believe wee are arguing this" - are you f***ing kidding? You couldn't tell 24/48 from 24/96 in a blind test if your life depended on it.

 

 

I agree with you.  I do find this argument about 48K not being 'good enough' for consumer delivery to be distasteful  (44.1k might have a few troubles, but is also 'good enough' most of the time) .   The reason for my distaste  is that the matter of adequate sample rate is pretty much settled and has good basis in mathematics & science.  (I'd even argue that 16bits is good enough FOR DELIVERY also -- but that argument is weaker in my opinion -- because of the dithering and possibility after minor processing to dither again...  16bits is on the margins, but okay. )  (I was going to discuss the various reasons and when for more than 16bits, but that would only further confuse matters.)

 

It is an embarassment to humanity & intellect that someone would claim that greater than 48k is needed for delivery of audio for humans to listen to.  Any day -- I'd prefer 48k/24bit over 96k/16bit FOR LISTENING -- not because all of the 24bits is needed, but simply I like it better :-).  The 96k is specious for human listening.  (We all know that for other purposes, 96k can be useful or even necessary to maintain quality, just like 24bits or FP area also necessary or helpful in some cases.)

 

44.1k is a different matter...  From an emotional standpoint, I do not like it.  Perhaps the more important reason is the various kinds of tighter (more delays) filtering needed to make sure that there isn't aliasing, and it gives almost ZERO room for extra dynamic processing while maintaining the entire 20+kHz BW.  48kHz gives that extra 2-3kHz which really makes a difference for certain kinds of processing.  44.1k JUST BARELY FITS -- no extra room. 

 

John 

 

[John Dyson]

9 hours ago, mansr said:

With headphones and the volume turned up, dither at 16 bits is audible. Since it's easily possible to lower the noise level, there's no good reason not to.

I wish that small amounts of noise were audible to me -- 62yr old tinnitus...  Frustrating...  (However, I believe in the criteria being normally audible, and I listen to music that was originally on analog audio tape...  FOr that, the hiss on the tape makes pretty good dither :-)).

 

John

[John Dyson]

I am so disappointed that people cannot agree to disagree (ignoring totally unsubstantiated claims.)  For example, I have written that FOR LISTENING I prefer 48k/24bits over 96k/16bits (maybe I am remembering poorly -- been fighting a computer OS reload right now), but that is what I 'PREFER'.  Making claims that one is technically better FOR LISTENING than the other is poorly supported (other than the very slight amount of additional noise with 16bits.)  With my tinnitus & mostly listening to material with tape hiss -- even the 24 bits isn't of much serious interest -- but I PREFER IT MORE.  If I ever find a technical basis that says that one is really better than the other, then my opinion might possibly change.

 

You'll seldom see me write that something IS better than something else unless  I have reasons to accept the fact that they are actually better in the objective way.  On the subjective view of things -- I wont argue that for example YOU prefer choice A over choice B -- I cannot argue against  your own preferences -- such a claim borders on 'unreasonable.'

 

The only place where I disagree with such unsubstantiated PREFERENTIAL claims is when someone is apparently trying to sell a product or technology (I don't care if the technology is better or worse than the norm), but the problem is with the (IMO) ethical dilemma of stealth selling or even advocacy.  (For example, I write about my own project  -- BUT I DO NOT 'SELL' IT ON FORUMS LIKE THIS.)  'Informing' or 'talking about' is very different from 'marketeering.'

 

Just my opinion -- can't we all get along?  :-).

[John Dyson]

28 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I'm okay with members having different opinions on formats but the argument was not about 16/96.  There are few files encoded in that anyway and maybe zero commercial releases.  The argument was about 24/48 versus 24/96.  24/96 is clearly better.  The higher sampling rates do matter.

 

Your tinnitus may be impacting the frequency range but recent research suggests we hear timing distortions down to 5 microseconds well into our 70s.  Maybe you are doing okay on hearing the timing elements.

Well -- I must have mistyped -- because I was thinking 96k/16 when I typed 96k/24...  However, that is my mistake and confusion (I have been under blinding and overwhelming pressure...)  Can we forgive my mistake ? :-).

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

10 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Some corrections here:

 

1.  They have sold the software to the studios which came after testing done by all the individual labels.  MQA offers a cloud service so the studios can batch process files that way.

 

2.  There is new innovation here as MQA has invested time in building a deblurring filter for most of the studio ADCs.  Then they further figured out how to use machine learning to ID the ADC and deploy a deblurring filter.

You might not even know what 'blurring' or 'jitter' does and how it cannot manifest in the way that some clueless people might believe.

 

Firstly, if you have fast jitter, and a limited bandwidth (like 22.05k, 24k, 48k), and some ps of fast jitter, then most of that jitter cannot get through.  it is because the FM/PM modulation caused by the jitter requires associated modulation products (sidebands if you will), which fall far out of the bandwidth.  This means that IF there is jitter, as soon as you have a reconstruction filter, then the jitter mostly disappears (cannot manifest because of not enough bandwidth.)  The only place where the jitter can really manifest a change in teh audio is in an D/A and A/D conversion.  Even then, it doesn't change down the chain, and only changes the sampling point.  Much of that noise cannot manifest because of the digital filters after the input.  As soon as there is a bandwidth limit after said jitter, then it becomes progressively more difficult for the jitter to manifest.  Chopping the sidebands is a lot like grabbing an AM signal and doing a narrow filter on it -- then the modulation disappears (progressively losing more and more high frequencies until theoretically you just have the carrier.)

 

If there is 'blurring' or 'jitter' on the input, it must be at a relatively low frequency -- and that would be horrible.  Again, jitter can manifest, but it is a purely analog phenomenon, and the effects are at least partially removed by bandwidth limits.  A sane, recent design isn't going to manifest much jitter, but IT DOES EXIST.  Such jitter is like the 'angels on a pin' type thing -- there are many more important matters about audio processing. (I want to clarify that the effects of jitter do exist, even with the filtering, but is more of a PM/FM to AM type conversion process.)

Before playing with 'blurring', there are infinite numbers of other defects in the distributed audio, including total botches like not doing DolbyA decoding on older material.  Such talk only clarifies the point to me -- too much marketing-speak that is being used to sell something bad to everyone.

john

[John Dyson]

11 hours ago, Jud said:

 

This is factually incorrect.

 

This is marketing.

 

What has actually happened is this (a little bit of the longer tech piece I still haven't had time to write):

 

- The MQA filters don't "ring" (the more common name for what MQA calls "blurring" - what it really is you can find here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon ) themselves.  f "deblurring" anything (but do produce some amount of distortion), with lossy compression applied to the results.

 

It is possible for any filter that chops off the spectrum to cause a Gibbs type effect -- but it is kind of a smoke and mirrors type thing anyway.  (There aren't going to be any Gibbs effect if living in a world of sine waves, but if there is a square wave as an entity, then the missing harmonics will result in something that looks like ringing -- like I wrote -- smoke and mirrors.)  The serious negative effect is that if there is nearly a full scale square wave, then a low pass filter is used (assuming 2nd order, Q greater than 0.5), there will be a bit of a peak that might overshoot.  In the extreme, with a fairly narrow filter, there will be something that looks like ringing (given the square wave), even if it isn't really ringing (in an indirect way, it is kind of like ringing -- but not caused by resonance, but by similar mathematical behaviors.)

In the context that you are writing (and essentially agreeing with you), the idea of 'blurring' is nonsense other than a low pass or a jitter or amplitude noise  type thing (either a kind of noise or removal of detail.)  Both of these types of things (noise or frequency response) are both well understood, and once information is lost, or uncorrelated noise is added -- there isn't much that can be done either than artificially doing something to add back in fake detail, or find some kind of correlation in the noise so it can be mitigated.  (One kind of correlation can be described as a spectrum of the noise, so some of the noise might be able to be removed by filtering out that part of the spectrum -- however crude and destructive that might be.)

I regret the gullibility of the customers and/or the inability of those who understand the technology to help educate the gullible.  The technical side obviously doesn't have the patience to deal with the insults from the indoctrinated and the anti-truth advocacy, and frankly it is much easier to 'give up.'  On the other hand, the 'customers' are more interested in convenience than seeking out the real-world facts...  That lack of patience is understandable, because even technically savvy people can have glitches in their own understanding (including me.)

If there is money to be made, there will be sellers either living honestly (needing to be patient), or cheating (including dishonesty with the customers).  I don't care about the cheaters, but I am concerned about the hurt being perpetrated against the normally honest (but gullible) customer.

 

(This is not meant to be to the person that I am replying to -- rather to everyone reading this):

This is not a matter of 'lets just all get along', but rather I suggest listening to those who might know the TECHNICAL and UNBIASED facts about a subject.  Usually such people don't have a financial interest and doing generally show a financial or political benefit by conveying the honest facts.  Wishful thinking that the technically accurate facts not be true is not helpful.

Sadly -- sometimes an incompetent or agenda driven person will seem to be an authority -- no real formula for detecting such miscreants.

 

[John Dyson]

2 hours ago, Paul R said:

Speaking only of the technology, not the  company or their license practices -

 

I like the idea that MQA appears to use sub-band ADPCM, and that the lossy compression is not perceptual, but based upon bit rate reduction.  That is cool. I believe that could be implemented in such a way that could be effectively lossless in the audio band, though I have not done any proof on concept. Just kind of played around with the math.  

 

All compression (space/storage reduction) schemes have an attribute of bit rate reduction, just as a matter of physics and math.  Any scheme that does bit rate (space) reduction without consideration of perceptual attributes is most likely a very inferior scheme.  Just throwing bits away (even in an organized/mathematically reasonable way) isn't going to be as 'nice sounding' as a scheme which considers perception as its most important requirement.

There ARE schemes which can compress effectively, playing games to hide their artefacts because of choices that mitigate perceptual distortion, but most all schemes (all that I know of) have negative perceptual attributes (even mpeg at 320k or opus at 256k.)

By packing information into encoded 'noise bits', and recovering the information from encoded 'noise' will be less effective than a well designed full perceptual scheme.  How can 'partial data compression' work as well as 'data compression of all of the data' given the same bit rate?  Doesn't make any sense.  Even though the sound 'sucks' for high fidelity applications -- listen to opus at 64k or even lower -- it is surprising.  Usually, data compression of the higher energy data (lower frequencies) ends up with MUCH better compression than data compression of higher frequency data (that is a simple matter of the associated statistics and what DCT/MDCT and associated KLT theory implies.)

 

The approach of encoding the high frequency information in a few bits per sample -- especially with complex material (mixed vocals for examples) seems to be impossible to do without artefacts.  This is one situation where opus or worse -- mpeg, have troubles distinguishing multiple near-time coincident MF/HF sources.  Mpeg tends to totally hide the fact, while opus does a notch or two better.  This very subtle information is going to be encoded in a few bits? -- don't think so. For my own project, just a few little differences in some of the time domain sensitive processing can EASILY destroy the subtle details.

 

Anyway -- ANY *compression* scheme which doesn't consider perception in the data reduction choices is going to sound inferior.  (Well, except certain exceptional circumstances.)

 

There is too much snake-oil out there, with the marketeers hooking the vulnerable recipients of pseudo-technical gobbledygook.

 

 

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

Despite every piece of evidence/proof presented to Lee Scoggins, he keeps on promoting MQA.

 

This reminds me of the persistent salesman from the 1980's, selling a pile of crap, but keeps on trying to hook the customer. Relentless. They will say anything to get the sale, regardless whether the technical people told him, what he was saying would not work.

 

Trying to reason, or argue with such people is pointless. They will still repeat the same statements regardless of whether they believe the proof/evidence presented to them or not.

 

At this stage now, he can never admit he was wrong, despite that he may want to.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

So many times in the past -- I have had to rescind a claim or simply accept the fact that I am wrong.  It shouldnt' be a matter of ego, but simply an acceptance of reality.  The only thing that really bothers me is that the snake-oil just might hook a few people in the meantime.

 

On the other hand about making a false or erroneous claim -- someone has to step out and innovate, and sometimes the innovations are bogus or problematical.  The frustrating thing in this case is that the mistaken claim hasn't been accepted as a mistake by the originator.

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

The frightening thing about MQA is that it is NOT vaporware, but a very destructive thing.  From my view, I can imagine all of the leaked DolbyA encoded material being placed on MQA form, and not being able to decode it.  That isn't the only problem, but would be my own problem.

MQA only takes away freedom -- there is zero benefit from a quality standpoint.  Limiting 'compression' to the high frequencies/small details is exactly the opposite from the optimum behavior.  For optimum quality/minimum signal energy one would want to compress the high energy data -- where the precision is very crticial also.  By compressing the high energy material, and then removing it from the uncompressed stream -- it allows for less precision & signal energy in the uncompressed stream.  Also -- secondarliy different kinds of compression are more optimum for different kinds of data.  Data with high variance benefits more from a different algorithm than data with a small variance.  The benefit from compressing data with a large variance is MORE difficult to achieve.

MQA seems to be getting it absolutely opposite from optimum usage of resources vs quality.

 

Ahhh.  The compatibility issue -- compatible is of lower quality...  Not good either.

 

Additionally, the other benefits don't seem to manifest for the user side of things.  MQA is only bad for the user base.  Other kinds of compression/data reduction would be much more beneficial -- maybe a super-opus which is 100% optimized for quality, but not quite flac could be a good thing.   MQA simply seems to be optimally unoptimum.

 

John

[John Dyson]

25 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

I think @The Computer Audiophile hit this exactly right in his presentation.  In a world where we think nothing of streaming video on and through our mobile phones, where you can pick up 4-6 TB of storage for less than $150 at a local store or online, and where both these situations are going in the direction of faster and larger, cheaper - MQA is a solution whose time has come and gone.

 

Pay attention to the presentation video: Chris's slide about 5G and mobile/wi-fi speeds getting faster was something that really set off the MQA folks.  Now whether you know anything about the technical side of MQA or not, you surely see mobile/wi-fi/home internet speeds getting faster, and you surely know that streaming video, let alone streaming audio, is ubiquitous on the Web, home or mobile.  And you therefore can understand that there is no consumer value to MQA's file size minimization, whether via compression or the ADPCM (adaptive differential pulse code modulation) @Paul R mentioned.  But right there on the video you see MQA arguing against the faster cheaper future everyone knows is coming (really, for streaming audio purposes, is already here), because they realize it means at least half their supposed value proposition is quite evidently worthless.

Okay -- I do agree that data compression of audio is of less importance than today.  However, there are still cases where compression might be useful.  Maybe a LOT of compression of good quality might be more useful than some compression at the highest quality.  Where bandwidth reduction is needed -- then a lot of reduction is needed.  Data reduction for storage reasons is of less importance (or the need is less common.)

When I need data storage size reduction, I am happy with flac -- it does just enough to be worthwhile, and except for material that has data out of range, is good enough to store the data that I normally use floating point for manipulating.  Usually, flac is otherwise good enough.

I have to admit, sometimes I do play with flac's apodization options to maximize compression -- but the benefit is similar to that of twiddling thumbs.

 

MQA is optimally unoptimum in yet another way -- time has come and gone -- after digesting the informaion/thinking about it --  I do agree.

 

John

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, Tintinabulum said:

 

Somewhere I saw a post about anti-MQA cabal.  Actually, there isn't really anyone who is anti-MQA or HATES anything.  it is more of an issue that those who are technically competent know what the MQA thing is going to lead to if it is universally adopted.  The general quality of the audio signal will be poorer, and there will be zero sense of owning a copy of a piece of music.  Everything will tend to be transient -- not just MQA alone, but the power that MQA takes away from the userbase.

Any time a large corporation that gains excessive control, even with good intents initially (e.g. Google), will abuse their power in name of profits.  I am a true capitalist -- to the nth degree, but also realize that capitalism has to be moderated by the rule-of-law, and common decency.  The user base is just not strong enough to hold back the power of those who are focusing on pure profit (not really considering anything artistic or enjoyable).

MQA represents a power-grab, and a decrease in general quality.  The mumbo-jumbo being espoused by the advocacy should be considered either specious or manipulative.  I am NOT claiming that everything that they espouse is wrong, but rather it is done with a purpose that is NOT necessarily in the interest of the user base.

I love new technology, but adoption of technology needs to be moderated, or we get things like atom bombs in the hands of madmen (NK, for example.)  MQA and its ilk is the smaller scale, audio oriented analogy to an atom bomb - and unrestrained control of such technology kind of reminds me of something very dangerous.

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

7 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

There is a commonality between this, anti-vaxxers and also fake news. All come from the point of people wanting to be right and the common issue of finding others with the same ideals. There was a great article on this type of topic about the Flint Water Crisis - https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/opinions/flint-water-myths-scientific-dark-age-roy-edwards/index.html

 

They call it the Scientific Dark Age. I mean, maybe it is a little too alarmist but the gist is definitely there. Flat earther, anti-vaxxers, Fake news, Climate change deniers, and pseudo-science audiophile Dom all fit into this category. It is hard to fight it, when people do not want to admit they are wrong.

This is a slight deviation off the subject, and NOT, NEVER meant to be disrespectful to anyone...  However, in the rock-hard professional audio/recording community (I am on the periphery only), there is a disrespectful term sometimes used when chortling about some of the misguided audio lovers who REALLY want to do the right thing, but have been misled in a very  very cruel way -- 'audiofool'.  Now, DO NOT take offense, because I had been an audiophile in the past -- but as a technically knowledgeable person, seldom (never) ventured into the insanely esoteric realm -- just the technically best that I could afford.

 

However, there is a big group (I don't know how large) of people who *love* audio, and want their experience to be as good as possible given their limitations.  It is sometimes best to have 'financial lmitations', common sense, and a bit of ACCURATE technical knowledge. There ARE profit mongers who are so much in love of taking advantage of the (affluent) audio lovers, that it is sickening. (This is similar to the MQA issue, and advocacy that is either misguided (term intended kindly by me) or misleading (intended unkindly by me.)

 

MQA seems to be a media/software variant on the general l$100K CD player theme:  How can we 'soak' people for their money?

 

These snake oil people are not stupid (usually), but seem to be willing to claim half-truths to vulnerable people.  I don't care if someone has lots of money to waste, but PLEASE I hope that those with the ability to waste spend their money in a way that it benefits more than their egos.  Get the reasonbly technical best equipment that you can, really DO THAT!!!  Get the best, not 'better' than the best!!!

 

If someone is planning to purchase something that is 'better than the best', or somehow 'elite' -- please tell them caveat emptor in the kindest way possible.  I truly feel bad for people who misspend their money, or the similar idea about schemes like MQA -- it is for the purpose of control and/or money -- it is not intended to benefit either the customer or the artist!!!

 

My two cents -- again...  And I did NOT mean to disrepect anyone, but rather to make a kind and supportive wakeup call.  I could make stronger emotional complaints about MQA, but I now suspect that the knowledgeable person, who doesn't have a specific financial/political interest has already been dissuaded (by others cogent comments and explanation.)  It (and other unnecessary complexities)  just aren't in the best interests of most people in the audio community.

 

John

[John Dyson]

5 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

None taken. I was just trying to point out  the similar style in thought process, not they are in the same vein of severity at all.  BUT, it is a common denominator to this type of thinking.

Thank you so much for not taking offense -- I HAD to let off some emotional steam.  I truly give a darned and cannot fix the problem for everyone.  It would be nice if the snake oil perveyors could get an honest job also!!!

I love my music (however tired I am listening to it right now -- doing it for a project), and I wanna make it more available in the simplest, purest form possible.  I want no more strings attached, everyone abiding by the licensing (within reason), and want everyone be able to enjoy their hobby, profession, or simple casual listening.  It really doesn't need to be complicated...  Some people try to make it complicated  anyway.

 

John

[John Dyson]

When comparing music, slight (very slight) differences in mastering can make a huge difference.  I am sometimes dealing with 1/2dB or less during my tests...  It is amazing how much of a difference that a few 0.10dB can make.

 

Also, even though I have promised myself not to talk much about this -- there is a wonderful way of unfolding a lot of OLD material -- do a proper DolbyA decode on it.  It is NOT a small improvement, but is a MONSTEROUS improvement.  Properly processed ABBA actually sounds reasonably good (believe it or not), but of course not all albums.  Some do suck audio-wise.

 

A lot of people have been dealing with (and extolling the virtues of) undecoded DolbyA material for years (a big cause of the semi 'harsh' or flat sound from CDs), and not really complaining OTHER than making the gernal claim that analog is therefore better than digital.  Bad controls on experiments has encouraged a lot of mistaken beliefs (and in the case of analog vs. digital), misguided 'audio religions'.

 

In too many situations, there is NOT an even playing field.  It is very easy to make a minor tweak here or there, and material can sound a LOT better or worse.  I have been amazed by this. 1yr ago, I would have considered the claim about the differences as specious.  BUT THEY ARE REAL...

John

[John Dyson]

9 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 John was talking about properly decoding Dolby encoded originals.

In this case, having checked out his linked to before and after versions, I would definitely agree with him.

Thank you -- with some serious work, and some help from a significant audio professional -- the decoder quality is lightyears better yet.

 

The main reason why I use ABBA (other than as ear-candy) is that the mixed female vocals with a wall of sound really drives a fast gain control system totally bonkers.  It is wonderful (and tough) test material.  Easy stuff, like Carpenters, doesn't really test the software.  Carly Simon's recordings are kind of tough also.

 

A lot of undecoded material is available.  The Carpenters' album from HDtracks is apparently undecoded, for example.

 

I am NOT claiming that everything is encoded for sure, and the decoder sounds BAD (grainy, sometimes REALLY bad) on unencoded material.  The decoder (DHNRDS) will destroy the sound of unencoded material, but leaked DolbyA material (sometimes with a small amount of EQ) will produce a master quality result.   Apparently, some distributors have apparently believed that a shelf of -3,-5,-6dB at 3kHz/Q=0.707 is 'decoding' DolbyA material.  Not really, but that is what has happened to some old material that sounded kind of 'harsh' or didn' t have any 'depth.'  It  is sad indeed.

 

 

John

[John Dyson]

2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 You forgot to include some of the hard line Objective members in this forum who appear to be Anti Audiophile.

 

I am hard line objective, but am pro-audiophile.  My attitude is to be protective.

 

Some people MIGHT be critical of some technical choices but never degrade a listening hobby.  In my case, I can be critical, but only against those who take advantage of others.  If I could, I'd like to protect those who are misled and taken for a lot of money.

There is NOTHING wrong with an expensive hobby -- but I really would like for people to really benefit if there is a lot of (or excess) money spent on something.

 

Enjoy the hobby -- no matter if it is the entire hobby, loving the toys, or just listening.  I lost my hobby -- I started trying to clean up a lot of old recordings, and it has been 4 yrs, 2yr  of them have been intense and grueling.  If I can do anything to help, I will do what I can -- and have proven it!!!  It would be terrible for the effort to have been lost -- I am hoping for the best possible quality to be available to the consumer, but there are so many ways for the 'greedy' to be parasites.

 

John

[John Dyson]

4 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 It would be interesting to hear some segments of the corrected versions vs. the non corrected versions if you get around to doing this.

 Can you name a specific Carly Simon recording that was undecoded ?

DO you want me to show some material?  I don't have a site anymore to demo -- but I can email a copy of a snippet or two if you want. (I am infinitely trustworthy.)  If you are serious -- I can provide a temporary email address so that we can get started...  (I also ahve dropbox, but it seems more complicated to use.)

 

This was an online purchase from somewhere a few years ago.  A lot of digital material hasn't been decoded (definitley not all.)  A lot of my originals are in storage, but I have an encoded Queen CD from Hollywood records (I think) immediately available also.  The Carpenters example was downloaded from HDtracks.

 

John

[John Dyson]

Okay -- anyone who wants to email me, and request some snippets (before and after) on the DolbyA compatible decoder (not supposed to say that) -- I can do so...  I am not sure about this temporary email thing -- so I hope I have done it correctly:

 

[email protected],

 

then I'll send you a short 'Carly Simon', 'Brasil'66', 'Carpenters', or  'ABBA' example.  Just tell me -- Carpenters isn't so good (but had been popular).  I think that I have Petula Clark also.  There are a few that I am NOT sure if they are encoded (sometimes hard to tell -- most of the time they sound like H*ll if not), but I do have more.  I'll keep it to something reasonable (maybe 60seconds), and really should send flac for the best quality.  (The decoder does certain things so well that mp3 can be embarassed.)  Sometimes, the decoder *does* choke, however.

 

John

[John Dyson]

Just now, sandyk said:

 Hi John

 It's probably better to just name particular albums  for the members to check out themselves from their own collections if possible, than risk copyright infringement.

I would however be interested in hearing what you have done with the Carly Simon album sample.

Kind Regards

Alex

The problem is that a lot of my CDs are in storage.  As long as the cut is short, shouldn't be a problem (not talking about sending the enitre recording, but a chunk of it.)  I wouldn't transfer more than 1 minute in any case (yea, I know that 30seconds is usual and would cut it that short if it was enough to demo.)  I seem to remember that many of the ABBA Gold from the early 1990s are not decoded (ABBA Gold & More ABBA Gold.)  I have a Hollywood records copy of Queen from about 2004 (it is encoded.) 

 

Looking around for material that I still have metadata online (it just gets in the way.)  I'll look in the headers to see if I can find the album information for some examples.

 

I am trying to figure out a way to explain how to determine if something is DolbyA encoded (I can distinguish because of experience) -- for example, the sound has poor spatial image, and also the highs have a suspicious kind of compression -- it is faster than usual.  Often the hiss is stronger than it should be (look at a spectogram on Audacity, for example.)  I think that the strongest indication tends to be the very flat spatial image and the high hiss level on the recording.  The compression is sometimes difficult to disinguish because it is so very fast (I can describe the arrangement, but at freq above 3k, the release time is about 30msec 1pole for fast transients and for dwell times greater than about 10msec is something like 40msecs+30msec release time (2 poles).)  That is a very fast release time.  The saving grace is that the gain changes are mostly between -20dB and -40dB.  The DolbyA is roughly flat above about -10 to -20dB, but the compression at the lower levels really does significantly  boost the highs.

 

Unfortunately, I cannot send the decoder itself -- it is a matter of project integrity, we have been thinking about making a consumer version, but that is planned to NOT be the market for now.  So, this makes it difficult.  Once we start selling -- I hope to lobby for a consumer demo version that runs only at 44.1k/48k and only runs at the lower quality settings.   Low quality on the DHNRDS is generally better than DolbyA HW...  So -- it would be useful for the consumer app.  Once we get our acts together -- hopefully something might be able to happen in that market.  (I own the software, but the project is shared with two, and possibly a third person who wants Telcom C4.)  The project integrity must be maintained...

 

I'd like for the consumers to rattle the cages of the distributors, and at least get the old DolbyA units out to decode the material!!!  The 'real deal' sounds a LOT better than the mushed up compressed shrill sound (at least, they EQ it!!!)

 

John

 

 

[John Dyson]

The Carly Simon example:  Reflections, Carly Simon's Greatest Hits, 2004.  That IS DolbyA encoded (if you get the same one that I have.)

 

John

[John Dyson]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

Yet, nobody is holding a gun to anyone’s head and saying you must buy music. You disregard or ignore the facts that a large library of non-DRM material already exists, and that there are and always will be non-MQA venues to enjoy even audiophile grade music without MQA. When and if MQA has the power to prevent a live concert from happening, or someone from distributing their music without MQA, then... maybe. That is one big assed if too.

 

 

At one time, Google wasn't the only real player, and always had the motto rougly said 'do good things' or something like that.  What do we have now? -- a singular major search engine -- lots of money -- lots of tentacles...  I knew one of the YAHOO guys -- they were reasonably big, but there was also Alta Vista, and others.  Google got a leg-up with some very good proprietary algorithms -- and blew everyone else away.  Now -- we certainly cannot say that MQA is anything like the leg-up that Google had... However, it is very possible that Google would have become the monster that it is -- whether or not they had the super technology.

 

What REALLY GOOD search engines do you have now?  We don't allow flac on any players that can use MQA -- sound like typical big corporation?  You got the idea?

 

DRM represents a 'control' over peoples choices IF THEY WANT MUSIC.  For example, my DolbyA thing -- imagine all of the music, left undecoded, in MQA format -- how can you REALLY recover the recording then?  Do you purchase the $1000 MQA DolbyA decoder -- because of the licensing, or purchase a reasonable cost decoder MAYBE $300 or so (like the DHNRDS) sometime in the future?

 

MQA represents an attempt at monopoly - simple as that.

 

John

[John Dyson]

 

9 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Why should an entertainment source such as music, suddenly become proprietary format only, where the format offers inferior sound ?

 

I can answer that specifically -- why should the source use an inferior/proprietary format?  Misinformation, disinformation, lies, and most important -- more control/opportunity for siphoning more money from the customer.

 

The  most responsible thing to do RIGHT NOW:  The customer to reject whole heartedly anything associated with MQA so that they don't get a foothold.  If they ever get a significant amount of control, then the audio world will  lose a lot of diversity/motivation for the little guy to innovate & will cause stagnation because of the raw profit motive/short term cost-benefit by large/controlling corps.  Even if a large number of people reject MQA - it won't really stop the owners of the IP, but might keep them from attaining monopoly control.  I am definitely not out to destroy anything or anyone, so that ideal makes me advocate at least some rejection of MQA -- if there is enough, then then can siphon some money, yet the customer still has some choice.  There is SOME room for MQA (however misguided), but schemes like that are dangerous, and best avoided.

 

See Google/Facebook for the expected kind of control and manipulation of the people.   Frankly, I believe Facebook to actually be inferior to what really should be happening -- and is functionally not all that big of a deal.  However, it is popular, and the fact that it is so popular that it can exert control over speech (proven politcial control, for example.)  (Sometimes free speech is misunderstood.. It is legal for a company like Facebook to do bad things and declare any certain kind of speech forbidden -- on personal/corp policy whim.)  However, the best thing is not let an entity like Facebook to attain much control.  Some kind of monopoly status might allow regulators to more strongly demand certain behaviors -- but the government solution is not always good either.  There is too much money involved (however diminished it might be) to expect enough people/corporations to truly be 'good citizens'.  Regulators are also a big mess -- not necessary altruistic, have problems with the enacted laws, and corrupt civilians in gov't agencies (the FBI leadership has actually had a poor history -- not just recently -- whether or not you agree that the recent FBI has been corrupt.)  There is nothing really pristine in the US gov't unlike other gov'ts :-).

 

The best thing -- try to keep monopolies from getting monopolistic control of anything.

 

MQA is just a bad thing for the consumer.  Too many problems for the future.  Too much control ceded by the customer.

 

John

[John Dyson]

On 3/17/2019 at 5:15 PM, fung0 said:

 

Not off-topic at all. I've resisted bringing up this example myself only because I felt it had been over-used around the Internet.

 

But telemetry is only part of the problem with Windows. The big issue is loss of choice. Currently, my PCs all run either Windows 7 or Linux. But next time I need to upgrade my hardware, Windows 7 will not be an option - not because users demanded this, but because Microsoft and Intel have agreed it should be that way. Nor is there any Windows 'competitor' that can offer me a reasonably compatible alternative - say, with no telemetry, no advertising, no 'Metro' tablet-oriented controls, no built-in DRM, etc.

 

The computing 'tech' press has been largely silent on all this. Occasionally, they criticize Windows 10 on minor points. But even when there's a major disaster, such as a forced update that 'bricks' large numbers of PCs, there's no general furor - it's treated as 'just one of those things,' and there's constructive criticism of Microsoft's QA process. Nobody in the computer press exerts pressure for Microsoft to be broken up - for that, you have to go to outsiders like Ralph Nader.

 

At this point, Windows is about a decade behind where it should be technically. But it has something like 1.5 billion (legal) users and around 90% share of the personal computer market, so Microsoft can do whatever it likes. Music is a little looser, with four companies (it is still four, isn't it?) splitting the bulk of the business, but the problem is essentially the same.

The Windows dominance is a real problem -- but I use Linux (I wrote part of FreeBSD) simply because -- it is better, easier, less external 'control' against my will.  The trouble with Linux is that a lot of stuff isn't compatible, and there are programs that are not available for it.

 

On the other hand, much of the time I can find alternatives available on Linux to programs running on Windows..  Also, I get the advantage of a MUCH snappier system (not because of a lack of complexity/power, but simply more competence.)  There had been bugs in the 32/64bit Windows products since the beginning -- not being fixed for a DECADE (when I speak of problems -- I mean design flaws causing suboptimal behavior.)

 

This qualitative argument is meaningless when 'everyone' uses Windows (or the equivalently messed up Apple products.)  However, when I must use Windows (program builds for Windows targets), then I use a little laptop for that.  I invest very little in Windows because it is so very unlikely that it is of good enough quality to avoid being a hinderence.  99% of the fancy development tools on Windows are mostly just eye candy, and often easier to use/do on Linux.  Linux has a truly SLIGHTLY longer learning curve, but just enough to make Windows take control.  (Apple supposedly is easier to use -- but the problem is that the flexibility appears even more limited.)

 

This Windows dominance thing really makes me sad -- but the populace has not be educated on the actual use of computers, so very similar to the parent who thinks that a child is 'learning computers' when playing games -- so many users casually using Windows aren't really getting the experience to understand and fully utilize computers.  OSes like Linux require a small amoujnt of additional learning to use, but then the vistas open up.

 

The historical control by Microsoft has been a sad thing.  I am not on a 'crusade' either way, but it is so very sad indeed.  I could make emotional arguments -- that that isn't my style anymore -- my testosterone is all dried up :-).

 

John