MQA is Vaporware

[Josh Mound]

4 hours ago, GoldenOne said:

ASR has now locked the MQA discussion thread.
 

Prior to this, one of the moderators requested a phone call with me. They said (and no I am not joking) that there were too many people criticising Amir for the MQA related comments he'd made and that they couldn't keep up with the moderation, so they wanted to lock the thread and wanted me to start a new one, in which they would not allow anyone to bring up the statements Amir had made regarding MQA. Because ASR/Amir needed to "remain neutral".
 

I told them that I was unwilling to do this and that censorship is not a good plan. Firstly it will just raise more questions and make ASR/Amir look suspicious, and secondly it's just morally wrong.

If ASR/Amir wants to remain neutral, then Amir shouldn't be making statements in any direction regarding MQA.
 

If they were going to lock the thread I was not going to help them make it more PR-Friendly by posting a new one and saying that it was all ok. Because it isn't.
No one should be immune to criticism, doesn't matter if it's their forum or not. And if you don't want to be criticised, you should say nothing. (And certainly shouldn't run a forum)
 

Even if there are people being un-necessarily hostile, which to be clear, some were, and that should absolutely be handled, if more moderation is needed, appoint more moderators.

Censoring discussion and preventing people from criticizing the forum owner is just wrong. And doing it now, when the owner of the forum says something in defence of a company that is known to have attempted to censor other forums, makes things look damn fishy.

I made quite clear that in my opinion, the best way for ASR to remain neutral would be to leave the thread up, as-is. And simply have Amir not say anything further on the topic.
Let people continue the discussion and have the forum owners/staff remain neutral from here on.

 

The above is impossible! I've heard that, while @The Computer Audiophile is a ruthless censor, Amir cultivates a forum focused on a no-holds-barred exchange of ideas in the search of objective truth. 😉

 

More seriously, isn't this the second MQA thread that's been locked at ASR because Amir made a fool of himself and got repeatedly dunked on by his followers?

[Josh Mound]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

I've had a couple of back and forths with Amir, 😉 - and what I found out is that it's all about "winning the 'fight'" ... for him. The more one argues some technical point, the more he throws absolutely anything that's at hand at you - he works on the basis of wearing you down, by using some and more words with each post; he latches onto the fight like a ferret, and refuses to let go, no matter what. So, the solution when you see this happening is to gracefully step aside - a boxing match with one person in it ends pretty quickly 😊.

 

His comments in that thread were hilarious. He kept citing Bob Stuart's CV, as if that's a rebuttal to objective analyses of what MQA does and doesn't do.

 

Then he brought up random things like the Apple store's business model. Huh? What does that have to do with MQA? It was also rich to see someone who worked at Microsoft during the '90s and '00s (and whose emails were part of the DOJ's antitrust case against MS!) slamming Apple for monopolistic practices!

[Josh Mound]

On 5/20/2021 at 2:44 PM, UkPhil said:

Bob bites back,  his response to            goldensounds video reveal 

https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/?fbclid=IwAR27rjL7kzceBQWTLjD-nRHKOpEq5q3Hk3t6SRLn65E9ot7aBcSz4rd34cw

This part of Stuart’s “technical appendices” is making my head spin. 
 

[Josh Mound]

On 5/26/2021 at 3:26 PM, vmartell22 said:

 

Hrm - very disappointing. This should have the thing that united  ASR and AS.  Argument should be  - hey,  both sides of the audiophile thought discussion agree here, mQa is bad news  - even if for different reasons. Doesn't matter.

 

I do have a related question - do moderators have a duty to be impartial?  Well, I understand that the owner of the forum has the right to regulate content she/he wants on the forum - BUT, talking in general, if someone becomes a moderator, is that a reasonable expectation? I guess I kind of answered my question... so it may be dumb in essence... yet... feels wrong what they did...

 

v

 

 

Amir is absolutely melting down in the reopened MQA thread over at ASR. It’s hilarious. 

[Josh Mound]

Mastering engineer Brian Lucey is filleting MQA over at GearSpace:

 

https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/1171365-mqa-discussion-denver-rmaf-21.html#post15468549

 

I’m sure he just doesn’t understand audio and the music industry as well as Amir, though. 😂

[Josh Mound]

One humorous part of Amir’s meltdown about MQA is that he’s bringing up the old “We don’t know who Archimago and Golden are” argument while simultaneously claiming that we should trust MQA because one of the underlying AES papers was peer-reviewed. Of course, peer review is supposed to get its credibility from its anonymity. In theory, it forces people to engage with ideas and evidence, not with resumes.* Yet, that’s precisely why it doesn’t matter what Archimago or Golden’s real names are! 
 

*Obviously, in small academic and professional communities, this often brakes down. I’m sure the reviewers of Stuart’s paper knew Stuart wrote it. But that’s a reason to doubt the rigor of the peer review, not to trust it more. 

[Josh Mound]

Now Amir is arguing that MQA being lossy is good because space actually is a concern. But instead of using an apples-to-apples MQA to effective FLAC resolution example, he’s pointing to a WAV of a long song from a 2xHD DSD release!

 

This is obvious bait-and-switch strawmanning, but I feel like I’m losing my mind. How does he have any credibility?!

 

[Josh Mound]

17 hours ago, Mayfair said:

Excellent question. Does anyone know whether there is actually a non-MQA version of Nina Simone's Montreux Years?  

 

I understand from the label Metropolis that this album was "MQA encoded" (https://www.thisismetropolis.com/metropolis-masters-new-the-montreux-years-albums-from-iconic-artists/) but when I look it up on Qobuz (https://www.qobuz.com/fr-fr/album/the-montreux-years-nina-simone/rzqyhgadfvukc) or HDtracks (https://www.hdtracks.com/#/album/60d1feb7747d7a64003b775a) it shows as downloadable in 24-Bit 44.1 kHz or 16-Bit 44.1 kHz.  

 

An interview with the engineer who mastered it, Tony Cousins, is also featured on MQA's website. (https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/montreux-jazz-festival-mqa-releases-on-bmg). 

 

If this album was encoded in MQA, and there are apparently LP(?????) and "CD" (if the term "CD" can be applied to non-Redbook)  versions of it in MQA, is there really an authentic non-MQA version for download in 24-bit/16-bit 44.1 kHz FLAC (i.e., *not* MQA in an FLAC container)?  And if not, I wonder why Qobuz and HDTracks are not identifying it as MQA?  

 

I hope one of our tech sluths can figure out of the Qobuz and HDT files are MQA-free. 
 

This is a release I was really looking forward to…

[Josh Mound]

I’m not sure if someone else has run into this, but I discovered an (uhhh) “interesting” MQA glitch:

 

Qobuz integration with Audirvana was down for a few days for me. So I was listening on Tidal. I also happened to be using my Matrix XSP, which is MQA-capable. Not paying attention, I clicked on an MQA-encoded album on Tidal. I was quickly alerted to the fact that I was playing MQA because every 15-20 seconds, I heard a dropout.
 

The entire file is loaded into memory on Audirvana, and I use a dedicated music-only Mac Mini. So dropouts essentially never happen in my setup. When I switched to a PCM file, even a 24/192 one, these dropouts went away. I was puzzled. 
 

After some experimenting, I found that the MQA dropouts occurred because I have an Ideon USB isolator between my Mac Mini and DACs. When I removed the isolator, the dropouts stopped.
 

However, there’s nothing wrong with the Ideon. I also have an Audiophilleo, which has bit-perfect test files. Feeding those files — from 16/44.1 through 24/192 — from Audirvana through the Ideon to the Audiophilleo was bit perfect every time. 
 

So there’s something about the “authentication” (lulz) code in an MQA file that won’t lock if there’s a USB isolator in between the computer and the DAC. What a wonderful format! 🤢

[Josh Mound]

On 9/22/2021 at 1:21 PM, Pierre LeMonf said:

Forgive me, but after parsing through this thread, isn't the quote below pure merde?

 

 

"When music is playing, the EVO's screen displays, along with the album cover, the song and album titles, the artist's name, the stream resolution, the file format, the track's total and elapsed time, and—if the track is MQA—the MQA logo accompanied by either a green or a blue dot indicating whether that MQA recording is engineer- or artist-approved (blue, "MQA Studio"). If the dot is green, it means that the file being streamed is intact MQA, but it may not be the most recent or definitive version of the recording.

 

I got a kick out of seeing my first blue authentication dot. I thought: "This recording is the real deal!" It appeared on the 24/192 MQA version of John Coltrane's cover of "My Favorite Things" (Atlantic/Qobuz) which I heard after I'd heard that same track on a green-lighted 16/44.1 MQA mix."

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/cambridge-audio-evo-150-streaming-integrated-amplifier

How do I get them to include a golden dot for the versions I recommend in my TBVOs? 😂

[Josh Mound]

9 hours ago, Iving said:

The banners/ads had nothing to do with it.

 

"Science" (most of which was ostensible) - even objectivity - had nothing to do with it.

 

The problem was antisocial behaviour - stifling free participation for all.

 

It was antisocial behaviour that got marginalised by Chris - in the end.

 

Nothing would have been marginalised but for antisocial behaviour.

 

5 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

 

When a legitimate alternate opinion cannot be posted in the main forum by the site rules, I'd call it an echo chamber. 

IMHO, the issue is that at a certain point “objectivism” and “subjectivism” are quasi-religious incompatible worldviews. I don’t personally think they should be, but that’s where we are. Given that, it’s impossible to have discussions. For example, I don’t personally think competently made cables make a difference, but I have no desire to go into a thread where someone asks about cables and call them morons. Etc.

 

Different places have handled this issue differently. Hoffman Forums has banned any discussion of blind tests. Period. At the other end of the spectrum, ASR folks berate and pile on anyone who offers a subjective opinion, telling them they’re in the “wrong forum.” Chris tried to find a middle ground. The fact that it doesn’t really make anyone perfectly happy probably shows it’s a good compromise. Unfortunately, I think separate sandboxes don’t appeal to people who get a kick out of arguing. 

[Josh Mound]

9 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

My point about the banner ads is that the "objectivists" often weren't compatible with them.

 

Example:

 

Q) Is a DAC that costs as much as a car worth the money?

 

The "subjectivist" response would typically be something along the lines of, "OMG, have you **listened** to one?"

 

The "objectivist" response would typically be something along the lines of, "No way.  And the manufacturer certainly hasn't proved that it is".

 

Which response is more compatible with the banner ads?

As someone who (unfortunately) has a masters in journalism, I think this misunderstands how digital media works. Clicks and engagement are the name of the game. Sites can charge for advertising more based on those metrics, because it means more eyes will see the site.

Ever wonder why terrible opinion columnists have long careers, or why stories like “My Wife and I Make $4.2 Million Per Year, But We’re Barely Getting By” and “Here’s Why I Let My Toddler Watch Hardcore Porn” get published? It’s because hate clicks are often the most reliable clicks. People love to argue in the comments or post things they hate on Twitter. 

 

If Chris were to ask me, as a business decision, whether to let people go at each other in threads, I’d probably say “yes”! So, it’s silly to say he tried to calm things down because of banner ads. He’d almost certainly be able to charge more for banner ads if he let warring camps draw blood!
 

Finally, as someone who writes for the site, I can say that Chris has never — literally never — changed a word in a review of mine. Nor has he told me what to review. Indeed, he doesn’t ask me to let him know what I’m reviewing or what I think ahead of time! I buy a piece of equipment, decide to review it, write what I want, and then send it to him. I never had to think or ask “Is it okay to say a ___ is great even though they don’t advertise on AS” or vice versa. 

[Josh Mound]

3 hours ago, tmtomh said:

 

 

I'm one of the folks who stopped participating when Chris consigned objective discussion to a single subforum. I didn't ask for my account to be deleted, and for context I should note that I was a strong and frequent voice in favor of deleting trollish and needlessly combative comments and repeatedly urged the banning of a couple of members who clearly could not or would not behave. I look in on the site perhaps once every 2-3 months, though I don't log in (except now). I check the site mainly to see if @JoshM has posted another one of his excellent "the best-sounding version of" series. When I do that, I also take a quick look at the forum homepage too, and sometimes click through to the Objective-Fi forum, and occasionally to the MQA Is Vaporware thread if it shows up on the forum front page as a recently updated thread.

 

For what it's worth, here are my observations and opinions on the status of scientific inquiry, objectivist discussion, the objectivist-subjectivist debate, and so on.

 

1. It doesn't matter to me one bit why @The Computer Audiophile made the change in the forum structure and rules that he did. As I've said repeatedly in the context of debates where folks try to attribute specific motives to MQA/Bob Stuart, I don't think hypothesizing and arguing about someone's motives is useful or the main point. What matters are the actions themselves and their effects.

 

In that regard, it is clear to me, as it was at the time, that Chris' action ghettoized objectivist discussion. I don't use that term for sensationalism. It's the most apt description: a formal, forcible, restriction of a group into one sub-area of the larger community. Yes of course, self-described objectivists are still free to post anywhere in the forums, but they cannot post as objectivists in any area except objective-fi. In other words, if someone makes a subjective listening claim outside the objective-fi forum, I am free to comment on their claim, but I am not permitted to make an objectivist comment on their claim. So as a practical matter I am barred from participating in that discussion because forum rules do not permit me to write what I really think or believe in that thread. And I think every reasonable person can understand that no one enjoys participating in a discussion if they cannot say what they think.

 

To be clear, I do NOT a restriction on my free speech rights, because a private forum is not obligated to enable or respect free speech rights in the first place, so I have no complaint there. But it is nevertheless a ghettoization of views and therefore of certain members here, and it is indeed a restriction on what can be said anywhere in the forum (including the Q&A subforum!) except in the objective-fi ghetto.

 

2. It is Chris' right and prerogative to run things this way, and again I have no complaint in that regard. But I find his explanation and justification for why he did this partial, self-serving and - looking at his rehash now compared to when it first happened - increasingly self-satisfied and unreflective. Not surprising that the narrative would harden over time, but it has done so nevertheless.

 

As part of this, I was struck by the petty way Chris chose to treat another audio site whose culture and purpose are objectivist and science-based: the way he mocked its name, and if memory serves the way this forum set up some kind of auto-barrier to correctly displaying the name of that site or perhaps to linking to content there (apologies - I can't recall the details and I don't look in here often, so I am happy to be corrected if I am misstating the details of this particular bit or if something has changed in that regard).

 

3. Another important - though IMHO totally predictable - change is that the Objective-Fi subforum itself very quickly became more or less the opposite of what it was supposed to be. Most of the threads there appear to be dominated by Chris and some self-described subjectivist members engaging in speculation about whether or not there are scientific bases for subjective listening impressions. But the point of those threads isn't to actually answer or even seriously investigate the objective truth of those impressions. Rather, the point is merely to pose the question and keep it perpetually open and unanswered. This is a key feature of subjectivist audiophile culture (and, to be fair, of many hobbies): the artificial maintenance of mystery and open questions by ignoring some portion of human knowledge, so that space can be left open for interesting and enjoyable explorations, new purchases, expenditures, and so on. The thread Chris started on fiber transmission of digital data is a good example. He raises a question to which the answer is already known, with the implicit use of "science" as a cudgel - "if you haven't done a test, then how can you really know it won't make a difference?" This is such a basic red herring and rhetorical fallacy that it is difficult for me to believe that Chris honestly is not aware of the fallacy; it is difficult for me to believe that he is not casually and intentionally indulging in the fallacy simply to be able to have a conversation he finds interesting and to cloak it in the dressings of "science" and "objectivity." The ridiculous demands being made of @plissken as he tries to engage in a reasonable discussion about what would constitute empirical evidence illustrates that "science" is simply being invoked as a rhetorical tactic to keep actual scientific information out of the discussion, even in the objective-fi forum.

 

4. I have considered asking for my account to be deleted. It didn't sit right with me at the time, as I don't like the idea of "taking my marbles and going home," and I wanted to have an open mind and give things a chance to see if they might perhaps develop differently than I thought they would. They have not.

 

Now, Chris might very well say they have gone the way they have because so many of us objectivists stopped participating. But it takes only a cursory look at the consistent participation of @pkane2001 and plissken to see that this is not the case. 

 

In this vein, if Chris actually thinks that we stopped participating because we no longer "had anyone to yell at" or no longer had an "audience" of subjectivists, he is ignoring the fact that the objective-fi forum is filled with just such an "audience" of self-described subjectivists, and still very few objectivists from before are participating. Moreover, I am a member and frequent participant at the other forum I referred to above, and there's plenty of fascinating, educational discussion there. Putting aside for a moment the fact that a good number of subjectivists actually do post there and do not get chased away, that other forum is evidence that objectivists have enjoyable, vigorous, informative, extended discussions without needing a bunch of people to "yell at" and without needing a subjectivist "audience." So Chris' claims in that regard are (not to put too fine a point on it) empirically untrue. Or to put it another way, his claim is true of this forum but not of audio forums in general, which therefore suggests that his characterization of the issue is inaccurate.

 

5. Finally, following on point #4, Chris said repeatedly at the time he made the forum-structure change, "you can be part of the problem or part of the solution." But what he never addressed then, and what he seems even less interested in or cognizant of now, is that most of the people he directed that claim towards chose the third option of just stepping away, because to take your time, energy and effort to be "part of the solution," you have to feel that your time, energy, and effort will be valued, respected, and put towards a "solution" that you actually view as a solution (in other words, as a desirable, feasible, or enjoyable state of affairs). And I can tell you that I have no desire to be part of a "solution" in which by participating here I lend credence to demonstrably false claims that this is a balanced community with a fair and open opportunity for multiple viewpoints to be shared; that Chris is in any way, shape or form interested in a scientific or evidence-based approach to audio; and that others who share my views but no longer are members here left simply because they were babies, trolls, or attention-seekers not interested in real discussion but only in fighting with others.

 

I'm just one person, and my views and preferences matter only insofar as anyone else here cares about them - and it very well might be that virtually no one here does care. That's fine. But so long as as such self-serving narratives are being spun; so long as the objective-fi forum functions as the inverse of what it is claimed to be; so long as I remain a member and the rules permit me to post a comment like this (which perhaps they don't!) - then I have the prerogative not to let such things pass without comment, and for this one time I have decided to exercise that prerogative.

 

I fear I've already spent too much time composing this, to too little end. But I console myself that the time spent writing this is a tiny fraction of the time I spend enjoying other online venues for discussion audio - and that that time online is, in turn, a tiny fraction of the many hours a day I am lucky enough to be able to enjoy listening to my favorite music.

 

To anyone who's made it to the end of this comment, thanks for reading. Be well.

 

I appreciate your props to my TBVO columns, and I'm glad you're part of AS. Figuring out how to keep the peace in any online space is difficult, and I respect your perspective on this. The one thing I do want to push back on is the idea that subjective folks at ASR aren't hounded (or banned). Whenever someone posts a subjective opinion there, they're mocked and often told "you're not in the right place." I've posted over there with alts and have been banned, not even for offering subjective opinions, but for questioning (with no insults, vulgarity, etc.) Amir's subjective judgments. Ultimately, I think it's bad for audio for ASR to be the poster child for measurements, because its proprietor's idiosyncratic views drive things there.

[Josh Mound]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

I am reading the comments and at the same time came upon T-Bone Burnett's new medium announcement, New analog disc

 

I was just about to post this. T-Bone is a legendary producer. August and Everything After is one of the best sounding albums. Ever. But this disc seems like NFT records.

[Josh Mound]

1 hour ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

I never joined The Forum That Shall Not Be Named.  And you make a good point about mQa and how that site founder has a history with HDCD, so all proprietary codecs Must Be Good.

 

But that site sometimes playing fast and loose with "science" does not invalidate the need for testing.  Indeed, even Schiit now has three different versions of the Yggy.  One made specifically for those who want better measured performance.  They took a LOT of guff for the lackluster measurements of the OG Yggy.

 

Although I have some things in common with those who simply want the highest sound quality that they can afford, I also understand that audiophilia is first and foremost a consumerist activity.  There are very specific psychological tactics having to do with the advertising and marketing of consumer products.  mQa routinely uses all of the most egregious of these tactics.  But so do many others.  Some of which have banner ads on this very site.

 

And at the end of the day, it is the conflict between consumerist psychology and the questioning of the Audiophilia Status Quo that ultimately forced your hand to corral the people who might have made others question their consumerist motivations into their own segregated sub-forum.

 

We certainly don't want people questioning whether a DAC that costs as much as a car is really worth the money, right?

 

I'd say two things:

 

One, I think Amir's advocacy of a proprietary system revolving around WMA and Zune (outlined in some of the internal MS documents collected by the DOJ) is much more relevant than HDCD for considering his defense of MQA. At its worst, HDCD wasn't as damaging as MQA. If anything, one could see where *maybe* it could've helped address the loudness wars (brickwalled junk non-decoded, more dynamic audio decoded).

 

Two, "consumerist motivations" cuts both ways. People love to feel like they got a bargain. They also love to feel superior to other consumers. So the idea that a $100 DAC is "scientifically perfect" and better than what "audiophools" spending 10+ times more are getting is also very intoxicating for consumers.

 

[Josh Mound]

43 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

Just because ASR has some bad practices, doesn't make AS treatment of objectivists any more fair.

 

People love to have someone to attack, and here, it seems the site-approved target is ASR/Amir, with all the objectivists somehow loped into the same group of intolerant, antisocial, religious zealots who love to belittle and berate others. MQA is the backup target, when there are no objectivists around to attack :)

This is why I want people like Erin or Golden or Arch who also do good measurements to get as much attention as ASR. It’s bad for any school of thought to be conflated with one individual, and the more that individual is personally polarizing, the less likely it is that people from different schools of thought will listen to each other and find common ground. I also think the software you’re putting out there is advancing things significantly, because it makes it easier for people to begin conducting their own measurements.

[Josh Mound]

IMHO, @MikeyFresh and @pkane2001’s interesting back-and-forth more fits the “Can You Trust Measurements?” thread, but it was a compelling discussion, and I found myself nodding in agreement with both of you at points. 
 

Coming from a completely different background, I can’t help but agree that measurements themselves are not “science.” Deciding what and how to measure, as well as determining the significance of the measurements is, though. That’s where many things break down and people start talking past one another. 
 

In terms of what to measure, I have much more appreciation for Amir’s speaker measurements, since Klippel is an automated process less subject to errors and the effects of pre-measurement decisions (though I do wish he’d do compression measurements like Erin does). I’m more dubious about his headphone and DAC measurements, which involve judgment calls in the measurement process, and I find it hard to compare his DAC measurements across reviews, since he’s changed included measurements over time. In fairness, this is true of most folks, but AtomicBob and @GoldenOne have been much more consistent from what I’ve seen. 
 

In terms of significance of various measurements, it seems there’s little consensus in audibility and significance behind a certain (low) threshold. Good human subject lab research determining that would be valuable, but it’s much more complicated than measuring headphones or DACs, which is getting cheaper by the day thanks to MiniDSP, E1DA, and Paul, among others. 
 

Getting back to MQA, Amir’s response to Golden’s and @Archimago’s data was to claim that what was found is inaudible or not representative of real music. The former claim was unproven (and inherently contradicts subjective claims that MQA sounds better!) and the latter can be applied to the very tests Amir performs on DACs, so believing it would take down the entire ASR brand. More importantly, as Golden and others noted, much of today’s highly compressed electronic pop music does contain signals that could “break” MQA’s encoding.
 

The larger point, though, is why would we care about SINAD-chasing DACs if we’re feeding our DACs lossy MQA material? For me, the depressing part of MQA has been that some superb masterings are already trapped in MQA. There are unique Steely Dan masterings only on MQA CDs, and I just ordered CCR MQA CDs that supposedly are the only digital release of Miles Showell’s lauded mastering, previously only available on vinyl. In past years, I’m sure these Japan-only releases would’ve been issued on DualDisc SACDs. Instead, we’re stuck with MQA-encoded CDs. IMHO, a great mastering and transfer in MQA CD (though I don’t “unfold” and stick with a linear phase filter) is better than a worse transfer and mastering in Redbook, but I’m bitter that they’re not available in true Redbook PCM, let alone true hi-res.

[Josh Mound]

On 5/21/2022 at 11:07 AM, MikeyFresh said:

It's also worth noting that Steely Dan's master tapes were destroyed in the Universal Studios fire in 2008. So that MQA-CD is not anything extra special in that regard alone.

 

That doesn't mean a pristine tape copy given a white glove mastering treatment won't sound good, but it is just another example of the record labels screwing buyers with their absolute refusal to provide proper provenance information about these supposedly better and better release versions.

 

I'm willing to bet that nothing has changed at all in this respect, and any chance the label can save some money and use a tape copy as opposed to doing actual archival research and restoration of the original master tape, they do that, every time, no matter the format involved.

 

So be it a CD reissue, SACD, DVD-Audio, or even vinyl, they will always take the lower cost shortcut wherever they can, not telling the buyer,  and the only times they don't are when their hand is forced by the artist or other rights holders. MQA-CD will be no exception to that game.

 

That Steely Dan MQA-CD series will likely sound different, maybe even "better" to some people. But is it really better than previous reissues which did utilize the original master tapes before they were destroyed? I highly doubt it, just as I doubt there are any liner notes admitting the actual provenance, MQA and Universal Music no doubt skip those details.

 

 

19 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

I'll stand corrected to say a quick check on Discogs shows these liner notes for The Royal Scam on MQA-CD:

 

Tape research: Peter Macchia (Universal Music NY)
DSD flat transferred from US original analogue master tapes by Eli Brown at Universal Music Studios, LA, in 2018.
Edited in DSD by Manabu Matsumura at Universal Music Studios, Tokyo, in 2018

 

Wowser, so they are trying to hitch MQA's wagon to DSD there by saying they used the tape transfer that was originally done for the Japanese SHM-SACD. The part where it goes off the rails is where they say they used the original analog master tapes in 2018, as those were reported to have been destroyed in the fire 10 years prior, way back in 2008.

 

I suspect those liner notes were simply copied from the previous release's packaging  by Universal Music Japan, they may not even have anything to do with the MQA-CD release.

 

12 hours ago, firedog said:

Well at least if they used a Japanese DSD transfer of the original tapes, it's probably very well done. I have some other 60's and 70's albums mastered that way in Japan and whether in DSD or PCM they are very good. Not unusual for them to sound better than the original LP/CD releases, IMO. So even with MQA it probably still sounds okay.

 

It's not clear which Steely Dan tapes, exactly, were destroyed in the Universal fire. Moreover, there's a long, complicated, contested history of which Steely Dan CDs (long before the Universal fire) used the original analog tapes versus digital transfers made in the early-'80s.

 

The MQA CDs are, indeed, new masterings, and those 2018 Japanese transfers have yet to appear on another disc. I'd love to see them make it to a Redbook CD or SACD. But for now we're stuck with the MQA CD. As I wrote in one of the updates to my Aja TBVO, the MQA CD is excellent. (At the time, I said it was still a hair behind the Hoffman, but I think I'd say it's my favorite now.) So I'm not happy it's stuck in the MQA format, even if (as @Archimago notes), it's likely inaudible if left "folded."

[Josh Mound]

15 hours ago, Brahan Seer said:

Who knows what the 'team wants to deliver'? We know what it delivers, but unless it's discussed, who really knows exactly the sound the team wanted to create? A moot point, you may counter, but this is certainly not a black-and-white issue. 

 

Anyway, to say that the original can't be improved seems a defeatist approach – especially when this view comes from someone involved in the audio technology world. For example, take this quote from Paul Hicks from this Sound On Sound article: "There's also the issue of audio quality. The catalogue was first digitised in 1986, and although it was done well by the standards of the time, the improvement in digital audio since then has been vast". Check out Guy Massey, too, from that same article: He believes that the '80s team did apply some digital noise‑reduction, to the original CDs' detriment, but credits the improvement in sound above all to the new transfer from the original tapes: "We always had the original CDs in a [Pro Tools] Session and I'd always refer to that. Immediately, they were better." These guys know their stuff and are open-minded about potential sound improvements from technological advancements.

 

And it feels like your final comment counters your second para. My take is that you accept that original recordings can have fixable flaws. You just don't think that MQA fixes them. That is different to not being able to improve on an original. As for the sausage grinder - are the other gazillion tracks in various formats all lovingly created by the hand of a breaded artisan, nestled in a cozy hut on a snowy mountain? Just because a machine works at speed doesn't mean it doesn't work. And, on that note, I must do some work. :-)

 

PS I get that you don't like MQA but your QAnon' joke' does you no favours. And, to my mind, dilutes the strength of your arguments (and, by association, your title). In my opinion, anyway.

The article you posted refers to remastering, not to MQA encoding. Of course improvements can be made with better tape transfer and better AD conversion. That can, and does, happen when remastering to PCM. Using a lossy format like MQA can only lead to worse-sounding remasters, not better ones. 
 

14 hours ago, Brahan Seer said:

'Taken away choice'. :-) Oh come on, Chris, MQA is just a business trying to be successful. Going by your logic, Apple, Coke, Microsoft, and Pepsi have taken away choice. Which of those (anti-choice) brands do you actively boycott?

It’s strange to mention Microsoft here, because it’s an example of just that. It lost one of the most famous U.S anti-trust cases in modern history. Moreover, both Apple and Microsoft have continued to face antitrust scrutiny from regulators in the U.S. and Europe.

[Josh Mound]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

In addition, nothing is making something better than the original. A remaster may make a new version closer to the original, but not better. There is no such thing as better than the best (original).

Right. The original isn’t the first CD mastering (or second or third…); it’s original two-track master tape or digital file.

[Josh Mound]

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but in the Reddit AMA, the Tidal CEO also said they aren’t planning to acquire MQA. This combined with the true hi-res announcement points to an eventual removal of MQA from Tidal.

I’ve also found it amusing that ASR has locked all threads about MQA’s troubles.