MQA is Vaporware

[FredericV]

1 minute ago, Pure Vinyl Club said:

 

Thanks for the comment.
If you so praise the Metrum Adagio, then why did not you use it on the demonstration, but Zodiac Platinum (delta-sigma ...)?

 

politics

[FredericV]

7 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

 

So a MQA file played without a decoder cannot be distinguished under blind testing from the original DXD master. I fail to see how that is "very bad for MQA".

 

 

 

Only on the condition of using minimum phase upsampling, which so far hqplayer, 432 EVO and Auralic have implemented in their products. There may be other as well, I open sourced our findings, so any dev can use it in their product.

So it's still bad, as most don't have this resampler. It's also bad because MQA has DRM and deliberate crippling features in the patent so that the above can be sabotaged in the future without MQA decoder, and the file size increments compared to real nyquist data compressed as flac.

[FredericV]

12 minutes ago, Fokus said:

 

When I was 16 I spent days at the mixing desk there ...

In Antwerp?
 

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What microphones did you use? If they were omnis it is only normal that the recording sounds severely lacking in treble, so deep in the reverberant field.

As I did not plan to film, I used my Nikon D750 builtin stereo microphones. My wife was in the choir so decided to film handheld. Treble is actually boosted by the D750 internal microphone and needs to be attenuated by 7 to 10dB to sound acceptable on a high-end set. Did not do that for the youtube video's.

Next months there will be another choir in de Singel, will take much better kit with me.

[FredericV]

43 minutes ago, ShawnC said:

I thought MQA was supposed to be a one container contains everything.  Many of those albums in that spreadsheet are 44, 48, 96, 192 versions of the same thing.  This makes it seem like they did a MQA version from a 44 Master (whatever that means), another from 48, 96 so on and so. Talk about trying to make a buck someday on this.

There is technically no difference between the 96K and 192K versions unless they were created from different PCM files.

MQA does not contain real music content (e.g. harmonics) above 48 Khz, everything above 48 Khz nyquist is fake and contains aliasing errors.

Furthermore a renderer can be forced to upsample the first unfold to any multiple, so first unfold which has a samplerate of 88.2K or 96K (which limits the max musical content to 48 Khz) can be upsampled to 176.4, 192, 352.8, 384, ..... it's just a library call.

So I don't care about the csv list, all inflated numbers. Reduce the list to unique albums and it's still vaporware.

Tidal contains how many albums?
How many unique albums are also in MQA?

Do the math ....

 

[FredericV]

52 minutes ago, PeterV said:

What is even smarter than I thought  is the way MQA is able to use all these discussions regarding their technology totally in their advantage.

It's not.
 

52 minutes ago, PeterV said:

This amount of free publicity by nay- and yes- sayers is priceless. If MQA would be an inferior format like MP3, no audiophile listener or criticaster would care to discuss it.

You must be wrong: MP3 has been discussed on many audiophile fora in the 90's. A lot of energy has been wasted on MP3. The only reason why MP3 existed was because our slow analog modems could not transfer WAV in a reasonable timeframe. MP3 was the solution. For the same reason, MQA will die. The compression benefit of MQA has no place in a world where soon a lot of homes will have fiber and gigabit. Even the slowest ADSL lines can transfer 24/192 without any problem. This week Telenet installed their gigabit HFC network in my street. We now have 200+ mbit, soon 1000 mbit. 24/192 flac takes how many mbit? Just a few.

MQA is also lossy just like MP3, with crippling features so that without a decoder, it sounds like MP3. It's all in the patent. Not saying that these features are already active, but they could activate it any time. They could also active files tied to the serial number of the DAC.

So MQA can become a very evil DRM format.

MP3 was good for one thing: I discovered a lot of music thanks to MP3, which then made me buy the CD for higher sound quaility. When I was a network engineer for a big telco, I listened to MP3 and later AAC shoutcast stations. I bought a lot of CD's based on the new music I heard. In the 90's I did the same with cassettes: taped from MTV in stereo nicam, badly compressed, and if I liked the music, I bought it on CD.

With MQA there's no more incentive to buy music, as I will never buy MQA files when I can buy the real lossless master for just a few EURO's more. Undecoded MQA with sox minimum phase sounds already extremely close to the DXD master, and does not suffer from the weird filters which make everything thinner with more distortion, which deviates from the master.
 

52 minutes ago, PeterV said:

Now, the fuzz and buzz is a strong marketing tool :-) just count the amount of times the 3 letters are being mentioned every day.. just listen and you will understand that it's all about about the MUSIC

I hear from several manufacturers that demand for MQA is down. They no longer ask if their DAC will support MQA or not.
Same applies to our music servers, when MQA was introduced we frequently got questions about MQA.

In Munich nobody asked us about MQA. Since Munich we heard things like this:

- we do it not because we believe in MQA, but because we don't want to miss the train, we don't want to lose money
- we have an MQA decoder ready for our DAC, we don't promote it, but if MQA becomes a big format, we don't want to go bankrupt, so we keep the line open
- lead designer: our CEO believes in MQA, but our latest greatest dac with MQA is not great because of MQA (and this is a very big MQA partner)

So critical topics like this must be working. Topics like these debunk and demystify MQA.

[FredericV]

55 minutes ago, PeterV said:

 I can only advise to test this for yourself but with certified MQA streamer and DAC  to ensure end-to-end optimised analog sound. 

Do you actually understand MQA? You don't need an MQA streamer, just a bitperfect one (our's can do that too), and an MQA dac to enjoy their weirld filters that make everything more thin with extra distortion, more echo & reverb.

End to end is a joke, MQA allows tube dac's to be certified. No studio I know uses tube dacs for their critical listening. I must conclude there's a lot of quack here.

[FredericV]

30 minutes ago, PeterV said:

Again: the only way to 'debunk' anything is to listen to it. If you like MP3 that's fine.

 

I am perfectly informed how MQA works and that it's lossless in the audible band up to 48 kHz, above it can be regarded as noise.

 

It's not lossless, as it's not 24 bits. But it does not matter, as your NAD C390 reaches 16 bits of SNR at 1 Watt, and source material exploiting the full dynamic range of 24 bit does not exist either.  At full power your NAD reaches 20 bits worth of SNR. This is why they get away with only 15 bits that MQA can achieve without dithering.
 

30 minutes ago, PeterV said:

Compared to the cut-off frequency of a CD this is allready a large improvement. But you need to understand that the end-to-end encoding and decoding process is all about improving the total impulse response and decreasing time-smear. 

PCM already has infinite timing resolution, which you don't seem to understand. Impulse response is only an issue with oversampling or upsampling dac's, not an issue with NOS dacs like my Metrum. MQA is no upgrade here but a downgrade. End-to-end encoding is not the issue as PCM already has this, looking at your system, your acoustics and NAD will be the limiting factor.
 

30 minutes ago, PeterV said:

That's what results in a very convincing audible improvement of these albums ans all others I am listening to dor just 20,- euro per Month. No need to download music anymore and the soundquality is better than ever before.

 

 

But you own nothing and services can cease to exist or go bankrupt. Just look at what Spotify did to the Logitech ecosystem.

[FredericV]

22 minutes ago, 4est said:

I must say that I am a bit confused by your insistence that putting a tube into a DAC relegates it into the "sub critical" listening category. Sure studios might not use them, but what's the big deal. You might not like them, but there are some very well regarded DACs with tubes in them. One might complain about the output transformers in most tube amps, but there are no intrinsic sonic disadvantages to using tubes in line level components.

 

Tubes break the end-to-end analog promise MQA is claiming, as they add harmonics which were not in the input signal.

While I don't dislike tubes, tubes have coloration. DAC specific coloration is what MQA's marketing tries to undo.
 

[FredericV]

8 minutes ago, PeterV said:

You really have no clue Frederic. I seem to have made a lucky choice with NAD 390DD. It is relatively affordable and it is build around the fully digital architecture a the 35 bit 844 kHz PWM DAC.

 

You clearly have no clue about DSP. 35 bit means nothing if the analog output at the speakers can reach only 16 bits. All marketing BS.
 

8 minutes ago, PeterV said:

Plenty of headspace for full 24 (or more!) resolution. Check the specs and reviews on the web. As mentioned earlier A/B testing shows MQA is a clear winner here at home and I am very satisfied with those albums I know by heart.

24 bit needs an SNR of at least 144dB which your NAD can't achieve.

I'm talking to a guy with a marketing / sales background that has no clue and just repeats the MQA marketing, and does not learn from the technical info posted here.

[FredericV]

6 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

You're supposed to sit in front of the loudspeakers :~)

My neighbor has Wilsons + Bryston amplification and uses an old Sony SACD player as source, and has a sofa in between the speakers. I once demonstrated an Antelope Zodiac and this was a very strange experience as I was sitting across, on the place where you are supposed to sit, and he was sitting in between the speakers.

My neighbor also recently told me he suffers from Tinnitus and can't stand certain frequencies.
 

[FredericV]

18 minutes ago, firedog said:

Actually, this tells you almost nothing about how MQA albums are remastered. It picks 3 famous albums and tells us how they decided what source to use for an MQA version. Nothing more. It's an exercise in PR disguised as some kind of "deep information" about MQA.  

 

For the Led Zeppelin example, they also state that they already took an existing remaster, which they used for the MQA encode. So 'MQA remaster' as claimed by Peter V is a little bit misleading:

"For the MQA release, the 12th July 2016 96 kHz/24 transfer was chosen as the best asset in the archive; it had been remastered....."

So far only with 2L.no we are sure the MQA versions come from their existing DXD 24/352.8K masters, which makes the comparison fair. On these files I had a lot of fun with wave editors to see what each stage of MQA does.

Most other examples where a claimed sound improvement is heard with the MQA version, a different master was chosen.

[FredericV]

On 10/10/2017 at 8:08 PM, Miska said:

 

Well, MQA contains only max 96 kHz sampling rate worth of content, but not even that properly that as the response is notably rolling off already at ~25 - 30 kHz. Further "unfolding" is just upsampling with crappy leaky filter. And they cut a lot of bits out to do that for content that actually contain some high frequencies in order to get space for the stupid "folding".

 

I was just chatting with Hans Beekhuyzen, a well known reviewer. Hans does not understand MQA. He says the difference between upsampling MQA files and MQA decoding, is that MQA "saves" everything above 92 Khz (he probably meant 96 Khz).

 

This group "streaming audio" is a public group.

It's not the first time that Hans is wrong:
 

 

 

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It doesn't matter, because audio analyzer easily tells what there is and there isn't.

 

Indeed, so I showed Hans the following:

 

First is the original DXD from 2L.no, then first unfold, then second unfold. While this DXD file did not have any real content above 22.5 Khz except noise, that noise is completely gone in the first and second unfold.

The red part in the original DXD file is gone in the fully unfolded MQA version:



Even better would be a DXD file from 2L.no with actuel +48 Khz content (which MQA can't describe) and compare the spectrum of DXD vs 1e vs 2e unfold. I believe Mansr knows a public 2L.no file with such content, that has harmonics above 48 Khz.

The above example is not the best, as it does not show what the first unfold can do, as there's no music content just above the audible range. But it show the second unfold does not recover entropy that was in the original.

 

[FredericV]

49 minutes ago, Shadders said:

One can probably emulate the MQA effect using a third party processes which is open, and based on some reverse engineering of MQA.

Regards,

Shadders.

 

Thanks to Mansr, Archimago and our own work, and confirmation by Auralic, we have something that can work with MQA, but without the negative aspects of MQA such as the weird filters that make everything thinner with more echo & reverb. In feb 2017 we were looking into ways in improving CD quality. But what we found worked also great on MQA. We recently figured out Auralic has come to the same conclusion as they also use sox, but had a headstart as they were a former MQA partner so they must have seen more than what we have seen.

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

So what we did recently on the X-FI show is play a DXD file, then we said we were going to play a different version of the same file without telling them what it was, and we switched to MQA version processed with sox, so without official decoder.

It was this file:

 

Nobody could tell any difference. We begged them to list any diff. They could not.

This was our setup:
http://the-ear.net/show-reports/x-fi-2017-pt1

 

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Kommer Kleijn from Belgium was on hand to explain the newly developed John Watkinson Legends loudspeaker. As co-developer with John, he was happy to demonstrate the €37,800 (fully installed with power amp) ‘precision sound reproducer’. Based on a detailed study of human hearing it takes into account how the ear deals with reverberant environments. Built in Reading, England they need just a DAC or other source to create a complete system. Their neutrality was astounding and I sat and enjoyed the output for quite a while before making way for others who had waited patiently for a chance to listen to this star of the show.

John Watkinson wrote the bible on digital audio and is a great designer.

PeterV also visited our room, and spoke briefly with him, and liked our sound. He was not part of this test which was at the end of the show on sunday. I also did this test here in our workshop with Amphion Two 18 and Krypton 3 with many visitors and they always guessed on the Kryptons, and on the Two 18 it was impossible, and these are among the better studio speakers which are in Grammy award winning studios.

[FredericV]

4 hours ago, PeterV said:

Technical analysis without complete information how the encoding is being done, why the focus of MQA is totally focussed towards the improvement of temporal blur and to deliver a very fine time description is incomplete and inadequate as well. 

It's clear that you don't have any experience with testing protocols, black box testing.  You always default to your time domain fallback argument, or change the subject into  the go listen argument. Hans Beekhuyzen uses the same logic "fourier is for devices, not for your ears, go listen".

An encoder-decoder can be tested in black box mode, even knowing nothing about the inner workings. You can test this end to end, which is what has been done:

1. DXD files which were the input for the MQA encoder
2. MQA decoder first unfold, extracted digitally
3. MQA decoer second unfold, "

It clearly shows MQA is not a lossless end-to-end process. End-to-end delivery of the studio, stream the studio, are all quack claims:

1. the first unfold is a "fair" lossy approximation of a band limited version of the studio file
2. the second unfold completely messed up the original:

- signals introduced not in the original
- signals removed from the original
- frequency response from original is severely degraded / altered

Measuring (3) at the analog output of the DAC will not bring back information that was not even encoded by MQA. Signals above 48 Khz are completely lost with MQA and replaced by garbage, no DA converter after the digital extraction method as used is going to bring those original signals automagically back on the analog outputs.

Why do you think MQA can do 9x compression with DXD to 24/44.1 files? Because MQA is a destructive lossy encoder/decoder.



 

 

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Emulation is per definition a surrogate and will always be an incomplete and incorrect representation of what MQA is capable of.

 

Correct, but emulation is more authentic to the original, than MQA's weird leaky filters and aliasing, replacing real information with surrogate fake information.

Just read the AES paper, it even states they do such replacement. This is not the master. This is not authentic.

Maybe approximated yes. Bob even admits it's an approximation. Remarkably close is false however.

 

 

[FredericV]

2 hours ago, PeterV said:

you just do not know how and are still guessing, emulating, trying to hunchback and misuse the encoded information and selling your own faulty minimum phase filetring and upsampling method as being just as good..

 

Learn to quote.

You have no clue. You don't understand DSP. There is nothing faulty with minimum phase resampling. If you think it's faulty, come up with scientific evidence why it's faulty. Now it's just slander and ad-hominem behavior. Why do you think many DAC's with selectable filtering have a minimum phase mode? Auralic, Mytek,  .... and many many more:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/new-trends-in-dacs-digital-filters-apodizing-minimum-phase.186820/

And this dates back way before MQA even saw the daylight.

Now back to sox + MQA vs original master

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

So far nobody can hear the difference between the method that was disclosed on Darko's site vs the original DXD. So it must be good enough. We and Auralic must be doing something good. And hey, we open sourced the parameters to use, so any dev can benefit from this.

Tested on DAC's with perfect impulse response and very expensive headphones by third parties. I just send the files via wetransfer and ask them to tell them apart. They could not. Tested with many individuals, in local and remote audio systems, from normal to extreme cost is no object gear. Tested on delta-sigma and ladder dacs.

Even tested semi blind on the XFI trade show without telling listeners it was a test.

On the X-FI they could not hear the difference between MQA + sox -vsM vs DXD.

Btw Peter visited our room and told me he liked the sound. So why now the ad-hominem route? In all our demo's, minimum phase was active. So he tells me our room on the X-FI sounds good, and two weeks later he writes that minimum phase is faulty?

Please think before you type.

 

 

[FredericV]

40 minutes ago, PeterV said:

I liked the sound of the loudspeakers and I might even like the sound of your emulated version of MQA and it might even happen that I like the sound of some albums which are pitched downwards using your 432 Hz pitching software....BUT all this  it has nothing to do with deliverance of AUTHENTICATED analog sound of the studio Frederic..! It is nothing more than sweetening the sound of the music files which you are manipulating.

 

This is the MQA topic, not the 432 Hz topic.

We don't use pitch shift but something else that's already been disclosed in our FAQ. This was already explained to you several times, yet you keep repeating pitch shift, which we don't use. So did you learn anything new? We don't believe in pitch shift. Do you know how pitch shift is implemented in DSP? It's very bad. We don't use that.

We even have lossless files which show the artefacts of pitch shift in our FAQ:

http://432evo.be/index.php/faq

But to come back to 432 Hz: when we did our own study with 60 persons, we found that Maria Renold also came to a 90% preference of 432 vs 440 but with 2.000 test persons. Can MQA come up with such study? Don't think so. We also found that pitch shift does not work. The only method that works is shown in our FAQ. This was in 2013, long before MQA even existed.

Now let's go back to MQA.

Independent tests show a 10% difference between MQA and the real studiomaster. Not 10% vs 90%. Not very convincing. But I know you reject all the independent research. Any argument that is presented to you, you ignore. I already replied to you on facebook several times that we don't use pitch shift, yet you keep repeating that flawed argument of yours.
 

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That is fine if you and your customers like it, but do not try to tell that you are doing the same what MQA does, because that is simply not true. 

Where do I tell it is the same as what MQA does? I oppose MQA's weird filters. They sound bad on my MQA dac. Real mastering engineers not paid by MQA like Brian Lucey also oppose MQA. So by consequence we are not doing the same what MQA does. We are doing something which is more authentic to the original master DXD, than MQA's weird filters which add garbage. The sox method can be used standalone, without any other processing.

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

The analog side of 2L.no's files contain a lot of ultrasonics above 48 Khz and part of the ultrasonic spectrum is also above the DSD noise floor which rises with frequency (they began several of these recordings as DSD, which has perfect timing resolution), which MQA just filters out and replaces with it's own garbage and aliasing.

 

This has been proven, and as you can't debunk these measurements, you have changed the subject into my own product and took the ad-hominem route in trying to attack your opponent.

You also tried to attack minimum phase as faulty, without any evindence. You must be against MQA by consequence.



 

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, PeterV said:

 

Pfffff.. you still have no clue Frederic.  The fact that you describe MQA is using 'weird filters' proves that you have no idea what they are used for. But still you try to use their technology in some strange way in your advantage.

 

We don't use any of their weird filters which multilate the master, which causes aliasing and garbage. But we understand perfectly what MQA does.

http://archimago.blogspot.be/2017/07/measurements-audioquest-dragonfly-black.html

 

I don't care what paid studio shills are saying.

 

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You are wondering in the dark my boy..having no idea what MQA does and how it really works. They have access to the source and you do not. They are keeping their secrets to themselves and you are afraid that MQA will prove to be a new standard for streaming authenticated music.

 

You lack the basic understanding of digital vs analog, yet you try to convince me I do not know how MQA works.

 

Let's remember that Peter Veth wrote earlier that minimum phase filters are faulty without providing any proof, now changing the subject into my product. This is the typical behavior of a shill, it's well documented.

 

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I told you before, do not worry so much! If it is not your appetite, just use other containers to stream the music which you and your customers like. If they prefer to listen to mutilated, non-original 432 Hz music, that is fine. I prefer the original enhanced by MQA if possible. There will be many more to follow!

MQA is non-original either. It replaces HF with garbage. Higher noise floor. Aliasing artefacts. Thinner sound. More echo & reverb. We don't do that to the sound.

At least we never said our DSP is the new master quality. We don't enforce our DSP, it's user selectable. We have some customers that buy it for bitperfect mode, outperforming digital transports costing triple of what our product costs. We used this setup in Munich. The 28k € CEC transport never played, but our source and vinyl did.

 

And yes in bitperfect mode it also talks to MQA dacs.

This is the MQA discussion, not the 432 Hz topic. Peter Veth why can't you stay on topic?

According to Peter Veth, the green line is authenticated, even though it deviates from the real master (blue line):

[FredericV]

10 minutes ago, PeterV said:

 

You can repeat your arguments and try to sell both your crappy emulation software as well as your 432 Hz religion every time we argue, but that is every time further exposing your agenda.

You changed the topic into my product, and you keep going off topic. When we defend ourself, you claim we sell our 432 Hz religion?
Well we never did any effort selling it here, but Chris asked to disclose my affiliation. So I had no choice.
 

10 minutes ago, PeterV said:

  The topic here is that MQA does alter every original PCM file intrinsically, since this is part of the filtering and encoding process. It actually REMOVES the garbage which you want to keep for your quasi emulated / upsampling methodology.  It means also that MQA is capable to correct past- and present aliasing errors efficiently, but also that the end-users can decide themselves if they like the sound or not.

It adds frequencies which were NOT in the original:

It also adds more echo & reverb than what mastering engineers like Brian Lucey are hearing. I hear the same thing in a nearfield setup.
MQA can never be authentic. Many engineers on gearslutz are also against MQA.
 

10 minutes ago, PeterV said:

But you seem to have only 1 goal and that is to discriminate all positive arguments and listening experiences but those who are concidentally listened to your stuf.. Even CEC CD players are 'bad'  well well.. congratulations to you and your customers who believe this research.. It makes me laugh! 

This is not about us. This topic is not about MQA vs 432 Hz, but MQA vs real studio files such as DXD. This topic is about a format war. We are not in the codec business.

Why can't you stay on topic? Why do you need to attack your opponents?
 

[FredericV]

26 minutes ago, PeterV said:

 

Just listen and then you will understand... TRUST your ears! It all has to do with deblurring the original signal to a degree where the the total impulse-response duration is reduced to about 50µs (from around 500µs for a standard 24/192 system), and that the leading-edge uncertainty of transients comes down to just 4µs (from roughly 250µs in a 24/192 system). If you cannot measure this, it does not exist is your belief? 

 

This is the standard answer of both you and Hans Beekhuyzen. I used to respect Hans when he was still doing objective measurements for the now long gone Vi-Fi magazine.

But now, when any technical argument cannot be debunked, you and Hans use the "go listen" argument. We know Hans is being paid by MQA and their partners to make all those nice video's, to give lectures about MQA at resellers. I even get emails from Hans where he promotes this kind of marketing efforts and how well his youtube channel is doing with millions of views.

I was so tired of the go listen argument that I bought that MQA dac, and listen in nearfield, on studio speakers. I did not like what I heard compared to the real studiomasters in DXD and found other studio engineers who had the exact same remarks. Respected Grammy award winning engineers that had no affiliation with MQA, and which Bob Stuart fears as MQA representatives bailed out on the RMAF panel.

If MQA sounds better on your mid-end C390 bluesound system good for you. But on your own FB profile, a lot of your friends tell you the difference is not so big with certain files where you claim it's day and night, they tell you the example that you showed is not good marketing for MQA. A lot report some files sound better in MQA and some worse. There is no consequent improvement over a large panel of listeners.

I challenge you to do a blind test with real studio master vs full MQA decoding (not CD vs MQA, but file used to encode MQA vs fully decoded MQA), documented so that it can be peer reviewed. Otherwise it's all anecdotal evidence and fanboy talk.

Please also turn off the MQA decoder when listening to the real studio master, so that the default MQA alike upsampler is not in the DSP path. I have friends in the MQA world so I know what I'm talking about.

[FredericV]

7 minutes ago, witchdoctor said:

"I have friends in the MQA world" Do you know how silly you look?

I personally know 2 lead designers which work with MQA. They are bound by the NDA, but in real life they can speak out.

I found a mistake in one of the DAC's and gave them feedback.  I actually managed to completely crash an MQA dac. This is how I learned that with one brand, the default MQA alike upsampler is always on.
 

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Throwing out dumb challenges just shows your insecurity. Like it or hate it MQA now has more content available than DSD and is becoming the defacto hirez standard. 

 

No, a peer reviewed test is not dumb. Blind tests are very useful when you need to take away the subjective factor and eliminate the placebo effect. It's used in science such as clinical trials /  medicine research.

So are you challenging the scientific method now?

[FredericV]

Just now, witchdoctor said:

Here is an expert in the MQA world, engineer Bob Ludwig. First watch the video then go see him at the AES meeting in NY on the Platinum Mastering Panel where they discuss mastering in MQA. Go make some more friends and enjoy.

 

 

http://www.aes.org/events/143/specialevents/?ID=5624

 

This guy is being paid to be part of MQA panels and MQA video's.

This is why we need independent research, based on objective listening tests.

 

[FredericV]

Just now, PeterV said:

 

Who cares..? MQA sounds simply better with low-end, mid-end, high-end and even ultra-high-end DAC's ..!

 

In order to prove if my ears and brains are capable to judge this, I was very curious to find out if the MSB technology UltraDAC which costs approx. 90.000,- euro would reveal an audible improvement. If any TOP end DAC on the market which I have auditioned twice before without MQA and sounded extremely mellow, detailed and ultra fast at the time, if that DAC would even improve, what proof would I further need?  In Antwerpen, Belgium there is the very experienced High-End dealer Frank Vermeylen, who sells stunning audio gear from Synergistic Research, Russel K, Tidal Loudspeakers, Thrax amplifiers, Exogal and acoustic treatment products, it was stunning and clear!  And the owner himself is also clear that MQA does even improve this 90K DAC.. so for me more than enough proof and listening experiences.   http://www.msbtechnology.com/mqa-has-arrived/

 

You just visit all these dealers for confirmation bias?
I know that Hans Beekhuyzen also went to Frank.

I also went to Frank's place and it did not have the resolution I'm used to listen to. But off course this is just subjective, just like your own claim how good it sounds. My Krypton 3 speakers on Vitus are a true bargain and they project nearfield into a larger room, which Frank's speaker can't do. MQA is not going to fix that.

So MQA may improve something (subjective for now, not scientifically proven in controlled studies), but it's not fixing all issues.

 

Just now, PeterV said:

But you will not surprise me if you will start talking BS again also of MSBtechnology and Frank and e and others.. in your mind we are all in a big fraud and bribed by MQA or paid os shill.

 

Well.. let me CHILL  further with MQA please and do not worry so much!

 

MSB has some very dark history which made me decide to buy the flagship R2R dac from another brand, even though I heard MSB in better circumstances than Frank's place. This other place has better acoustics and speakers which also do not radiate to the sides, and also an MSB dac. This guy is now selling his MSB.

Just google MSB's founder. This fact can be verified and is certainy not BS.

[FredericV]

29 minutes ago, mansr said:

Nice. I've been thinking of creating some corrupt streams just to see what happens. Looking at the decoder/renderer code, I've noticed a few potential buffer overflows.

We did something similar, but by accident. The DAC started to make all kind of strange noises and the only thing we could do was power cycle it.

[FredericV]

Just now, PeterV said:

Disclosing your dirty tactics has become a hobby for me now ...! ...:-))

 

You need help.

Does your employer really allows you to sit on a forum all day long and attack other members, for which you cannot debunk their technical arguments? So instead you start your little ad-hominem war, while being paid on the job.

[FredericV]

Just now, witchdoctor said:

You were shilling your speakers weren't you? That seems like a fact (while nauseating) rather than an attack.

It's a fact that speakers that radiate using a cardiod or dipole pattern work different from the Tidal speakers I heard at Frank's place, which did not have the resolution I'm used to. MQA can't fix mistakes in speakers or fix acoustics. In studio's, the dominant sound is direct = nearfield. This is why I tested MQA's claim in nearfield, on studio speakers. At home it's not nearfield, so you are listening to direct sound mixed with reflected sound, where the reflected sound smears the audio. MQA can't fix this.

This has nothing to do with shilling but with radiation patterns and acoustics.