MQA is Vaporware

[FredericV]

2 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

So are we saying that undecoded MQA is not worse than CD quality?

 

Not better but not worse?

 

 

MQA gets away with it, here's why:
 

 

[Shadders]

11 minutes ago, Don Hills said:

We won't get that until we start getting music which was recorded from scratch using MQA enabled ADCs.

 

(*) The original music was auditioned and approved using standard PCM ADCs and DACs.

Hi,

This is really funny. In the nearly 40 years of digital audio, MQA have now suddenly discovered how to correctly implement ADC's.

 

Shame on all those corporations (Philips, Sony, TI, Linear, Cirrus, Analog Devices etc.) with many hundreds of engineers and many thousands of years expertise/experience, for missing this. Tut tut.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, FredericV said:

MQA gets away with it, here's why:
 

 

 

Right, we don't need 24 bits resolution and maybe 15-17 bits is enough.

 

On the technical issues with un-decoded MQA, there has been a bit of a mixed message in the past discussion - some saying it's worse than redbook CD.

 

Are we now all in agreement it's not worse (technically) than CD quality? Putting potential DRM aside for a small moment.

 

@mansr has done the deepest analysis I believe. What are your thoughts mansr at present? 

[Fokus]

48 minutes ago, FredericV said:

This means the first unfold has no purpose. The first unfold just recovers one more octave in the ultrasonic range, which we can't hear.

 

Certainly not. MQA lives by tolerating aliasing from above 48kHz. Given the nature of music the impact on the audible band is negligible (at least in some cases).

 

But they cannot tolerate aliasing from the 24-48kHz band, it would simply overwhelm the music's highest audible octave. And MQA also cannot properly filter at 24kHz, because filters are evil. So they have to pass on 96k, in this case via the (Japan-invented) origami method.

[Fokus]

11 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Are we now all in agreement it's not worse (technically) than CD quality?

 

I fully expect, sooner or later, objective proof that the filtering necessary for the origami band splitting is damaging to the quality of the CD-rate baseband signal in MQA.

 

[mansr]

11 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Right, we don't need 24 bits resolution and maybe 15-17 bits is enough.

12 bits is enough for a lot of music, especially with noise shaping at 96 kHz or higher sample rate.

 

11 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

On the technical issues with un-decoded MQA, there has been a bit of a mixed message in the past discussion - some saying it's worse than redbook CD.

 

Are we now all in agreement it's not worse (technically) than CD quality? Putting potential DRM aside for a small moment.

 

@mansr has done the deepest analysis I believe. What are your thoughts mansr at present? 

Undecoded MQA has to be worse than CD since it has at most 15 bits of accessible data compared CD's 16. That's before we even start looking at potential damage from the band-splitting filters.

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, mansr said:

Undecoded MQA has to be worse than CD since it has at most 15 bits of accessible data compared CD's 16.

 

Noted.

 

But it's worse in the same way that a 16bit 44kHz CD is worse than the 24bit 44kHz Hi-Res master it was made from (as an example)?

 

[Tony Lauck]

21 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

So what?  Every new format requires new hardware.  No one is forcing you to buy the DAC.  Audio is in part about selling new products.  That feeds R&D and pays salaries for families.  We get better products every year and adults and children get fed.  As a consumer we are free to choose how often we upgrade.kly.

This is complete and utter BS.  There are many formats that I have in my library and I can play most of these on my DAC, converting them where necessary by  software.     There are things that I do with DBpoweramp, HQPlayer, SoundForge and iZotope RX that allow me to deal with these formats and where necessary I can download new CODEC software to access different formats.  However, if I were to be forced to use MQA I would not be able to do things that I presently do, such as to do digital room correction for both PCM and DSD using HQPlayer. 

 

I don't want hardware.  I don't want children of parasitic middlemen to eat at the expense of starving musicians.  I want to chose how I spend my money, and when I buy new hardware it comes out of my music budget.   When I want technical information I read research papers and patents.  When I want to see how software works I examine the documentation and I test it.  MQA has been set up in such a way as to make these tests difficult, if not impossible, to perform.  All we get is the typical rigged demonstrations and comparisons which are geared up to confuse non-technical audiophiles.   What we get are comparisons of different masters and non-level matched playback of the same masters, and doing this amounts to nothing less than fraud when it is done under the authority of experts, which me must assume includes AES Fellows.

 

[mansr]

22 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Noted.

 

But it's worse in the same way that a 16bit 44kHz CD is worse than the 24bit 44kHz Hi-Res master it was made from (as an example)?

 

Going from 24-bit to 16-bit is unlikely to be audible. Removing another 8 bits is definitely audible. MQA sits in the intervening, maybe audible region. The result depends on the music.

[Fair Hedon]

The other major MQA shill at Stereophile, is starting his CES reports with as many mentions of MQA as possible.

He is painting the rosiest picture possible.  It seems he is buying the notion that phones are the "gate way" to high res. Yeh ok.

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ces-begins-hi-res-revelations-mqa-qobuz-and-more

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mobile-mqa-playback-lg

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-expands-its-reach

 

I love the line, "Qobuz hasn't seen fit" to endorse and use MQA..."yet"...

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

9 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

In my discussions with people in the industry such as David Chesky and Ken Forsythe, bandwidth at the scale of streaming is a very real issue. 

 

There's that name dropping again.  To the best of my knowledge, neither of these people are experts in data communications or bandwidth requirements.  Once again, you're parroting rather than informing.

 

I see you slagging CA over at Hoffman.  Just can't help yourself, eh?

 

Quote

When I speak to people in the industry, they tell me that Archimago doesn't really understand digital and that I should take his findings and experiments with a grain of salt. The tests he has done on the internet would fail a high school class science experiment because they are based on people listening under all sorts of conditions with varying equipment. It's a joke.

As for engineering professionals at CA, perhaps. But why hide under assumed names? And how do we know how legitimate their engineering credentials are? Are they EEs playing with audio gear or have they done proper audio research and have solid academic credentials?

Even when I make a good faith attempt at responding in a respectful way on CA, the replies invariably include a personal attack. It's hard to believe in that environment that there are serious engineers there being objective.

The sense I get is that Bob Stuart has created something clever here and the armchair engineers on CA can't keep up with his math.

 

I must have missed the "good faith" posts you have made here.

 

[Fair Hedon]

12 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

There's that name dropping again.  To the best of my knowledge, neither of these people are experts in data communications or bandwidth requirements.  Once again, you're parroting rather than informing.

 

I see you slagging CA over at Hoffman.  Just can't help yourself, eh?

 

 

I must have missed the "good faith" posts you have made here.

 

Gee, I wonder how the site owner feels about this place being called a "snake pit"...

 

Very classy of Mr.Scoggins. He bumbles over here and posts like an uninformed boob, gets

put straight, and runs off to cry at Hoffman. Nice.

 

At the very least, his industry coddling, uncritical, and consumer un-friendly stance has been exposed and anyone who chooses to read his "articles" going forward will know they were done with a minimum of research and due diligence.

 

So something was gained here.

[Shadders]

16 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

There's that name dropping again.  To the best of my knowledge, neither of these people are experts in data communications or bandwidth requirements.  Once again, you're parroting rather than informing.

 

I see you slagging CA over at Hoffman.  Just can't help yourself, eh?

 

 

I must have missed the "good faith" posts you have made here.

 

Hi,

The post by LeeS is disappointing - he states :

 

"As for engineering professionals at CA, perhaps. But why hide under assumed names? And how do we know how legitimate their engineering credentials are? Are they EEs playing with audio gear or have they done proper audio research and have solid academic credentials?"

 

I have asked Lee Scoggins for his credentials (in this thread) with regards to engineering on this site - he has not provided them.

 

My credentials are MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, work areas include R&D in audio and visual telecommunications, broadband testing and engineering, satellite communications design (aeronautical/maritime/point to point links) which includes simulating carriers in transponders using relevant signal processing software.

 

Maybe others can provide some of their activities to allow Lee the confidence to provide his own.

 

Thanks and regards,

Shadders.

[rickca]

16 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

It seems he is buying the notion that phones are the "gate way" to high res.

That is the latest MQA talking point.  

[Lee Scoggins]

2 minutes ago, rickca said:

That is the latest MQA talking point.  

 

Is this focus on mobile wrong?  I work on digital transformations a bit at work and the mobile focus is real among consumers.  How can a new music format attract customers at scale if they don't offer mobile access?

 

To me this is a key selling point of streaming.  One of the things I like about my Tidal subscription is being able to try new music in real time while shopping at record stores.

[rickca]

Maybe Disney should buy MQA.  They could put it in Fantasyland.

[Lee Scoggins]

11 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

Gee, I wonder how the site owner feels about this place being called a "snake pit"...

 

Very classy of Mr.Scoggins. He bumbles over here and posts like an uninformed boob, gets

put straight, and runs off to cry at Hoffman. Nice.

 

At the very least, his industry coddling, uncritical, and consumer un-friendly stance has been exposed and anyone who chooses to read his "articles" going forward will know they were done with a minimum of research and due diligence.

 

So something was gained here.

 

Sigh, more personal attacks.  Do you not know how to debate without constant attacks on my character?

[Samuel T Cogley]

21 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

It seems he is buying the notion that phones are the "gate way" to high res. Yeh ok

 

Smartphones is the currently the most reliable growth market for music consumption today, so it makes sense MQA is embracing phones.

 

The alleged relationship between smartphone music streaming and demand for high resolution audio is quite a stretch.  Hi rez is still a tiny, tiny niche of total music consumption.

[Lee Scoggins]

24 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

There's that name dropping again.  To the best of my knowledge, neither of these people are experts in data communications or bandwidth requirements.  Once again, you're parroting rather than informing.

 

I see you slagging CA over at Hoffman.  Just can't help yourself, eh?

 

 

I must have missed the "good faith" posts you have made here.

 

 

Hey, I'm just reporting what I heard from fellow journalist and audio enthusiasts about CA.  I am accurately reporting the reputation of CA among many.

[Samuel T Cogley]

Just now, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Hey, I'm just reporting what I heard from fellow journalist and audio enthusiasts about CA.  I am accurately reporting the reputation of CA among many.

 

No, you're attacking the credibility of MQA skeptics.  Your industry sycophancy is laid bare.

[mansr]

11 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Maybe others can provide some of their activities to allow Lee the confidence to provide his own.

My name is Mans Rullgard. Google me (there's only one).

[Lee Scoggins]

1 minute ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Smartphones is the currently the most reliable growth market for music consumption today, so it makes sense MQA is embracing phones.

 

The alleged relationship between smartphone music streaming and demand for high resolution audio is quite a stretch.  Hi rez is still a tiny, tiny niche of total music consumption.

 

Smartphones are the trojan horse here.  Sell the catalog depth and convenience to gain customers then MQA goes along for the ride.  This is the point I made in my article.  

 

Hirez interest is small which is why you can't go the other way by building a SACD or DVD-Audio disc then trying to gain consumer attention.

 

MQA and the labels are betting, and I think rightly so, that the best way to attract customer is through convenience.  My guess is a strong manager at Universal may not know how many "hirez" subscriptions he will sell nor will he care as long as he gets enough annuity income via monthly subscriptions.

[Dr Tone]

9 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

The alleged relationship between smartphone music streaming and demand for high resolution audio is quite a stretch.  Hi rez is still a tiny, tiny niche of total music consumption.

 

Definitely a large stretch.  I subscribe to Apple Music for phone use, it's all I need for my bluetooth headphones when walking around.

 

On a side note, as I walk down the hallway at work half the people listening to music on their devices have only 1 ear bud in and are fine with that.  Maybe mqa will sound even better with only one ear bud?

[Lee Scoggins]

2 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

No, you're attacking the credibility of MQA skeptics.  Your industry sycophancy is laid bare.

 

Except that doesn't hold true either as some of these guys with a low opinion of CA are MQA skeptics.

[rickca]

29 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

The sense I get is that Bob Stuart has created something clever here and the armchair engineers on CA can't keep up with his math.

I have an M.Eng in Information Systems with a focus on optimization and simulation.  It is math, math and more math.