MQA is Vaporware

[mansr]

2 hours ago, Indydan said:

If anybody here sounds like they are on a crusade, it is you. It seems you have made it your life project to defend MQA. 

Isn't it funny how witchdoctor suddenly piped up in this thread just when PeterV got banned? It's almost as if someone is directing them.

[PeterSt]

On 20-10-2017 at 4:55 PM, PeterSt said:

 

On 20-10-2017 at 4:50 PM, witchdoctor said:

To my ears the MQA Motown playlist is awesome. James Jamerson on the bass really stands out better than anything I have heard before.

 

Thanks. But sadly this one errors out over here (Netherlands). Unauthorized tracks or something (merely coverart as it seems, which I also render per track).

 

 

Just in case I worried a few (no, I'm sure that would be nobody ), this was a bug on my side;

I am using the new sampling rate detection for an "album", but a Playlist is not an Album and so a few things failed.

[Confused]

I visited the 'Hifi Show Live' yesterday, this is located in Winsor UK (up the road from where the Queen lives).  This show claims to be the UK's biggest 'speciality high-end audio event', which is pretty much true these days I would say.  Anyway, wandering around the various room and demonstrations it occurred to me that I had heard no mention of MQA, and had not seen any MQA logo's on the kit or the very many advertising banners around the place.  By contrast, a couple of the demonstrations were along the lines of 'listen to how good redbook CD sounds with our DAC'.  In one room running Mola Mola kit, they had deliberately used a 15 year old CD transport just to make the point that an old digital transport sounds great with CD.  I always think it is difficult to make clear judgements at shows, but it is fair to say that it did indeed sound pretty decent with Vivid Giya G3's and class D amps.  Onwards to what must have been the most expensively equipped room, dCS Vivaldi One, D'Agostino Progression mono blocks and Wilson Alexia 2's.  Both redbook and SACD were used.  Chatting to the dSC guy, he advised that the dCS One was upsampling redbook to DSD.  OK, all this is one example of a 'high end' show in a sleepy corner of the UK, but lots of vinyl being played, CD's still lurking, and in other demos using streamers nobody was making big noises about if it was 24 bit, DSD or anything else.  I guess the point is that whenever file format was mentioned, it was not a case of 'listen to how good our kit sounds with hi-res' but much more 'listen to just how good out kit sounds with good old CD'. I did spot this at the venue's reception desk though.  Apologies for the terrible photograph, but I did get into trouble with the woman in from of me, who thought I was trying to photograph her credit card.  No sign of the man himself though......

 

 

[PeterSt]

7 minutes ago, Confused said:

No sign of the man himself though......

 

LOL

 

I think it would have been possible. But tight.

 

On 21-10-2017 at 12:00 AM, witchdoctor said:

Bob Ludwig, Ian Shepherd and Bob Stuart presenting on MQA at AES today:

 

 

I think that was in New York.

 

[Confused]

11 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

think that was in New York.

 

I thought maybe he could fold and unfold himself and use aliasing technology to appear in two places at once?

[mcgillroy]

5 hours ago, FredericV said:

Breaking: "No Scientific Tests Were Done, Says MQA Founder"
 

Here's the full unfold of his FB post:
 

 

Amazing and thx for sharing this! The main news here is that nobody less than Bruno Putzeys comes out as a vocal MQA sceptic.

 

He asked „scathing questions” & classifies MQAs bla, bla as “speculations about neuroscience and physics.”

 

Bob will remember this AES for sure. 

 

RMAF trainwreck + AES backfired. MQA marketing is having an excellent run this year.

[witchdoctor]

24 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

Amazing and thx for sharing this! The main news here is that nobody less than Bruno Putzeys comes out as a vocal MQA sceptic.

 

He asked „scathing questions” & classifies MQAs bla, bla as “speculations about neuroscience and physics.”

 

Bob will remember this AES for sure. 

 

RMAF trainwreck + AES backfired. MQA marketing is having an excellent run this year.

If Bruno is the engineer he claims to be he should invent something better than MQA instead of going around whining about it. He should stick with amps. The guy was very sheepish when he asked his question and instead of producing a better solution what does he do? What all malcontent engineers like to do, whine.
Bob may not have done blind testing but the labels did tons of it in what they call test groups when they were doing their due diligence. They went all in on MQA so what do you think the results were? Duh.

 

 

[witchdoctor]

2 hours ago, Confused said:

I visited the 'Hifi Show Live' yesterday, this is located in Winsor UK (up the road from where the Queen lives).  This show claims to be the UK's biggest 'speciality high-end audio event', which is pretty much true these days I would say.  Anyway, wandering around the various room and demonstrations it occurred to me that I had heard no mention of MQA, and had not seen any MQA logo's on the kit or the very many advertising banners around the place.  By contrast, a couple of the demonstrations were along the lines of 'listen to how good redbook CD sounds with our DAC'.  In one room running Mola Mola kit, they had deliberately used a 15 year old CD transport just to make the point that an old digital transport sounds great with CD.  I always think it is difficult to make clear judgements at shows, but it is fair to say that it did indeed sound pretty decent with Vivid Giya G3's and class D amps.  Onwards to what must have been the most expensively equipped room, dCS Vivaldi One, D'Agostino Progression mono blocks and Wilson Alexia 2's.  Both redbook and SACD were used.  Chatting to the dSC guy, he advised that the dCS One was upsampling redbook to DSD.  OK, all this is one example of a 'high end' show in a sleepy corner of the UK, but lots of vinyl being played, CD's still lurking, and in other demos using streamers nobody was making big noises about if it was 24 bit, DSD or anything else.  I guess the point is that whenever file format was mentioned, it was not a case of 'listen to how good our kit sounds with hi-res' but much more 'listen to just how good out kit sounds with good old CD'. I did spot this at the venue's reception desk though.  Apologies for the terrible photograph, but I did get into trouble with the woman in from of me, who thought I was trying to photograph her credit card.  No sign of the man himself though......

 

Thanks for the report. Did they do any immersive audio demos at the show? What was your favorite room and why? Thanks

[4est]

18 minutes ago, witchdoctor said:

If Bruno is the engineer he claims to be he should invent something better than MQA instead of going around whining about it. He should stick with amps. The guy was very sheepish when he asked his question and instead of producing a better solution what does he do? What all malcontent engineers like to do, whine.
Bob may not have done blind testing but the labels did tons of it in what they call test groups when they were doing their due diligence. They went all in on MQA so what do you think the results were? Duh.

 

 

Why would he need to invent something better than MQA when it already exists. Its called Hi Rez, and MQA is a solution without a problem, and a poor one at that. The more you respond, the more of a fool you seem. I'm left no choice but to keep you on ignore, and I hate doing that to anyone...

[witchdoctor]

8 minutes ago, 4est said:

Why would he need to invent something better than MQA when it already exists. Its called Hi Rez, and MQA is a solution without a problem, and a poor one at that. The more you respond, the more of a fool you seem. I'm left no choice but to keep you on ignore, and I hate doing that to anyone...

None of this stuff is perfect right? Not even "hirez". If he feels so strongly about it let him (or any of the malcontent engineers) invent something better. Bruno is focused on speakers now and I wish him the best of success but complaining about a competitor is not what I call an original marketing idea.

[PeterSt]

So if I don't like plastic toilet paper, I must invent something better ? why ? paper is fine.

[witchdoctor]

4 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

So if I don't like plastic toilet paper, I must invent something better ? why ? paper is fine.

This thread is so in toilet already with all the vitriol I get your analogy but let's not go there ok?

[Confused]

10 minutes ago, witchdoctor said:

Thanks for the report. Did they do any immersive audio demos at the show? What was your favorite room and why? Thanks

I don't like taking threads too far off topic, but this is an opportunity for a gratuitous photograph, so I'll bite.  I think the room per the pic was my favourite, nothing to do with ultimate sound quality, it's just that I go a bit funny when I see a Studer reel to reel tape recorder.  Looking at the material available on reel to reel these days, I would have to say that reel to reel is vapourware, or vaopurtape or something.  I might be wrong but I think the show was more or less 100% two channel.

[4est]

Can you even comprehend what you read? There is nothing new about MQA, and never has been. It has been reverse engineered. What people are concerned about is the built in DRM that may get used in the future.

[witchdoctor]

Just now, Confused said:

I don't like taking threads too far off topic, but this is an opportunity for a gratuitous photograph, so I'll bite.  I think the room per the pic was my favourite, nothing to do with ultimate sound quality, it's just that I go a bit funny when I see a Studer reel to reel tape recorder.  Looking at the material available on reel to reel these days, I would have to say that reel to reel is vapourware, or vaopurtape or something.  I might be wrong but I think the show was more or less 100% two channel.

Nice shot, thanks for posting!

[jabbr]

42 minutes ago, witchdoctor said:

If Bruno is the engineer he claims to be he should invent something better than MQA instead of going around whining about it.

 

He nailed the issue. A convolution is a convolution is a convolution. “Deblurring” we’ve been doing since the 1970s but seriously in the 1980s. I’d say the only quibble would be that with a CPU as opposed to hardware, the resolution of the convolution kernel is not limited. Do it in HQPlayer — room correction, the whole shebang. Get one of those new Intel CPUs and an NVidia P100 and go to town. Multichannel DSD512 beats any pathetic MQA. Math is math. If MQA can’t be represented as a convolution then let’s see the math. Ain’t there until you show me otherwise. I don’t need to “listen” to know this with mathematical certainty.

[FredericV]

48 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

Amazing and thx for sharing this! The main news here is that nobody less than Bruno Putzeys comes out as a vocal MQA sceptic.

 

I have met Bruno several times and even visited his lab in Aarschot (Belgium). This was a long time ago, somewhere in 2008. We were reselling UCD400 in a nice enclosure sold by Hexateq and and later also sold the Tentlabs hybrid amp that used the same module, but with a tube buffer. We had some technical remarks about these amps and actually saw a measurement from Bruno testing them.

You can't BS Bruno Putzeys. At the time he was working with Guido Tent, can't BS Guido either. Both now sell competing active speakers.

Meridian is selling their own MQA digital speakers, which probably do full unfold + crossover (just like what bluesound is doing via dspout). Competitors like Grimm Audio and Kii3 have to work with the data coming out of the first unfold. Thinking about this, this smells like unfair competition to me. MQA does not allow further processing of the full decode, except in their own Meridian speakers.

 

48 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

He asked „scathing questions” & classifies MQAs bla, bla as “speculations about neuroscience and physics.”

 

Bob will remember this AES for sure. 

Is there any video? The reaction must be priceless.
 

48 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

RMAF trainwreck + AES backfired. MQA marketing is having an excellent run this year.

 

All their claims are being deblured and debunked, layer by layer.

[witchdoctor]

50 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

He nailed the issue. A convolution is a convolution is a convolution. “Deblurring” we’ve been doing since the 1970s but seriously in the 1980s. I’d say the only quibble would be that with a CPU as opposed to hardware, the resolution of the convolution kernel is not limited. Do it in HQPlayer — room correction, the whole shebang. Get one of those new Intel CPUs and an NVidia P100 and go to town. Multichannel DSD512 beats any pathetic MQA. Math is math. If MQA can’t be represented as a convolution then let’s see the math. Ain’t there until you show me otherwise. I don’t need to “listen” to know this with mathematical certainty.

Bruno sells speakers that compete with Meridians, what did you think he would do, embrace Bob Stuart? Business is business I guess. Like I said, attacking is hardly a new marketing approach.

[firedog]

25 minutes ago, witchdoctor said:

Bruno sells speakers that compete with Meridians, what did you think he would do, embrace Bob Stuart? Business is business I guess. Like I said, attacking is hardly a new marketing approach.

Again, silly speculations that don’t answer any actual criticisms of MQA.Uh, do you not realize that every manufacturer of audio equipment is a competitor with Meridian?

So by your logic, all of them have to attack Bob Stuart? Obviously not, so your point makes no sense.

BTW, again Bruno didn’t “attack” Bob Stuart - he made a technical criticism of MQA that belies it’s marketing claims. I guess since you don’t actually understand anything but marketing claims, that sounds like an attack to you. Of course you don’t have any relevant answer to the actual technical criticism. 

Your posts and their circular “logic” are really a waste of time. Ignore list.

[mcgillroy]

Dude took the bait & foulmouthes Putzeys. MQA reputation management is a gift that keeps on giving.

 

Made my day!

 

 

[christopher3393]

1 hour ago, witchdoctor said:

Bruno sells speakers that compete with Meridians, what did you think he would do, embrace Bob Stuart? Business is business I guess. Like I said, attacking is hardly a new marketing approach.

 

Is the approach, particularly the tone of your posts here, similar to how you presented and handled questions at AES this weekend? I would guess that you behaved like a different person. You are not even addressing the technical issues that are being raised here.

[witchdoctor]

17 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

Dude took the bait & foulmouthes Putzeys. MQA reputation management is a gift that keeps on giving.

 

Made my day!

 

 

Bruno is a fine engineer but he's no better than the guys at Krell and Krell adopted MQA. Buy what sounds good to YOU, NP.
 

http://www.mqa.co.uk/customer/our-partners/krell-partner-page

[esldude]

2 hours ago, witchdoctor said:

If Bruno is the engineer he claims to be he should invent something better than MQA instead of going around whining about it. He should stick with amps. The guy was very sheepish when he asked his question and instead of producing a better solution what does he do? What all malcontent engineers like to do, whine.
Bob may not have done blind testing but the labels did tons of it in what they call test groups when they were doing their due diligence. They went all in on MQA so what do you think the results were? Duh.

 

 

Please expand on this group test.

 

As someone who doesn't listen to MQA you have no grounds for being critical of Bruno.

[witchdoctor]

What does Mark Levinson, Krell, Aurender, dCs, Lumin, Moon and the Witchdoctor all have in common? Luxurious audio standards and a passion for the highest quality and MQA.

 

What do the malcontents have in common? Poor anger management skills and a hole in their wallet from blowing all their cash on "hirez" hardware and software which is going to the bottom of the ocean next to 8 track tapes and the betamax. Time to move on geezers.

[Charente]

"What does Mark Levinson, Krell, Aurender, dCs, Lumin, Moon [redacted] all have in common?"

 

A high price tag that the vast majority of music lovers can't afford