MQA is Vaporware

[Sal1950]

37 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

ndeed.  They even admit that they have no explanation of how such signals are transduced

It's the magic dust Kal, everyone knows that.

Same dust Santa gives the raindeer at Christmas to make them fly.

Just ask Cheech and Chong. 

 

[mav52]

1 hour ago, Sal1950 said:

It's the magic dust Kal, everyone knows that.

Same dust Santa gives the raindeer at Christmas to make them fly.

Just ask Cheech and Chong. 

 

Must be medicinal dust 

[Ralf11]

11 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

I would love to see results of any human hearing tests that show people having positive response to ultrasonic frequencies. Most people don't hear anything much over 15k

 

actually there are some impulse tests that seem to show that 

 

also, there are effects of subsonics and IIRC ultrasonics that are not consciously heard BUT still alter mood, and produce other unconscious effects

[Sal1950]

27 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

also, there are effects of subsonics and IIRC ultrasonics that are not consciously heard BUT still alter mood, and produce other unconscious effects

I'm sure, they get tired and PO'd from attempting to hear that which they can't hear.  LOL

[Ralf11]

not at all - best to not BS about things before reading the scientific literature 

[soxr]

21 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

I’ve discovered is MQA Ltd is recruiting mastering engineers to be area representatives. So when you hear a mastering engineer support MQA you have to ask two questions. One are they an area representative and did they receive equipment or other forms of compensation to say what they did.

 

So MQA is hiring paid shills.

I also believe MQA is paying reviewers to debunk the MQA criticasters, example:
 

 

Then there some extreme fanboys, who are on every forum, blog, facebook group, always hammering on how good MQA is and why we need deblur and fixing the timing errors, which were never an issue before MQA.

It's like these people have a fulltime job just promoting and pushing MQA and battling with proponents. They always deny any affiliation with MQA, but they post comments like "good work, team" ....

Nomal people don't do that, unless they are part of the team. One of them is also member here.

 

21 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

Finally, opponents of MQA have formed a group to collate, organize and disseminate information about MQA. The group includes people from high end audio manufacturers, major labels, studios and me.

MQA pushers claim this group fears MQA. To the contrary, I think this group can cut through the marketing BS, and figure out that the A in MQA is a marketing lie, confirmed by a lot of real studio engineers not paid by MQA.

The fact that MQA is now hiring engineers shows how desperate they must be.

On Linkedin, MQA is spreading their usual marketing lies, e.g.:

"MQA is an award-winning British technology that delivers the sound of the studio in a file that’s small enough to stream or download. "

Studio's don't master for MQA. They don't even have the tools to do that. All encoding is done at MQA, not in realtime in the studio. MQA seriously alters the master. So MQA is not the sound of the studio. Just follow engineers such as Brian Lucey on Gearslutz and it is now confirmed several times that MQA is not the master.

 

[asdf1000]

After around the 29 minute mark, is he talking about MQA? It's hard to know for sure. Great interview anyway.

 

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/sweetwater-interviews-chuck-ainlay/

 

[afrancois]

I think he's talking about MFSL. If he is talking about MFSL, then I agree that some of these regarding are somewhat void of life. Other MFSL recordings however sound wonderful, especially on good equipment.

[Fokus]

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history

[soxr]

Mytek Brooklyn vs Asus Essence STX II

 

Archimago has posted measurements which now prove what I have been hearing in the lab for months.

http://archimago.blogspot.be/2017/07/measurements-mqa-filters-on-mytek.html

Basically what MQA tries to do is to kill post-ringing via a programmable filter in the ESS chipset, which seriously alters the sound. On cheap devices like the Dragonfly, this filter is only active when playing MQA. On the Mytek Brooklyn, this filter is ALWAYS active!

 

Now with the Mytek Brooklyn that I own, there's something strange going on. When I play through an Asus Essence STX II sound card in a linux box powered by a 12V linear supply, for which the Asus card does 24/192 max via PCM 1792A, and connect that card to a very high-end amp on studio speakers, and also run SP/DIF from this card to the Mytek and run a second analog cable set to the amp, I can do shootouts between the 220 € Asus card and a 2000 € dedicated DAC by switching the input on my amp.

 

No matter what we do to the Mytek, like adding a very decent linear 12V PSU, or whatever cable we try: the Mytek sounds so much less than the cheaper Asus card. It's less musical. This was very frustrated and we did not know why. This has been confirmed by local members of the hifi press which were present during the shootout.

First we believed that MQA is degrading NON-MQA on MQA dac's, to make the difference bigger. But now with the measurements revealed, it actually confirms that the MQA efforts to kill post-ringing just do not sound right.

 

I bought the Mytek to do some validation testing, but never suspected it would sound less than a 220 € Asus computer soundcard.

 

I hope Mytek offers some option to disable this MQA alike filters on normal PCM.
I certainly do not like this.

 

For me this is blind evidence that something is wrong with MQA's filter choice, as I have been annoyed by the sound of the mytek for weeks now, because you would expect that a 2000 euro standalone DAC would sound better than a 200 euro soundcard.

 

Other ESS dac's such as auralic vega don't have these problems, so it's not related to the ESS chipset, but because of MQA's filter choices, which seem to infect non-MQA playback as well.

[AJ Soundfield]

Maybe you just got so used to "smearing" all your life, that you now prefer it.

I'm holding out to hear every artist in history confirmation of authenticity.

[soxr]

4 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Maybe you just got so used to "smearing" all your life, that you now prefer it.

 

All audio playback colors and thus smears when playing through speakers in a typical room. With our without MQA.
 

4 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

I'm holding out to hear every artist in history confirmation of authenticity.

 

Dream on.

[AJ Soundfield]

12 minutes ago, soxr said:

All audio playback colors and thus smears when playing through speakers in a typical room. With our without MQA.

I speaking specifically about the time "smearing" that has plagued all digital audio until the seconding coming, our savior MQA.

It is clear you prefer this time smearing vs the smudge/grit cleaned canvas that MQA presents.

 

No dream, millions of artists are waiting to hear their work authentically for the first time, now possible.

The ADCs used back then prevented this.

 

Did I mention Bob Stuart is still more famous than you?

[mansr]

25 minutes ago, soxr said:

Mytek Brooklyn vs Asus Essence STX II

 

Archimago has posted measurements which now prove what I have been hearing in the lab for months.

http://archimago.blogspot.be/2017/07/measurements-mqa-filters-on-mytek.html

Basically what MQA tries to do is to kill post-ringing via a programmable filter in the ESS chipset, which seriously alters the sound. On cheap devices like the Dragonfly, this filter is only active when playing MQA. On the Mytek Brooklyn, this filter is ALWAYS active!

IIUC, the Mytek offers other filter choices if MQA is disabled. If you're playing non-MQA content, you're probably better off disabling the MQA decoder and using one of the other filters that then become available. It's a bizarre design for sure.

 

Do you by any chance have a decent recording interface capable of 192/24 or better?

[soxr]

4 minutes ago, mansr said:

IIUC, the Mytek offers other filter choices if MQA is disabled. If you're playing non-MQA content, you're probably better off disabling the MQA decoder and using one of the other filters that then become available. It's a bizarre design for sure.

 

H'mmm need to check if my MQA decoder was active, I think I once disabled it.

 

4 minutes ago, mansr said:

Do you by any chance have a decent recording interface capable of 192/24 or better?

I have two very old but good Onkyo PCI 200 SE LTD cards which I used in the past for audiodiffmaker.

[mav52]

11 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Did I mention Bob Stuart is still more famous than you?

 

Trouble is AJ, Stuart is more famous than all of us

[soxr]

49 minutes ago, mav52 said:

 

Trouble is AJ, Stuart is more famous than all of us

Coca Cola is also more famous than most other soda brands, even the organic soda brands that nobody knows about.

That does not make it the most healthy soft drink choice.

[Rt66indierock]

53 minutes ago, mav52 said:

 

Trouble is AJ, Stuart is more famous than all of us

 

Famous well I wonder. You can look at Meridian Audio’s latest financial statements. The profit and loss account shows a loss of 24,122,337 Pounds from April 1992 to May 2016. Lose a lot of money and become famous?

[AJ Soundfield]

57 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Famous well I wonder. You can look at Meridian Audio’s latest financial statements. The profit and loss account shows a loss of 24,122,337 Pounds from April 1992 to May 2016. Lose a lot of money and become famous?

Never mind the bollocks, here's the MQA

[Rt66indierock]

32 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Never mind the bollocks, here's the MQA

 

AJ this line of posting makes no sense. There are no famous people in high end audio.

[miguelito]

2 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

I speaking specifically about the time "smearing" that has plagued all digital audio until the seconding coming, our savior MQA.

Oh puhleeze sweetie! Nonesense.

 

2 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

It is clear you prefer this time smearing vs the smudge/grit cleaned canvas that MQA presents.

 

No dream, millions of artists are waiting to hear their work authentically for the first time, now possible.

Not true. I would like you to tell me of ONE famous artist that has "validated" the MQA version. And what if they say "No this is not how it should sound"... What parameters do you tweak in the MQA encoding to adjust?

 

Wait a minute... You really think any major recording artist is listening through and signing a validation receipt? Really? "Show me the receipts, Diane!" (sorry if you don't get this reference).

 

2 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

The ADCs used back then prevented this.

Back when? And are you sure or just repeating the PR lines?

 

2 hours ago, AJ Soundfield said:

 

Did I mention Bob Stuart is still more famous than you?

Who cares? There's no value for being famous in science.

[Ralf11]

54 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Never mind the bollocks, here's the MQA

 

Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, MQA is Gonna Win

[mansr]

19 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Oh puhleeze sweetie! Nonesense.

Methinks your sarcasm detector needs adjusting.

[mav52]

2 hours ago, soxr said:

Coca Cola is also more famous than most other soda brands, even the organic soda brands that nobody knows about.

That does not make it the most healthy soft drink choice.

But it does wonders as a rust remover and getting bugs off the car window

[miguelito]

5 hours ago, mansr said:

Methinks your sarcasm detector needs adjusting.

Fair enough... Haven't followed this thread as closely.