MQA is Vaporware

[WAM]

Hello Knickerhawk,

 

I just read your post about the A/B testing. If I am correct, you did not use the silver disc, but you used cd-quality files. That's not the same. It's a fairy tale that cd and redbook-flac are equal in sq. For some reason, the cd-transport makes a (big) difference.

 

I misunderstood you, please correct me  (English is not my first language).

 

Happy Listening,

 

WAM

[Shadders]

41 minutes ago, knickerhawk said:

I sense that a number of vocal participants in this thread (not referring to you) have not personally compared MQA vs. HiRes themselves and have ignored or dismissed the improvements vis-a-vis CDs, yet they are not reluctant to dismiss MQA altogether (inclusive of the CD vs MQA differences). Does that no strike you as a little irresponsible?

Hi,

If you read the comments in the thread, and that MQA claims that dispersion can be reversed, when in fact it cannot, which is the crux of MQA processing, then you realise that all MQA is an effect. [Alternatively, they take a master and process it with MQA. What was wrong with the master in the first place ?]

 

It has been mentioned that on some DAC's that MQA filters are not turned off when listening to non-MQA material - maybe worth checking that when you listen to 16/44.1 material that MQA filters are in fact not enabled ?

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[Shadders]

deleted

[knickerhawk]

15 minutes ago, WAM said:

Hello Knickerhawk,

 

I just read your post about the A/B testing. If I am correct, you did not use the silver disc, but you used cd-quality files. That's not the same. It's a fairy tale that cd and redbook-flac are equal in sq. For some reason, the cd-transport makes a (big) difference.

 

It's of course possible (maybe even probable) that you'll hear differences between playback from a CD and from a rip of the CD or a stream of the 16/44 file. You're introducing hardware variables into the equation. That's not what interests me though. I rarely bother with playing back my personal library of ripped CDs. I just do everything from Tidal. That's mostly because I listen to new stuff and/or stuff that I didn't have on CD anyway. Since I have virtually no interest in going back to the stone age of CD playback, the relevant comparison for me (and probably for most people who opt for streaming on a service like Tidal) is what (if any) audible difference can be heard when opting for streamed MQA (or HiRes) versions vs 16/44 versions. 

[knickerhawk]

33 minutes ago, Shadders said:

It has been mentioned that on some DAC's that MQA filters are not turned off when listening to non-MQA material - maybe worth checking that when you listen to 16/44.1 material that MQA filters are in fact not enabled ?

 

I don't think that issue applies to Tidal/Bluesound. There are no filter options to turn on/off. 

[WAM]

Fair enough. But you make a mistake. A silver disc is not " stone age" . A streamer does not beat a cd-transport. Do not fool yourselves, nothing obsolete about cd's.

 

But let's not spoil this thread with a discs vs files discussion, I just wanted to know how you did your testing. 

 

Enjoy your music. 

[Rt66indierock]

A little housekeeping here are four reasons to dismiss MQA without listening to it.

1.      You object to the use of Peter Craven’s patented method to degrade files and then reconstruct them in any commercial recording process.

2.      Can’t use DSP with MQA

3.      Can’t stream a decoded MQA signal to multiple locations making multi-room impossible without multiple licenses. This problem resulted in the first MQA clone.

4.      You’ve read the financial statements of Meridian Audio and MQA Ltd and concluded the market has rejected their ideas.

[FredericV]

24 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

3.      Can’t stream a decoded MQA signal to multiple locations making multi-room impossible without multiple licenses. This problem resulted in the first MQA clone

 

What do you mean by first clone?

[Rt66indierock]

6 minutes ago, FredericV said:

 

What do you mean by first clone?

 

After the dust up at CES 2017 Auralic cloned MQA and it was out in the wild April 2017. Did someone beat them to it in a commercial product?

[Sonicularity]

2 hours ago, WAM said:

Fair enough. But you make a mistake. A silver disc is not " stone age" . A streamer does not beat a cd-transport. Do not fool yourselves, nothing obsolete about cd's.

 

But let's not spoil this thread with a discs vs files discussion, I just wanted to know how you did your testing. 

 

Enjoy your music. 

 

Isn't a disc just a medium to store a file format, like MQA, MP3, AAC, FLAC, CD-DA, or others?

[Rt66indierock]

14 minutes ago, FredericV said:

Then we came to the same clone independently, see my signature
Auralic uses libsox to do this, we use soxr.

MQA's upsampling filters can be cloned via both libraries, the impulse responses are virtually identical to MQA's claims. However, nor we nor Auralic recover the ultrasonics.

lightningplayer has libsox linked as a shared library
 

 

I know its like the story of cloning the BIOS of an IBM PC. Auralic is Colombia Data Products and you are Compaq except you found a better filter moving past MQA performance wise.  Halt and Catch Fire still is the best story about cloning the BIOS though. 

[firedog]

7 hours ago, knickerhawk said:

7 hours ago, knickerhawk said:

Personally,I have no interest in the discounted downloads. I'm not sure I understand the value proposition there.

"Just stream flac hires masters..." That's a little easier said than done. If you can point me to such a service available in the US that doesn't cost significantly more than $20 per month, I'd be grateful. Otherwise, I just answered your question.

 

Not really. The question is why the industry won't give Tidal actual hi-res to stream instead of MQA. If you think about what the answer could be, you'd understand some of the anti-MQA attitudes. 

I'd also be willing to put money on the fact that MQA will not stay "free/no extra cost" if it succeeds in establishing itself. What's good in the short term is not always what's best for you in the long term. 

7 hours ago, knickerhawk said:

I sense that a number of vocal participants in this thread (not referring to you) have not personally compared MQA vs. HiRes themselves and have ignored or dismissed the improvements vis-a-vis CDs, yet they are not reluctant to dismiss MQA altogether (inclusive of the CD vs MQA differences). Does that no strike you as a little irresponsible?

Not everyone hears what you hear. Some dislike the sound of MQA or think it is at best a slightly different, but not better sound. They are also against closed, proprietary formats with DRM elements.

7 hours ago, knickerhawk said:

Personally,I have no interest in the discounted downloads. I'm not sure I understand the value proposition there.

It's a pretty big value if you buy downloads regularly. There are people who "pay for" their entire Sublime subscription by the amount they save on downloads. 

[Bob Stern]

Facebook developed an open source, lossless compression algorithm called zstandard that's suitable for streaming and compresses data by a factor of 3 or 4:

 

http://facebook.github.io/zstd/

 

I don’t have a clue whether the CPU demands on the decoding end are compatible with inexpensive streaming endpoints.

[Brinkman Ship]

As a Tidal subscriber, I think MQA is a great value. It allows someone like me to have access to high resolution digital music without having to pay $20 plus for downloads, or invest in hard drives.

[Lee Scoggins]

14 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

A little housekeeping here are four reasons to dismiss MQA without listening to it.

1.      You object to the use of Peter Craven’s patented method to degrade files and then reconstruct them in any commercial recording process.

2.      Can’t use DSP with MQA

3.      Can’t stream a decoded MQA signal to multiple locations making multi-room impossible without multiple licenses. This problem resulted in the first MQA clone.

4.      You’ve read the financial statements of Meridian Audio and MQA Ltd and concluded the market has rejected their ideas.

 

So far I have only seen UK statements on Meridian UK and not all the subsidiaries.  What if there are more profitable subsidiaries? Is Meridian America profitable?

 

Also, what about all the Meridian license revenue from Jaguar and others?

 

Also, MQA is a separate company that is a startup. Capital matters more than early operating performance.  The labels and other investors can inject money as equity holders

 

Also, to say “the market has rejected their ideas” ignores the history of digital innovation.

 

Also, isn’t Stuart married to an heir of the Boston Globe fortune?

[Shadders]

5 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

So far I have only seen UK statements on Meridian UK and not all the subsidiaries.  What if there are more profitable subsidiaries? Is Meridian America profitable?

 

Also, what about all the Meridian license revenue from Jaguar and others?

 

Also, MQA is a separate company that is a startup. Capital matters more than early operating performance.  The labels and other investors can inject money as equity holders

 

Also, to say “the market has rejected their ideas” ignores the history of digital innovation.

 

Also, isn’t Stuart married to an heir of the Boston Globe fortune?

Hi,

Is it true that companies that make a loss can reduce their taxes ?.

Maybe their accounts need to be examined to discover the truth about losses or other ?

Regards,

Shadders.

[Lee Scoggins]

1 minute ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

Is it true that companies that make a loss can reduce their taxes ?.

Maybe their accounts need to be examined to discover the truth about losses or other ?

Regards,

Shadders.

 

Often firms will employ tax strategies to minimize taxes, all legal of course.

 

We cannot claim Meridian is in any financial trouble without having a look at all the statements.

[kumakuma]

19 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

So far I have only seen UK statements on Meridian UK and not all the subsidiaries.  What if there are more profitable subsidiaries? Is Meridian America profitable?

 

This is incorrect.

 

The financial statements freely available from Companies House are the consolidated results ("Financial Statements for Meridian Audio Limited and its subsidiary undertakings")

 

.

 

 

 

 

[Shadders]

2 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Often firms will employ tax strategies to minimize taxes, all legal of course.

 

We cannot claim Meridian is in any financial trouble without having a look at all the statements.

Hi Lee,

Yes - agree - that was my point, if one artificially incurs losses to reduce taxes, then this may account for why Meridian UK looks like a failing company.

As you have stated, people need to see the full detailed accounts.

Regards,

Shadders.

[kumakuma]

6 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

We cannot claim Meridian is in any financial trouble without having a look at all the statements.

 

See my post above. The financial statements that you have seen show the complete picture for Meridian and it's subsidiaries.

[Lee Scoggins]

6 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

This is incorrect.

 

The financial statement freely available from Companies House are the consolidated results ("Financial Statements for Meridian Audio Limited and its subsidiary undertakings")

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

Just for the UK though.  How much money does MAI make?

[eclectic]

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02710631  - Meridian

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09123512 - MQA Ltd

[kumakuma]

8 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Just for the UK though.  How much money does MAI make?

 

Again, NO!

 

Meridian's financial statements are consolidated statements that show the combined results for the parent and the following subsidiaries:

 

 

Note that MAI is included.

[tmtomh]

14 hours ago, Sonicularity said:

 

Isn't a disc just a medium to store a file format, like MQA, MP3, AAC, FLAC, CD-DA, or others?

 

A CD-ROM is just a storage medium. An audio CD is a storage medium too, but not designed as a computer-style storage and retrieval file system. It's designed for real-time playback (aka streaming), and to maximize the playability of the music if the disc gets scratched or otherwise damaged. It's not really an issue these days, but in the 1990s and early 2000s computer operating systems couldn't necessarily be depended upon to be able to copy tracks off an audio CD in the usual simple drop-and-drag way that you can drag and drop files from a CD-ROM, external hard drive, etc. Third-party ripping apps were for a time the only way to do it. And if I understand correctly (and I might not!), an audio CD allows a reading device to locate a track's starting point only down to the accuracy of 1/75th of a second (a single "frame" in the parlance of the audio CD spec).This lack of precision in knowing where the data starts would be completely unacceptable for computer files. But for an audio streaming medium it is fine - if you jump to a given track on on a CD with your CD player, it doesn't matter if the CD player plays a fraction of 1/75 of a second's worth of silence before hand.

 

But all that said, the thrust of your question is totally correct. @WAM has an axe to grind - WAM feels strongly that reading digital audio data from a spinning CD will sound better at your speakers will sound better (or worse, I forget which, as I don't really care) and reading the same digital audio data from a hard drive or solid-state storage medium. 

 

In my view this is hogwash - there are too many other variables, and even if CD vs hard drive can sound different, it doesn't sound better or worse in any consistent, replicable manner. But while WAM says he doesn't want to derail the thread over this, so far it appears that he's going to keep jumping in and promoting this baseless article of faith as long as anyone continues to question it.

[firedog]

54 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

... Stuart married to an heir of the Boston Globe fortune?

don't remember the specifics, but apparently the in laws have twice injected money into Meridian to keep it afloat.