MQA is Vaporware

[FredericV]

Replies in the topic keep disappearing. Is the topic now lossy, just like MQA?

[FredericV]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

No. You talking about another member’s DSM diagnosis is unacceptable. 

Ok will completely ignore LeeS from now. There was no discussion anyway, always same repetitive canned MQA arguments from his side, and thus repetitive answers. He's not worth it.

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

OMG it just hit me, perhaps I'm slow. MQA is following the SiriusXM playbook. Get your stuff into cars and give away a free year or so of Tidal and hope that people stay onboard with it. Either way, MQA makes its royalty money from the hardware and can claim millions of MQA users even though they are accepting the free subscription. I can see the press release already. 

They must be desparate ...
What was the daily cash burn rate again?

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Lee downplayed it many pages ago. There has never been a factual response. 

 

Furthermore, MQA does not have any MQA enabled ADC, maybe except for the Mytek ADC.

Most likely they have made a model of typical ADC errors, and have generic correction filters:

 

Then during encode, the encoder does some guesswork which is the best profile for that file, and the renderer has the predefined correction parameters onboarded from factory for each profile, and Mans found that DAC specific tuning is not happening.

During encode, it sets one of the profiles to be applied during decode, and that's it.

[FredericV]

10 hours ago, Shadders said:

What sort of individuals would present a system that is claimed to be lossless and reverse blurring, which is actually a lossy system, which causes blurring and aliasing ???

 

Lying is a crime in the USA, but typically  you need to be under investigation first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements

The fact that Chris still has an old MQA logo with "lossless" in it, proves already MQA was lying about it's lossy crypto DRM pseudo hi-res format.

[FredericV]

6 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Perhaps you like the added information MQA creates that was never in the original files. 

 

(1) look at the severe frequency errors starting at around 35 ~ 40k - and remember MQA can't encode any analog signals above 48 Khz, or in case of DXD, above 44.1 Khz, as it can the encode the equivalent 17/88.2, so it starts to make mistakes already below 44.1 Khz
 

6 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Incredible!

 

I logged on this morning and posted several comments.  I logged off and spent the day going through my daily routine.  I logged back on and observe that Lee has been preaching the MQA gospel all day, and is in fact still preaching!

I have to admire him! To be able to preach all day and evening and still be able to maintain a full time job must take superhuman abilities! (2)

Now combine 1 + 2

 

[FredericV]

10 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I've talked to so many I lost count. 

One manufacturer told me personally the same story. His only motivation for adding MQA was the fear of losing customers when he would not do so, and MQA became a dominant format. At the same time, he also showed why MQA could not improve his dac design, and he made sure the MQA module was not messing with non-MQA.

[FredericV]

3 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

 

2007. Haha.

http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~adnan/adnan/papers/secon12.pdf

 

If you read the study, they try to reduce the packet overhead, while FLAC goes way further, as the data to be compressed is not formatted into packets with overhead, but the data is correlated and it can be predicted, so it can be compressed:

https://xiph.org/flac/format.html

Similar to many audio coders, a FLAC encoder has the following stages:

• Blocking. The input is broken up into many contiguous blocks. With FLAC, the blocks may vary in size. The optimal size of the block is usually affected by many factors, including the sample rate, spectral characteristics over time, etc. Though FLAC allows the block size to vary within a stream, the reference encoder uses a fixed block size.
• Interchannel Decorrelation. In the case of stereo streams, the encoder will create mid and side signals based on the average and difference (respectively) of the left and right channels. The encoder will then pass the best form of the signal to the next stage.
• Prediction. The block is passed through a prediction stage where the encoder tries to find a mathematical description (usually an approximate one) of the signal. This description is typically much smaller than the raw signal itself. Since the methods of prediction are known to both the encoder and decoder, only the parameters of the predictor need be included in the compressed stream. FLAC currently uses four different classes of predictors (described in the prediction section), but the format has reserved space for additional methods. FLAC allows the class of predictor to change from block to block, or even within the channels of a block.
• Residual coding. If the predictor does not describe the signal exactly, the difference between the original signal and the predicted signal (called the error or residual signal) must be coded losslessy. If the predictor is effective, the residual signal will require fewer bits per sample than the original signal. FLAC currently uses only one method for encoding the residual (see the Residual coding section), but the format has reserved space for additional methods. FLAC allows the residual coding method to change from block to block, or even within the channels of a block.

	Flac was released on 20 July 2001; 17 years ago MLP was just a few years earlier

[FredericV]

7 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Every time I log back on it is the same circular BS over and over again.

 

It's like a Monte Python skit:

 

MQA is lossless

No it's not

Yes it is

No it's not

It's perceptually lossless

What?

Look, there's bigfoot!

 

The MQA shills must figure people will just get sick of it and say:  "All right! Just take all my money and give me the crippled recordings!  Just shut up"!

 

There comes a moment you win the discussion, and some hours/days/weeks later they throw that already debunked agument back in the discussion. It shows they are dogmatic and do not learn, even if they were debunked.

Keep stirring in the same soup. Sooner or later it's going to get very dull. Maybe that's the endgoal. Make the discussion so dull members are running away or fall for the GO LISTEN argument. Someone is getting paid to make it dull and keep spreading already debunked lies here and in other fora, or some other checkboxes tick which we are no longer allowed to mention.
 

[FredericV]

29 minutes ago, Shadders said:

What MQA is offering is, as presented to the record companies, high resolution without giving away the master. They love it. But if listening to MQA is no different from the master, and is what the artist heard in the studio etc., then by obvious logic, we have the master. But in the record companies heads, they have pulled one over us - we haven't got the master. It is this twisted logic that causes them to back MQA.

It would be interesting to see what kind of marketing they did towards the labels. When MQA came out, I immediately knew A standed for approximation. Probably the right to listen to an approximation, while selling it as "master quality" was a very attractive to the labels. To sell lossy to audiophiles they invented their time domain / deblur claim.

Approximation and thus lossy was even confirmed by the man himself:

 

 

 

It was the middle statement in (c) which made me research this claim:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38608-truncating-mqa-files-to-16-bits-and-the-blue-light-still-shines/

 

[FredericV]

7 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

 

 

 

If they would tell it like it really is:
MQA decoded to 24/88.2 with max resolution of 17/88.2
17/88.2 upsampled to 24/352.8 with leaky filters

You can strip 1/3 from an MQA file and it will still lie about the resolution:
 

DAC's will still say it's 352.8 Khz - which is off course the upsampling resolution, and not the content resolution.

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

Honest to God,  I cannot watch that for any length of time.  Does BS ever actually SAY anything?

I recently started watching Person of interest. You could replace the text at 00:23 by "Assimilating Music".
 

There's an actor with a striking similarity in this show.

 

[FredericV]

3 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Missed the smiley did you?   (It was a mild joke, though obviously, only a math nerd joke.)   -PR

 

What is your opinion on the filter? I have heard it on a 777, and thought then it sounded amazing. That was several years ago though, around 2012. [Edit, August of 2013 actually.]  A friend had that DAC and was so impressed with it, I actually traveled to go have a listen.  Did not buy one though. About the only DAC I would sink that kind of money into is a Wavelength. 

 

-Paul 

 

Funny ... the iFi filter on the right
vs the SOX filter on the bottom, compared to "stock" minimum phase

 

So basically they implemented the MQA alike upsampling filter with one cycle of post-ringing.
 

I don't find this kind of filter very organic, Archimago's intermediate phase filter is far superior to my ears.

Yes this filter kills any MQA filters in terms of sound quality, and I decided to put it into our server, but you can configure it in any raspberry as well:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/01/musings-more-fun-with-digital-filters.html

[FredericV]

33 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

These impulse responses are from Stereophile, though they aren't from our review of the DSD Pro - see fig.4 at https://www.stereophile.com/content/ifi-audio-pro-idsd-da-processorheadphone-amplifier-measurements.  If you are going to quote from our content, I request that you ask permission and include a link to the original, please.

 

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

The source was
https://ifi-audio.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/iFi-audio-Tech-Note-GTO-filter-FINAL.pdf
not Stereophile.

[FredericV]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

Reminds me of Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster.

Oh boy I see Parodyphile coming up, for fairly extensive use of the original work
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Thank you for supplying the link. All the graphs in that white paper have been reproduced from Stereophile without permission. I will contact iFi to let them know that this is copyright infringement.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

So you really believe you are the first party who measured these filters? So you want us to believe iFI has no skills to generate the impulse and then run it though their own analyser, but instead source it from you?

All you did was peer review what was probably already measured by iFI.

Anyone can buy an AP analyzer, and duplicate what you measured. I know several designers who have such kit, one is famous for class-d. I actually found a bug in his design where his module would go into protection under certain home cinema loads, so we ran the module through an AP workstation 

 

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Are you sure they didn't create them themselves? Can you even claim copyright to a plot of somebody else's filter response?

 

Stereophile is becoming one big joke.

[FredericV]

10 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

No, but I did create the graphs featured in the iFi white paper. All the graphs I create for publication in Stereophile have a unique aspect ratio and other identifying features. We do not allow third parties to make use of our copyrighted content without permission.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

Can you prove this? The graphs from iFi are black & white, while the ones from your mag are directly from an AP workstation.

I could run an impulse through the iFI and measure the exact same response. Why would a vendor use a magazine for their plots? Does not make any sense.

e.g. bottom plot

[FredericV]

3 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Nonsense. You are clearly at endgame with your meshugah honey counterpoints. 

 

The shelf life of MQA's compression benefit has almost expired, furthermore dithering flac to 18 bit gives a better compression benefit, while not having the crypto DRM, and being backwards compatible with most of the gear out there which supports flac.

MQA will have a hard time competing Nielsen's law:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/

[FredericV]

7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Most people in this thread have read all the information about MQA and are tired of putting up with misinformation and lies. It doesn't take any planning to counter lies with facts. it's even easier when the facts are several pages back in this very thread.

 

I was also tired of LeeS and the repeated MQA marketing speak. The same could be said of PV.

They never learn and keep posting the same BS. They all deny being paid by MQA, but follow the money: why would anyone keep wasting their time here repeating the same old BS, if they were not being paid? If they are not paid, what do they gain? It just does not compute. It's more plausible they are getting paid or they get some other reward for pushing MQA.

 

[FredericV]

20 minutes ago, Jud said:

I think you both underestimate the ability of people to argue strenuously and at great length on their very own, without any external motivation at all.

I can agree that people can get lost in forum discussions.

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

You could have better filtering and much less aliasing, imaging and measurable distortion - but then you would not have MQA.  You'd have a signal with less intermodulation and harmonic distortion that had gone through lossy compression.

For me the holy grail is Archimago's intermediate phase:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/01/musings-more-fun-with-digital-filters.html

the MQA filters with one cycle of postringing just do not sound as natural - we have both selectable in our product (in total 10 different filters) - but I never use the MQA alike filter - it was more an exercise to know why MQA sounds the way it sounds: not natural.

[FredericV]

On 3/27/2019 at 1:17 AM, Archimago said:

Hey guys...

 

Unfortunate behaviour from a member of the online audio "press". Interesting discussions around LeeS and the banning.

 

Two quick questions. Perhaps already discussed but given the long thread, I missed the outcome/answers...

 

1. Who's going to this at AXPONA 2019?

 

 

 

Amazing little abstract! Still going after key phrases like "bit perfect" but in the form of "bit perfect playback" instead of making allusions to the music itself being "lossless". And the idea of "ultimate listening experience" - after all this - that's some set of balls.

When we were in Marriot Munich last year, we were visited by Axpona's organizer, and we get his marketing mails since.

So I did send some remarks about the MQA claims, and all I got was this reply:
 

Quote

I will share your feedback. FYI, this is a sponsored Masterclass from MQA.

There you go: MQA pays, and they can say whatever they want in their announcement, and the organizer just copy/pastes the announcement including all the lies which were debunked here at CA / AS.
 

[FredericV]

4 minutes ago, mansr said:

Now that is interesting. Who did they pay to say what? Was the sponsorship prominently announced to the audience?

Nope:
 

 

 

[FredericV]

If checksums are identical (e.g. SHA256 of 2 files are identical) and you hear a difference, something seriously is wrong with you or your gear

[FredericV]

I no longer have the time to read this topic fully, so who is willing to make a weekly executive summary?