MQA is Vaporware

[John_Atkinson]

4 minutes ago, Ran said:

Because these magazines report on what they are given by the industry. There is no investigative journalism, technical research or perspective.

 

Er, https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold

https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined

 

Perhaps you missed these articles?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[Ralf11]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

Because these magazines report on what they are given by the industry. There is no investigative journalism, technical research or perspective. Because of that, you as the reader has to take things as face value. If you need the education, do the research yourself or use forums like CA. Bear in mind that most of these magazines lack real understanding of digital technologies, computer audio, math and algorithms.  

 

 

Exactly.  Also, They are getting "paid" indirectly via ad $$ to hawk it.  It is as plain as the nose on your face.

[Ran]

13 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Er, https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold

https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined

 

Perhaps you missed these articles?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

These articles are from the last two months and came to be after Stereophile got criticism from industry people and the community. What I did not miss was you going gaga over MQA ("birth of a new world"). Here is a reminder:

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ive-heard-future-streaming-meridians-mqa

 

That was December 2014. It took around 3 years for Stereophile to produce something close to being consider serious. 

[Thuaveta]

22 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Er, https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold

https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined

 

Perhaps you missed these articles?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

With all due respect, as the editor of a publication, perhaps you should re-examine the meaning of the expression "investigative journalism", because sitting down with your chums to compare audio formats might seem like a stretch to some.

[tmtomh]

11 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Er, https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold

https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined

 

Perhaps you missed these articles?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

4 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

Exactly.  Also, They are getting "paid" indirectly via ad $$ to hawk it.  It is as plain as the nose on your face.

 

FFS, people - stop! You don't need to make unsupportable assertions about motives in order to make the argument we all are trying to make about MQA. @John_Atkinson, once again I appreciate that you've stuck around here, and I share your hope that the accusations of corrupt motives won't detract from the substance of the issues.

 

That said, I just re-scanned the three links you provided to ensure they were the Stereophile MQA pieces I've already read (they are). While it is true that two of the pieces contain a fair amount of detail and at least one contains visual data, I would be puzzled and frankly appalled if you were to warrant that these pieces represent anything close to an objective, critical appraisal of MQA.

 

Others have noted the issues, but in the hope of getting a direct response, I'll very briefly list a couple here:

1. There's question (to say the least) about the temporal resolution of human hearing when it comes to complex signals like music. MQA's claims about the necessary level of time-domain accuracy need to be investigated and not accepted at face value.
2. There is no reason given for why file compression is needed for high-res music outside a streaming context (and why it will be needed even in a streaming context in the next, say 3-5 years as bandwidth continues to increase.
3. There is no reason given for why a 48kHz sample rate does not provide sufficient headroom for high quality filtering - and therefore there is no reason given for why 96k and above sample rates would need to be preserved at all via MQA folding/encapsulation.
4. In one of your pieces, you conclude that "short"/"leaky" filters don't necessarily sound better or worse than "long" filters. Yet none of the articles acknowledges the implication of this fact, which is that it means MQA's entire claim to sonic improvement has no basis in fact.
5. No explanation is given for how "deblurring" could possibly work given multitrack recordings using a variety of mic preamps, ADCs, intermediate DAC-ADC stages, and so on. None of the articles even attempts to deal with that.

 

I'm sure I've missed many other issues. But the overall impression - which I would argue is amply supported by direct evidence from the articles you've linked to - is that even when Stereophile acknowledges isolated bits of information that would call MQA's benefits into question, your articles don't clearly state the implications of that information, don't follow them to their logical conclusion. These cruial bits of info seem not to alter or disturb the positive MQA narrative one bit.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, botrytis said:

 

Sorry no. Lossy means you NEVER can get what was removed back. The file will be 17 bit period, you will not have a 192/24. just because they use an up-sampling filter, does not mean if will go back to 192/24 - that is nonsense.

Thank you for telling me in CAPS what I already wrote. Can you not read the word upsampled? That means it is turned into fake 24/192 by filling in/adding bits. 

[Brinkman Ship]

2 hours ago, FredericV said:

 

So you did not read my article?

 

https://darko.audio/2017/07/kih-46-mqas-missing-link/

Thanks for link. And thanks to mansr for links too.

[Brinkman Ship]

2 hours ago, beetlemania said:

Great questions! (Don't know why you'd take anything in TAS at face value)

 

You might also read these sources:

https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music

 

http://www.schiit.com/news/news/why-we-wont-be-supporting-mqa

 

http://fairhedon.com/2017/11/05/an-interview-with-mastering-engineer-brian-lucey/

 

 

http://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/opinion/954-myriad-questions-about-mqa

 

https://archimago.blogspot.com/2017/10/mqa-final-final-comment-simply-put-why.html

 

 

Thanks a bunch. Very, very interesting reading.

[Brinkman Ship]

2 hours ago, FredericV said:

 

Gives a new meaning to "face value": MQA is between 15 and 17 bits:
 

 

Uncle Bob also laughs at 24 and 32 bit in the first minutes.

Hmmmmmm.

[Brinkman Ship]

54 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Er, https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold

https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined

 

Perhaps you missed these articles?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

With all due respect, why were pieces like this not published 2 years ago or more? I can't think of

a single reason why not except for relentless outside pressure.

[beetlemania]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Er, https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-tested-part-2-fold

https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-some-claims-examined

 

Perhaps you missed these articles?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

Thank you for participating here, Mr. Atkinson

 

Most of that writing strikes me as other than "investigative journalism" (FWIW, I've been a subscriber for nearly 20 years and part-time reader for much longer than that).

 

MQA was first billed as "as good as hi-res but in a smaller package" so that it could be streamed in a bandwidth-limited world. Now, bandwidth isn't much, if any, limitation and the goalpost is moved to "it sounds BETTER than hi-res". If you and others prefer MQA sonics, great! There's no accounting for taste, lossy or not.

 

But I haven't noticed much investigative journalism into the compelling reasons MQA is bad for high-end audio (not the least of which is it will make hardware and software more expensive). In particular, I haven't seen you or Jim Austin address the points raised by Linn Audio or Schitt Audio.

 

Nor have you addressed the reasons you sent your raw files, including impulse response, to MQA rather than simply your master. All I can do is speculate. Charles Hansen offered a compelling explanation for why you and Peter McGrath preferred MQA'd versions of your recordings. This could further explain why other listeners, using widely-released recordings, hear little difference, if any, with many listeners reporting degraded SQ.

[Brinkman Ship]

I still say that in some way MQA offers high value to listeners who have not invested in hi rez digital libraries, expensive NAS units, and hard drives. If MQA albums are starting with hirez masters and there is some bits thrown out, I am not sure that is a deal killer.

[MetalNuts]

 The article quoted: "Stuart mentioned in an e-mail to me that much fewer than 1% of recordings contain musical information above 48kHz—something he knows for a fact, because MQA's encoders collect such information as they do their work."

 

Then what's the purpose of manufacturing equipment that claims to have a frequency response of 1-100k Hz, i.e. Meridian's 857 Reference Power Amplifier or DSP 8000 speaker with frequency performance of up to 32k Hz . 

 

If one believes that the human audio range is 20 - 20k Hz and it is pointless to make equipment outside that range. 

 

This makes me wondering what Bob actually believes and the reason why the whole industry does not confine to making equipment within that range like years ago before the SACD era.

[Thuaveta]

3 hours ago, botrytis said:

They are getting paid to hawk it. It is as plain as the nose on your face. I mean Stereophile did testing and their graphs show what people have been saying in this thread (it is not exact as the original, etc) and then they say, "See they are the same", when anyone with any background in looking at data can see they are not.

 

 

57 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

With all due respect, why were pieces like this not published 2 years ago or more? I can't think of

a single reason why not except for relentless outside pressure.

 

Always remember not to ascribe to malice what can properly be explained by incompetence.


 

We all know that high-end audio is a small world. Stereophile (and despite what I just wrote, and my snapping at @John_Atkinson earlier, what follows isn't an indictment of 'em) as a publication, and as writers, are, quite simply, probably a bit too chummy with the industry they're covering.


 

Even if they're in a generally dominant position within their market, it likely isn't as dominant as it was a few years ago. As has been said before, they have a huge vested interest in maintaining good relationships with the manufacturers, both for advertising, but more importantly, for stuff to review. There's probably millions to be made for the industry by pushing MQA, everyone interested in audio and in their right mind wants more HiRes, and I wouldn't be surprised if Stuart and some of writers who wrote about MQA, at Stereophile or elsewhere, went back, quite literally, decades.


 

These relationships are likely relationships of trust, built over, once again, decades. Trust not to break an embargo, trust not to leak a product to a competitor, trust from the writers that what's being described by the manufacturers is what it says it is. The financial relationships are likely secondary compared to what can only be called friendships.


 

This, to me, and it's something that speaks highly of many of the writers' characters, is likely a much more important factor than any advertising contract: they trust their friends to tell them the truth, and to be candid with them, and they, very understandably, don't want to hurt their friends' livelihoods. Once they started getting on the MQA bus, getting off became impossibly difficult, because it'd mean not only admission that they'd failed, professionally, and failed in a manner that greatly diminishes and undermines the authority of the publication (since it's been preaching the gospel of losslessness, and they'd very publicly declared a lossy codec to be equal if not superior) but that they'd been swindled by people they trusted both personally and professionally. Given that so much in high-end audio is about psychology ("do you hear the night-and-day difference between these power cables I'm about to bring to market ?"), this breach of trust is, for any of the writers who worked on MQA both for the magazine and elsewhere, effectively fatal to the ability to both carry out, and be trusted for any subjectively-articulated review in the future.


 

At this point, there are certainly others, but I generally see three ways out of this mess for Stereophile as a publication:


 

a) a serious, thorough, methodical dismantling of MQA, from all angles including financial, which I'm personally uncertain the Stereophile writers are capable of, in terms of investigative journalistic technique or, secondarily, financial ressources. This would be what would be expected of a publication that has the public good at heart, but is unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons.

 

b) doubling-down on MQA support, which is unlikely given the cost in terms of credibility to the readership.

 

c) a pseudo-critical position, where a few reservations are stated by some writers, disregarded by others, and the reader is left confused as to what to think about MQA in general, and, confronted with contradictory analysis from trusted authority figures, drifts into passive acceptance. Knowingly or not, this is straight out of a political propaganda playbook (see below), and it artificially recreates a divide similar to subjectivist vs objectivist lines, which is the second-best thing that can happen to MQA after widespread, unquestioning adoption. This is what we're seeing now, it's unnecessary in light of the evidence, infuriating, and below the standards credible publications should hold themselves to.

 

 

[Ralf11]

29 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I still say that in some way MQA offers high value to listeners who have not invested in hi rez digital libraries, expensive NAS units, and hard drives. If MQA albums are starting with hirez masters and there is some bits thrown out, I am not sure that is a deal killer.

 

 

ok, what is that value??

[Brinkman Ship]

I ask the anti MQA brigade..why did Tidal, which has 2 million CD quality albums to stream, and the labels, sign contracts with MQA if it has so many supposed negatives? I ask for serious replies.

[Thuaveta]

5 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I ask the anti MQA brigade..why did Tidal, which has 2 million CD quality albums to stream, and the labels, sign contracts with MQA if it has so many supposed negatives? I ask for serious replies.

 

Tidal, I don't know. Labels are shareholders, so that might be an incentive, I don't know the details of the financials there. And, for them, there's the open question of what capabilities MQA's DRM has.

[kumakuma]

31 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I ask the anti MQA brigade..why did Tidal, which has 2 million CD quality albums to stream, and the labels, sign contracts with MQA if it has so many supposed negatives? I ask for serious replies.

 

argumentum ad verecundiam

[Ralf11]

38 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

 

ok, what is that value??

 

 

one more time

[The Computer Audiophile]

48 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I ask the anti MQA brigade..why did Tidal, which has 2 million CD quality albums to stream, and the labels, sign contracts with MQA if it has so many supposed negatives? I ask for serious replies.

The only way anyone will be able to answer with the real facts is if he was in on the meetings at Tidal with the labels and MQA ltd.

 

Anything else is speculation. 

[Rt66indierock]

7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The only way anyone will be able to answer with the real facts is if he was in on the meetings at Tidal with the labels and MQA ltd.

 

Anything else is speculation. 

 

I like my answer in the original post, second paragraph. 

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I ask the anti MQA brigade..why did Tidal, which has 2 million CD quality albums to stream, and the labels, sign contracts with MQA if it has so many supposed negatives? I ask for serious replies.

 

Brink,

Part of your question dealing with the labels is in the second paragraph of the original post. Please go read it.

 

As for Tidal, based on conversations I’ve had with people who were there market differentiation. They thought a hifi tier would increase Tidal’s appeal and guys pushing high resolution streaming are pretty slick.

 

Not reading the original post is a good reason to question your motives here.

[Rt66indierock]

2 hours ago, Thuaveta said:

 

 

Always remember not to ascribe to malice what can properly be explained by incompetence.


 

We all know that high-end audio is a small world. Stereophile (and despite what I just wrote, and my snapping at @John_Atkinson earlier, what follows isn't an indictment of 'em) as a publication, and as writers, are, quite simply, probably a bit too chummy with the industry they're covering.


 

Even if they're in a generally dominant position within their market, it likely isn't as dominant as it was a few years ago. As has been said before, they have a huge vested interest in maintaining good relationships with the manufacturers, both for advertising, but more importantly, for stuff to review. There's probably millions to be made for the industry by pushing MQA, everyone interested in audio and in their right mind wants more HiRes, and I wouldn't be surprised if Stuart and some of writers who wrote about MQA, at Stereophile or elsewhere, went back, quite literally, decades.


 

These relationships are likely relationships of trust, built over, once again, decades. Trust not to break an embargo, trust not to leak a product to a competitor, trust from the writers that what's being described by the manufacturers is what it says it is. The financial relationships are likely secondary compared to what can only be called friendships.


 

This, to me, and it's something that speaks highly of many of the writers' characters, is likely a much more important factor than any advertising contract: they trust their friends to tell them the truth, and to be candid with them, and they, very understandably, don't want to hurt their friends' livelihoods. Once they started getting on the MQA bus, getting off became impossibly difficult, because it'd mean not only admission that they'd failed, professionally, and failed in a manner that greatly diminishes and undermines the authority of the publication (since it's been preaching the gospel of losslessness, and they'd very publicly declared a lossy codec to be equal if not superior) but that they'd been swindled by people they trusted both personally and professionally. Given that so much in high-end audio is about psychology ("do you hear the night-and-day difference between these power cables I'm about to bring to market ?"), this breach of trust is, for any of the writers who worked on MQA both for the magazine and elsewhere, effectively fatal to the ability to both carry out, and be trusted for any subjectively-articulated review in the future.


 

At this point, there are certainly others, but I generally see three ways out of this mess for Stereophile as a publication:


 

a) a serious, thorough, methodical dismantling of MQA, from all angles including financial, which I'm personally uncertain the Stereophile writers are capable of, in terms of investigative journalistic technique or, secondarily, financial ressources. This would be what would be expected of a publication that has the public good at heart, but is unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons.

 

b) doubling-down on MQA support, which is unlikely given the cost in terms of credibility to the readership.

 

c) a pseudo-critical position, where a few reservations are stated by some writers, disregarded by others, and the reader is left confused as to what to think about MQA in general, and, confronted with contradictory analysis from trusted authority figures, drifts into passive acceptance. Knowingly or not, this is straight out of a political propaganda playbook (see below), and it artificially recreates a divide similar to subjectivist vs objectivist lines, which is the second-best thing that can happen to MQA after widespread, unquestioning adoption. This is what we're seeing now, it's unnecessary in light of the evidence, infuriating, and below the standards credible publications should hold themselves to.

 

 

 

In the case of a) any posts relating to the financial affairs of Meridian Audio and MQA keep getting deleted most places other than here. And look at the mess Lee Scoggins made of financial analysis and he spent a little time at KPMG. 

[Indydan]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi @Brinkman Ship, Welcome to CA. Or, should I say welcome back to CA or welcome to CA under a new name?

 

Based on your posts, your registered email address (mqatruth@<domain>.com), and the fact you're obscuring your physical location pretty well (IP addresses from all over the world, just in the last few hours), I'm quite suspicious of you. It appears you have an agenda and/or something to hide. 

 

I don't mind anyone hiding his location or using an email address such as yours, but given the volatility of this topic, it seems you are hear for reasons other than to truly discuss MQA with the community.

 

Please be careful and follow the rules.

 

Brinkman Ship, I added your name to the chart. Just in case... 

 

Put this one in the tin foil hat department, but Brinkman Ship has the same initials as Bob Stuart. They both also have the same initials as... 

 

 

MQA "enthusiast"                        Reason for no longer posting on CA

Peter Veth                                                          BANNED

WitchDoctor                                                      BANNED

Lee Scoggins                            DISTRACTED by jumping between forums

Michael Lavorgna                    BANNED for telling someone to go fuck his mother

Brinkman Ship                                                            ?

 

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

I still say that in some way MQA offers high value to listeners who have not invested in hi rez digital libraries, expensive NAS units, and hard drives. If MQA albums are starting with hirez masters and there is some bits thrown out, I am not sure that is a deal killer.

But that ignores the simple fact that the hi-rez masters can be streamed; or if bandwidth is thought to be an issue, a properly dithered 18/96 version of a 24/96 hi-res master is smaller than the equivalent MQA file and throws out less bits. 

 

So again, why do we need a closed; proprietary format?