MQA is Vaporware

[mansr]

50 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It's a choice that most artists willingly make. If it wasn't willingly, it would be void for being under duress.

Cut the crap, or are you really that naive?

[mansr]

48 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Look for another streaming service to announce MQA partnership September 4th. 

And this is why Chris maintains his strained "neutral" stance. If he took sides against the industry, he'd lose this early access to coming developments. Without access to insiders, any publication is dead.

[mansr]

12 hours ago, ShawnC said:

I guess you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  Have you said anything meaningful this week.  Just like your LinkedIn page states, one of your skills is trolling.

That Linkedin "skill" is a joke between friends.

 

12 hours ago, ShawnC said:

You do make things entertaining around here.  You have so much talent and knowledge, I wish you would share more of this. 

I might be more motivated to do so if I weren't so often ridiculed on the grounds of being an engineer.

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, Jud said:

On that score I think you give as good as you get, or to put it slightly differently, you set the terms of discussion. Many non-engineers perceive what they say as being attacked by you, and attack back.  There are certainly engineers on the site who manage to convey engineering information in a fashion that doesn’t raise hackles personally.

Sure, I too could couch established facts of maths and physics as personal opinion and play along with the notion that everything, and then some, is audible. I'm just not willing to do that since I consider such behaviour dishonest.

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, FredericV said:

How is 23 bits of dynamic range possible, if 17 bits of the 24 bits distribution file are already borrowed to reconstruct the partial ultrasonics? Remember that MQA can't describe any ultrasonic frequencies above 44.1 or 48K (depending if the original resolution is a multiple of 44.1 or 48K), as the second unfold is minimum phase upsampling + weird filters. The first unfold adds one octave compared to the undecoded version. The second unfold does not recover any new entropy, and does not recover any extra additional octaves.

Why can MQA get away with only 13 bits of resolution (in case of MQA CD) or 17 bits (in case of 24 bit distribution files)?

It's actually 15 bits for 24-bit files. I have yet to come across a sample from an MQA CD, so I don't know what bit allocation they use there.

 

As for how they can claim 23 bits of dynamic range, that's easy. They use shaped dither, so the effective dynamic range is frequency-dependent. Presumably their particular shaping curve results in a peak dynamic range equivalent to 23 bits for some frequency. Look at the spectrum of any undecoded MQA file and you'll see a lot of noise above 15 kHz.

[mansr]

46 minutes ago, mav52 said:

From Audiostream,  Michaels position  https://www.audiostream.com/content/against-mqa-unfolded

 

My Official MQA Position
Who cares what my official MQA position is? OK, for those that do care, I don't have one. And I don't have one because a) it doesn't matter, and b) it doesn't matter. What I do have is experience. This matters.

And my experience tells me that MQA can make recorded music sound better (see my review of MQA). In some cases much, much better. I've never heard MQA processing make music sound worse.

You may agree, you may disagree. In either case, my experience does not change. You can question my motives, but then you'd just be being silly.

What a convoluted way of saying he's all for it.

[mansr]

3 hours ago, mav52 said:

Thats what thought  , I have wondered if his nose grew when he wrote that.:)

That would imply he's made of wood. Witches are made of wood. Where's my duck?

[mansr]

44 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

I see this as part of the picture and feel I was doing my job contacting Warners for an answer.

If you as a burglar if he'll be raiding your house tonight, he'll probably say no too. That doesn't mean he isn't planning it. Maybe not tonight, but some night.

 

44 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

Just as I view it as part of my job to ask Bob Stuart directly whether or not there's a DRM component in MQA (He said "no").

An he lied when he did so.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

I see. So when I want to know what Bob Stuart has to say, I should ask you instead?

If you want to know what Bob says, ask Bob. If you want the truth about MQA, ask me.

[mansr]

6 minutes ago, lucretius said:

Also, the "quality degraded version" you speak of does not really seem that "degraded" as far as I can tell listening to tracks from Tidal.

The format allows for much more degradation, including to the point of uselessness, without a decoder. They're just not using those features yet.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, mcgillroy said:

It's staggering to see the difference in quality between the anonymous research and comments on MQA done by people like Archimago, as well as Soxr and Mansr before they revealed their real names, versus anything the audiophile press has done. Anything.

FWIW, I've never tried to hide my real name. All anyone ever had to do was ask, assuming they failed to figure it out.

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

1. supposed character deficiencies ("he's a liar')

The dictionary definition of a liar is "a person who tells lies," and a lie is defined as "an intentionally false statement." If Bob Stuart isn't a liar, the false statements he's made must have been unintentional, which would imply he is incompetent. Either alternative is reason not to trust him.

 

9 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

2. there's DRM that will ruin music for everyone. No one has yet to explain how DRM will effect people who stream MQA which is the only way MQA will gain traction because no one, outside of audiophiles, downloads high-rez. Today you can download every MQA title (as far as I know) in regular old high-rez from the usual places as well as CD-quality, etc. So every conversation about how MQA will ruin music are speculative.

MQA as distributed today already prevents upsampling and DSP room correction that many people enjoy. Perhaps ruin is too strong a word for that, but it certainly makes the music less accessible.

 

9 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

3. forum speculation. This includes the gearslutz post you linked to. I'm not downplaying the important role forums *can have* I'm saying that the idea that people on forums *know the truth* about MQA (see 1 and 2) and *no one else in the entire world does* strikes me as a fantasy. Do you know how many people are involved in MQA? I'm talking about outside MQA. I don't but it's more than a few. If 1 and 2 are in fact true, you are saying that not one single person who has worked with MQA in any capacity has recognized what you guys have because they are a) not knowledgeable enough, b) have been bought off, or c) too afraid to tell the truth.

Anyone working with MQA in any official capacity has signed an NDA preventing them from talking about it. When people figure things out for themselves, you dismiss it as speculation. You've made yourself a nice little catch-22 shelter where the only ones you'll listen to are those who are legally forbidden to talk. You can either stay in your comfy bubble, or you can let the scales fall from your eyes and see the world for what it really is. The choice is yours.

[mansr]

11 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

What do you make of this: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mqa-time-domain-accuracy-digital-audio-quality

"higher sample rates inherently improve the ‘temporal precision’ to some degree."

 

You can stop reading there. This statement (or equivalent) is actually a great litmus test for audio bollocks. If an article includes it, the entirety is, without exception, rubbish. In this particular instance, the remainder of the article is just a rehash of MQA marketing blather with no real substance.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, Michael Lavorgna said:

I would certainly consider it but I will not publish anything that includes personal attacks, wild speculation, etc. I would hope that my position is clear on these points.

Yes, you've made it quite clear that anything not originating from MQA themselves, or otherwise supporting their claims, will be dismissed as speculation.

[mansr]

Just now, Michael Lavorgna said:

9:00am (EST) today is my cutoff time for commenting here.

Oh no, another hour of this.

[mansr]

Just now, Michael Lavorgna said:

10 minutes according to my clock.

Oh, you meant EDT. Thank goodness.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, lucretius said:

This is a reasonable argument against MQA -- more specifically, against purchasing MQA files vs streaming MQA. I agree that one should be able to transcode the MQA file without loss to any container without having to repurchase the same content over again.

Too bad the loss is baked into the format, even if you had a decoder.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Hi Michael L

 

Is there any chance you could get Bob S and Charles H in a room together for a video interview to hash out the technicals of MQA (or just ask questions to Bob)?

 

Maybe mansr could send in all of his work to Charles. The only reason I don't suggest mansr for the interview (since it's mostly his work) is Charles is a HiFi industry heavyweight.

 

A video interview would get huge ratings through your site, so that's what you could benefit.

 

If not a video interview then just 3 way phone call or something, again through your site.

 

Even Chris could maybe arrange this here?

 

Whether Bob agrees is another thing but someone should ask him at least. 

I'd be up for it, but I'm afraid anything actually published would be creatively edited to cast me as a fool in front of Saint Bob. Unless Mr Lavorgna radically changes his attitude, I'll have to politely decline any participation in what can only end up a farce. However, if someone is serious about writing a critical piece on MQA, I'll gladly help out in any way I can.

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

I'd really love to hear all questions and responses in real time (like a recorded phone call), unedited, with all the natural pauses by all parties. Something different !

That's never going to happen, but not because of me.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

So CDs now are high-rez in label talk...

 

Makes strategic sense to frame anything above MP3/AAC like that. Divide and conquer, create leverage for price differentiation when negotiating with the entities that actually bring the music to consumers.

It's not that long ago mp3 was touted as providing CD quality. How times changes.

[mansr]

I see it's time for the daily Lavorgna assault.

[mansr]

20 minutes ago, Jud said:

By the way - anything at all preventing me from sending you a copy of an MQA file, and you decrypting it on your MQA DAC?

MQA files available today aren't encrypted at all, only signed.

[mansr]

Just now, lucretius said:

Not sure what you mean by "recorded".??  When an MQA file download becomes avaiable, first thing I'll do is copy it and play it on MQA and non-MQA dacs. 

If it is encrypted, you won't be able to play it on non-MQA DACs. Well, you'll be able to play it, but you'll only get 4 bits worth of music.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

Wonder if Tidal streams can be played simultaneously on two computers using one account.

Many streaming services allow slightly more than one simultaneous streams.

[mansr]

52 minutes ago, Jud said:

Right, so the point of these questions is: At least in the current state, MQA seems equally as subject to unauthorized distribution in digital format as non-MQA discs and streams.

This is correct.

 

52 minutes ago, Jud said:

And it’s doubtful the music industry will try to push the idea that MQA on non-MQA hardware is awful, since that would restrict their market.

If MQA DACs become sufficiently widespread, they might start pushing harder in this direction. Or rather, they'll push the idea that anything but MQA music on MQA hardware is awful.

 

52 minutes ago, Jud said:

(Equipment manufacturers might.) So rights restrictions are very unlikely to be a reason for the music industry to like MQA. Marketing it as a better listening experience to folks who grew up on mp3 seems a much more likely reason for the music industry to push MQA.  We’ll see how successful that is.

It would be relatively easy to embed a unique ID in each download, so if the file turns up on a pirate site, they'll immediately know who did it. As there's no upside to the buyer from this, they have to be baited by something else, such as a promise of better sound.