MQA is Vaporware

[randyhat]

You are correct....I missed it.  But now it's being re-invoked...this time with graphics.   Cool.

 

[KeenObserver]

We should not be sidetracked from the fact that widespread adoption of MQA would have profound effect on the music industry.  MQA's control of the music chain would give them enormous influence and wealth.  The majors would get their DRM and the chance to sell their catalogue again.  All this would be borne on the backs of the music buying public.

MQA and the majors are of course going to try to push this through by any means possible.  The music buying public needs to reject this to protect themselves.  They need to reject any aspect of MQA.

[rickca]

OK @KeenObserver are you @Brinkman Ship?

[KeenObserver]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

OK @KeenObserver are you @Brinkman Ship?

 You know that is not so.  What is your purpose in asking?

[rickca]

17 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

 You know that is not so.  What is your purpose in asking?

Your posts remind me of him.  And I don't know it's not so.  Just curious.

[Rt66indierock]

20 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

What all this comes down to is this: Do you TRUST the people that are advocating for MQA?

 

I wrote the post “MQA is Vaporware” because you can not trust the people advocating it.

[Rt66indierock]

21 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Trust exactly whom? And in exactly what respect? 

 

Trust the technical minds minds and at least the potentional of the technology for sound reproduction? Sure.

 

Trust the marketing minds and the potential for abuse? Probably not.

 

Trust most of the reviewers? Yep, they try hard to be both accurate and mostly objective. Some are just stuffed shirts with a desperate need for recognition, but those are few and very far between in our hobby world. 

 

There is is no way to wrap up the issue into simple little sound bytes suitable for the evening news. The subject needs more of an NPR in depth reporting treatment.

 

You shouldn’t trust the technical minds. At best they were years late and Bob Stuarts track record of producing technology for sound reproduction speaks for itself. The market has rejected his ideas. The Meridian financial statements document this very well.

 

The marketing folks have shown their true colors. I find it fascinating that I have better access to the MQA Ltd people than the audio press does, and I have been open that my goal is the liquidation of MQA Ltd, and the intellectual property not end up in the hands of the labels or the major shareholder (an investment fund).

 

Trust most of the reviewers? I received a lot of apologies at RMAF 18 for their overly enthusiastic support of MQA. After I said at the end of RMAF 17 I’ll let anybody walk away right now. Many did and we talked about who wouldn’t.  From 2014 to 2016 I didn’t see any reviewers trying hard to objective and accurate when talking and writing about MQA.

 

I don’t ask anyone to trust me. Listen for yourself, volume match, do your own measuring, check my facts then report back.

[Paul R]

Well, I think I would trust Bob Stuart with pretty much any audio subject, as the man is brilliant technically, and has shown that in the audio world time and time again since the 1970's. That's a long track record of achievement, and MQA did not fail in a technical sense, but rather in implementation and marketing. Technically, it has the potential to provide better sound. It also has the potential to lock people into an unpleasant situation with non-MQA music files. 

 

Honestly? I don't know who you are, or what possible motivation you could have to be attacking Bob Stuart with what appears to be such anger. Stuart is, and pretty much always has been, one of the good guys. Sounds like some kind of personal agenda just from what you wrote above.  I haven't been very active on the system for the past year or so, so I might have missed when you introduced yourself. 

 

-Paul

 

 

 

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, Paul R said:

MQA did not fail in a technical sense

That is exactly where it fails. Time and again, the claims about MQA have been shown to be blatant lies.

[Paul R]

I would dispute with you that it is not the MQA algorithm that has failed, but rather, the intentionally crippled implementations of it.

 

I believe most (if not all) of the implementations were designed to "protect" the music industry interests,  along the same lines as why the music industry has consistently refused to provide high quality master recordings for decades. 

 

MQA *could* be used to release master level recordings, but the industry just will not sanction that. The result? Same old crap. People's reputations sullied, and a lot of anger in the community. 

 

IMNSHO, YMMV, etc.  - Paul 

 

 

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

I would dispute with you that it is not the MQA algorithm that has failed, but rather, the intentionally crippled implementations of it.

 

I believe most (if not all) of the implementations were designed to "protect" the music industry interests,  along the same lines as why the music industry has consistently refused to provide high quality master recordings for decades. 

 

MQA *could* be used to release master level recordings, but the industry just will not sanction that. The result? Same old crap. People's reputations sullied, and a lot of anger in the community. 

 

IMNSHO, YMMV, etc.  - Paul 

Sorry, but you're not making any sense.

[KeenObserver]

26 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Well, I think I would trust Bob Stuart with pretty much any audio subject, as the man is brilliant technically, and has shown that in the audio world time and time again since the 1970's. That's a long track record of achievement, and MQA did not fail in a technical sense, but rather in implementation and marketing. Technically, it has the potential to provide better sound. It also has the potential to lock people into an unpleasant situation with non-MQA music files. 

 

Honestly? I don't know who you are, or what possible motivation you could have to be attacking Bob Stuart with what appears to be such anger. Stuart is, and pretty much always has been, one of the good guys. Sounds like some kind of personal agenda just from what you wrote above.  I haven't been very active on the system for the past year or so, so I might have missed when you introduced yourself. 

 

-Paul

 

 

 

 

Bob Stuart put himself in the position to be questioned.

 

First off there is a picture of him giving a talk in front of one of the most absurd charts I have ever seen in my life.

 

Bob Stuart has given talks that go on and on and say NOTHING!  They are like a Professor Irwin Corey act!

 

If MQA is going to make all kinds of claims and Bob Stuart is the figure head,  then he is going to be subject to examination.

 

Something that is going to have a profound effect on the future of music should be thoroughly vetted.  MQA has been found wanting time and time again.

[Paul R]

24 minutes ago, mansr said:

Sorry, but you're not making any sense.

 

Okay, let me restate it. The technology of MQA is absolutely capable of doing everything that it was claimed it could do - namely put master quality music in the hands of audiophiles and music lovers. 

 

The implementation of MQA was intentionally crippled, and not by Stuart. Or at least, not by Stuart alone. 

 

Not sure how to say it any clearer than that. 

 

P.S.  Do I support MQA? No. I think it is the DIVX of the audio world.  -Paul

[FredericV]

36 minutes ago, Paul R said:

MQA *could* be used to release master level recordings, but the industry just will not sanction that. The result? Same old crap. People's reputations sullied, and a lot of anger in the community.

 

Not in it's current form, where it's limited to the equivalent of 17/96 + upsampling with weak filters which have aliasing. Like redbook with one octave of added ultrasonics + upsampling.

I recently showed MQA's impulse response to a befriended engineer, and his first reaction was: that must have a lot of aliasing !!! This person was not even a die hard audiophile.

Anything above 16/44.1 these days is called hi-res

My theory why they use weak filters: you get fake content above the 1x rate, and most likely they try to use a touch up signal to compensate for the diff with the real signal (as shown in the patent), but as this is a lossy process, there are still parts of the spectrum which they mess up, as shown by @mansr recent plots.

I could be wrong, as the actual inner workings of MQA remain partially secret, but my gut feeling says this is why they use such weak filters.

SOX can also create similar "fake" content, but it misses the touch up, so it creates even more aliasing as MQA if you use the filter setting with one cycle of postrining (it's somewhere in this thread) :

 

[KeenObserver]

If MQA could put "master quality music" in the hands of audiophiles, why is it that absolutely no one would consider archiving their music on MQA?

[asdf1000]

On 5/2/2018 at 8:38 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

In a world without competition this offering would be tiered / more expensive. However, some VERY LARGE and VERY WEALTHY companies will give away or include stuff like this at no visible cost to the consumer, in order to one-up the other guys. 

 

Hi Chris

 

Have you heard anything more on this?

 

Is 2019 the year MQA Ltd signs a big contract with one of these wealthy companies you mentioned above?

 

Or has this fizzled out?

 

[Paul R]

6 minutes ago, FredericV said:

 

Not in it's current form...

 

Exactly.  

[KeenObserver]

The fact that there are cycle after cycle of of MQA apologists makes it pretty obvious that there is something profoundly wrong with MQA.

[FredericV]

8 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

If MQA could put "master quality music" in the hands of audiophiles, why is it that absolutely no one would consider archiving their music on MQA?

 

It's not used in the studio to "save"' project files. It's an export format, like saving your video project to a lower bitrate youtube version ready for upload. MQA is not an archival format or mastering format - but a lossy export format where you lose data, and all you get is the right to listen to an approximation of the master when you own some form of decoder software or hardware.

[mansr]

29 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Okay, let me restate it. The technology of MQA is absolutely capable of doing everything that it was claimed it could do - namely put master quality music in the hands of audiophiles and music lovers. 

FLAC already does that just fine. The sole purpose of MQA is to extract revenue for Bob Stuart at every stage of music handling, from recording studio to playback device. The labels jumped on board since MQA lets them claim to be providing "master quality" music while simultaneously keeping their "crown jewels" safely under lock and key. Quite the magic trick, if it were true. Of course, when we reversed engineered the format, we found that it was mostly fake. As magic tricks tend to be.

 

29 minutes ago, Paul R said:

The implementation of MQA was intentionally crippled, and not by Stuart. Or at least, not by Stuart alone. 

Whatever gave you that idea?

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Em2016 said:

 

Hi Chris

 

Have you heard anything more on this?

 

Is 2019 the year MQA Ltd signs a big contract with one of these wealthy companies you mentioned above?

 

Or has this fizzled out?

 

Hi em - Given that I’m no longer on MQA’s Christmas card list I don’t get any inside information now days. 

 

I’ve talked to a few people about what I originally heard and got some interesting feedback. Nobody seems to think these big companies will bite on MQA.

 

For example, MQA Ltd gave a demo to Amazon. Amazon was interested in MQA because it could light the blue light on Amazon devices. Amazon said it couldn’t explain high resolution to its customers but that blue MQA light was all it needed. 

 

However, nobody seems to think Amazon will ever pay MQA to include its technology when Amazon could just create its own blue light and play regular flac or something similar.  

[asdf1000]

18 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi em - Given that I’m no longer on MQA’s Christmas card list I don’t get any inside information now days. 

 

I’ve talked to a few people about what I originally heard and got some interesting feedback. Nobody seems to think these big companies will bite on MQA.

 

For example, MQA Ltd gave a demo to Amazon. Amazon was interested in MQA because it could light the blue light on Amazon devices. Amazon said it couldn’t explain high resolution to its customers but that blue MQA light was all it needed. 

 

However, nobody seems to think Amazon will ever pay MQA to include its technology when Amazon could just create its own blue light and play regular flac or something similar.  

 

 

Thanks Chris. The Amazon blue light story made me chuckle.

 

Spotify and Apple Music subscriber numbers continue to grow, so I don't see either of those in any rush to change anything in terms of sound quality. But no rush doesn't mean they're always looking at ways to get some sort of competitive advantage.

 

We know Spotify trialled CD quality streaming in 2 years ago. 

 

Apple Music getting into headphones (first with Beats and soon their own branded headphones, it is rumoured), they might want better 'end to end' sound quality - from 'Mastered for iTunes' to the headphones. They can probably do that skipping MQA, even offering better AAC quality than presently offered. Beats headphones sound quality has improved a lot the last years, so the trajectory is good, even though I still much prefer my MrSpeakers Aeon Closed cans.

 

Of 'the big 4' that leaves Amazon and Google, who have the cashola but lacking in paid music streaming subscriber numbers.  Let's see where things go.

 

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

2 hours ago, Paul R said:

Well, I think I would trust Bob Stuart with pretty much any audio subject, as the man is brilliant technically, and has shown that in the audio world time and time again since the 1970's. That's a long track record of achievement, and MQA did not fail in a technical sense, but rather in implementation and marketing. Technically, it has the potential to provide better sound. It also has the potential to lock people into an unpleasant situation with non-MQA music files. 

 

Honestly? I don't know who you are, or what possible motivation you could have to be attacking Bob Stuart with what appears to be such anger. Stuart is, and pretty much always has been, one of the good guys. Sounds like some kind of personal agenda just from what you wrote above.  I haven't been very active on the system for the past year or so, so I might have missed when you introduced yourself. 

 

-Paul

 

 

 

 

Paul if Bob Stuart approached anyone in The Silicon Beach (LA), Silicon Valley (Bay Area), The Silicon Forrest (Portland Oregon) or the Puget Sound area with MQA they would and have shown him the door. Meridian’s losses are large enough to overcome any argument you can make about Bob’s technical brilliance.  Simple due diligence really.

 

When the studio guys were approached sound quality was not talked about. They were the ones initially found that it altered the sound. Something I’ve talked with Bob Stuart about.

 

MQA is bad for artists, recoding engineers, mastering engineers and consumers. No evidence has been shown me that MQA can sound better. If you think otherwise, please provide some evidence to the contrary that we haven’t already shown to be untrue and without merit. No anger there and I would calculate that it probable (greater than a 75% chance) I have better information than you do.

 

I wondered who would be the first to play you are angry card in 2019. You win but you should know everyone who tried in 2017 and 2018 failed. An angry Rt66indierock never survives any face to face conversation.

[KeenObserver]

The single most profound development to come out of MQA is the incredible ability to light the blue light!  This is the paradigm shift of which Harley spoke.  We have entered the brave new world of the blue light!  Families will gather around in wonder of the blue light!

[KeenObserver]

Note to self.  Send Chris a Christmas card this year.