MQA is Vaporware

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

Tell me a practical, non-lab, scenario where this could occur. 

how about the fact that dcS and did not even know how Roon works with a multi zone set up? 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

3 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

I was talking just about that the authentication does not detect certain kinds of of tampering.  I don't think there's any dispute about that.

It really bogged the mind why Stereophile, and dCS, for that matter, would waste so much time on MQA when it is available from one source, Tidal, and it has been soundly rejected by Qobuz and Amazon HD.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

46 minutes ago, FredericV said:

 

A  strange twist:

https://hifipig.com/meridian-announces-new-distribution-partnership-with-onkyo-corporation/

This is very confusing. It is a partnership with Meridian and Onkyo? Or MQA and Onkyo?

 

Remember, Meridian, and it's shills angrily continued to claim that Meridian and MQA are totally separate entities. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, Tintinabulum said:

Content on this thread doesn’t improve. Keep it going though.... by any means possible. 

Welcome back...Wait, did some one disparage Meridian gear? 😍

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

It's a shilly morning! Brrrrr!!!

 

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/mqa-sounds-really-good.9512/

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Wow. A 7 million dollar bleed out. So unless a white knight investor comes along, it is just a matter of time until life

support is plugged. Truly stunning that there total net assets are less than than the value of a one bedroom apartment in New York City.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

4 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

I don't think so, more the other way around. None of these MQA partners need do anything that would cost them much, I'd like to think they are keenly aware of that and are only cutting deals with MQA that cost the partner next to nothing.

 

The label's ownership stake in MQA is one such example, they paid next to nothing for it. 

 

Based on the ridiculously low Turnover posted in MQA's financial results, it does not appear they have been successful on any level in cutting deals that produce real revenue in the here and now.

 

If I were a partner or potential partner, I'd fiercely negotiate only the most favorable deal terms with MQA, otherwise just walk away. It should be abundantly clear by now that MQA needs partners much worse than those partners need MQA.

 

That pathetic top line number in MQA's financials would seem to indicate the partners are aware of MQA's desperation, and have taken advantage of that, none of them are really paying MQA much of anything to date.

 

While Jbara (or even a bit player like Forsythe in their U.S. operation) does have ties to various industry segments, they've failed to effectively leverage that in such a way as to actually generate top line results, much less bottom line.

 

Failed miserably would be more descriptive, when MQA's top line number is exceeded by a single Director's renumeration (among their 21 employees). I wonder if that's Jbara pulling in the £403,494, or is that actually Bob himself?

A most astute an accurate assessment of the situation.

 

I almost wish Lee Scrotum was still here. It would be a quite amusing to see him twist himself into a pretzel trying to spin these numbers.

 

Oh wait, he did not even know how to correctly read balance sheet, genius business consultant that he is. 😍

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Bam! A Masterpiece article by Archimago Another home run.

 

On Audiophile Forums. Disagreements on MQA. (And Redscape preview...)

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/10/on-audiophile-forums-disagreements-on.html

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

It is amusing, well, not really...to watch MQA pivot monthly and move the goal posts as everyone of their marketing lies

are debunked. So now we move on to "provenance".that is hysterical. 

 

A laundry list:

 

"de-blurs" timing errors in the ADC-DEBUNKED

 

-Authenticated: DEBUNKED

 

-Losless: DEBUNKED

 

-Sounds "better": DEBUNKED

 

Saves bandwidth": DEBUNKED

 

And the biggest lie right in the catchy product title.."Master Quality"

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

6 hours ago, james45974 said:

My curious mind is wondering whether this new tack by MQA is a round about way of supporting Tidal in reaction to the latest moves by Amazon and Qobuz in the streaming business.  Face it, MQA is less than zero without Tidal, and Roon is pretty tangled up in there too.  Tidal may be in a big hurt and Roon has become kind of stale as of late.

Agree that MQA without Tidal is a defunct business

 

I am not sure what you mean by Roon being stale however. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

27 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Ah, now this makes sense.  Roon was/is/will not able to convince the 99% (Amazon, Spotify, Apple, Pandora, etc.) to give them the time of day, so Danny/COO has decided his future lies in convincing the 1% (i.e. "audiophiles") that Tidal and Qobuz (he inexplicably argues that Qobuz is on board with MQA) and thus MQA are crucial to their musical enjoyment.

 

I would call this desperation, but it's just another day in Audiophiledom.

I disagree with your take on Roon. As a Roon customer, I think it is state of the art in playback and cataloging. I have never experienced any effort to convince me that I "need" MQA, Tidal, or Qobuz. I maintain a large local library and it works perfectly for my needs. Roon is 100% a hifi product not different than a tube preamp or a stand alone DAC, it never was intended for the "masses" and there never was an attempt to "convince" anybody.

 

Please note I was a MAJOR Roon skeptic when first introduced, and I thought was a fly by night hipster product. I was wrong. 

 

Any way, i really doubt Roon users give a damn about MQA unless they only listen to Tidal.

 

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

44 minutes ago, ShawnC said:

I agree although lifetime membership just went up to $699 with the new software release today.

Wow. I paid $500. Pretty decent jump. From the release notes, it looks the new version offers significant improvements. Let's see.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

5 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Roon is claiming that through the miracle of big brother data mining of users  which they give the marketing term "Valance", Roon radio was significantly improved in this latest release.  I don't use it very much so I might not notice the difference...

 

edit:  https://blog.roonlabs.com/roon-1-7-valence/

I will say the search is wayyyyyy faster or more accurate. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

What ever happened to 7digital shutting down? I just checked and they still have current releases in hires, also still no MQA.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, Daccord said:

 

Unfortunately, almost all the new releases on Prostudiomasters are available as MQA downloads. And in some cases, the MQA version is significantly more expensive than the 96/24 FLAC

I find PSM tidal wave (no pun intended) of MQA offerings bizarre. This batch encoded slop being priced higher is even more bizarre. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, FredericV said:

It's getting more absurd: take an analog recording, remaster it digitally in 24 bit, MQA encode it and call it the new master and then render it back to vinyl ....  and other formats.

https://www.stereonet.co.uk/news/the-soft-parade-deluxe-vinyl-from-mqa-master
 

 

I bet these 50 year old recordings do not even have the resolution of redbook: "This new release commemorates the album's 50th anniversary". Wikipedia mentions a 24 bit remaster, probably they used that for the lossy MQA encode, then converted into another lossy format (vinyl):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soft_Parade
 

With all the pops & clicks and added noise of vinyl, for sure that's how it sounded in the studio. A true end-to-end process

There is one big misstatement. There are NON MQA downloads of all 4 Anniversary releases with true 192 kHz content. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

I find this state particularly interesting:

 

HRA, about their version of the new Coldplay album:

 

"Please Note: We offer this album in its native sampling rate of 48 kHz, 24-bit. The provided 96 kHz version was up-sampled and offers no audible value! Hence the reason why we also do not offer the MQA. "

 

https://www.highresaudio.com/en/album/view/ncurgd/coldplay-everyday-life

 

It is, however, on Qobuz as 24/96.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I have to give kudos to HRA for the honesty and information provided to customers. Very well done. 

I also see that PSM has added an additional layer of "information" on their MQA titles..on the pull down menu, if you select MQA,

it says 24/48 or 24/44.1-"SOURCE"...24/96 etc. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Isn't this same bullshit that happens about once a month? Some new poster comes on to say how uncivil the thread is and they can't believe it is still open. Yawn. Then ARQuint comes on and blathers on and says absolutely zero of substance.. Rinse and repeat. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

10 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

 

I agree that progress is being made on the civility front.

 

However, I also agree with those who say that you continue to misrepresent the conversation in this thread. Yes, there have been many antagonistic comments, some justified IMHO and some gratuitous and unnecessary. And there also have been many, many important, substantive comments that have brought information to light that would not have come out otherwise - and that despite your and others' steadfast refusal to admit it, clearly influenced the mainstream audiophile press and clearly played a role in some of the moderate walking-back of the earlier uncritical euphoria over MQA.

 

But most importantly, there's a third part of the conversation in this thread, and your repeated ignoring of it speaks volumes: the many, many posts by Lee Scoggins and several others that endlessly repeated MQA marketing lingo and technical talking points. These were not opinions to be disagreed with. Rather, they were demonstrably false claims, often contradicted by MQA reps' own statements. When someone keeps saying over and over and over that MQA is not lossy - and then finally "admits" it's lossy by saying. "it doesn't matter that it's lossy," that's not a disagreeable opinion - that's unaccountable, bad-faith behavior, and it doesn't deserve a civil response. 

 

And it's disingenuous in the extreme for you to keep banging the civility drum without calling out - or heck, just mentioning once - the shifty, bad-faith approach taken by Lee and some others in support of MQA. Unless or until you acknowledge that, you're not likely to find much of a welcoming reception here. You can of course continue to chalk that up the horrid incivility of members here, but to do that you have to ignore the many of us who are pro-civility and anti-MQA, and I would hope you'd not want to adopt such a simplistic and lazy posture here.

Simply devastating, sir. If AR Q does not understand your points, then there is nothing to more to be done. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

It is interesting that the pro MQA posters who behaved poorly are frequently named and criticized, while those against MQA who behaved poorly are seldom if ever named and the criticisms are vague and brief ---one could say "minimized". Wouldn't it be an interesting experiment to name some of our own shortcomings in this thread, to own them? Who are these few bad apples and how bad were they really? Certainly not nearly as bad as the Shills of Audiophiledom!

 

Thank God there is no hypocrisy among our good membership or one might think there is a social media ethics problem of some sort here. And what on earth is Mr. Connaker on about in claiming there is a problem with so-called "civilty" on the forum, enough so that changes are proposed because of a few very vocal members. Surely not on the paragonal MQA thread!

 

After all, the OP has made clear numerous times that he does not see the "problem" as a problem. And one or two have made clear that they have no issue with banned members returning in disguise, like Anonymous, becaused they were chased off by snitches and civility police. TOS be damned, it is the right thing to do for a higher cause!

 

"AT EVERY DOORWAY before you enter, you should look around, you should take a good look around— for you never know where your enemies might be seated within."  --- Havamal

 

Happy New Year, gentlemen.

how have those who call out MQA "behaved badly"? In your opinion? Who cares what you think.

 

Lying, ignoring facts, contesting verified scientific data, and disingenuous contact only deserves smash mouth responses. 

 

If you don't like it, tough. 

 

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

3 hours ago, FredericV said:

Another article which tries to weaken those who have debunked MQA, and try to lead the reader back to the canned articles from MQA?
 

https://audiophilereview.com/audiophile-news/what-does-master-quality-mean-to-me-or-you.html

Steve Stone is laughable,  has zero credibility, and is clearly desperate writing for such a bottom feeding website. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

7 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

 

Steven Stone's post includes a 1200 word response from Bob Stuart. Instead of just spewing for five sentences, why don't you critique Stuart's points in a reasoned fashion? Could you? That's what civility looks like.

Oh yes, I read his response with great interest.

 

It was total and utter fantasy, with, literally an alternate reality. 

 

All that needs to be highlighted is 

 

"where labels or artists are working with MQA during the production process (recording, mixing and mastering), MQA can work with the real definitive Master at point of creation".

 

That is literally garbage pulled out of thin air. 

 

and better yet-

 

"There is a strong support from professional recording and mastering engineers for the sonic benefits and ‘Authentication’ in MQA. Finally, MQA is not a 'filter', this has been refuted many times in Q&A materials and perpetuating the myth reflects either a lack of expertise, an inability to read, or just mischief!"

 

Again a total and utter fantasy.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

25 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

 

Would you please look at the two sentences you wrote reacting to the pair of quotations you extracted from Bob Stuart's post? They are not a reasoned response. A reasoned response would be countering his "facts" and conclusions with yours. That's what Archimago would do, that's what Chris would do.

 

[Sigh]

 

Happy New Year to all, friend and foe.

 

AQ

Look, one could spend two hours going line by line in poignant out that these 1200 words are nothing but pure pseudo techno babble, half truths, and a fog of vagueness so thick you could cut it with a knife

 

Please, tell me, as you lounge in your ivory tower, exactly what a" modern approach to sampling" is?  I would love to know.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

2 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

By attacking us they are hoping folks won’t notice the authority figures in high end audio are an unwashed bunch of heathens whose expertise should be questioned 24/7. Consider.

As several Stereophile readers have wryly noted John Atkinson looks pretty scruffy at times.

Nobody can tell me where Robert Harley got his degree.

Steven Stone’s background in photography and his admitted hearing loss don’t inspire confidence.

John Darko was a DJ.

Jim Austin’s meltdowns here, Audio Asylum and on pro audio sites are legendary.

Herb Reichert’s parroting of MQA talking points to me cemented his status as a sheep.

And what are my friend Andy Quint’s audio qualifications?

You are spot on. But you have just scraped the surface. 🤪