MQA is Vaporware

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mav52 said:

I really think your on point about this.  The music industry now has a medium to control the pirating of their music and that's using DRM regardless of a few audiophiles might think about what MQA really is or isn't. Its DRM all the way, the industry is speaking and MQA Capt Stuart listened. I hope that makes sense as I'm installing my Hurricane panels at the moment.

 

I think the music industry probably doesn’t give a rusty goddamn about the DRM aspect of MQA because (1) they can market MQA as superior to mp3 regardless of decryption, (2) it restricts their market to those with the right hardware, and (3) “DRM” is unpopular.

 

It would be the larger hardware manufacturers I’d expect to want to market “best quality MQA,” except of course for Apple.

[Jud]

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?

 

Can pre-decryption streams be recorded/copied and shared in this way?

 

Just trying to get a notion for what exactly the DRM would restrict.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

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

 

When I referred to recording I was talking about streams, not downloadable files.

[Jud]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

In that case --

 

For MQA streams, I can use my Tidal account from any computer, sending the file to any (connected) DAC. When it's a non-MQA DAC, it will play the MQA file like a 16/44 file with no MQA (or like a 24/96 file with no MQA if you use the Tidal App setup properly to do the 1st unfold). In fact, I have logged onto computers at dealers with my Tidal account and the MQA streams played just fine (like 16/44 files, since the DACs in these cases were non-MQA).

 

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

[Jud]

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.  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.  (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.

[Jud]

On 9/6/2017 at 3:54 AM, Miska said:

 

CD pressings are much cheaper too than SACD. Because SACDs can be manufactured only at very few locations controlled by Sony.

 

Downloads allow record companies to sell much more directly to the end customers, without long chains of companies each adding 30% profit margin on top of the previous step...

 

 

That’s the way one would think it ought to work, but in actuality the music companies have much more economic control over contractual arrangements and profit margins with the disc distribution system than they do with a download market where the price and profit margins for the vast majority of downloads are set by contract with Apple.

[Jud]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Hmmh, but Apple is not selling DSD downloads? I doubt selling SACD discs through Amazon is much more profitable than selling downloads through nativedsd.com or HDtracks...

 

At least if I would sell my software on CDs in a cardboard box that old way, it would at least double the price or more... Almost nobody sells boxed software anymore. It is hard for me to imagine selling music would be much different from selling software.

 

 

Yep, agreed.  But something the size of the DSD download market is not why some labels and streaming services are trying out MQA.  I would guess they must want MQA as a better quality alternative for streaming and download markets that are now built around mp3/AAC.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

I fail to understand why they would go with MQA instead of standard FLAC. It doesn't save any bandwidth - in fact it consumes more. Unless they wish it as a DRM vehicle...

 

But MP3/AAC don't contain DRM aspects by the spec, anybody can write a decoder. And now MP3 is patent license free too, so quite a bit cheaper than it used to be.

 

 

I don’t think it works for the labels as DRM, because then they limit their market to people with MQA hardware.  I think what works best for them financially is to say MQA sounds great without special hardware, and even better with.

 

Two possibilities occur to me as to why MQA instead of FLAC: they won’t be selling anything that can be converted to a hi res master; and to their ears it may sound good.

[Jud]

6 hours ago, crenca said:

 

So it really is about DRM...except that it is not...but in the end....

 

Look, no matter how hard you twist this MQA begins and ends with DRM

 

I’d actually say the reverse.  No matter how much people want to say the DRM piece should be significant to the music industry, it really doesn’t suit their economics *yet*, and quite possibly never will.  It’s the fact that it’s a lossy format that may work out for the industry. (It’s essentially the same as if they offered LPs and needle drops.  No DRM required, but you can’t convert it back to a hi res master.) If the music industry wants the maximum number of people to buy MQA streams and downloads, it can’t be pushing the idea you’re listening to a sonically awful version unless you buy new equipment.  It has to market MQA as “better right now than what you’ve got, even better yet with new equipment.”  (The equipment manufacturers, of course, can be expected to heavily emphasize that last part, so for *them*, the built-in DRM is economically beneficial.) 

 

We’ll see if anyone goes for it.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, Shadders said:

Hi Jud,

I am not sure i understand why you are referring to MQA marketing. Of course, this is required to make it popular.

What we do know is that MQA is lossy, BUT, as others have stated, FLAC which is not lossy, has similar compression ratios.

Is MQA better - even when unfolded ??? Who knows (well, we do, as per this thread) - but we do know it sounds different.

MP3 provides a lossy capable stream - and it is now licence free ?

 

So, we have a new format which is lossy, same file size as FLAC, is no better than existing (although we are told it is better), and requires licencing (MQA Ltd).

 

So why even push it ?. We have perfectly capable existing methods now, MQA offers nothing better (aliasing...).

 

If you like lossy - then MP3. If you like high resolution - then use existing.

 

Comparing to existing - there is no need for MQA. So why would the record companies be promoting it ?

 

What's in it for them ?

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

People are very familiar with FLAC, so it’s got no marketing pizazz.  FLAC is lossless, so labels would be concerned about bootleg copies if they issued their highest resolution files widely.  MQA not only isn’t convertible to the original file, it can be marketed as something New! and Shiny! and a species of this Hi Res! a few of the kids may have heard Neil Young talking about.  “Diet Hi Res, tastes like real Hi Res!”

[Jud]

14 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi Jud,

I think you agree with me.

You only get to hear MQA unfolded if you have an MQA DAC.

If you download an MQA file, you can give it to someone else who has an MQA DAC.

So, there is no copy protection.

Therefore, why not just let people have the FLAC version without the MQA tax.

 

Or are you saying, that MQA nobbles the sound file such that MQA High resolution is no where near the quality LPCM high resolution file ?. (so who would want to buy that.....)

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

The music companies will want to sell MQA to everyone they can, meaning 99% of the target market are kids listening to mp3 and AAC through earbuds, or Beats if they’re kewl.  Who among these folks wants to hear anything about “unfolding”?  Nope, the music companies want to sell them something shiny and new that they can say is hi res and sounds great, period.  It will be left to equipment manufacturers to try to tell the kids they have to spend another hundred or couple hundred for even better sound than “regular” MQA.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, jhwalker said:

 

I'm not Jud, but I think you're talking past each other.

 

1) MQA is not lossless, so there is no possibility to get perfect / master copies and, thus, no way to distribute the "crown jewels" - win for the record companies

2) MQA™ is "cool", shiny / new - easy to market, and attractive - win for the record companies

3) FLAC (in whatever form) is lossless, so it is possible to get and distribute perfect copies - loss for the record companies

4) FLAC is not shiny and new, everyone who's anyone already knows about it - loss for the record companies

 

So the record companies have EVERY incentive to push MQA and no incentive to push FLAC / lossless.

 

Yep.  I would suggest shiny and new is far more important to the bottom line than the “crown jewels” aspect.  If they just wanted to avoid distributing master quality stuff, all they have to do is what they’ve done for decades to produce CDs - run it through a decimation filter to reduce the resolution.  Bingo you’re done, and no MQA contracted fee to pay.  So I would guess the lossy thing plays a distinct second fiddle to the new and shiny thing.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, Shadders said:

I don't see this happening, so why then offer MQA, if it costs the record industry more money to offer ?, and MQA (as per your statement) is there to stop the record industry offering the crown jewels ?

 

Because (again) the music industry doesn't need it to avoid offering the crown jewels, and (again) telling people you need new hardware to get the full effect limits their market, so (again) it seems to me much more likely the reason is to be able to market something shiny and new.

[Jud]

7 hours ago, Shadders said:

HI Jud,

That is the point isn't it - why offer MQA if it costs more money than the return on investment ?

 

Who was saying it would cost more than the ROI?

 

7 hours ago, Shadders said:

Offering something shiny and new that costs more money, than existing formats make no business sense.

 

Let's make this very simple and easy.  This week Apple rolled out shiny new phones, a couple of which cost a little more than the existing phones.  This seems to me to make great business sense, to have something shiny and new you can sell for more money.  No?

 

7 hours ago, Shadders said:

So, maybe, the shiny and new is not the reason ?

What the reason is, we can only speculate, *cough*DRM*cough*.

Regards,

Shadders.

 

Apple also rolled out a new phone that costs a *lot* more than their existing phones.  So they have the iPhone 8, on which they will likely depend for the majority of sales (if the iPhone 8 doesn't sell well, this week's launch will certainly be a business failure), and the iPhone X, the luxury model.  This model is aimed not at the majority of the market, but at early adopters with a lot of money to spend who must have what is reputed to be the latest and greatest.  I'm sure Apple wants the iPhone X to do well, but priced at $999 and up I am sure they are not relying on it for anywhere near the majority of their sales.

 

For the music industry, MQA without specific MQA hardware occupies the same position the iPhone 8 does for Apple.  It's a little more money but not a lot, they will push it as being better than the mp3 and AAC in the market right now (just as Apple extols the improvements of the iPhone 8 over the iPhone 7), and they will rely on it for the vast majority of sales.  What DRM gets the music industry is a "luxury model."  If you spend ~$100 or more on specific MQA hardware, then you, the early adopter with an extra ~$100 to burn, will hear an "even better" version than the "better" version the vast majority are buying.

 

So just like the iPhone 8, if MQA *without* specific MQA hardware doesn't sell to the masses, it will be a business failure.  The "luxury model" of MQA that DRM enables is like the iPhone X: it will be nice to have the extra sales, but this isn't what will make or break the product.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, lmitche said:

Simple, the headline says, "MQA DRM prevents unpaid copying of music files from proliferating on the internet". The graph shows a downward trendline of illegal downloads from today, going into the future. It has a music industry revenue line pointing upwards.

 

Well, but it doesn’t.  It prevents unpaid copying of the originals, but then so does the decimation to lower resolutions that is ubiquitous today.  It doesn’t at all prevent copying of MQA files (or, with a little more trouble, streams).

 

 It seems to me the attraction of MQA must be the ability to sell something as new and hi res and better sounding.

 

As I’ve speculated before, MQA without new hardware could be sold as something better, and MQA with new hardware could be sold as a luxury tier for fewer people.

[Jud]

7 hours ago, mansr said:

As used today, no. It has optional features providing much more restrictions.

 

Sure - we’ll see if market adoption gets to the point where it makes sense to turn those features on.  I would hope not, because in my personal experience MQA on my system has sounded to me a little less good than hi res of the same mastering.

[Jud]

22 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

about the DSD-camp

 

As Charles says, it’s helpful to know what’s actually going on in your system.  The vast majority of DACs internally use sigma-delta modulation on the bitstream.  DSD is a specific form of sigma-delta modulated bitstream.  So it’s just another one of those instances, like upsampling, where you’re doing something outside the DAC that the DAC would otherwise do (or something very similar) on its own.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, Charles Hansen said:

If you'll stop being snide

 

I’d like to read what you think about the subject before this happens.

[Jud]

26 minutes ago, crenca said:

though I think it is certainly reasonable to ask these questions

 

If we were chatting on the pages of some web-based gossip rag, I would think of it as more in line with the personal interests of the audience.  But I don’t know what it has to do with the possibility of getting greater enjoyment from my music.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Charles Hansen said:

Finally it has a feature whereby it is claimed to "correct Windows LSB rounding errors", which is a very interesting feature indeed.

 

This just sounds to me like another description of dither.  Or it could be of >24 (16?) bit math in the signal processing chain somewhere, I suppose, which is another pretty ordinary thing.  Or it could be a description of the driver’s operation versus Windows’ low level audio processing.

 

In other words, I have no idea.

[Jud]

11 hours ago, Fokus said:

correct anti-aliasing and anti-imaging filtering

 

It would make good ADC filtering easier, I imagine, if decimation to 44.1k sample rate hadn’t been baked in by the old silver-disc distribution system.  But we have what we have.

[Jud]

14 minutes ago, firedog said:

Many of us can remember being told how great early digital sounded (even when it didn't) from these same types of sources.

 

My recollection is the reverse: The “subjective” publications, for example TAS, led the group of those who said not to believe the hype, while objective consumer-oriented media, such as Consumer Reports in the US, were the leaders in saying the sound was essentially perfect.

[Jud]

8 hours ago, crenca said:

prices have and continue to rise at "luxury" rates of increase

 

I bought my DAC for $375.  The previous DACs that I purchased were ~$2000 (more than 25 years ago) and ~$500 (about 7 or 8 years ago).  I like this DAC better than either of those.

 

The prices on speakers, however, have increased, though I don't know what the comparison to the rate of inflation is.  (The speakers I purchased 30 years ago, the Vandersteen 2 series, are about double the price today.)

 

So I think the story is considerably more complex.

[Jud]

47 minutes ago, firedog said:

HQP not good enough for you?

 

He's got his own. 

[Jud]

2 hours ago, Fokus said:

 

192 dB

 

In what universe did this AES Convention take place?

 

 

If you hold all the electronics in the chain at close to absolute zero, have no acoustic to electrical transitions anywhere (so everything starts and ends as files - edit: until the playback transducer, probably headphones/IEMs), keep it all 32 bit, play back in the world’s finest anechoic chamber (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170526-inside-the-quietest-place-on-earth), and listen between heartbeats and breaths (and try not to move, even your eyes), you might get what, 2/3 of the way there?