MQA is Vaporware

[Digital Assassin]

21 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

My opposition to MQA is mainly economic. Does it put money in the hands of artists? No it does not. For studios it is a simple capital project question. Does the cost of equipment and labor to record and encode MQA files have a revenue stream to justify making the conversion? The answer is no.

 

On the consumer side the market has rejected high resolution audio or there would be more than 20,000 albums available. On that basis we don’t need another high resolution format.

 

Then there are capacity issues. Very few studios can make high resolution recordings. The vast majority of music in the marketplace is mastered for CD. And only Warner and MQA can convert files to MQA.

 

There are technical issues my iPhone 7 can play files up to 24/48. Will a file format work with mainstream consumers if you need any other equipment than headphones for their  phones probably not.

 

Finally the economic argument high resolution supporters make to Apple, Amazon and Spotify is average revenue per user. It will take more than 20,000 albums to get people to pay more for enough high resolution music to change ARPU.

 

No paranoia, fear or hysteria.

Exactly, no fear or hysteria.

 

But anger, yup.

 

My main opposition is that even the fact that MQA got this far out of the gate, it will embolden other desperate,

failing digital designers to come up with a similar scheme to save them selves from the abyss.

 

They will take all the pages right out of the Stuart playbook.

 

Run "demos" at the numerous audio shows and have bright eyed bushy tailed obedient "reviewers'

proclaim they have heard the future of digital audio.

[Digital Assassin]

28 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Apple did.  At the time, they were certainly an upstart, and a competitor for the money to be made from music sales (while at the same time a contractual partner, so some of the money from those sales would go to the industry).  As I noted before, though, having felt burned by Apple's control over the product and share of the take, the industry is very unlikely to allow such an internal takeover again - like, for example, MQA.

Apple has never provided an alternative to the CD. They have, and still do, offer an inferior product.

[Digital Assassin]

5 minutes ago, james45974 said:

What would the point of MQA CD's be?  Who or what is the demographic/market that is still buying discs (I am, no viable streaming capability at my house) and would they look favorably on MQA?  The inclusion of MQA on CD might further erode the market for spinning discs, accelerating the downward market trend.

 

It has to be the streaming that the industry is looking at for MQA (as has been said many times already).  People are getting used to paying next to nothing for access to huge libraries of music, and MQA could give some sort of control over that revenue stream in terms of pricing or access.  I don't see the current streaming model lasting, you are either going to have to pay higher prices or have limited access.  If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that the record companies are getting all of you used to the streaming paradigm before they start tightening the economic noose.

MQA on CD is beyond pointless...you have to purchase new hardware to hear the so called "unfold".

 

This industry is filled with some very smart people who produce very stupid ideas.

[Digital Assassin]

Thank you to St. Peter for the wad of MQA spam. 

[Digital Assassin]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Maybe they once intended to do per DAC tuning but dropped it for some reason. Either way, it keeps getting brought up as the reason rendering can only be performed by the DAC, not in software.

Uh, they "dropped" it because they could only get a handful of manufacturers to pay the FEES, send their units, along with the blueprint for the design, and to sign strict NDAs.

 

They dropped nothing.  This notion was rejected. MQA was given a massive middle finger by smart industry players.

 

This is why you hear 95% of MQA zombies talk about software unfolding only unless they have a Meridian or MyTek DAC.

[Digital Assassin]

6 minutes ago, soxr said:

 

Furthermore, it was always claimed by MQA that full unfolding was not possible in software and you needed a DAC for this, which has been debunked by what's inside the bluesound library. The BS library that is an .so file (shared library) contains both the software for first unfold and renderer stage.

So Bluesound does full unfolding in software. It basically debunks the need for an MQA dac.
Also some of the fanboys claim the filters are analog and MQA is an analog end-to-end process, while hey listen to an NAD c390DD amp which is fully digital.

Which means MQA cheats. They do allow full unfolding + DSP on some of their own products (like the active Meridian DSP speakers) and they do also allow EQ after full MQA decoding on NAD:

https://support.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115007974948-MQA-and-EQ-functionality-

 

but at the same time limiting output to the first unfold in software like the tidal player and MQA software players.

So MQA maintains double standards.

 

SPOT On.

 

This is why you see critics of MQA talk about the ever changing story.

 

They keep moving the goal posts as opposition mounts.

 

They had the sheer audacity to think that DAC designers would pack up demo units  and ship them en masse to the UK for Meridian to reverse engineer.  And pay for the privilege at that. What a hoot.

[Digital Assassin]

45 minutes ago, soxr said:

I thank my former & current career to open source, open standards & open file formats.

Allmost every player software including closed source software is based on open source decoders and/or open standards. Almost nobody is going to write their own flac decoder.

Then some company comes along and claims: all that you know about audio sampling is wrong, we have the solution. They infect open formats like flac and redbook by inserting encrypted content which can only be decoded via a licensed decoder. Without decoder it becomes high frequency noise / hissing. This is a form of hacking: hack the file formats to technically inferior versions for those who don't have the decoder, provide articles to the hifi press which are almost impossible to debunk as the technical details are hidden or simplified because the solution is a black box.

Like any proprietary format, decoders will be hacked, decryption keys leaked ... it's just a matter of time. Look at DVD and DeCSS. BluRay was hacked.

SACD was hacked because the PS3 fat models with SACD drive had the decryption keys onboard, and a custom firmware could be installed. I had some fun installing this on two old PS3's so a customer could make a legal backup of his SACD to DSD files which he could then play using open source software like MPD and open DSD decoderss. So a closed encrypted format was unpacked into an open file format, while keeping the DSD data intact.

The same applies for MQA. Input & output of MQA decoder and render stages can be rerouted to files or virtual devices. The proof is in the open source code that was revealed in the technical MQA thread. So what if technical users take matters into their own hands?

Output of the first unfold can be sent to a much higher quality upsampler without the post-ringing trickery that makes MQA sound thinner than the original studiomaster, which audiophiles may wrongly interpret as "more air" "more stage" "more reverb" "more echo".

This can even be legal: just create a vitual audio device, and send that data to some post-processor. Alsa can do that easily. You can create slave devices which write to a pipe. Under windows, such solutions can also be developed, just look at dirac live, which uses a similar setup.

I took a different route: instead of trying to crack MQA decoders, I tried to figure out what gives MQA it's distinct different sound compared to the real studiomaster DXD files and figure out how we can benefit from the smaller MQA files without hearing a very different rendering compared to what the studio engineer was working on before sending his files to MQA for offsite encoding.

Studio engineers do not listen to MQA in realtime. Even though this is claimed on the MQA site, actual discussions with real studio engineers on gearslutz proved there are no realtime tools yet. Several GS engineers provided a lot of info and exact logistical workflows, and for the technical side we have to thank mansr and archimago to cut fact from fiction and expose the inner workings of the black box that the hifi press cannot grasp.

The problem with the hifi press is that they just copy paste the official versions, or do not understand them, which leads to video's like this, where the admit they were wrong:

This is why I became member here and decided to disclose the sox method so others can benefit from my research. I also became member because I want to have obective fact vs fiction, and I do not take the canned material from the MQA marketing for granted.

There needs to be a counterweight to bring everything in balance. I am part of that counterweight.
I'm not 100% against MQA, as I can still benefit from MQA smaller file sizes which are free on Tidal (I don't have to pay extra for MQA) and throw a minimum phase upsampler at it, and hear virtually what the mastering guy was working on, not the MQA guy in some remote encoding facility which makes the choices of encoding parameters.

Brilliant. Thank you. Facts. Logic. Good things.

[Digital Assassin]

17 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Well, you have your version of history and your opinion of what has been "well demonstrated". Others have their own.  I know well that proprietariness pisses people off like you would not believe, and I understand that everybody, especially consumers, wants everything to be a free commodity good, everybody, that is, except the guys who invested in bringing the idea to market.  

 

I went through this in a post several days ago.  As a former venture capital executive, I would not waste my time talking to someone who had an investment idea based on developing an open technology standard.  Sorry.  

 

 

"One way this happens is through the ecosystem of open standards and open source contributors that can allow competitors to pursue your customers. While this may result in less control and less margins for the competitor, the reduced overall costs, the ability to scale, and the increased rate of innovation afforded by open source can outweigh the benefits of a proprietary platform. A good example for this is how Google has created an open source platform with its Android operating system as compared to Apple’s more proprietary and closely controlled iOS."

 

https://hbr.org/2016/11/ceos-need-to-ask-the-right-questions-about-their-digital-businesses

 

 

 

 

[Digital Assassin]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

 

Which shows that both can be successful.  Each has advantages and disadvantages.

Hi You replied, while I was editing my post. I quoted from an article quoting the actual article.

 

I fixed it so the correct quote and actual article are linked. Apologies!

[Digital Assassin]

And now Mr. Analog, Michael Fremer has jumped on board the Atkinson MQA train with ridiculous over the top

statements.

 

According to Archimago:

 

"Most recently (August 2017 Stereophile, reviewing Brinkmann's Nyquist DAC) I read that mister analogue himself Michael Fremer endorses MQA - "Had this been CD sound in 1983, I'd still be an LP guy - but I'd also be all in with digital." Wow... Really? Consider that later on in the article he used the analogy of "Grand Canyon of analog-vs-digital" to describe the sonic divide to describe the difference; did MQA make that much difference!?"

 

Please note, he said the identical nonsense a few months ago while being interviewed at a show.

 

This tells me he had a pre-determined agenda.

 

Now the entire staff at Stereophile is officially on board. They got the boss's memo.

 

 

[Digital Assassin]

38 minutes ago, semente said:

 

MQA Vinyl Edition 220g

 

post of the week so far! 

[Digital Assassin]

18 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2017/07/kih-46-mqas-missing-link/

 

another negative look inside MQA. The audiophile press will really have egg on their faces after all is said and done I believe.

This may be linked on John Darko's site, but it is not written by him... he is all on board with MQA.. jumped right in the pool when he saw the big mags fellate Bob Stuart..a real sycophant iIMO.

[Digital Assassin]

6 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

Regardless of your opinion of JD, the fact that it is on his site means that more eyeballs will get to see it. Nothing wrong with that.

This is true.

[Digital Assassin]

1 hour ago, mcgillroy said:

 

I think that's to simple. Darko has published essential critical material on MQA on his site before. On the other hand he recently touted the MQA horn.

 

But the fact that Ebaen comes with an MQA skeptical article is highly significant. He is a major taste-maker in the business and many small and medium audio-firms rely on his 6 Moons website for exposure.

 

I bet the mail he cites was not the only one which has landed on his desk recently. If Ebaen feels confident enough to publicly confront MQA + the established audio press he has heard more than a single vendor raising serious concerns.

 

Not a good day at MQA-headquarters.

Let's hope their many more bad days....

[Digital Assassin]

10 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

Freely free to tell a long story I got 600 miles to go today and tomorrow.

+1 Wife and kids are on holiday..I got all night...

[Digital Assassin]

14 minutes ago, Tin said:

This is the long story (which like this thread is also contaminated by a lot of opinions, including my own):

https://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=35574

 

A slightly shorter version is that the beforementioned marketing director used a false identity to ask 'interested questions' about MQA while obviously trying to steer the answers. His problem was that he lacked the basic technical knowledge to discuss the subject, and when he was forced to reveal his true identity all that left was a somewhat sad sales guy in a room full of agitated audiophiles.

It is not a surprise that some "marketing" clown at Meridian has no idea what he was talking about.

 

This reminds me of when Wall St executives were called before the US Congress to explain the exotic derivatives their firms were involved in and not one of them had any clue, because these "financial instruments of mass destruction" as they were smartly called, were pure rubbish.... these were the heads of major investments banks...

 

MQA is the exotic derivative off audio...it is pure rubbish, designed for no other reason but for revenue, and not only can none of the peons at Meridian explain it neither can Bob Stuart, because he made it up out of thin air, and pulled it out of you know where.

[Digital Assassin]

What a disingenuous, dishonest creep that "Arthur Dent" is on the Linn thread. What a crock.

[Digital Assassin]

Well, Darko is at it again...another massive shill:

 

 

"The point here is that, once again, with this one album, heard via PS Audio’s glorious D/A converter, keeping one eye on Godwin’s Law, MQA sounds different. And to my ears, that difference translates to better."

 

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2017/07/mqa-donald-fagen-ps-audio/

[Digital Assassin]

3 hours ago, soxr said:

This article again mentions that the source is corrected, but from what we've seen from archimago's/mansr's work, the source is not corrected, but the encode contains a flag, so that the renderer can post-process using one of 32 anti-ringing filters.

If the source was corrected, the waveform would be drastically different from let's say DXD vs upsampled MQA with minimum phase. I did not find evidence of pre-processing.

Yes, let these dunces continue to shill for MQA all the while we see more evidence of what it is, and what it is not.

 

What it is: Proprietary DSP masquerading as a "format", with no benefit to consumers what so ever.

[Digital Assassin]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

What strikes me about this is that "Darko" is one of the more digitally/technically aware guys in the "audio press" (not that is saying much).  Why is he not speaking directly to this issue - that the "MQA" versions that he is using are in point of fact different remasters than what he is comparing them to?  Is he really a "shill", and if so why?  Is he just simply lazy, or does he simply not mind that MQA as a format/technology is irrelevant to the difference he is hearing - he just likes something different?

Remember this guy until 6 months ago had an entry level system crammed into a small apartment. He moves to Berlin and starts getting expensive loaner gear and now he thinks he is a player. "Got back into vinyl" so as to not fall behind the other hipsters.

[Digital Assassin]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

The regular and MQA versions of The Nightfly on Tidal are clearly from different masters. Comparing track 2, there are a number of differences:

• The sample rates differ, 44.1 kHz vs 48 kHz for the MQA version.
• The MQA version is 7 seconds longer.
• The MQA version is 2 dB louder, even clipping a few times.
• The polarity of the MQA version is inverted.
• The actual speeds don't quite match. In other words, they are not simply different digital downsamples from a common source.
• The speed difference fluctuates throughout the track.

I'd be inclined to say these two versions came from different tape transfers, except it's an all-digital production.

..and you would think as a blogger, and one that is pretty musically knowledgeable at that, would at least make an effort to provide this information to readers...

[Digital Assassin]

15 hours ago, rickca said:

His writing style makes me cringe.

Here is his style:

 

Feign skepticism, move to "open minded", go whole hog right in as a true believer.

He lost me when he raved about the Audioquest Ethernet cables after comparing them to junk bulk Cat5.

[Digital Assassin]

31 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

Actually there is tape in the middle. Thanks for posting this while I'm on the road. 

...as will all so called early "digital" rock recordings...Rush, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, etc.

 

 

[Digital Assassin]

29 minutes ago, esldude said:

I suppose that highlights the question that doesn't get asked.

 

MQA=Master Quality Authenticated

 

Nobody asks "Which master?"

Let's be clear.

 

NOTHING is being authenticated, WHAT SO EVER.

 

This is is one of the most laughable outright lies told by MQA from the beginning...that somehow

the artist and producer would "sign off" on the master files processed by Meridian.

 

The only thing that is authenticated is that one is a sucker and bought an MQA DAC.

[Digital Assassin]

44 minutes ago, George Hincapie said:

Why is Quobuz so expensive? £350 a year? WTF? I pay £20 a month for Tidal HIFI.

No comparison. Full 24/192 streaming, 50% discount on downloads, and 60,000 hirez albums on Qobuz.