MQA is Vaporware

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, esldude said:

Now I am not in the business.  So might be wrong.  Reading about it the tour was probably mostly going to the artist.  In recent years record labels have wanted to use what is called a 360 contract.  In a positive light it means the label and artist become more like business partners sharing expenses and profits.  In less kind terms it means some touring money, TV appearance money and right on down to the Tshirt sales and concession sales the artist mostly got to keep goes partly to the label.   360 means everything and anything related the music the label has its hand out for cut.

 

"360 deal" does sound better than "comprehensively screwed."

[Jud]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I look at this like any other job. If you want to invent Post-It Notes on your own, go for it. Otherwise go work for 3M who will pay you peanuts compared to the value of the invention. 

 

I agree.  With few exceptions, people who can negotiate with large companies in groups come up with deals that are better than folks who have to represent themselves individually.

 

There is the alternative, as you say, to go it alone.  In the music space, Prince, the Grateful Dead, and even the Beatles tried this unsuccessfully.  There's an entire distribution and marketing infrastructure you're not tied into if you go that route.  I don't know how many people are making even a reasonable living through Bandcamp and playing live, but I would guess it isn't a large number.  So yes, you have that choice, but the economic incentives are skewed the other way.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Jud, how can you say the Grateful Dead were unsuccessful? They had one of the best business models for a band ever. The Dead are a case study in business schools to this day because they succeeded. And Jerry Garcia’s estate was valued at $9.9 million. Unsuccessful people don’t pass away with that kind of money.

 

There are two topics in this thread I won’t discuss, your post touched on one and the issue that lead to the Michael Lavorgna bashing is the other.

 

The Dead were tremendously successful at many things, but creating their own label and new studio recording distribution system wasn't one of them.

[Jud]

Is it really necessary to pounce on every expression of enjoyment of MQA?

 

 I don't think it's any great shakes myself, but I don't feel that everyone in the world is required to agree.

[Jud]

Boys, boys - guy said he heard a demo and was impressed.  No claims of scientific or engineering exactitude, double (or more likely in the audio realm, single) blind testing - just, he listened, he was impressed, he likes MQA.  Do you really, really need to wrestle this one to the ground?

[Jud]

11 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

I have heard some  and they sounded like, I will be scientific here, CRAP! That is part of the reason why I am so skeptical.

 

Well, um, that kind of undercuts your calls for third party blind tests (you said double blind, but I don't think you actually meant double blind as correctly defined) for anyone wanting to say they like MQA, doesn't it? 

[Jud]

8 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Is there a scientific way to do figure out what someone likes best?

 

Even if you do, there remains the question of what "likes best" actually means.  The story of the Pepsi Challenge and New Coke is instructive.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, jhwalker said:

 

Some producers have gone back to their original master, and compared the MQA version with it.  They liked the MQA version better, saying it was closer to what happened in the venue than did the "master" that was produced at the time.

 

Does the original master still "win" in this scenario?

 

It raises an interesting philosophical question, doesn't it? 

 

 

[Jud]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

That's where I was headed. 

 

Glad I could help. 

[Jud]

4 minutes ago, jhwalker said:

 

They are *very careful* not to say it's "lossless".  And as we know, it is not.

 

I think the reason to make the compression lossy was to make whatever encryption is used harder to bypass/crack, because you can't know what went in from what comes out.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, audiventory said:

 

For me it more like to MP3 vs. AAC.

 

Hi Yuri.  The point Chris (who will correct me if I misrepresent him) and I were making is this:

 

- There were people who preferred Pepsi to Coke under certain testing conditions.

 

- As a result, New Coke was formulated, which tasted more like Pepsi than the traditional Coke formula.

 

- Under non-testing conditions, the market resoundingly rejected New Coke, including many of the same people who had preferred Pepsi in the testing.

 

So this is about how test conditions affect preferences.

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

That's not the reason. The difficulty of "cracking" the encryption doesn't depend on the lossy or lossless nature of the compression.

 

The main reason for making it lossy is that achieving the desired compression ratio is impossible otherwise.

 

Thanks for the correction.

[Jud]

6 minutes ago, audiventory said:

 

1. In the patent used "lossless" term https://www.google.com/patents/US9548055

 

2. 10%+90% also good linked with point #1

 

Yeah, "audibly" lossless, which doesn't have a strictly mathematically defined meaning.

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, audiventory said:

 

Hi Jud,

Test conditions more important than test even

 

Market response more complex than better product. First is bigger number of people and their issues, that solved via product. I not once heard recommendations don't use focus-groups.

 

Some people think that double blind test between 2 option is enough careful.

 

But I heard opinion, that need add 3rd option (mp3 320k, as example), but nobody must know about it, only push "like"/"dislike"

 

May be test with 2 options assigned to MQA and 1 option for WAV or contrary. And listener should assign MQA or WAV for each option.

 

Hi Yuri.  I don't think that stuff works a lot of the time for audio, due to the short time span of echoic memory and other confounders.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

That is a standard useful only for compression/decompression schemes, not MQA, which is only partly such a scheme.

 

Hi Fitz -

 

As to the filtering part of MQA, I agree.  Very few filters used in AD or DA are lossless.

 

However, the compression used in MQA is itself lossy, when as you've noted, lossless audio compression is ubiquitous.  That's where I fault MQA for using the term "lossless," which has a precise mathematical meaning when talking about compression, to mean an entirely different thing: that its lossy compression supposedly doesn't throw out any information that is perceptually significant.

 

I suppose it is somewhat pedantic to want certain words to have their traditional definitions rather than becoming malleable marketing concepts.  But once we start playing with those meanings, confusion can result, as I think is occurring with regard to MQA.

[Jud]

11 hours ago, audiventory said:

 

As I understand, "debluring" in MQA is applying "lazy" (instead "brickwall") filter for folding/unfolding. It's correct?

 

John Atkinson, Stereophile, December 2014:

 

Quote

I understand that mastering with MQA uses Meridian's "apodizing filter" but fine-tuned to the actual A/D converter originally used. According to Bob Stuart, this is possible because 1) there is only a small population of professional A/D converters and 2) record companies actually keep good records on what converter was used for the original sessions and/or mastering.

 

Edit: Yuri, if I recall correctly, regarding the D/A end of things, mansr found the filtering options available from MQA to be too "lazy" to remove ringing.  So if they are in fact de-blurring/removing ringing with apodizing filters, it must be at the A/D or D/D stage.

[Jud]

6 minutes ago, mansr said:

Well, that's a first. Do you also understand quantum electrodynamics?

 

Perhaps slightly over the top (though if he *did* understand QED or QCD or whatever you like to call it, that would be a hoot  ).

 

 I feel reasonably comfortable concluding from all sources of information I've currently seen, that "deblurring" is MQA's snappy term for removing ringing (and any "time smear" that may or may not go with it).

[Jud]

22 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Do we know this "different masters" thing for a fact on Tidal?  Do we know which ones? Is there a list somewhere?

 

It is possible there were different masters.  But, we listened to a number of selections in different genres from different labels.  Some recordings were fairly newly made, some were analog remasters, etc. 

 

The results, the "sonic signature" of the difference was similar between them all.  After the first few comparisons, where we learned what the difference sounded like, two of us could then spot it immediately blind, not double blind, with our host making the selections.  It is not true objective science, but it was close enough to convince us. So, I do not think the "different masters" theory was at work.

 

 

Hi Fitz - Granted it may not have affected your listening, I did hear plainly different masters between regular Tidal and MQA files: instruments in different locations.

[Jud]

8 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Sure everybody has heard ABOUT it.  But, have you actually heard it?  What do you think about how it sounds?  Sal?  Anybody?

 

Yes, but - not the "full decode," but the first "unfolding," and A+'s upsampling after that.

 

I thought the times when the masters were different, the MQA masters were uniformly better, so I'm hoping those masterings become available without the MQA treatment.  The reason I say that is because when the masterings were identical, I thought the non-MQA files I'd downloaded were slightly better.

[Jud]

A little surprised that more people aren't seeing the much bigger picture here.

 

MQA has so far contracted with the sixth largest streaming company (if I recall the figures on Tidal correctly), and I don't know who offers MQA downloads at the moment - can anyone tell us?

 

Meanwhile, your ability to hear the music you want is fading into the past due to something a lot of MQA haters are actually in favor of, streaming.  Streaming is, by actual numbers, taking over the marketplace from downloads.  As it does, the availability of artists many of us like but who weren't hugely popular in their day, and the availability of masterings with reasonable DR levels from artists who *were* hugely popular, fades away.  Good luck looking for reasonably priced used CDs at local shops or on eBay, Amazon, etc.

 

But keep on focusing your energy on MQA, guys, I'm sure the music industry is eager to let itself get pwned again by some third party like they did with Apple.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

DSD != SACD. There are other formats for delivering DSD. In fact, most DSD content these days is distributed as unencrypted downloads. No DRM there.

 

I would (seriously) love to see some figures on this.

[Jud]

24 minutes ago, mansr said:

I don't have any sales figures, but consider these facts:

- There are only 3 SACD manufacturing facilities in the world.

- Lots of websites sell DSD downloads but not SACDs.

- DSD128 and higher is by definition not SACD.

 

11,596 items under SACD format on HRAudio.net: http://www.hraudio.net/music.php?format=1&genre=0&label=0&page=1

 

I assume all are not currently for sale.  However, I believe the SACD market in Asia and in the classical genre are doing all right, which is why I'd like to see actual sales figures for silver discs compared to DSD downloads.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, mansr said:

DSD != SACD. There are other formats for delivering DSD. In fact, most DSD content these days is distributed as unencrypted downloads. No DRM there.

[Emphasis added.]

 

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

The exact numbers are beside the point which is that DSD downloads don't have DRM.

 

Right - were you distinguishing SACDs from "DSD content"?  I wasn't, which is one reason I asked if there were sales figures on this (the other reason is because I'm just curious to know).

[Jud]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Perhaps I don't understand the logic. 

 

 

"...your ability to hear the music you want is fading into the past due to something a lot of MQA haters are actually in favor of, streaming."

 

The ability to hear music that was never released on CD, and multiple remasters of the same thing, has never been better because of streaming. I've been listening to a lot of Fleetwood Mac lately. Looking at Tidal, I can listen to many versions of the albums without purchasing anything. It's simple for a label to just throw an album up on a streaming service rather than produce a physical product. 

 

Perhaps I'm not following the logic, but I'm very willing to listen.

 

Hi Chris -

 

I was thinking of our very enjoyable afternoon at Top Secret CA HQ  .  OK, so my interests are probably a little different than most folks', but remember how difficult it was to find the Stones' version of "Money" to compare with the Beatles'?  And that it was impossible to find the original version of the song "Heigh-Ho" from Snow White to compare it to Tom Waits' version?  So that's one piece of this: Even with so many tracks available, the streaming services don't have everything I want to listen to.  Of course I shouldn't expect that they would; but what happens if they become the only game in town?  If, as with so many other areas of commerce, the industry grows to love the idea of content you can never stop paying for?  (Thank you, cable TV or whichever industry spawned this model.)  So that's one piece: Obscure artists or obscure tracks by famous artists, or stuff that just gets old, that either is never picked up by the streaming services or is no longer available from the one you're subscribed to.

 

Another piece of this has to do with best quality versions of tracks from relatively famous artists.  My wife loves a couple of Bob Seger albums.  I looked at the DR Database and various other references to see what was likely to be the best mastering.  Here's what I saw:

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=bob+seger&album=against+the+wind

 

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=bob+seger&album=night+moves

 

Quite a difference between the new remasterings and the original CDs, eh?  So I bought the old CDs from a very reasonable vendor on eBay.  But those old CDs won't be around forever, and as they get rarer, they'll get more expensive.

 

If you have a hankering for some Bob Seger tonight (I would assume that as popular as Seger was, those albums will be available), which of those masterings do you think you'll be listening to?  Or how about Fleetwood Mac, let's say their most famous album, "Rumours"?  Will you be streaming the "Deluxe Edition," average DR 10?  Or earlier versions, average DR 15?

 

I know we've been talking about "lossy compression" in the context of MQA, but even its harshest critics say they expect little to no audible difference coming from that.  With the DR figures shown here, we're talking about a different kind of compression that may very well be "audibly lossy." 

[Jud]

Just now, mansr said:

Ok, I shouldn't have said "most" without having figures to show. If I instead say "lots of" it doesn't change the point I was trying to make. That said, when shopping around for music, I personally come across far more downloads than SACDs.

 

I look for downloads first as a matter of convenience, as well as supporting several vendors I like in the process.