MQA is Vaporware

[oneway23]

30 minutes ago, mansr said:

Where Qobuz is available doesn't really matter. Most of the world can't get Tidal either. The point is that Qobuz is able to stream lossless 96/24, thereby refuting the claim that MQA would be required for high-res streaming.

I don't believe MQA is required for hi-res streaming at all.  My point was that it doesn't really matter to me if 24/96 loseless streaming is happening elsewhere until someone actually comes to market here in the U.S. and provides such a service.  

Those in countries served by Qobuz obviously shouldn't even concern themselves w/ MQA if they're looking for hi-res streaming options.

[mansr]

5 minutes ago, oneway23 said:

I don't believe MQA is required for hi-res streaming at all.  My point was that it doesn't really matter to me if 24/96 loseless streaming is happening elsewhere until someone actually comes to market here in the U.S. and provides such a service.

Maybe Tidal would be streaming lossless high-res too if they hadn't fallen in the MQA trap.

[oneway23]

Just now, mansr said:

Maybe Tidal would be streaming lossless high-res too if they hadn't fallen in the MQA trap.

That would have been ideal.  I'd love to have been a fly in on those negotiations.

 

I don't know the length of the deal, but, there's always hope of changing course.

Considering the number of top executives Tidal has shuffled in and out over the past few years, there's a good chance!

[Dr Tone]

51 minutes ago, mansr said:

The point is that Qobuz is able to stream lossless 96/24, thereby refuting the claim that MQA would be required for high-res streaming.

 

Qobuz has kicked it up a notch and offers 24/192 streaming when they have the content.

[Thuaveta]

44 minutes ago, oneway23 said:

Those in countries served by Qobuz obviously shouldn't even concern themselves w/ MQA if they're looking for hi-res streaming options.

 

They should, and that's the bigger problem.

[left channel]

3 hours ago, oneway23 said:

Tone, I've tried to use HolaVPN on numerous occasions to create an account on Qobuz over the years, to no avail.  I've also just emailed them directly and was told by their customer service that Qobuz used to give accounts to US residents 3 or so years ago, but, no longer.

 

If you have a way for me to do so, I'd greatly appreciate the assistance (via PM), but, until they launch in the US with a legal option (I understand it's apparently on the way), I'm not really sure this is a fair comparison to the large majority of folks here in the states.

 

When my wife and my parents can log onto the site, create an account, and enter payment details in their native language and without a VPN/geographical workaround, we can compare options.

 

At this point it's an open secret, and not likely a big deal as they'd like to transition us to long-term local customers now. The problem most people encounter is that they've tried this via VPN only after they've already been to the Qobuz UK website. Their browser now has a cookie identifying their location.

What you need to do is clear your browser cookies (and maybe the cache just to be safe), and then VPN to a UK server before accessing the website again. Also pay via PayPal to avoid international transaction fees, and to avoid giving a billing address of course. Download the desktop app while you're in there. Then log off, log off VPN, and you're good-to-go. You can also download and use the iOS and Android apps from anywhere.

We have a Qobuz USA thread here:

 

[oneway23]

20 minutes ago, Thuaveta said:

 

They should, and that's the bigger problem.

 

Not my hill to die on.

[oneway23]

10 minutes ago, left channel said:

 

At this point it's an open secret, and not likely a big deal as they'd like to transition us to long-term local customers now. The problem most people encounter is that they've tried this via VPN only after they've already been to the Qobuz UK website. Their browser now has a cookie identifying their location.

What you need to do is clear your browser cookies (and maybe the cache just to be safe), and then VPN to a UK server before accessing the website again. Also pay via PayPal to avoid international transaction fees, and to avoid giving a billing address of course. Download the desktop app while you're in there. Then log off, log off VPN, and you're good-to-go. You can also download and use the iOS and Android apps from anywhere.

 

Much obliged for the info!

[Thuaveta]

24 minutes ago, oneway23 said:

Not my hill to die on.

 

Keep in mind the Kindle 1984 precedent: assuming you want to guarantee your continued freedom to stream higher-than-MQA-quality content, it unfortunately is, whether you want it or not.

[Don Hills]

17 hours ago, Indydan said:

...

Put this one in the tin foil hat department...

 

The email address sounded familiar... user MQA Truth was banned from WBF recently. Surely just a coincidence... 

[oneway23]

31 minutes ago, Thuaveta said:

 

Keep in mind the Kindle 1984 precedent: assuming you want to guarantee your continued freedom to stream higher-than-MQA-quality content, it unfortunately is, whether you want it or not.

 

The article says that the party responsible for uploading the copies of the Orwell books did not own the copyright, and so, the offending files were removed.  This incident you reference, by the way, occurred almost A DECADE ago.  In any event, I can easily purchase 1984 from Amazon for any device I so choose right now.

 

I'm guessing the next phase of this conversation is going to involve various angles on the ownership vs. rental debate, with the potential for mentions about recent lawsuits against Spotify, replete with highly-philosophical  viewpoints around the notion that our rented content is never guaranteed.  Let's just agree to save my disabled hands the wear and put this aside, because, again, I'm not interested in going down that hole.  There are plenty of others around here who are more knowledgeable and far move entertaining to read than I. 

[adamdea]

7 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Can you point out specifically what errors and misunderstandings Mr. Austin was guilty of in his articles..I believe there was Part One and Two?

"An impulse is a very short signal—the shortest possible signal, in fact—so it's tempting to think of a test of an audio system's impulse response as a test of its response to very short signals. An impulse-response test is that, but because an impulse contains all the frequencies—for band-limited systems, all the in-band frequencies—it's a useful and commonly used measure of a system's overall fidelity.”

Hmm really? If so how does that work? Talk me through an example of how we measure the overall fidelity of two systems in this way.

[firedog]

3 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Let's try this...who determined that "Hi-rez" was "better" than Redbook CD...Who determined DSD was more "analog like"?

 

You can say that the market was rigged so that everyone went out and bought 24/192 and DSD resolution DACs.

Non sequitur. No one determined anything. Those are all freely available formats with no proprietary strings or royalty payments attached to them. All have freeware software solutions for playback and are open to anyone to add to his or her software or HW capabilities - if they like them and if they choose to. 

The MQA situation is totally different: closed proprietary format. Non disclosure agreements. Labels required to commit to MQA conversion of catalog (which they weren’t required to do with hi-res and DSD because there was no leverage on them-so they didn’t convert lots of material). 

 

Ask yourself: it’s been practical for about 20 years for the labels to release everything possible in hires masters in  open formats of some type, but they haven’t done it. Especially in the last few years to streaming-there’s been almost no hi-res licensed to streaming.

Suddenly this closed proprietary format comes along, and they are jumping at the bit to convert their catalogs to it and release what they are calling high res “masters”.

Doesn’t that sudden “altruism” seem a little strange? 

Answer: yes. Conclusion: follow the money - or the future revenue streams they are planning on - if you want to know why this sudden “altruism” has come about. 

[Ralf11]

This is like other things: you have a problem (say, a loss of jobs by un-educated elderly people, or by young liberal arts majors) but then the proposed solution to the problem is elected (or not) and is no solution at all.

 

MQA is no solution at all to the problem of Hi-Res mobile streaming in some countries, and comes with unacceptable baggage.

[Brinkman Ship]

27 minutes ago, adamdea said:

"An impulse is a very short signal—the shortest possible signal, in fact—so it's tempting to think of a test of an audio system's impulse response as a test of its response to very short signals. An impulse-response test is that, but because an impulse contains all the frequencies—for band-limited systems, all the in-band frequencies—it's a useful and commonly used measure of a system's overall fidelity.”

Hmm really? If so how does that work? Talk me through an example of how we measure the overall fidelity of two systems in this way.

Well, I must say, putting aside accuracy, that paragraph is a total mess, utter gibberish. How that passed editing is beyond me.

[Brinkman Ship]

38 minutes ago, firedog said:

Non sequitur. No one determined anything. Those are all freely available formats with no proprietary strings or royalty payments attached to them. All have freeware software solutions for playback and are open to anyone to add to his or her software or HW capabilities - if they like them and if they choose to. 

The MQA situation is totally different: closed proprietary format. Non disclosure agreements. Labels required to commit to MQA conversion of catalog (which they weren’t required to do with hi-res and DSD because there was no leverage on them-so they didn’t convert lots of material). 

 

Ask yourself: it’s been practical for about 20 years for the labels to release everything possible in hires masters in  open formats of some type, but they haven’t done it. Especially in the last few years to streaming-there’s been almost no hi-res licensed to streaming.

Suddenly this closed proprietary format comes along, and they are jumping at the bit to convert their catalogs to it and release what they are calling high res “masters”.

Doesn’t that sudden “altruism” seem a little strange? 

Answer: yes. Conclusion: follow the money - or the future revenue streams they are planning on - if you want to know why this sudden “altruism” has come about. 

Ok, hold your horse.

 

First of all, let us stop operating under the false premise that there is demand for 24 bit streaming. THERE IS NOT.

 

If there was, Apple, Spotify, and others would be have already done it. There is not even demand for CD QUALITY streaming.

 

Second, I do not believe the three majors are rushing to convert their entire catalogs to MQA. I have seen no evidence of this.

 

 

[John_Atkinson]

30 minutes ago, adamdea said:

An impulse-response test is that, but because an impulse contains all the frequencies—for band-limited systems, all the in-band frequencies—it's a useful and commonly used measure of a system's overall fidelity.”

Hmm really? If so how does that work? Talk me through an example of how we measure the overall fidelity of two systems in this way.

 For Stereophile's speaker reviews I use the calculated impulse response (derived from either an MLS or a chirp signal) to measure the fidelity of the speaker under test. See, for example, https://www.stereophile.com/content/kef-reference-5-loudspeaker-measurements where I derive, from the measured impulse response, the frequency response, the radiation pattern in vertical and horizontal planes, the in-room response, the step response, and the cumulative spectra-decay plot.

 

For measurements of digital products I use a diagnostic signal that I created 20 years ago, comprising a single sample at 0dBFS to derive the impulse response of the reconstruction filter. This maps the filter coefficients, revealing if it is minimum- or linear-phase and whether it has a fast or slow rolloff.

 

I am currently using the analog equivalent of this signal, generated with a monostable multivibrator circuit I built,  to characterize all the A/D converters I have available, to examine the dispersion of their anti-aliasing filters. I actually used this signal many years ago, to examine the behavior of Wadia's spline filter; see

https://www.stereophile.com/content/wadia-850-cd-player-page-2

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[firedog]

19 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Ok, hold you horse.

 

First of all, let us stop operating under the false premise that there is demand for 24 bit streaming. THERE IS NOT.

 

If there was, Apple, Spotify, and others would be have already done it. There is not even demand for CD QUALITY streaming.

 

Second, I do not believe the three majors are rushing to convert their entire catalogs to MQA. I have seen no evidence of this.

 

 

I didn’t say there was demand, I said how come there has been next to no hi-res material licensed to streaming until MQA came along, and suddenly there are thousands and thousands of titles? I agree there is little demand even for CD quality streaming. So MQA is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. 

 

And that’s exactly why we should be very suspicious. Why would the industry move in this direction? Like I said before, “follow the money” - or at least the potential for monetizing MQA after it becomes established.

 

Evidence: The majors have all committed to MQA. They’ve all said they are converting their catalogs as soon as possible. Their agreement with MQA requires them to convert their catalogs. Thousands and thousands of MQA titles have appeared within a few months in all music genres. So far there’s no extra charge for this benevolence. And you see no evidence?

[mansr]

12 minutes ago, adamdea said:

"An impulse is a very short signal—the shortest possible signal, in fact—so it's tempting to think of a test of an audio system's impulse response as a test of its response to very short signals. An impulse-response test is that, but because an impulse contains all the frequencies—for band-limited systems, all the in-band frequencies—it's a useful and commonly used measure of a system's overall fidelity.”

Hmm really? If so how does that work? Talk me through an example of how we measure the overall fidelity of two systems in this way.

A linear system is fully characterised by its impulse response. Indeed, the output is the convolution of the input with the impulse response. However, visual inspection of the impulse response tells us very little. Symmetrical impulse response means it's linear phase, but that's about all we can say just by looking at it. Far more useful is a Bode plot showing the amplitude and phase response as function of frequency. A pole/zero plot is also informative though a little harder to interpret without training.

 

Regarding fidelity of audio systems, we obviously want a flat frequency response in the audible range. For ADCs, DACs, preamps, and amps, this is a non-issue. Microphones can be made that are very close to flat, though that is not always desired. Speakers are still anything but flat. To an extent, speaker anomalies can be compensated for with DSP correction, but MQA prevents this.

 

Aside from transducers, the greatest impact on fidelity is from non-linear distortions (harmonic, intermodulation) in primarily power amplifiers (which MQA does not address) and, to a much lesser degree, other analogue components. The key word here is non-linear. This means the effect cannot be inferred from an impulse response.

 

In summary, an impulse response plot is essentially useless in assessing the fidelity of an audio component. Impulse responses are frequently measured and discussed, but not for the reasons Jim Austin alleges.

[mansr]

20 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

First of all, let us stop operating under the false premise that there is demand for 24 bit streaming. THERE IS NOT.

 

If there was, Apple, Spotify, and others would be have already done it. There is not even demand for CD QUALITY streaming.

 

Second, I do not believe the three majors are rushing to convert their entire catalogs to MQA. I have seen no evidence of this.

I'd say those are accurate observations.

[mansr]

13 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

I am currently using the analog equivalent of this signal, generated with a monostable multivibrator circuit I built,  to characterize all the A/D converters I have available, to examine the dispersion of their anti-aliasing filters.

What is the rise/fall time and duration of this pulse?

[firedog]

9 minutes ago, mansr said:

I'd say those are accurate observations.

Compared to the rate at which standard hi res was made available to the public - slowly and over many years - especially if you didn’t own a proprietary SACD player, the rate at which MQA titles are being released to streaming  is astoundingly rapid. 

 

And while not a “major”, the  seemingly simultaneous release of nearly the entire ECM catalog to MQA streaming  is a phenomenon not previously seen with regards to standard hi-res. I’d say that’s a good indicator of the “rush” to MQA.

[Lee Scoggins]

On 1/30/2018 at 2:56 PM, mansr said:

Of course it's not Lee. It's just another troll for hire.

 

It's not me. I'm just on break.

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, firedog said:

Compared to the rate at which standard hi res was made available to the public - slowly and over many years - especially if you didn’t own a proprietary SACD player, the rate at which MQA titles are being released to streaming  is astoundingly rapid. 

SACD and MQA have one thing in common: DRM. Lots and lots of DRM.

[firedog]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

SACD and MQA have one thing in common: DRM. Lots and lots of DRM.

Yep. Lot of titles released  to SACD years before they were released in any other hi-res format, if at all.