MQA is Vaporware

[ECL]

"So many experts, so little expertise!"

 

--Anonymous Expert

[ECL]

To clarify, I am not part of any conspiracy theory or hit-and-run attack. I am not even pro- or anti- in some partisan war camp. I see MQA as good in some ways and bad in others. The BAD: possibly as a marketing disaster and too proprietary, which locks out advancements, discussions, and global cooperative consortia toward improved V2+ versions thereof.

 

I am here mostly for the classifieds so if I'm ever in danger of being banned for what I say, please just delete my post give me a warning.

 

My comments about experts and expertise pertains to the fact that none of the discussions I ever see on the topic, whether pro- or anti-, have their head anywhere in clean air but mostly in a dark musty place where the sun doesn't shine, rank with propaganda, fearmongering, misinfo, on both sides. Where are calm people weighing the good and the bad with an even analysis? Few and far away, just like the ones who know what they're talking about.

 

Since I said the bad, I'll be fair and say a few good things. Neither my good- or bad- list in conclusive but I didn't come here to write a 10 page research essay. Just to touch on it.

 

I see MQA as a good ALMOST-lossless codec for delivering HiFi audio over transport channels of limited bandwidth and/or where bandwidth usage incurs greater costs. Think here, bluetoothy-ish, mobile data while traveling, or traveling in places where you pay $20 but they cap you at such-and-so-many gigabytes until you have to pay more.

 

In my own listening, which is very well-trained (usually detecting things that others only start to notice after extended hearing), I can say that for now, I have not detected any superiority of MQA when it comes to MQA vs. standard Hi-Res, in anything 24/96 and above.

 

One should separate Tidal from MQA as well, as the two are different companies. I believe Tidal has mis-marketed a few things which perhaps unfairly fall onto MQA as a format. I can't get over the feeling that Tidal is doing extra, hidden, secret DSP to what it sends out in MQA, as I just can't escape the feeling that sometimes someone is hitting one of those "3D Acoustic Ambience" buttons like you often used to see on LowFi consumer AVRs. I'm less outraged over it since they do a surprisingly non-heinous job of it, but the whole thing still smells of hidden dark secrets and disingenuous marketing which audiophiles don't want... we want knowledge.

 

Disclaimers:  In spite of that I stick with Tidal because, as a classical performer with connections to people who first founded the company, I'm grandfathered in "free for life."  I'd probably use Qobuz if I weren't.

 

Remember, the way to knowledge is research, inquiry, and deep reflexion, not judgment or parroting the first partisan who happened to skew your judgments!

 

Cheers, and Peace to all.

[ECL]

45 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

>> Here you go

>> https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/mqa-a-review-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/

Yeah I've read that one and it's not as bad as the others, though all the questions it asks and answers are subliminally begging the question of anti-MQA, asking such things like MQA taking over, replacing current digital recording methods (absolute balderdash!), and so on. Quickly glossing over real use-cases for MQA or outright ignoring them.

 

45 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

>> This actually can’t be the case because MQA decoders wouldn’t work if it was.

 

Yeah but no, you are assuming that part of what they say about "authentication" to be true. When hearing an MQA and a 24/192 cut off the same master, on the same DAC with same filters, the difference in "spatiality" is far too much to be explained away by any of the public documentation about how MQA works. I'm not saying I know the answer or I'm right, only what I hear (in many recordings, not all, which in itself is interesting and perhaps fishy.) I happen to know the stuff about authentication is NOT 100% true because of some recent experiences with firmware versions/bugs/upgrades that I went through which empirically invalidated some public claims about MQA. But I don't want to get into it because I'm not dying on any hill of defending my merely speculatory hypotheses of why MQA could have such a distinctly different "spatiality" sound when supposedly cut from the exact same master.  

 

At the end of the day, there's absolutely NO WAY and NO CHANCE IN HELL that MQA is taking over anything, nor replacing anything superior to itself. ANY talk on this subject comes from people with their head where the sun don't shine and completely ignorant of how music/recording industry works. So, after we put that to bed,

 

1. You have an ALMOST-lossless codec,

2. > 99% of what's lost is what's claimed as inaudible, such that it's ALMOST fair to call it lossless.

3. This codec allows transport of Hi-Res at bandwidth usage similar to 16/44.

4. If used properly and not merely for marketing hype, it could potentially satisfy artists AND consumers about authenticity. To clarify, NOT that the end-user is hearing a Master on the same kit it was produced with "as it sounded to the production team", which is silly and preposterous.... But rather, that the end-user is hearing something compressed, decoded, and unfolded in such a way that it is 1) guaranteed to be reasonably faithful to a Master, at least in the source data, and 2) isn't some counterfeit unapproved kooky crap that who knows which platforms you can't trust, would serve that stuff up.

 

If one can't think of how that's potentially useful, one has one's panties way too tightly wadded.

 

As I alluded to before, I believe a lot of the controversy is deservedly due to mis-marketing and overhyping of claims, combined with poor PR and proprietary secrecy. This has created a partisan atmosphere where it seems that nearly 100% of people who are politically anti-MQA think it also sounds worse, and nearly 100% of people who are politically pro-MQA also think it sounds better. Whereas we all know that if this were a cleanly conducted discussion, those two things should be independent variables.

[ECL]

First, a troll is not by definition, "someone who disagrees with you."  I'd say a troll is someone who evades all the scientific discussion and just parrots misinformation as "It's already 100% established", then launches into ad hominem attacks or conspiracy theories. So here the real trolls are the ones who accused me of it.

 

Second, there is no way I can fight the flood of spurious misinformation above. Much of it has clearly not even researched the basic goals and principles of what MQA is and is trying to do. And is completely ignorant on the science of the flaws in digital recording that MQA rightly acknowledges and CLAIMS to be improving.

 

Third, I am not pro-MQA. I am pro-evolving past the heinous flaws in current digital recording/playback methodology and highly interested that MQA at least rightly lists off what those are. I am not inner circle to MQA nor the expensive equipment needed, to tell if those claims are correct, but certainly educated enough to peer review that all the critiques so far against MQA have failed to pass even the basics of scientific methodology, and are total amateur hour not even worthy of MS level let alone Ph.D. or post-graduate level.

 

I have given ample volumes of critique against MQA, especially in what I called mismarketing and proprietary secrecy which would hold back global cooperation and intelligentsia from collaborative consortia of bringing the legitimately superior goals of MQA further. To anyone over IQ 108, this should be clear enough to differentiate me from some paid bot who comes in just to troll and market MQA.

 

Fourth, the claim that MQA at a 16/44 or 48 is up to 50% more data is a blatant misinformational propaganda lie, far worse than any misrepresentation made by MQA itself. It's at roughly 1:1 or only micro higher, and significantly compressed for Hi-Res, which is what all audiophiles are more concerned about since Hi-Res brings significant magnification to the frequency bandwidth for the cutoff filtering, which CREATES LESS FALSE DIGITAL ARTIFACTS in the AUDIBLE frequencies.

 

Fifth, to claim that ALMOST LOSSLESS is the same as LOSSY is a disingenuous argument when the topic is about slight lossyness in INAUDIBLE frequencies in a format whose A-to-D was ALREADY extremely lossy in these frequencies due to microphone limitations. If we are lossy in inaudible areas that microphones can't even record, and we trade off SLIGHT lossyness in this "garbage data" for actual GAINS in the reconstruction of audible frequencies, then besides that being KUDOS FOR ABSOLUTE GENIUS, we can make some judgements about the kind of person who understates this as "ALMOST LOSSLESS." That person could've hyped it a lot more than merely saying ALMOST LOSSY. That person is using understatement and OVERVALUING the points against them in an extreme act of honesty and civility to propagate higher quality discussion. That person is a hero of honesty, civility, and understatement when calling it ALMOST LOSSLESS when they could have deservedly and easily given it a more deserving title like "LOSING NOTHING OF VALUE IN EXCHANGE FOR GAINING EXTRA FIDELITY." If anything, we need to re-educate people with a greater vocabulary than just LOSSY vs LOSSLESS. Let's make some new concepts such as GAINY. GAINY represents any format which RECOVERS losses made over an exisiting A-to-D-to-A paradigm, giving greater fidelity to the original A. FLAC has 0 GAINYNESS and as such, recovers NONE of the lossy damage which has been scientifically shown to occur in the current A-to-D-to-A sound reproduction paradigm. 

 

Now then, it is claimed that MQA is a GAINY format which recovers some of those losses and is therefore, when the rubber meets the road, actually LESS lossy than PCM/FLAC/etc. Obviously, an MQA enemy could propagandize this GAINYNESS by actually measuring it as LOSSY, by comparing it to the middle-stage D rather than original-stage A. But only if disingenuous and dishonest and deliberately ignoring the main thesis of MQA as invalid before even starting the troll attacks against it.

 

Sixth, the claim that we are at a place where bandwidth doesn't matter couldn't be further from the truth. YES, TRUE, we are at a place where you can actually pay LESS to get lossless Hi-Res from Amazon, than compressed ALMOST-LOSSY from Tidal. And I never claimed otherwise. I'm the honest one here who acknowledges pros and cons.

 

Seventh, a "partisan" in my book is someone whose pro- and con- list is 100% pros or 100% cons and is incapable of having an erudite productive dialogue. If we were to believe intelligence experts like Edward deBono, we'd classify the people who deliberately try to force data/information to 100% support a view as IDIOTS, people who weigh a list of PROS vs CONS as SMART, and people who use a list of PROS and CONS to generate a third category called INTERESTING, and use the three categories to generate intellectual PROGRESS, as geniuses. I started out with P and C to a group of only C, and hinted at how we can discuss I, and all I got was more C.

 

At the end of the day, the elephant in the room is this, and NO ONE here is talking about it so hasn't even passed level 1 out of 10 in due diligence:

As Bob Stuart CORRECTLY says, all the recording engineers in studio COMPLAIN that the A-to-D-to-A PERFORM-RECORD-PLAYBACK tests right in the studio show that what goes in IS NOT WHAT COMES OUT. Compared right next to analogue in the same studio, the analogue is still performing better in SOME metrics over digital. Unlike poop-throwing chimps, I applaud him in giving a calm, clear, thorough, and civil explanation of the hypotheses for why this is the case, based on our current scientific understanding of all the known phenomena from multi-disciplinary fields coming together. I applaud anyone seeking to TACKLE these issues rather than stick their head in the sand and proclaim current digital formats as be-all-end-all. Heroes raise the bar, fundamentalist dogmatists fight advancement. What we know so far is that in studio A-to-D-to-A A/B testing, significant improvements WERE made in these issues.

 

My concerns are that there is no openness to what's going on, and how much of the advancements made there are really and truly getting to END USERS from a dual-corporate-monopoly that has currently exhibited no remorse in wildly exaggerative mismarketing and not delivering truthfully on its claims. But I don't care about that as much as making sure a bunch of nazis don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. WHERE ARE ALL THE OPEN-SOURCERS trying to make an OPEN STANDARD to do what MQA is trying to do? Nowhere, just chimps throwing poop and sticking their head in the sand and claiming PCM/FLAC is the be-all-end-all highest summit humanity will ever reach in recording and playback. DISGUSTING.   

 

What people familiar with these topics should be legitimately concerned about is:

1. HOW WELL does it MQA achieve its stated goals? Surely it can do better.

2. IF it can do better, WHO IS EVOLVING THAT improvement?

3. WILL PROPRIETARY SECRECY handicap the rest of the industry from taking these concepts to further levels of perfection?

4. Will the mismarketing and exposure of false claims permanently damage the LEGITIMATE goals MQA has correctly listed, as what is holding digital media back from higher levels of fidelity?

 

My prediction is that none of the trolls here will address any of that, and will default back to their PCM/FLAC is the be-all-end-all which needs none of the improvements that Bob Stuart listed, in spite of the fact that those are now scientifically established flaws in the current world of digital formats.

 

Cheers and Peace.

 

[ECL]

I don't care if he used owls and rats to gain more info that is POSSIBLY useful. I do care about the A-D-A A/B tests in studio, with humans, show something.

 

For those who are civil and not monkeys throwing ad hominem predicates, I apologise if you thought I was referring to you. I am not.

 

"You applaud Bob for stating what everyone on earth knows and has stated for years? Strange."  No, the contradiction to your quote is all over this thread, at least half of the people's arguments are made as if they are completely ignorant of those statements, and make arguments and counter-claims as if they do hold those statements to be false.

 

"You seem to have fallen hook line and sinker for all the technical BS from BS. MQA says it improves items that it actually hurts. It has been shown objectively many times."  Show me ONE. Everything I've seen so far presumes the middle D stage in the A-D-A SR paradigm to be the golden standard while ignoring the lossyness in the "-" hyphen-joint stages. And even worse, ignores the already documented issues in those phases, and makes no measurements about restoration of damage caused by those effects. Which is, I believe, what every claim about MQA is built on. So you can't test MQA without testing those.

 

 

"Fifth, to claim that ALMOST LOSSLESS is the same as LOSSY is a disingenuous argument" Probably it was TL;DR, so I'll use an analogy...

I deliver to you a bag of food. Cheeseburger, fries, napkins, and also in that bag are some invisible rocks. We put it through two Star Trek teleporters, which are named A and B.

 

A gives you almost perfect replication of the food but has issues that "everyone on earth knows and has stated for years", and the invisible rocks are also almost perfect.

B gives you a cheeseburger that's different from A and claims to be better, by addressing issues that "everyone on earth knows and has stated for years". A lot of people say hey, yeah, it does taste better. Others don't, but there's no currently known impartial testing on it because the facts are in secrecy and the testers claiming it's worse are only comparing to cheeseburger A as the gold standard rather than the OG cheeseburger. Compared to A, any way that B gets better will by definition be considered lossy, if assuming this logical fallacy. But why not compare to OG cheeeseburger instead? Something is rotten in Denmark, my fellows! And oh yeah, the makers of teleporter B admit that the invisible rocks won't be quite as good as the OG invisible rocks and admit they're lossy. And also their marketing department made some misrepresentations which they were caught on. Lots of hooting chimps who understand less than 5% about teleportation science get all excited about that and start parroting the enemies of B and take on tribal characteristics similar to witch-mania in the middle ages.   

 

 

 

 

 

[ECL]

I assumed by now that if copying A into different competing products B and C is at issue, then anyone with a modicum of honesty would immediately flag statements of the type "C is not as good as B because it differs" as idiocy. I have an open challenge to EVERYONE in this forum quoting all the "established science in this forum" to give a SINGLE EXAMPLE of said references which do not make this heinous sophomoric mistake. Henceforth, until such example is given, the null hypothesis is in effect, that it has not been established at all, that MQA measures worse than FLAC/PCM in comparison to the originally performed sonic characteristics.

 

Whew, glad we could get that one out of the way.

[ECL]

Quote

There’s no need for long analogies about burgers and fries. Sticking to audio will work much better. 

If I understand you correctly, you want to compare MQA to PCM, but from the original source before it has been turned into either? 

I’m confused because this makes no sense and is likely not what you’re trying to say. 

 

Thanks for the good question. Let me label some variables.

OG - The original soundwaves of the actual performance

DD - The storage of the OG in lossless digital format, after a LOSSY conversion to DD through digital recording

CW - A placeholder for the current paradigm of lossless digital media (PCM/FLAC, etc.)

NW - A placeholder for "new wave" digital paradigm, different from CW and making strongly questioned claims about being closer to OG than CW.

 

Now then, whether true or not, the entire pyramid of goals and claims that MQA is predicated upon, are such:

1. The A-D-A sound reproduction paradigm we have now, has flaws which science has established ("that everyone on earth has known about for years").

2. The CW format is full of useless or semi-useless "garbage data". For example, in Hi-Res, a majority of the file-size is useless bits that microphones can't even register during recording.

3. If we sacrifice taking on a tiny bit of lossyness in fidelity to the "garbage data" in DD, we can gain data-space used for improving fidelity in audible characteristics which everyone on earth knows are suffering lossyness relative to the OG, then a NW format superior to OW in fidelity to the CW is possible.

4. MQA claims to have successfully created a NW (Note: I am not claiming for or against that claim.)

 

Now then, iif anything is superior to something else, it has to be different in some way. If not different, then it's the same, and same things are equal, not superior or inferior.

 

I cannot establish that 16/44 PCM is superior to MP3, by measuring how faithful it is to MP3, and marking up any differences in PCM as "distortion caused by the PCM format." Are you smart enough to tell me why? Of course you are. Because that would be begging the question that MP3 is perfect and it's impossible to be superior to it because any difference will automatically be counted as "worse than MP3." Well, the elephant in the room is this: 100% of the dozen or so "scientific measurements" I read in this forum and others, are all doing a charlatan trick of exactly that.

 

If someone does a "scientific measurement" between NW and CW to see which is better, and says "NW measured different than CW so therefore measures inferior to CW", we have what SHOULD be an obvious problem even to a layperson: this gives NW no way to be superior to CW, and at very best it could only be equal to it, perhaps only better at data compression but under these premises, impossible to transcend the CW.

 

So to finally answer the question, if you record OG into competing formats NW and CW, any test that says one measures worse than the other because it's different, is absolute QUACKERY and JUNK SCIENCE. You need to do something like RMS deviation scores on both, relative to the OG, and the one with higher deviance WILL be definitely objectively worse in such case; though you could still argue about subjectives since one might have higher sum deviance in things which matter less, while less deviance in areas that matter more to sound quality.

 

Hope the helps