MQA is Vaporware

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

2 hours ago, daverich4 said:

 

Paul is right though that since the thread started there has been lots of discussion about why MQA can’t sound good but almost no posts about what people actually HEAR wrong with it. I’ve posted a couple of times that I neither hear the claimed improvements nor anything wrong with it. That’s my experience, what is yours?

I disagree somewhat. I think there are many posts describing what is wrong with it. Personally, it creates a soundstage whole in the center, and bloats the mid bass. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

20 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

I guess what I was after is what someone like you would hear as defective in the MQA version of the album compared to a pure PCM version? I’ve already stated that I don’t hear a difference but know that some people do. I’m just asking what that is and then perhaps I can listen for that characteristic to hear it for myself. 

So if you don't hear a difference what is the point of the existence of Master Quack Audio? 

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

47 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

I agree there are many posts describing what is technically wrong with it but still believe there aren’t many as descriptive as your post about what is wrong based on listening to it. A wide soundstage is something I especially value and I’ll go back to the two albums I have from the same master in 24/96 and MQA and concentrate on that. Thanks. 

These description are here. However due to the number of pages and posts finding them will prove difficult. But i personally have read numerous posts describing the  very specific sonic differences.

 

One thing for sure. Virtually NO ONE on planet earth heard what Austin, Atkinson, Fremer, Harley, et all heard.

 

NO ONE>

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

43 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Add to that the out of phase-i-ness of the upper frequencies and (depending on the recording) a grain/"digititus" added as well. All subtle and somewhat tolerable if it was just a clever superMP3 without "end to end" designs through lock in and DRM...

Completely agree. 

 

I just compared the MQA and non MQA versions of Coldplay's Viva La Vida, and the Black Keys new album. The MQA versions far inferior to my ears.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

18 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

According to Stereophile it was actually the birth of a new world.

 

Yes, those were disingenuous acts at best...more like premeditated deceit, and the audio press went for it hook, line, and sinker (or were they just playing along?).

 

 

Thank you, PaulR can add that data point to his comprehensive survey, or perhaps you had already been interviewed in the Cheyenne area?

No? what about Salt Lake City?

"...or perhaps you had already been interviewed in the Cheyenne area? No? what about Salt Lake City?"

 

Now, that was so funny, I just spit out my Mannishevitz...😃

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, daverich4 said:

 

By that definition DSD also has DRM built in as you can’t play it without a DAC designed for it. My Schiit Gumby won’t. 

You are way off the mark here.

 

First, DSD is an ACTUAL recording format. When you playback DSD, you are playing back the actual master.  Secondly, there is virtually no additional cost to have DSD capability,. Thirdly DSD capability in no way interferes with PCM playback on most if not all DACs.

 

Schiit swims upstream on many things, and DSD is one of them. Silly.

 

The only thing you were correct about is that DSD was locked into the SACD optical disc conceptually.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Just now, from TAS:

 

"MQA encoding can be applied to CDs, and that format is taking off in Japan in a big way, where 80% of music sales are of physical media."

 

What a bizarre article. NO mention of streaming, at all, unless I missed it.

 

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-music-industry-responds/

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Hashem, please, help us.

 

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

27 minutes ago, rando said:

Next sentences in the May 2018 issue of Hifi Pig interview of Lothar Kerestedjian I previously quoted from.

 

"It doesn't matter what it is - they (US based mediums) jump on it and make it big (for a short period of time) and then something new comes along.  There is no persistence feel."

 

Fighting hype with hype, bluster blow for blow with bluster,...  When MQA is no longer interesting this same endowment will pass to the next drum circle ad infinitum.  Sound familiar?

 

Two and a half paragraphs later we continue a reasonable assessment.

 

"Over the past two years, the initial product concept, company's attitude and the way MQA was marketed has changed and felt dishonest to me.  Hence, the abrupt stop.  Bob Stuart promised me many things but none of them have come through so far.  I wonder why?"

 

Hmm, less a blind chest thumping frenzied war party brooking no new information disagreeable to its cravings for contact with the enemy than calm assessment of which way the winds are blowing.  The strength to reverse a previously held conclusion at risk to one's name. 

 

Sensible and civil.

 

Edit: I see at least one recent response directly above has been removed.  Should this seem somewhat disjointed or lacking immediate context. 

 

i guess some get "repetitive post count/page view producing" witness protection. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

22 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Just trying to be a bridge to improve understanding someone who might have a more raw technical interest.  It just seems like people sometimes get into a mode where they want to disagree -- in this case, both sides of this argument (I am on neither of the current vehement disagreement) have dug in their heels.  I really despise the goals of the MQA advocacy, but there might be some technical merit in some of the mathematical concepts used.  Oddly, I'd suspect that both sides of this ongoing spat might actually dislike the goals of the MQA advocacy.

 

It 100% sucks to decrease quality (MQA definitely decreases quality), but some of the technical tricks that they played might be very interesting.  Some of the MQA destruction might actually be interesting to understand exactly what they did -- it is not likely a conventional compression scheme like mp3.

 

To me, MQA is so much of an anathema, that if it would have taken hold 10yrs before my current effort, then my current project would have been infinitely more difficult.  The logical business application of MQA is against everything that the audiophile community really needs -- but some of the techniques might be verrrryyyy interesting. (Ignore the techno-babble marketing nonsense from the MQA advocacy -- there might be some real 'meat' in there.)

 

John

 

With all due respect...if "there might be some technical merit in some of the mathematical concepts used," then Stuart and Craven should have designed a new ADC. They did not, because clearly they don't have the chops. If they had, they might have survived with their reputations intact, and the same goes for Atkinson and Harley. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

25 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Naw, nothing really lost. Believers will continue to believe no matter how strong the evidence against their positions.

Not really true. I encountered many in the hobby who just assumed Stuart was a luminary because he produced expensive products and seduced the mags. MQA made them look behind the curtain. I can't tell you how many people I have told that Meridian lost 35-40 million shekels and they were stunned. They assumed Meridian was "successful". 

 

The market rejected his products and they should have gone belly up like Halcro, and other companies that made over priced paperweights. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

I agree.  But the context of my 'why go further' question relates to Paul suggesting that we/audiophiles need to prove that MQA doesn't sound better than plain PCM, etc. 

We donna gotta prova a nuthin'....end of story. 😅

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Let us be CRSTAL CLEAR here:

 

Except for the faint possibility of a few albums, there was no EQ, compression, stereo repositioning with MQA.

 

The simple fact is the amateurish, flawed proprietary DSP distorts the sound. PERIOD. There seem phase issues, soundstage distortions, and clear to see in Paul Miller's measurements, aliasing. 

 

MQA moves you AWAY from the original file, not closer.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

12 minutes ago, esldude said:

So what benefit would you say exists from the MQA process if it all comes out pretty much the same?

https://www.hifinews.com/content/opinion-more-questions-answered

 

 

Graph 2 (above), however, illustrates what MQA calls the ‘upward rendering’ of aliasing products with twice-folded files, trading increased frequency distortion for reduced time distortion. The red trace shows a 192kHz LPCM rendering of Laura Metcalf's First Day while, in blue, a partial ‘image’ of her piano-playing is reflected above 48kHz from the MQA encode/decode.
 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

"So MQA is not lossless but puts its emphasis on time over frequency domain performance, claiming a reduction in ‘perceptual smear’ of 10x over 192kHz/24-bit LPCM."
 

https://www.hifinews.com/content/opinion-more-questions-answered#gkmYxk3VBGriHhG4.99

 

Note "perceptual smear" is a a term fully pulled out of thin air.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

That's not actually what happens, though. Time and frequency are inextricably linked, and any distortion in one is also a distortion in the other. There is no trade-off of the type implied.

Didn't Archie come to that conclusion too, and provide repeatable measurements to prove it?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

a perceptual schmear is what goes on a doughballistic, West Coast "bagel"

Come to Russ N Daughters on the Right Coast. A schemer on an everything bagel with gravlax...pure heaven!

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Just now, crenca said:

 

It runs deeper - its a basic "fact" in signal processing

Right, but Stuart. ran with the "time domain" correction bullshit....and Atkinson and Austin picked up the ball and continued to spew that nonsense.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

I'm with are Hebrew Brother on this - I suspect that (beyond changing masters - the source file - and perhaps some small volume increase on many (most?) MQA processed files) MQA has nothing up its "deblurring" sleeve.  Yes, Bob S and MQA hold to a certain philosophy about min phase filtering (and its corollary, "ringing")  and the like, but that is all known art and they have simply packaged it in a proprietary black box and made strong marketing claims about "blur" and the like/

 

If there is something of substance (something "new") behind the curtain, they are waiting awful late to show it...we are in the later half of the game and MQA is losing.  Would not any team have pulled out the trick play by now??!?

 

@John Dyson, you appear to say that what your inside knowledge implies is that there is a benefit to the holy grail of "transients" and the waveform buried within MQA's folding algorithm - or am I reading this into what you said?

 

3 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

I have never seen it not spewed by men such as Atkinson and Austin and the wider "Audio Press".   It just seems to be part of the furniture of the Audiophile Confidence Game...

 

 

In fact, let repeat what I said...the DSP, and that is ALL it is DSP, which anyone with a laptop an audio editing program can do, is a hack job. 

 

As far as Atkinson et al never questioning marketing claims, it is ironic that Atkinson was very cautious and skeptical about DSD in the pages of Stereophile when he first encountered, it and was very slow to warm up to it, once DSD DACs became common.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

12 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Atkinson has defended this difference (here in this thread and elsewhere) by saying that what he and others (Harley certainly falls into this thinking) found seductive was the "Authenticated" or "end to end" part, and how that would play into the overall business circumstances of the industry (i.e. piracy, "crown jewels") and Hi Res, the future (i.e. streaming, etc.), blah blah blah...

 

So unlike DSD, MQA offered a real solution to a real problem that all Audiophiles recognized and could get behind a solution there of...

 

Except we all know that the reality of MQA was/is quite different than the sales job.  

 

What is revealing I think is that the SQ argument of MQA is perhaps the pick of the litter of half-baked and fraudulent MQA claims basket, yet it is the one that Stereophile writers and the wider Audiophile "press" still put most of their energy behind.  We can understand why, as SQ is the bedrock of the hobby, and thus the bedrock of any (true or false) marketing effort.

 

Yet, even when the SQ claims have been debunked, it's still full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.  Just shows how entrenched the Old Guard, anti-consumer, to hell with the truth what's "good for the industry is good for everyone" thinking/habits are...

..also amusing to note how the wanna bees and sycophants like Darko, Stephen Stone, Andy Schaub, Lasagna, et al jumped right on the train like good little puppies.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

20 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

Thanks for the tip, but I haven't crossed the Rockies in the last couple of decades.

You don't know what you are missing boobie...

 

As for yours "authenticated" lol....

 

 

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 minute ago, kumakuma said:

 

<drool>

For the record I order without onions....fresh breath is a priority...😍

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

5 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Fish breath is OK?  I go with all of it.

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

29 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

You posted yesterday the statement regarding MQA sound quality that "Any 'improvement' in the sound is a result of unknown processing applied before the compression takes place. In some cases this amounts to a complete remix/remaster. More commonly, it is more along the lines of light dynamic range compression, a touch of EQ, maybe some stereo width tweaking."

 

You offered no suppport for this statement. It is therefore mere opinion, not based on any evidence. By contrast I performed experiments, the results of which show that, at least far as the selection of MQA files I had to hand was concerned, your statement was wrong. Yet I am the one who is being asked to provide additional support while your misleading statement appears to be accepted by other posters regardless of the lack of evidence.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

 

can you post snippets of your recordings pre and post MQA somewhere please? There are no copyright issues for short clips. It would fall under the fair use clause. Thank you. 

 

Edit; Also who did the encoding, 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

7 hours ago, Ran said:

 

@John_Atkinson

 

You are (were) the editor of an influential magazine. Some audiophile will swear by the words which you print. Because of such, you have a responsibility toward your readers to uphold the highest standards when it comes to the content published. You went overboard with MQA, created a buzz within the community which led to demand for MQA by audiophiles. Not once, there was any serious technical insight into MQA and the various claims made by the company. When various people found many holes in MQA and came forward with a serious technical explanation (basically doing your work) you chose to bury your head in the sand. That is the major reason why members here hold you to a different standard. I hope you realize it.

Mr. Atkinson was blown away by the "unfold" of the so called "origami", and he was so taken with it he called it elegant.

 

It then got the Stereophile rubber stamp, then cronies, Austin, Reichert, Lasagna, and Fremer ran with it continuing with that editorial decision. 

 

To be fair, Kal Robinson renounced, and Jon Iverson wrote it off.

 

His new boss found the aliasing and the loss of bits....