MQA is Vaporware

[Currawong]

He might have meant ALAC and just typo'ed it. It was originally available to purchase online. It's a fantastic album.

[yahooboy]

On 1/29/2024 at 1:25 PM, Currawong said:

He might have meant ALAC and just typo'ed it. It was originally available to purchase online. It's a fantastic album.

Nonetheless the only distinction should be lossless or lossy. The rest is marketing.

 

It seems that most "techjounalists" can not keep track of the different formats (the reason that MQA fooled so many) and just lets their spell correction insert a format?

[botrytis]

4 minutes ago, yahooboy said:

Nonetheless the only distinction should be lossless or lossy. The rest is marketing.

 

It seems that most "techjounalists" can not keep track of the different formats (the reason that MQA fooled so many) and just lets their spell correction insert a format?

Honestly, I have an lp or two in lossless *.ape . There are others, also. Why one over another? Who knows.....

[Archimago]

5 hours ago, botrytis said:

Honestly, I have an lp or two in lossless *.ape . There are others, also. Why one over another? Who knows.....

 

FLAC vs. APE - both lossless. Technical advantage of APE/Money Audio is better compression. But slower than FLAC for decompression speed so FLAC better for lower-power streamers.

 

A lot of the variants are like this. For example WV/WavPack allows DSD compression but unfortunately compatibility limited. Also variation in whether the format handles 32-bit PCM, how many channels, etc...

[DuckToller]

54 minutes ago, Archimago said:

FLAC vs. APE - both lossless. Technical advantage of APE/Money Audio is better compression.

Money for the monkey - I happen to hate my typos though I am not alone

[Currawong]

6 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

FLAC vs. APE - both lossless. Technical advantage of APE/Money Audio is better compression. But slower than FLAC for decompression speed so FLAC better for lower-power streamers.

 

A lot of the variants are like this. For example WV/WavPack allows DSD compression but unfortunately compatibility limited. Also variation in whether the format handles 32-bit PCM, how many channels, etc...

Can you compress a DSD file much at all? I was under the impression that it is near impossible to get any significant space savings.

 

Also, the last comment in the article on your site is spam.  I couldn't see a report link for it.

[bogi]

3 hours ago, Currawong said:

Can you compress a DSD file much at all? I was under the impression that it is near impossible to get any significant space savings.

 

1 minute googling:
On a SACD the compression achieved is about 50%

The WavPack is the best method to compress DSD. It achieves a 50%~60% compression ratio in my library.
 

[Currawong]

On 2/2/2024 at 3:13 PM, bogi said:

 

1 minute googling:
On a SACD the compression achieved is about 50%

The WavPack is the best method to compress DSD. It achieves a 50%~60% compression ratio in my library.
 

I wouldn't mind saving the space on those files then, except Roon doesn't support WavPack as far as I can tell.

[bogi]

56 minutes ago, Currawong said:

I wouldn't mind saving the space on those files then, except Roon doesn't support WavPack as far as I can tell.

I also don't bother with that. Particularly with today's storage prices. Although HQPlayer contains WavPack support, I'm not going to convert my DSF files.

 

A technically interesting thing is that foobar2000 with Maxim Anisiutkin's DSD Converter component can convert DSF files to DST compressed DFF files. It's the only free tool able of that conversion I know. But then, for example HQPlayer does not play these.

[Archimago]

Yeah, "Monkey" audio, not "money" above :-).

 

While there are reasons why DSD will not be the predominant digital audio format (eg. limited DSP capability), I still think one of the reasons why DSD has been poorly accepted is the lack of a good universally supported compression file format that also provides good tagging features. I expressed this way back in 2013 and still feel the same way. At least WavPack is available but without good compatibility across software, sadly not going anywhere.

 

In any event, I think it's basically moot these days other than for those who want to use DSD with HQPlayer.

 

Hey, if Roon is looking to implement new features these days, I would certainly love to see WavPack support with DSD. I have a little library of SACD rips to point Roon to :-).

 

 

[bogi]

4 hours ago, Archimago said:

I still think one of the reasons why DSD has been poorly accepted is the lack of a good universally supported compression file format that also provides good tagging features.
...
In any event, I think it's basically moot these days other than for those who want to use DSD with HQPlayer.

Tagged DSF files are de facto standard. You can download such content and if you are able to rip SACDs, you can also convert SACD ISO to tagged DSF files. Many people were doing so already 10 years ago. Tagged DSF is the most common DSD file format used in DSD capable players, so there is wide compatibility. Many players and free tools like MP3tag support DSF tagging.

 

Free foobar2000 has much more users than HQPlayer. I'm not sure if there is any other player on PC platform with more installations. Thanks to Maxim Anisiutkin's unique work DSD content become playable in computer environment for large amount of people. I don't think the tagging topic is the thing limiting DSD usability.

 

The compression topic was more important 10 years ago when for example 2TB disks were much more expensive than now. Impossibility of stronger compression and unavailability of a free compression tool for very long time were probably among the points (together with restricted ways how to get DSD content into computer) which restricted popularity of DSD content in the past years like 10 to 5 years ago.

 

IMO less interest for DSD content in the latest few years can be rather attributed to the fact that music consumers now prefer streaming services, which are based on PCM content. People are now less often buying physical media and file downloads than 10 years ago. Because of streaming services many people now don't do so at all.

 

For the specific HQPlayer community DSD files are also less attractive than at the time of HQPlayer version 3. 10 years ago it was recommended to play DSD content in HQPlayer as it is (no upsampling) and it sounded usually superior to PCM to DSD conversion. Quality of PCM to DSD conversion in HQPlayer raised significantly since that time and much easier availability of higher DSD rates in DAC devices helped too to get improved sound. Now hires PCM source content converted to high rate DSD sounds on the level of upsampled DSD source content. Any DSP is easier with PCM source content in HQPlayer. These points are the reason of less demand for DSD source content in HQPlayer community.

A point still speaking for DSD file downloads are rare recordings produced with minimal digital processing and distributed in DSD format, like those from nativedsd.com.

[stefano_mbp]

4 hours ago, Archimago said:

file format that also provides good tagging features

Actually I can tag dsf files exactly like flac files, I use at least ten tags in addition to the “standard” ones without any issue.

Flac and dsf files are perfectly homogeneous in my library.

[Currawong]

DSD is going to always be an incredibly niche format. It's essentially non-existent in terms of actual use. High-res doesn't really have that much more traction. MQA was the first actual effort to legitimise high-res and make it mainstream, even if it wasn't a good-faith effort. Given it got essentially zero traction, I don't see anything changing in the future, except that Apple has a lossless Bluetooth streaming solution for the Vision Pro, and Qualcomm has finally come out with APTx Lossless, and we aren't even talking about high-res yet!

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, Currawong said:

Apple has a lossless Bluetooth streaming solution for the Vision Pro

Lossless at 20bit / 48 kHz. 🤔
 

 

[UkPhil]

It seems he's finally got his MQA CD's to play, but the bus has left the station so to speak 😉

 

 

 

 

[bambadoo]

No MQA from the latest ES chips. 

https://www.esstech.com/essnews/ess-technology-introduces-new-stereo-high-performance-codec/

[DuckToller]

43 minutes ago, bambadoo said:

No MQA from the latest ES chips. 

https://www.esstech.com/essnews/ess-technology-introduces-new-stereo-high-performance-codec/

Let's see how it will perform in reality, however, imagening a RME ADI-2 FS DAC using two of these might make me want one ;-)

[GoldenOne]

So it seems MQA/Lenbrook are now rolling out a service to allow people to encode stuff in MQA themselves (for $9.99 per file.....) https://createmqa.io/convert-audio/upload

Will make testing easier at least if anyone wanted to do some of their own or repeat tests previously done by myself, @mansr , @The Computer Audiophile or @Archimago etc

[The Computer Audiophile]

50 minutes ago, GoldenOne said:

So it seems MQA/Lenbrook are now rolling out a service to allow people to encode stuff in MQA themselves (for $9.99 per file.....) https://createmqa.io/convert-audio/upload

Will make testing easier at least if anyone wanted to do some of their own or repeat tests previously done by myself, @mansr , @The Computer Audiophile or @Archimago etc

You can’t make this stuff up. 
 

No label is going to pay $10 per track to encode an album with no streaming outlet. Is this service for end users who really want to MQA their own music?

[bogi]

29 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

No label is going to pay $10 per track to encode an album with no streaming outlet. Is this service for end users who really want to MQA their own music?

I think their offer is intended for independent artists - anybody, who creates music content and wants to have it on Tidal in MQA format. No label is needed for that.

 

Such a service looks to me rather like a curiosity than something which could become some impact.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, bogi said:

I think their offer is intended for independent artists - anybody, who creates music content and wants to have it on Tidal in MQA format. No label is needed for that.

 

Such a service looks to me rather like a curiosity than something which could become some impact.

Given that Tidal is getting rid of MQA and apps to play Tidal are now supporting its Max pure PCM offering, I can’t imaging someone paying to encode music for a nonexistent market. 

[GoldenOne]

22 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Given that Tidal is getting rid of MQA and apps to play Tidal are now supporting its Max pure PCM offering, I can’t imaging someone paying to encode music for a nonexistent market. 

No idea who this is aimed at tbh. 

 

Pretty sure that if you wanted to encode an album it's literally cheaper to just pay to publish + encode via distrokid. And that gets the music pushed to tidal as well. 

[Archimago]

2 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

No idea who this is aimed at tbh. 

 

Pretty sure that if you wanted to encode an album it's literally cheaper to just pay to publish + encode via distrokid. And that gets the music pushed to tidal as well. 

 

Indeed, way better deal with distrokid.

 

Maybe just a last kick at the can to see if they can squeeze a few bucks off the mQa encoder now that new albums aren't being processed for Tidal anymore - lots of capacity!

[Stereo]

2 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

No idea who this is aimed at tbh. 

 

Pretty sure that if you wanted to encode an album it's literally cheaper to just pay to publish + encode via distrokid. And that gets the music pushed to tidal as well. 

I’ll take Stupid People for $100 Alex.

[MikeyFresh]

5 minutes ago, Stereo said:

I’ll take Stupid People for $100 Alex.

 

C'mon man, this is probably the full white glove treatment at 10 bucks a track, completely deblured and everything (better than lossless).