MQA is Vaporware

[miguelito]

Can someone post a link to the Iverson article please? I can’t seem to find it.

[The Computer Audiophile]

45 minutes ago, miguelito said:

Also: The setting is MQA stream sensitive. By default, a non-MQA file will play with F1, and an MQA file will play with M1. It switches automatically back and forth based on the file type. 

And it remembers what you set. If you change MQA to F3, all MQA will be on F3 until you change it again.

 

P.S. John Q. said you're a nice guy :~)

[miguelito]

46 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

And it remembers what you set. If you change MQA to F3, all MQA will be on F3 until you change it again.

 

P.S. John Q. said you're a nice guy :~)

John is a great guy as well. And that is customer service! Next stop is Vivaldi. 

 

When are you gonna come visit anyway?

[miguelito]

51 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

And it remembers what you set. If you change MQA to F3, all MQA will be on F3 until you change it again.

 

P.S. John Q. said you're a nice guy :~)

It’s interesting how MQA has also triggered a host of other implementation complexities like having to switch upsampling filters on a stream by stream basis. 

[labjr]

2 hours ago, miguelito said:

Can someone post a link to the Iverson article please? I can’t seem to find it.

As far as I know, it's in the April issue that's in the mail and not been received by everyone yet. I think at some point it will be on the site on in "As We See it" column 

[FredericV]

On 3/8/2018 at 7:37 PM, Vincent1234 said:

If you're paranoid this is probably true. ? In real life my dCS has no such thing as screwing up regular non-MQA files by applying the specific MQA filtering for those files too. In practice MQA does sound easily better than Redbook, at least when streamed.

My mytek upsamples with MQA's leaky filters unless I completely turn off MQA.

My metrum only does MQA's leaky filter when MQA is being detcted (according to the lead designer) ... I have a version without MQA and I'm not jumping for the MQA module. I warned him MQA can potentially degrade his DAC design for non-MQA content.

R2R dac's  should not upsample for non-MQA content

[Kal Rubinson]

5 hours ago, crenca said:

Not sure how this is relevant, perhaps you could say more.  First, when I look up the name on the Stereophile web site I see he is a regular (several contributions a month) going back several years - not sure what "independant" at this context means. 

I was not referring to Jon Iverson's long relationship with the magazine. What I meant (despite the misspelling) is that, as far as I know, all contributors arrive at their own opinions/conclusions independently.  The editor has not, in my experience, ever asked for an opinion piece.  There have been cases where I have  expressed an opinion to him and then he responds by suggesting that I put it into a contribution for the magazine. 

 

5 hours ago, crenca said:

Second, I wonder how and when he came to his conclusion - "what took him so long" still stands, as well as where did he get his basic data from which to be skeptical?

I have no idea and, I suspect, only he does.

[Indydan]

According to Dale Thorn (who was banned from CA),  we have all made fools of ourselves opposing MQA. 

 

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?24970-MQA-(Master-Quality-Authenticated)-Better-Sound-or-DRM&s=82297a3b6b09502c63d349487a980c3a&p=499504#post499504

 

Dale's opinion is of zero importance. I just thought it was funny (as well as Dale's inflated sense of self importance). 

[MikeyFresh]

43 minutes ago, Indydan said:

Dale's opinion is of zero importance. I just thought it was funny (as well as Dale's inflated sense of self importance). 

 

Both funny and also somewhat disturbing (that inflated sense of self importance).

[Sal1950]

10 hours ago, labjr said:

As far as I know, it's in the April issue that's in the mail and not been received by everyone yet. I think at some point it will be on the site on in "As We See it" column 

Yes, my jaw dropped this afternoon when I read the AWSI editorial in the April issue I just got today. I would think that article will get published to their website in the near future, unless Atkinson decides to bury it.  LOL 

Yep IT"S ABOUT TIME, but I am surprised that any anti-MQA voice is being allowed over there. It's a big "good for the indu$try"  push that almost everyone will make money on plus the record labels love the DRM like attributes. Time will tell if this is a real (if slight) awaking at Stereophile that all is not roses with MQA and they have decided to at least let a bit of the "light of truth" come out. Or if this is just a short hiccup that we'll hear no more of, while all the others there continue to beat the MQA drum and applaud like trained seals.

 

Heck, it did take us a LONG time to get Chris to come around just a bit here at CA too.   LOL 

[Kal Rubinson]

7 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

Yep IT"S ABOUT TIME, but I am surprised that any anti-MQA voice is being allowed over there.

Don't be surprised.  In the 20+ years that I have been writing for Stereophile, I have never experienced any censorship.  

[Sonicularity]

5 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Don't be surprised.  In the 20+ years that I have been writing for Stereophile, I have never experienced any censorship.  

 

Though, one has to consider that you have provided no reason to be censored, which may have contributed to your lengthy tenure.  

[firedog]

20 hours ago, miguelito said:

Can someone post a link to the Iverson article please? I can’t seem to find it.

The online version has a delay for about a month, I think (not sure how long). They do want to sell some magazines, after all. 

[miguelito]

19 hours ago, labjr said:

As far as I know, it's in the April issue that's in the mail and not been received by everyone yet. I think at some point it will be on the site on in "As We See it" column 

Thank you. Just read the column.

 

Firstly, hats off to Jon Iverson for spelling this out. I will keep my Stereophile subscription and cancel all others that do not come forth with this kind of balanced review. I vote with my fecking wallet.

 

Couple of points:

 

1- Dissection of MQA

Completely agree with the viewpoint of compression medicine vs sweetener - a sweetener that is in my opinion complete BS. It’s all about the poisson: DRM and lockdown of the format (duh!).

 

2- Poisson: MQA as a DRM vehicle

I don’t know the details of the history of this but in music DRM’d formats have disappeared. In surround sound, Dolby has maintained a lot of what MQA aspires to.

Does someone understand why this is? 

 

3- Sweetener: Deblurring

Seriously? You’re telling me that these kinds of time corrections are new in MQA? Please...

Then you show me a diagram with a mic, an ADC, and you’re telling me that you can correct the ADC fault? Please... No production workflow is like that (except possibly Cookie Marenco and a few others, for whom the MQA sweetener is more like Splenda than sugar). 

Then they tell me that musicians are “validating” the MQA-encoded version - this is hillariously false... 

 

4- Debunking the sweetener - Couple of things here...

I have listened to a lot of MQA on a very good full-hardware-decoding system (see my signature). My conclusion is:

a- Decoded MQA sound better than non-decoded MQA and better than redbook generally - but it is twice the bandwidth of redbook, mind you.

b- Decoded MQA sounds about the same, though different than most high res versions I own. I have not found one case where some sweetening deblurring made it better.

c- Ultimately - as expected - the quality of the original production determines what you hear in your system.

MQA is a mixed bag. If comparing redbook or undecoded MQA to decoded MQA, then decoded MQA is better - at twice the bandwidth usage compared to redbook, mind you.

 

5- Side effects of MQA implementations that benefit MQA in comparisons

MQA uses a particular filter in the rendering stage. There are many technical hurdles to implement this in a way that the filter is used only when rendering an MQA stream and not when rendering normal streams. So DAC manufacturers have defaulted to use the MQA filter all the time - even for mid-priced DACs (eg Mytek, Aurender). Higher priced DACs (such as dCS Rossini) do not do this. So when comparing MQA to non-MQA files, the latter might be hampered by the use of what generally is not a good filter for standard streams. Is this something MQA Ltd did on purpose? I doubt someone would be that Machiavelian. I don’t want to speculate about that, just make it clear that proper comparisons require that we switch filters to appropriate ones for non-MQA streams.

 

At this point I am fairly negative about MQA...

[miguelito]

43 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Don't be surprised.  In the 20+ years that I have been writing for Stereophile, I have never experienced any censorship.  

I will retain my Stereophile subscription and cancel all others that do not come forth with a balanced view such as this. 

[Kal Rubinson]

37 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

 

Though, one has to consider that you have provided no reason to be censored, which may have contributed to your lengthy tenure.  

That is possible but it is an accurate description of my experience covering a long period of time.  In addition, I have not heard anything to the contrary from any other reviewer.  OTOH, I know of no basis for any speculation of censorship other than suspicion.

[Dr Tone]

10 hours ago, Indydan said:

According to Dale Thorn (who was banned from CA),  we have all made fools of ourselves opposing MQA. 

 

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?24970-MQA-(Master-Quality-Authenticated)-Better-Sound-or-DRM&s=82297a3b6b09502c63d349487a980c3a&p=499504#post499504

 

Dale's opinion is of zero importance. I just thought it was funny (as well as Dale's inflated sense of self importance). 

 

What’s real sad about Dale, is he isn’t even cable of figuring out hog/exclusive mode in his software.  He changes the midi settings in macOS manually for his self important MQA analysis, he then draws concusions about MQA and the dragonfly’s lights based on the core audio resampling he unknowingly chose.

[botrytis]

31 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

 

What’s real sad about Dale, is he isn’t even cable of figuring out hog/exclusive mode in his software.  He changes the midi settings in macOS manually for his self important MQA analysis, he then draws concusions about MQA and the dragonfly’s lights based on the core audio resampling he unknowingly chose.

 

Unfortunately, that is what happens when people THINK they can run experimental procedures and measurements, without people reviewing what they are saying and the procedures. Archimago has said that others have reviewed and verified his claims. That is the key here.

Dale is just an arrogant shill who thinks HE knows what is right (he is BTW, in his mind) without actually having somebody review what he is posting.

[miguelito]

1 hour ago, miguelito said:

2- Poisson: MQA as a DRM vehicle

I don’t know the details of the history of this but in music DRM’d formats have disappeared. In surround sound, Dolby has maintained a lot of what MQA aspires to.

Does someone understand why this is? 

I guess the answer is pretty simple: If DRM is done by the producer - the studios - then they control the spigget completely. If it is done by intermediaries - eg Apple - then it is possible for others to offer alternatives and that’s why DRM fails in the second case. 

 

I am not 100% sure what our leverage point here is? Should we purposefully avoid streaming MQA versions of albums to make our voices heard?

[adamdea]

11 hours ago, Indydan said:

According to Dale Thorn (who was banned from CA),  we have all made fools of ourselves opposing MQA. 

 

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?24970-MQA-(Master-Quality-Authenticated)-Better-Sound-or-DRM&s=82297a3b6b09502c63d349487a980c3a&p=499504#post499504

 

Dale's opinion is of zero importance. I just thought it was funny (as well as Dale's inflated sense of self importance). 

I had an exchange with him the other day. Quite a lot of it was edited out. Even by the standards of people banned from this forum he seemed to have an outstanding gift for obnoxious fatuity

[Indydan]

43 minutes ago, adamdea said:

I had an exchange with him the other day. Quite a lot of it was edited out. Even by the standards of people banned from this forum he seemed to have an outstanding gift for obnoxious fatuity

 

It gets better!

 

Dale just compared his ban from CA, to Mandela's imprisonment and Jesus being crucified! 

 

"Jesus was executed, Dr. King was assassinated, Mandela was imprisoned, and Dale was banned. I feel very honored."

 

Post number 40.

 

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?24970-MQA-(Master-Quality-Authenticated)-Better-Sound-or-DRM/page4

[adamdea]

2 minutes ago, Indydan said:

 

It gets better!

 

Dale just compared his ban from CA, to Mandela's imprisonment and Jesus being crucified! 

 

"Jesus was executed, Dr. King was assassinated, Mandela was imprisoned, and Dale was banned. I feel very honored."

 

Post number 40.

 

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?24970-MQA-(Master-Quality-Authenticated)-Better-Sound-or-DRM/page4

Right after he said to you:

“You're obviously a victim of your misplaced emotional angst. Get a life.”

You couldn’t argue with a person capable of such obvious humiliating self-contradiction. 

[Indydan]

2 hours ago, Sonicularity said:

 

Though, one has to consider that you have provided no reason to be censored, which may have contributed to your lengthy tenure.  

 

Well Kal does write about surround sound. Surround sound is the devil for many 2 channel audiophile purists. One could say Kal has made a career of being controversial. 

[Rt66indierock]

50 minutes ago, miguelito said:

I guess the answer is pretty simple: If DRM is done by the producer - the studios - then they control the spigget completely. If it is done by intermediaries - eg Apple - then it is possible for others to offer alternatives and that’s why DRM fails in the second case. 

 

I am not 100% sure what our leverage point here is? Should we purposefully avoid streaming MQA versions of albums to make our voices heard?

 

Our leverage points are clone the decoder and cut out the DRM in files and make the tool open source.

 

I thought we were purposefully avoiding streaming MQA versions. 

[MikeyFresh]

15 minutes ago, Indydan said:

Dale just compared his ban from CA, to Mandela's imprisonment and Jesus being crucified! 

 

There's that inflated sense of self importance again, apparently much worse than previously thought.