MQA is Vaporware

[Samuel T Cogley]

9 minutes ago, Tintinabulum said:

I suspect you guys love ganging up on an innocent... sport right?

 

Where is this "innocent"?

[Samuel T Cogley]

Compared to other "luxury" audio brands I can think of, today's Meridian is an "also ran" among them.  And that's being generous.

[Samuel T Cogley]

10 minutes ago, Tintinabulum said:

Judge, jury and executioner...

 

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Don't be dense.  Bob S is a Big Fat Liar just like Bill Clinton is a Big Fat Liar, as in "I did not have sex with that young women"

 

Wake up Barrowboy, you were duped by Bob S at some point in the past (how much did you $pend did you say?), and now are shooting the messenger....good luck with that.

 

Is it just me, or is "executioner" histrionic?  My take is that @Tintinabulum sees a grave and serious threat to MQA coming from this forum.  And that's odd considering the typical MQA devotee usually has the opposite opinion.

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

Then why are so many people jumping on the MQA bandwagon?

 

Where are you seeing this?  Setting aside MQA's desires for success, where are you seeing "so many people jumping on the MQA bandwagon"?

[Samuel T Cogley]

10 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Didn’t we just go over this? I am basing it on talking to a few hundred people in this area, which is Salt Lake City, Southwestern Wyoming, Cheyenne, and Denver.

 

 

Just so I understand, you literally talked to "a few hundred people in this area"?  Wow.  How long did that take?  "A few" to me is higher than two, so I'm really keen to hear how you were able to pool three hundred or more people in such short a time.

[Samuel T Cogley]

19 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

Seems to me that you are being heavy-handed here. If I had accidentally sent you a PM intended of someone else and was indulging in a bit of private venting, I'd hope for a heads up about my mistake, especially if I were a known person professionally connected to the industry.  To simply allude to the content of those posts and claim they are hypocritical? How can anyone disagree or offer a different interpretation? If any privately expressed criticism is considered "uncivil" and therefore hypocritical of someone who has supported civility, there would be no civility supporters left, including yourself.

 

"Personal attacks aren't allowed here"...except when they are, which is not infrequent. This does not bode well.  It appears you've been drinking some of crenca's kool-aid.

 

The (ab)user of the "Report This Post" function doth protest too much, methinks!

[Samuel T Cogley]

I don't know what you guys are on about.  Lee Scoggins is a journalist, after all.  😆

[Samuel T Cogley]

2 hours ago, tmtomh said:

But by the same token, those of us who are critical of this must be more discriminating than the publications we are criticizing. So just because someone writes about MQA does not make them part of a cabal or a hype machine. MQA is something new - we might hate it, but that doesn't make it irrelevant. There has never been a lossy, high-res audio compression algorithm used to create standalone digital audio content before. (Yes, HDCD was similar, but that was in the age of physical media. And yes, non-HD DTS can be both lossy and high-res - but it's an AV audio codec, not the basis for standalone music releases). So of course the audiophile press has to cover it. If they cover it poorly - as most of them have - then by all means go at them with both barrels, as many of us here have done and continue to do. But suggesting that they didn't need to cover it at all and should have ignored it - that's an unfair criticism IMHO - and more importantly, it's a pointless criticism because we can see over and over and over again in this thread what kind of discussion that criticism creates.

 

Audiophilia is a sub-category of consumerism.  I occasionally read some of the music sub-forum over at Hoffman and never cease to be shocked by how utterly emotionally devoted some people are to their musical idols.  To the point where any kind of self-awareness or objectivity is completely suppressed.  The people more focused on gear than music also have their objective weaknesses.

 

Manufacturers manufacture gear to generate profit.  Audiophile publications have become mostly (not completely in some cases) a mere conveyance for manufacturer's marketing material.  Music reviews always give an audiophile publication some credibility.  Objective testing of performance as well.  But as much as I think MQA is A) primarily designed to make Bob Stuart rich and B) a solution in search of a problem to solve, it's naive to the point of childishness to suggest that audiophile publications should show their dedication to "truth" by ignoring MQA.  Anyone who believes that is rationalizing their own consumerism as something more sanctimonious.

[Samuel T Cogley]

26 minutes ago, jmsent said:

I hate the sound quality. The better the audio system, the worse it sounds.  Still, the programming for the music stations blows away virtually anything on terrestrial radio, and there's a lot to choose from. I wonder what holds it back on the sound quality front.  Is it just out of date hardware sitting up on those satellites? I notice that some stations sound better than others, and I'm curious what the maximum potential for sound quality is.

 

Before the Sirius/XM merger, before Sirius became Sirius, it was known as "CD Radio" (NASDAQ: CDRD).  The original business model was bringing "CD quality" sound to your car, nationwide.  My assumption is the sound quality is all about bit rate.  After the merger, the play was quantity, not quality, and the bit rates were brought way down to facilitate more channels.  Sound quality could be vastly improved, but at the cost of channels variety.

 

Personally, I wouldn't listen to Sirius/XM if it were free.  The sound quality so dreadfully bad that I find it unlistenable.

[Samuel T Cogley]

Just for clarity, what problem did MLP claim to solve?  Was it a max bitrate issue from the DVD optical transport?

 

I'm reading that DVD transport has a max bitrate of around 9.8 mbps.  My math says 6 channels of 24 bit 192000 Hz audio is around 27.6 mbps.  But even with MLP, the best you could do is an effective bitrate of 18 mbps.

 

So I'm thinking they likely limited the bit depth to stay under 18mbps.  6 channels of 16/192 is 18.4 mbps. The LFE channel probably provided an opportunity to get the bitrate under 18 mbps.

[Samuel T Cogley]

When I finally got around to ripping DVD-A discs, was quite disappointed to see the volume maximization and peak limiting.  Just like MQA 🙂

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

 

well, let's see....this happened

 

I know, you're going to ask "What does this have to do with MQA?" Here's your answer: this can be used as an all-purpose response. Note: Darko says there are thousands of them and they are everywhere....and they are intolerant. That's why they don't like MQA! They're too picky, too opinionated, too arrogant, etc. Of course, this presupposes that there actually are audiophiles that fit the bill. And that wouldn't include anyone here. After all, that's not Audiophile Style, is it? That's for those radically subjective styleholes out there in the industry and media that shill for the latest fads, like MQA. Not us! We're more...how shall I put it...objective. 🦄

 

Congrats on finding some provocative grist for the forum mill!

 

I made it as far as Darko dishing some argumentum ad populum ("rapcrap"), then bailed.  Darko may perhaps be a social media "influencer", but he's assembling a straw man of what he thinks his audience hates the most and gleefully sets it ablaze.

 

In other words, this Darko nonsense is pure, unadulterated clickbait.  I would have thought that using this as a cutout for your chronic civility grievances was beneath your apparent intellect, but perhaps I overestimated that.

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

Am I the only one noticing that MQA and its most loyal fanbois have transitioned to a defensive posture?  Perhaps I'm imagining it.

[Samuel T Cogley]

2 minutes ago, Paul R said:

I don't think that finding matching MQA and PCM audio files to compare is that much of a chore...

 

Hi Paul

 

I chased this rabbit for a while and gave up.  Seems like there's always a difference with the MQA version.  That could be intentional as to make direct comparisons difficult or impossible.  Also, I've not seen much in the way of mastering provenance information shared by the record labels, which also makes such a comparison effort exceedingly difficult.

 

In other words, I don't think it's in MQA's best interests for people to make those comparisons and that's why it's very difficult to do.

[Samuel T Cogley]

^ the profundity has rendered me blind.  Such eloquence I hope never to encounter again. 🙂

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Right, but a lot of what is posted on this forum - see mansr's recent postings in this thread - doesn't even offer anecdotal evidence, just unsupported opinion.

 

1 hour ago, mansr said:

WTF?

 

This is the narrative that MQA has been pushing ever since the technical dissent became a threat to them.  It was on full display at Chris' RMAF presentation: malign the integrity of the dissenters at every opportunity.  Mike Jbara was obsessively focused on Archimago's anonymity but was unprepared to discuss the substance of Archimago's technical takedown because he conveniently didn't bring anyone "technical" with him.  At least he had someone doing some mediocre Nikita Khrushchev roleplay and Scoggins provided superfluous harrumphs.

[Samuel T Cogley]

The nearly universal embrace of MQA by the "establishment" audiophile press is what opened my eyes to what @crenca calls a Confidence Game.  At first I thought that was just hyperbole, but I now believe it's a fair and accurate description.  Generally speaking, the audiophile press does not put much (if any) emphasis on consumer advocacy.  But they never miss an opportunity to regale Bob Stuart with nauseatingly lavish praise.

[Samuel T Cogley]

"listen and report what you hear" is a call for testimony.  And testimony is notoriously unreliable.  This is why I personally place a very low value on testimony.  MQA removes things present in the high resolution master and adds things back that weren't there to start with.  That's simply a fact.  I tried listening to that, and didn't like it.  If you like fidelity, you probably won't like MQA.  If you like blue lights, you might like MQA.

[Samuel T Cogley]

11 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

...testimony also has the attribute of being very difficult to dispute.

 

That's because it's a subjective opinion.  Argumentum ad populum might seem initially to lend some credibility to a claim.  But western civilization has known for millennia that subjectivity, regardless of how passionate it might be, cannot be substituted for fact.

 

The known facts about MQA do not speak well of the process or the company.  As far as I'm concerned, Tidal and MQA cannot go out of business fast enough.

[Samuel T Cogley]

2 hours ago, Paul R said:

I thought the comment was cogent, pointed out that testimony is devilishly difficult to dispute...

 

No, this is not at all what I was saying.  I said that testimony is notoriously unreliable.  Which is why I am utterly unmoved when some people say they like the sound of MQA. 

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

 

And what has your contribution been?

 

You first.  Please, elaborate.

[Samuel T Cogley]

Randi's takedown of Uri Geller is legendary.  But let's please get back on MQA.

[Samuel T Cogley]

the civility scold doing his part to keep the thread on topic I see 🙄

[Samuel T Cogley]

5 minutes ago, AMR/iFi audio said:

 

Naah, don't worry, someone might find it useful as we wrote. Worst case scenario, admin will remove it 

 

With all due respect, it's precisely this attitude that stopped me from buying any additional iFi products.  I have several of your DACs and a few other items (iGalvanic3.0, etc.).  But you went to the MQA dark side, and I purchased a Benchmark DAC3 B instead of the iDSD Pro.

[Samuel T Cogley]

9 minutes ago, AMR/iFi audio said:

 

It always is an option to simply not listen to it if you don't like it. But if you really want to be MQA-immune, we provide firmware with it disabled. 

 

For the iDSD Pro? 🙂