MQA is Vaporware

[james45974]

My main thought about MQA is that in the couple of years they have been trying to get their act together computer audio has progressed further and I wonder if their window of opportunity hasn't passed by already. Now I see them scrambling to try and find a use in today's market for their old tech.

[james45974]

[quote name=

Since the music industry has already sold its crown jewels to its most lucrative assets, it must come up with a reason to purchase them again. Thus, MQA sounds better than the crown jewels :~)[/quote]

 

Some would argue the crown jewels are really pressed in vinyl..... Interesting thought though Chris, but since the music industry has already left the genie out of the bottle (selling their crown jewels) it will never go back in again! Maybe another reason to shift back towards vinyl, even if it is only to do needle drops, no proprietary hardware or software! Seems like the music industry, in their inimitable incompetence, still can't find their way out of a paper bag.

[james45974]

Now I'm worried if I don't have a way to avoid MQA streams. I don't want it and I don't need it. Since the only DAC with decoder I have (Meridian) performs especially poorly with MQA content and is not great in other ways either, I don't want the quality degradation compared to RedBook when playing it in "compatibility" way.

 

Maybe it's time to cancel my Tidal subscription. I can get quality degraded streaming for cheaper from Spotify.

 

I currently don't stream so my trouble with this is that it will insinuate itself into physical media somehow. Is that a possibility or am I guessing?

[james45974]

Yes, with 30,000 major label tracks available today, I no longer think MQA is vaporware.

 

maybe not vaporware but undecided on whether it is any good or not....

[james45974]

I object to the term "master" in this context entirely. MQA encoding is not a bit perfect copy of the master, and using that terminology is very misleading.

 

This reminds me of the lie: "perfect sound forever"

 

Obviously this is a very calculated case of subterfuge!

 

I am going to stop commenting, I still buy physical media and don't stream so it seems I have no horse in this race, yet!

[james45974]

Good sounding music with the very least fuss and with an easy interface to access all that music. Sounds like a plan to me.

 

Except for the 'good sounding music' part, what you are talking about is handled by MP3 very well already for the vast majority of listeners. How small of a niche within a niche is Roon with Tidal with MQA going to be? And realistically, will that niche expand in any meaningful way? I don't see Tidal adding tons of subscribers because of this, they are preaching to the choir so to speak, the general public will have a big yawn over this while the audiophiles continue their debate.

[james45974]

Are you really surprised? We are talking about Tidal you know.

 

I would think MQA is behind this, not Tidal. MQA continues to be clear as mud in many ways.

[james45974]

MQA doesn't have anything to do with the Tidal app.

 

I guess I will sound like some conspiracy theorist (heaven forbid!) but I can't buy into the thought that MQA doesn't dictate how their wares are presented by companies like Tidal in exchange for licensing the tech. The proof in the pudding will be when more outlets make streaming of MQA available and how they label them or not.

[james45974]

I agree with you. But, today many would say that even with a re-release/remaster of catalog titles, the decision to volume compress is an "artistic" one by the producer of the remaster.

 

Technically that is clearly correct.

But it's also clear that the "artistic" decision in many cases has nothing to do with any "artistic" consideration; or that the original artist/musician/producer isn't being asked his/her opinion.

 

Your thoughts could be extended to other artistic fields as well. The concept of taking a classic or well known entity and updating it today's standards is not exclusive to music. I am an architect and this updating or remastering happens all the time, both good and bad. Take for instance the renovation to Soldier Field in Chicago. It could be considered the architectural equivalent of the loudness wars!

[james45974]

Did a search for this on CA but didn't see it mentioned before, apologies if I missed it.  Here is a link to a hypothesis paper from Xivero (of MusicScope fame) regarding MQA:

https://www.xivero.com/blog/hypothesis-paper-to-support-a-deeper-technical-analysis-of-mqa-by-mqa-limited/

[james45974]

Why do we get hung up on "accurate" reproduction when that concept is frankly tilting at windmills and we should instead be debating how "real" the reproduction is!  Accurate is such a loaded term in these parts.  Is accurate in the eyes of the artist, producer, listener, record company, MQA?  All of them are right and wrong at the same time.

 

I would suggest that anything beyond minimal miking, live, one take recording (and no Autotune!) is at some level contrived and fake.  It can probably be reproduced accurately but it can be far from real.  It is similar to using sharpening or auto-contrast in Photoshop, which gives you a contrivance, not the real, original image with warts and all!  

[james45974]

To me it boils down to the question of whether MQA is all that much of an advance if all it is giving us is self proclaimed "accurate or close to what the artist intended" reproduction of junk?  What's the point?

[james45974]

Merriam Webster Definition of Accuracy:

 

1. 1:  freedom from mistake or error :  correctness checked the novel for historical accuracy

2. 2a :  conformity to truth or to a standard or model :  exactness impossible to determine with accuracy the number of casualtiesb :  degree of conformity of a measure to a standard or a true value — compare precision 2a

Merriam Webster Definition of Reality:

 

1:  the quality or state of being real

[james45974]

  you can be accurate without being real!  Shouldn't we be aiming for realistic reproduction paramount to accurate reproduction?

[james45974]

9 minutes ago, Daudio said:

 

Huh ! I didn't get what you meant the 1st time you used that phrase, and now in context it seems to me that 'radical objectivist' would make more sense.  Would you explain please ?

 

 

 

That way leads to madness 

 

A radical objectivist, I always thought I was just a curmudgeon!

 

To go back to the Steinway example, you could record the piano from a microphone placed underneath the instrument on the floor and you could accurately reproduce it.  But unless you have had too many Scotch's that wouldn't be realistic!

 

Maybe my current taste in music is the source of my argument, I am currently on a chamber music and jazz trio binge!

[james45974]

8 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Sorry, I do not follow.  How is "accurate" different from "real"?

Look at my Steinway recorded with a mic on the floor underneath as an example a few posts ago.  You could fairly accurately reproduce a recording done with that setup.  But how many concerts have you been to where a piano is featured and there is an audience laying on the floor underneath the piano!  Your realistic position is seated in the hall somewhere which in my argument is where the most realistic recording of a piano should be taken from.

[james45974]

9 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

The situation with the mic on the floor underneath the piano is (at least to me) analogous to the trivial solution in linear algebra.  That is, we can look at accuracy from this point of view, but it is of no interest to anyone.  I think we can agree that when the topic of accuracy comes up (in relation to live performances at least), it can be safely assumed that we mean accuracy in relation to an ideal or realistic position of the listener.  I don't think it helps at all to keep adding more terminology (i.e. realistic vs accurate) to an already confusing discussion. 

 

I don't necessarily agree with you but don't need to belabor the point.  In the end I would argue for better source material, and that starts from the beginning, not at the mastering stage!   cheers!

[james45974]

13 minutes ago, Teresa said:

 

This deblurring has me really confused.

 

According to Wikipedia "Deblurring is the process of removing blurring artifacts from images, such as blur caused by defocus aberration or motion blur." 

 

So how does a digital or analog master audio recording become blurred? Perhaps they should figure out how masters become blurred and quit blurring them. Does this blurring only happen with heavily processed major label recordings? Or do even minimust naturally made recordings also suffer blurring?

 

Wouldn't it be better to not blur recordings in the first place?

 

And is this deblurring process available without MQA?

All this seems like the "flavor of the day" to me, pretty soon there will be competitors to MQA claiming to do what they claim to do (already starting apparently).  This will all be forgotten soon enough when the audiophile crowd moves to the next "big thing"!

[james45974]

12 minutes ago, Teresa said:

Thanks Jud and James. 

Teresa, I didn't exactly get to your question about blurring, that is something that I really cannot answer, I don't have the technical background for that discussion.  My response to you was from the skeptic side of things, I'm still not sold on they why's and how's of MQA, my own personal opinion. 

[james45974]

11 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Tidal is much more about fun and agenda than profits. 

Chris, I couldn't tell if your were serious or sarcastic, you didn't include any emoticon!

 

If Tidal is a "have fun" vanity project of Jay-Z then you can start the obit and digging the grave.  The business world is cut throat and littered with the remains of ventures started because someone thought it would be "fun"!  Money has to be made sometime!

 

The only one who seems to have made anything out of a vanity project is Dr. Dre.  He got a deal with Apple!  All Jay-Z has to show is $200 mil from the 4th place US cell company.  Hope it didn't hurt his ego too much!

 

On another note, nobody has really talked about how intertwined Tidal, Roon, and MQA have become.  If Roon went belly up, Tidal would be less desireable.  If Tidal went belly up Roon would be less desireable, and MQA would be up the creek without a paddle.  If MQA went belly up, well, would too many people notice or care?

[james45974]

33 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Interesting Rt66 as always.

 

So, based on all this in your opinion is Hi Res going over to MQA?  with the recent announcements of HDTracks and others, does the future of Hi Res = the future of MQA?  In other words, will there be any Hi Res ( >24/44) PCM,DSD (or any other open format) from the majors in the future?

Is MQA even thinking about mainstream consumers now (were they ever?)?  Seems like they are zeroing in on a very small piece of the audio pie!

[james45974]

1 hour ago, miguelito said:

One my favorite albums is Prince's "Purple Rain". I have a few of the versions: CD, the very short lived 24/96 that showed up on HDTracks at some point, and the newly released 24/96 Painsley Park remaster expanded edition. For comparison purposes alone I captured the stream from the MQA version out of the TIDAL app using Audio Hijack. I compared the high res versions using Roon, no upsample.

 

Long story short:

1- The MQA version looks to come from the same master as the latest 24/96 in spatial content and DR (see below).

2- The MQA unfolded stream out of TIDAL came out as 24/176, and from the spectral content (see below) I have to say TIDAL is possibly upsampling the unfolded  24/88 stream... I don't know what is going on there.

3- The short-lived 24/96 version really looks like a different remaster from the original, and notice the spectral content is identical between the 24/96 versions.

4- The MQA spectral content is MARKEDLY different from the other two.

 

Bottomline: My ears prefer the MQA version, there's a physicality to Prince's voice that bests the other two, in my opinion. Is this a result of EQ? I don't know. But I like it.

I guess this goes to my main problem with MQA: do people like the "remastering" aspect of MQA  or do they like the filtering aspect of MQA?  It seems to me, just hypothesizing, with the investigations going on from different quarters that you will soon be able to get "MQA like" filters for your player of choice and ditch the whole MQA BS, if you so chose.

[james45974]

2 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

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

MQA, Black Sabbath USB computer dongle cross,

 

Wrong and tasteless on so many levels!

[james45974]

What would the point of MQA CD's be?  Who or what is the demographic/market that is still buying discs (I am, no viable streaming capability at my house) and would they look favorably on MQA?  The inclusion of MQA on CD might further erode the market for spinning discs, accelerating the downward market trend.

 

It has to be the streaming that the industry is looking at for MQA (as has been said many times already).  People are getting used to paying next to nothing for access to huge libraries of music, and MQA could give some sort of control over that revenue stream in terms of pricing or access.  I don't see the current streaming model lasting, you are either going to have to pay higher prices or have limited access.  If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that the record companies are getting all of you used to the streaming paradigm before they start tightening the economic noose.

[james45974]

14 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Peter. I just looked and I will rephrase what Fokus already told, but which possible goes beyond you and others :

The Nightfly is presented to you as an MQA album in native 48KHz. This means that it won't be 96KHz or more. It is and remains 48KHz.

 

The impulse response would be poor because of this, normally. Say that it is just CD quality and for CD quality to reconstruct, steep filtering is necessary in order to let drop the frequency to 0dB at 24KHz (half of 24KHz). This implies a high amount of ringing and that is your smear.

Might it be helpful, here's the spectrograph of the 2nd track :

 

As you can see, apart from some anomalies, no data above 24KHz. Not even noise, which at least proves that their workflow regarding this 48KHz is OK. It also proves that nothing is faked here (no fake hires).

 

One more thing for additional confusion :

I was promised that "no Hires" MQA albums were going to be there just the same. The benefit ? that ADC thing. This is an example of at least the existence of MQA without being Hires (I found some more).

The confusion is of course and again about the "where" of the ADC "counteraction".

 

Peter

 

 

 

 

Two questions from a non-technical follower of this MQA thread:

1. Does ringing show up at the frequency extreme, 24 Khz in your example,or elsewhere in the signal?

2. I have the Nighfly Trilogy box set which included a DVD of the Nightfly, ripped to 48KHz, might this be the same used to produce the MQA file?

 

Jim