MQA is Vaporware

[esldude]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Alias is the correct word for this. Image is not.

+1 on this.

 

If you use the same word for two different phenomena you are confusing. 

 

If you use two words for two different phenomena you are communicating. 

 

While you can have context dependent meanings of one word for different things it is best to avoid that especially with technical matters.  

 

So while in context of describing DA conversion  using aliasing most may understand you really mean imaging. Things are much nicer to use the correct term.  Eliminates confusion. 

[esldude]

Oops double post. 

[christopher3393]

1 minute ago, Fair Hedon said:

Who made you a moderator?

 

You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

[beetlemania]

17 hours ago, Fair Hedon said:

He says even the anti-MQA engineers cannot tell a difference between the master file and the MQA streamed 24/192 file.

If it's so close that experienced sound engineers cannot hear it, a lot of this discussion seems a bit academic.

 

Awesome! So, at best, MQA is indistinguishable from PCM? And we get to pay more for DACs and content for this?

 

No, Mr. Scoggins, it's not academic. It's stupid! High end audio is shrinking and now everyone has to pay licensing fees to MQA for the thrill of having a blue light illuminated. Ugh.

 

But it's even worse than that given that people who hear worse SQ via MQA outnumber those who claim to prefer MQA.

[Fair Hedon]

8 minutes ago, beetlemania said:

 

Awesome! So, at best, MQA is indistinguishable from PCM? And we get to pay more for DACs and content for this?

 

No, Mr. Scoggins, it's not academic. It's stupid! High end audio is shrinking and now everyone has to pay licensing fees to MQA for the thrill of having a blue light illuminated. Ugh.

 

But it's even worse than that given that people who hear worse SQ via MQA outnumber those who claim to prefer MQA.

Precisely.

Does this not blow out of the water the utter puke spewed by Atkinson et al, that the MQA'd file is "better" than the master file?

 

Because subjective preference for the sound is all they have left to cling to...the bandwidth and authentication nonsense have been blown out of the water...

[Lee Scoggins]

11 minutes ago, beetlemania said:

 

Awesome! So, at best, MQA is indistinguishable from PCM? And we get to pay more for DACs and content for this?

 

No, Mr. Scoggins, it's not academic. It's stupid! High end audio is shrinking and now everyone has to pay licensing fees to MQA for the thrill of having a blue light illuminated. Ugh.

 

But it's even worse than that given that people who hear worse SQ via MQA outnumber those who claim to prefer MQA.

 

Think about this for a minute.

 

The original 24/192 file is being folded into a 24/48 file, then unfolded, then played back while streaming with no loss of fidelity to experienced ears compared to the original file.

 

That seems to indicate the claimed “17 bits” contains all of the music.

 

The triangular encoding must be robust.

[Lee Scoggins]

4 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

Precisely.

Does this not blow out of the water the utter puke spewed by Atkinson et al, that the MQA'd file is "better" than the master file?

 

Because subjective preference for the sound is all they have left to cling to...the bandwidth and authentication nonsense have been blown out of the water...

 

Neither of these last two claims is true.

[Thuaveta]

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Think about this for a minute.

 

The original 24/192 file is being folded into a 24/48 file, then unfolded, then played back while streaming with no loss of fidelity to experienced ears compared to the original file.

 

That seems to indicate the claimed “17 bits” contains all of the music.

 

The triangular encoding must be robust.

Please allow me to rephrase your argument in a way you'll be able to comprehend:

 

"The 16/44 file is being compressed into a much smaller file at around 320kbps, then uncompressed while streaming with no loss of fidelity to experienced ears. That seems to indicate the claimed "lossy mp3 compression" contains all of the music."

 

I'm not saying that 320kbps isn't lossy, I'm saying it's indistinguishable from the lossless original.

[Fair Hedon]

2 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Neither of these last two claims is true.

LOL.

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I honestly don’t know what happened. I dropped off around 9pm last night to watch a movie, then this morning could not find the thread.  I saw some comments from Agitater that people had hurled some personal epithets at me.  I am bummed because they gorts usually just remove the offensive posts and give a public warning.  Now we don’t have access to the articles, etc.

 

Very common practice.  They disappear threads if they get controversial, if they primarily express opinions the gorts or Hoffman don't agree with or if they win an argument Hoffman is on the other side of.  No warning just disappeared. 

 

This is a really horrid way to run a forum.  

 

I was banned there because too many threads I participated in they decided to disappear.  I never violated any of their TOS.  Never was personally insulting or vindictive.  I simply expressed personal opinions at odds with what they wanted promoted.  I provided technical reasons for them (which is when they would decide to disappear threads).  

 

Someone there would also filter PM's from other members.  If someone started asking or explaining something to you related to a thread they didn't like, suddenly neither of you got PMs thru to each other anymore.  Really pathetic forum. 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Fair Hedon said:

Who made you a moderator?

It's a community. If you pee in the pool, others have a right to say something.

[Fair Hedon]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

It's a community. If you pee in the pool, it others have a right to say something.

Ok..I could have done with out the imagery...yikes...

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Think about this for a minute.

 

The original 24/192 file is being folded into a 24/48 file, then unfolded, then played back while streaming with no loss of fidelity to experienced ears compared to the original file.

 

That seems to indicate the claimed “17 bits” contains all of the music.

 

The triangular encoding must be robust.

No, it means that CD quality was good enough all along.

[adamdea]

35 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I recently visited Dave Wilson in Provo and he also showed me research on the ear’s ability to hear timing differences which he used to design the Chronosonic flagship. He was excited about it because this ability of the ear to hear tiny timing differences holds true into one’s 70s.

Well who knows what he meant? It is my understanding that age related hearing loss is not confined to frequency range but also affects certain temporal effects including gap recognition for example. These temporal phenomena are AIUT highly relevant to speech comprehension.  It's difficult to engage with the entire spiel about timing differences/time resolution/time blur because none of it appears directly to map to any genuine measured or recognised effect.

 

Our old friend the 7us resolution is of course about inter aural time differences and has nothing to do with anti alias filters. I have tried looking into what time resolution might mean (within one audio channel) and cannot see that there is any single fixed measure. But so far as I can recall they all seem to be in the millisecond range.

 

Which is just as well or vinyl would sound unbearable 

[beetlemania]

5 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Think about this for a minute.

 

The original 24/192 file is being folded into a 24/48 file, then unfolded, then played back while streaming with no loss of fidelity to experienced ears compared to the original file.

 

That seems to indicate the claimed “17 bits” contains all of the music.

 

The triangular encoding must be robust.

 

Waat?

 

First, this is complete nonsense. There are multiple reports from credible listeners of diminished SQ from MQA including loss of resolution.

 

Second, you didn't address the point of my post: consumers will have to PAY MORE for performance that makes zero difference, at best (and probably worse SQ). WTF should audiophiles care? Tidal is streaming 24/192, right? So why would anyone care that MQA can reduce file size?

 

Bizarre and destructive to the audio industry.

[mansr]

27 minutes ago, manisandher said:

Yes, but surely better than a perfectly tuned piano played badly.

I'd rather hear a competent amateur player on a well tuned piano than a virtuoso on an ill tuned one.

[manisandher]

7 minutes ago, mansr said:

I'd rather hear a competent amateur player on a well tuned piano than a virtuoso on an ill tuned one.

 

And what if only the top 5 keys were ill-tuned, the rest perfect?

 

Mani.

[Samuel T Cogley]

25 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

That seems to indicate the claimed “17 bits” contains all of the music.

 

You seem to be acknowledging the effective 17 bit depth of MQA.  Tiny progress it seems.  I'll be very curious to see if this ends up in the next PTA MQA marketing post.

 

 

[Andyman]

37 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

And what if only the top 5 keys were ill-tuned, the rest perfect?

 

Mani.

 

Now you're being silly...!

[Andyman]

39 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

And what if only the top 5 keys were ill-tuned, the rest perfect?

 

Mani.

 

...or if someone were to write a concerto for...

let me think now

maybe ...the left hand!

[FredericV]

59 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

You seem to be acknowledging the effective 17 bit depth of MQA.  Tiny progress it seems.  I'll be very curious to see if this ends up in the next PTA MQA marketing post.

 

 

Furthermore, do the ultrasonics matter?

I did the following test on a trade show, without announcing the specifics:

- first play the DXD file from 2L.no (without them knowing what format it was)

- then play the 24/44.1 MQA distribution file, upsampled with the sox method which is in my signature

Between the tracks, I told the audience in my room of the XFI 2017 trade show I would play a different version of the same track. So they were expecting to hear some change.

At the end of our little shootout I asked them if they could hear any difference. They could not. This was on a world class system. I begged them to name ANY difference, they could not.

So do the ultrasonics matter, as MQA is in no way accurate (up to 20dB difference between master, see fig 2), but it does not seem to be a problem at all?

If upsampled MQA with sox can sound as good as the input file used to encode the MQA, why care about licensing a decoder anyway?

Just do what we and Auralic did: use the sox library.

[Fair Hedon]

1 hour ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

You seem to be acknowledging the effective 17 bit depth of MQA.  Tiny progress it seems.  I'll be very curious to see if this ends up in the next PTA MQA marketing post.

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

I was banned there because too many threads I participated in they decided to disappear.  I never violated any of their TOS.  Never was personally insulting or vindictive.  I simply expressed personal opinions at odds with what they wanted promoted.  I provided technical reasons for them (which is when they would decide to disappear threads).  

 

Someone there would also filter PM's from other members.  If someone started asking or explaining something to you related to a thread they didn't like, suddenly neither of you got PMs thru to each other anymore.  Really pathetic forum.

 

I don't know about you, but there are many who consider being banned from Hoffman to be a badge of honor. 

[Fair Hedon]

2 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

I don't know about you, but there are many who consider being banned from Hoffman to be a badge of honor. 

+1.

 

Guffman is an ego driven forum, and a venue for Hoofman to shill. He claims he is getting in gear for "review", which he keeps and never returns, and the "review" never appears any where.

[manisandher]

39 minutes ago, Andyman said:

Now you're being silly...!

 

What, I've gotten away with it until now? Great! ;-)

 

Mani.