MQA is Vaporware

[Brinkman Ship]

Not to derail Jim Austin's fun..but side note, poster Thuaveta suggested to me that Apple Quicktime plays back FLAC just  fine..and damned if he is not correct. I was able to playback FLAC on a Mac Book Pro running High Sierra with QT. I stand corrected on Apple support with OS. It seems iOS devices still have a way to go.

[tmtomh]

2 hours ago, Jim Austin said:

What are you folks still on about? Still assuming that all sampling theory ended with Shannon? This place is obviously a massive circle-jerk, but your posts are visible to the outside world, so you run the risk of embarrassing yourselves

 

Yes, all posts are indeed visible to the outside world - but clearly that didn't stop you from embarrassing yourself, so it's curious you'd express concern about others doing so.

[tmtomh]

1 minute ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Not to derail Jim Austin's fun..but side note, poster Thuveta suggested to me that Apple Quicktime plays back FLACjust  fine..and damned if he is not correct. I was able to playback FLAC on a Mac Book Pro running High Sierra with QT.

 

Yes, starting in recent macOS updates, the OS/Quicktime can handle FLAC. iTunes cannot yet do so, unfortunately, but it's still really handy because now one can preview FLAC files in the Finder without having to convert them or load them up in VLC or whatever.

[Brinkman Ship]

Just now, tmtomh said:

 

Yes, starting in recent macOS updates, the OS/Quicktime can handle FLAC. iTunes cannot yet do so, unfortunately, but it's still really handy because now one can preview FLAC files in the Finder without having to convert them or load them up in VLC or whatever.

Agree. Although this may not change much for many..I use Audirvana for local desktop playback out of habit..i wish they had done this 5 years ago. Next..Quad DSD support

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Keep digging Jim. The hole is only getting deeper.

 

I won't censure you post. I'd rather it be available for everyone to see for a very long time. 

All current MQA is encoded from regular PCM or DSD converted to PCM (like 2L.no capturing in DSD and editing/mastering in DXD = PCM), and thus follows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem
 

The fact that post-Shannon articles are mentioned, is a similar strategy as Peter Veth posting a lot of neuroscience articles in his closed MQA group to bootstrap the group. They all use the external authority argument. They try to look smart by referencing to fancy research in the hope to gain credibility. But they don't prove the fancy research is actually applied. Then they can mix it with their own agenda. This is a well known tactic and I've seen it in other domains (outside hifi).

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, mansr said:

Even this is handled by Shannon. The sample rate needs to exceed twice the bandwidth, not twice the maximum frequency. If the signal is known to have a lower as well as upper bound, a matching band-pass filter is all you need for sampling and reconstruction. The spectrum of the sampled version of the signal might be mirrored, but this can be dealt with.

An example where compressed sensing comes to use is a Poisson process consisting of Dirac pulses occurring at a finite rate. Such a signal has infinite bandwidth, so traditional sampling doesn't work. However, the signal obeys other constraints allowing it to be accurately captured with suitable filtering. Needless to say, this example is not applicable whatsoever to audio.

[rickca]

1 hour ago, Brinkman Ship said:

It seems you decided to take on the tactic of provoking...a way to get banned so you can have "proof" of your theory that pro MQA opinions are not allowed?

 

Is this all you have left?

@Jim Austin is apparently fishing for flame throwers here, looking for some good sound bites that he can quote elsewhere in order to discredit CA members as mad fanatics.  Don't give him the satisfaction by overreacting.  He just wants clicks for his articles so he can prove how influential he is. 

[Brinkman Ship]

3 minutes ago, rickca said:

@Jim Austin is apparently fishing for flame throwers here, looking for some good sound bites that he can quote elsewhere in order to discredit CA members as mad fanatics.  Don't give him the satisfaction by overreacting.  He just wants clicks for his articles so he can prove how influential he is. 

agree...and I don't think any one here has over reacted..it would fit right in with his and their narrative...

 

 

[rickca]

Just now, Brinkman Ship said:

I don't think any one here has over reacted

I don't think so either.  I didn't mean to imply you had by quoting you.

[Brinkman Ship]

Just now, rickca said:

I don't think so either.  I didn't mean to imply you had by quoting you.

no worries, i did not think you were...but your advice is solid. the cracks are showing.

 

if I recall, there were several other MQA shills that had colorful meltdowns..

[rickca]

2 hours ago, james45974 said:

When are the manufacturer's who jumped in with MQA going to realize what an embarrassment it is becoming to be associated with it?  Is is really a farce!

I guess they will say their customers and dealers demanded it.  MQA has clearly been lobbying dealers to do exactly that.  The hardware and software partners are just going to look stupid for investing R&D resources in MQA implementation if MQA is unsuccessful.

[james45974]

10 minutes ago, rickca said:

I guess they will say their customers and dealers demanded it.  MQA has clearly been lobbying dealers to do exactly that.  The hardware and software partners are just going to look stupid for investing R&D resources in MQA implementation if MQA is unsuccessful.

could be perceived as somewhat of a Faustian bargain by the hardware and software partners.......

[tmtomh]

2 hours ago, Jim Austin said:

 

So, quite obviously, you're now abandoning any pretense of objectivity and even-handedness. 

 

No, he's abandoning any pretense of refraining from pointing out the rude, crude manner in which you've launched yourself into this discussion. When you call everyone here part of one big "circle jerk," you should not be surprised if people, including the guy who runs teh site, take note.

 

I must say, the one surprising aspect of the visits by you, ARQuint, and John Atkinson is the degree to which you are going after @The Computer Audiophile himself, and the intensity with which you are focusing on denigrating this community. Atkinson's done it in a polite and civil (albeit sometimes condescending manner). But the other two of you are just rude - totally your prerogative, but don't complain when you get the inevitable response.

[Ralf11]

Chris better get ready for the Russian bots

[crenca]

34 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

I must say, the one surprising aspect of the visits by you, ARQuint, and John Atkinson is the degree to which you are going after @The Computer Audiophile himself, and the intensity with which you are focusing on denigrating this community. Atkinson's done it in a polite and civil (albeit sometimes condescending manner). But the other two of you are just rude - totally your prerogative, but don't complain when you get the inevitable response.

 

They definitely are willing to fight for their turf, their perceived authority.  One good thing that I think is coming out of their MQA overreach is what Chris C. is reporting - behind the scenes and off the record the vast majority of these trade publication customers (i.e. the manufacturers and service providers who advertise in Stereophile, TAS, typical Audiophile web zine, etc.) are not liking what MQA is and what it demands of them on just a business level - to say nothing of its lack of technical substance.  

 

I really feel for these manufacturers, as they are between a rock and a hard place.  We consumers are leveraging forums such as this one to create an unofficial Consumers Audiophile and Technical Union (perhaps one day we will have something official). We are asking the hard questions and getting at the truth, and communicating it to each other.  What alternative do the manufacturers have?  How is the Faustian bargain they have had with these trade publications for a long time working out for them now?  

 

What the industry needs is alternatives to the current trade publication lock-in.  If they had this, then they could have told MQA and its trade-publication-promotion-machine to take a hike at the very beginning.

 

Chris C is in the enviable (not that it is without risks, but then everything has risks) position of not being part of the "old guard".

[skikirkwood]

5 hours ago, Jim Austin said:

What are you folks still on about? Still assuming that all sampling theory ended with Shannon? This place is obviously a massive circle-jerk, but your posts are visible to the outside world, so you run the risk of embarrassing yourselves (those of you not hiding behind a pseudonym, that is). So I'll do you a favor--I'll present some quotes from scientific literature. Then you can dig them out yourself if you care to educate yourself; I don't expect that, but maybe it'll at least convince you to think twice before posting ignorant things. 

 

 

 

 

 

[shtf]

2 hours ago, tmtomh said:

........

I must say, the one surprising aspect of the visits by you, ARQuint, and John Atkinson is the degree to which you are going after @The Computer Audiophile himself, and the intensity with which you are focusing on denigrating this community.

.........

 

Almost as if to protect some vested interest perhaps?  I'm suspicious again.

 

Just sayin'

[MikeyFresh]

4 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Is this all you have left?

 

Apparently so, calling the forum a massive circle-jerk and warning members they've made fools of themselves appears to violate the site rules.

 

I applaud Chris for leaving Austin's post there as is for all to see, it's very telling in a number of ways, none of them good.

[The Computer Audiophile]

 

 

[Brinkman Ship]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

 

i love his show on National Geogrpahic, Star Talk. 

[HalSF]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

They definitely are willing to fight for their turf, their perceived authority.  One good thing that I think is coming out of their MQA overreach is what Chris C. is reporting - behind the scenes and off the record the vast majority of these trade publication customers (i.e. the manufacturers and service providers who advertise in Stereophile, TAS, typical Audiophile web zine, etc.) are not liking what MQA is and what it demands of them on just a business level - to say nothing of its lack of technical substance.  

 

I really feel for these manufacturers, as they are between a rock and a hard place.

I'm getting a bit of mental whiplash envisioning the hi-fi makers who advertise in Stereophile and its cohort — the same advertisers repeatedly depicted in this thread as powerful agents of corruption whose shilling the magazines must do at the expense of their readers — now portrayed sympathetically as hapless casualties of the MQA juggernaut.

 

There definitely is a crisis of audiophile authority, however. The same loop keeps playing over and over again: MQA makes extraordinary claims; seems incapable of offering extraordinary proof beyond abstruse jargon and scientism; while subjective audiophiles insist MQA sounds amazing in brief, carefully controlled show demos; as MQA defenders making drive-by rebuttals focus on technical quibbles and the bad manners of MQA opponents, but decline to engage directly in good faith with sincere critics on the substance of their dissent. In this context Jim Austin's fundamentally noncommittal dispatches just punt the controversy until next month's issue, and nothing definitive is ever clarified.

 

The only two things that would make this impasse break in MQA's favor — strong peer-review endorsements by independent audio engineers and a wave of un-hyped enthusiasm from hi-fi listeners — are things MQA seems incapable of making happen. And an MQA end run via some major licensing  deal imposing MQA from above would likely be a Pyrrhic victory, further poisoning the atmosphere and exacerbating the crisis of trust.

 

No wonder everybody is getting more edgy and irritable.

[Brinkman Ship]

3 minutes ago, HalSF said:

I'm getting a bit of mental whiplash envisioning the hi-fi makers who advertise in Stereophile and its cohort — the same advertisers repeatedly depicted in this thread as powerful agents of corruption whose shilling the magazines must do at the expense of their readers — now portrayed sympathetically as hapless casualties of the MQA juggernaut.

 

There definitely is a crisis of audiophile authority, however. The same loop keeps playing over and again: MQA makes extraordinary claims; seems incapable of offering extraordinary proof beyond abstruse jargon and scientism; while subjective audiophiles insist MQA sounds amazing in brief, carefully controlled show demos; as MQA defenders making drive-by rebuttals focus on technical quibbles and the bad manners of MQA opponents, but decline to engage directly in good faith with sincere critics on the substance of their dissent. In this context Jim Austin's fundamentally noncommittal dispatches just punt the controversy until next month's issue, and nothing definitive is ever resolved. The only two things that would make this impasse break in MQA's favor — strong peer-review endorsements by independent audio engineers and a wave of un-hyped enthusiasm from hi-fi listeners — are things MQA seems incapable of making happen. And an MQA end run via some major licensing  deal imposing MQA from above would likely be a Pyrrhic victory, further poisoning the atmosphere and exacerbating the crisis of trust.

 

No wonder everybody is getting more edgy and irritable.

you...pretty much nailed he whole darn thing....

[crenca]

30 minutes ago, HalSF said:

I'm getting a bit of mental whiplash envisioning the hi-fi makers who advertise in Stereophile and its cohort — the same advertisers repeatedly depicted in this thread as powerful agents of corruption whose shilling the magazines must do at the expense of their readers — now portrayed sympathetically as hapless casualties of the MQA juggernaut.

 

 

Good point HalSF, it does get a little hard to follow does it not?  Think of it like this:  Audiophiledom, or "High End" is a small and very interdependent market, and thus is like a family (almost none of them have any real vertical scope at all).  There are all sorts of interrelationships, history, hurts and commitments all forming a complicated web.  On the one hand, to enter this circle one has to agree at least to a certain extant (that is if one is not intentionally positioning oneself as a "maverick" - think Schiit) to the culture.  In Rome do as the Romans do.  

 

Part of this agreement is a tacit agreement to not speak transparently against the voodoo, the extraordinary, the (in MQA's case) "post shannon" unicorn.  Too many benefit, even indirectly, from this exaggerated, art & wine positioning vis-a-vis customers.  Yet the situation is fluid. Some come out against it explicitly (Linn, Benchmark), others compromise to some extent but voice "concerns" or "why I don't personally don't like it" (PS Audio), most others are simply silent or blame the customer (Roon).  In all cases it is clear a kind of careful politic is at play behind the scenes.  A kind of peace is maintained if not for familial unity, then mutual maintenance of the status quo.  

 

MQA comes along but it turns out it is a bridge too far.  It makes demands that the current peace can not really bear.  Turns out that at least part of the commodity base (i.e. the consumers) are not prepared to accept this level of voodoo, this much intrusion into their digital ecosystems.  Turns out manufactures see that MQA wants a piece of the pie from EVERYONE, no matter what their place in the market is (i.e. "end to end").  Turns out that the disseminators of taste and knowledge, the trade publications, can't maintain the charade of legitimacy because it is too extraordinary and too thin at the same time.  

 

So sure, the manufactures are not "innocent" before MQA, and they won't be after MQA either (assuming it fails).  However, despite this they don't deserve MQA and we consumers don't have to wish such a punishment on them.

 

What the market needs is an alternative to the trade publications, and a consumer base willing to see beyond art & wine high end to a real value oriented high fidelity.  I think the latter is actually in place, at least in part.  The formal I am less sure of, though I think the internet (aka the "trolls" and the "forums") are evidence of the potential.

[psjug]

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

art & wine high end

I think I'm with you.  But I also want to be pro art and especially pro wine.

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

Apparently so, calling the forum a massive circle-jerk and warning members they've made fools of themselves appears to violate the site rules.

 

I applaud Chris for leaving Austin's post there as is for all to see, it's very telling in a number of ways, none of them good.

 

yea - it's kinda like a public stoning