MQA is Vaporware

[firedog]

16 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

..Maybe that is because you remove some of his posts????

I've posted many times politely but emphatically disagreeing with articles at Stereophile and haven't had anything removed. Seems like they are fine with disagreement and criticism as long as it isn't nasty and ad hominem.

[The Computer Audiophile]

13 minutes ago, firedog said:

I've posted many times politely but emphatically disagreeing with articles at Stereophile and haven't had anything removed. Seems like they are fine with disagreement and criticism as long as it isn't nasty and ad hominem.

I believe you’re correct as well. 

[Brinkman Ship]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

I've posted many times politely but emphatically disagreeing with articles at Stereophile and haven't had anything removed. Seems like they are fine with disagreement and criticism as long as it isn't nasty and ad hominem.

Yes, I mixed up Audio Asylum and Stereophile.com.

[Rt66indierock]

On 8/4/2018 at 4:00 PM, John_Atkinson said:

 

The summer months are always slower than the winter months. Our traffic at stereophile.com this year peaked at 3,051,871 page views for the month of January.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

Which was about 1.5 visits according to SimilarWeb.

[Shadders]

Hi,

What Hifi republishing again the HIgh Res introduction where it states :

https://www.whathifi.com/advice/high-resolution-audio-everything-you-need-to-know

"MQA (hi-res): A lossless compression format that packages hi-res files with more emphasis on the time domain. Used for Tidal Masters hi-res streaming, but has limited support across products"

 

This is the text that i challenged What Hifi with, and had no response. Article is now "We are part of The Trust Project".

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

[Indydan]

A recent interview by MQA Chief executive Jbara. He claims MQA is the high resolution quality, to better current streaming quality. He also claims it's what's best for the consumer! 

 

http://musically.com/2018/07/24/mqa-mike-jbara-hi-res-music/

[crenca]

4 hours ago, Indydan said:

A recent interview by MQA Chief executive Jbara. He claims MQA is the high resolution quality, to better current streaming quality. He also claims it's what's best for the consumer! 

 

http://musically.com/2018/07/24/mqa-mike-jbara-hi-res-music/

 

That was a comforting read in a way.  The market conditions and his strategery is all uphill, and he knows it.  MQA simply is not relevant to much of anything...

[Brinkman Ship]

3 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

That was a comforting read in a way.  The market conditions and his strategery is all uphill, and he knows it.  MQA simply is not relevant to much of anything...

..it is also rather pathetic that they are reduced to giving interviews to blogs no one has ever heard of....

[Brinkman Ship]

"jbara says that MQA specifically is seeing some encouraging signs from the automotive industry, describing the last few months as “blistering” in terms of the number of RFPs [requests for proposals] from car manufacturers reaching his desk."

 

LOL. Yes. Cars. That is the answer. What a hoot. You can smell the desperation.

 

 

[labjr]

10 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

 

LOL. Yes. Cars. That is the answer. What a hoot. You can smell the desperation.

 

 

They probably got the idea from Bose. If they put it in cars they'll make a ton of money from people who don't care about MQA and wouldn't even know they have it. What's next Android OS, IOS?

[Brinkman Ship]

8 minutes ago, labjr said:

They probably got the idea from Bose. If they put it in cars they'll make a ton of money from people who don't care about MQA and wouldn't even know they have it. What's next Android OS, IOS?

Yes, well Bose makes hardware..not hard to understand why they would want large automotive contracts.

 

It is with great pleasure I am seeing them squirm to paint some sort of positive picture...

[Indydan]

Another recent article that's good for a few laughs.

 

"A TIDAL client is included in the Activo CT10 and this is where things start to get exciting: the CT10 is the first budget player out of the box that I’ve seen that can play MQA files straight off. MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated and it’s the next big thing in hi-res digital music. An MQA file can reproduce music that’s CD quality but with a far smaller file size and streaming rate. If you subscribe to TIDAL – and you probably should if you want to stream high-quality audio – you’ll find that there are already some 30,000 MQA tracks that sound as good as the original master tapes. What you hear from an MQA file should be pretty close to what the sound engineer in the studio heard when finalizing the mix of an album."

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksparrow/2018/07/17/activo-ct10-affordable-hi-res-music-player-aimed-at-the-younger-generation/#1574f3f45ab6

 

 

[crenca]

36 minutes ago, Indydan said:

Another recent article that's good for a few laughs.

 

"A TIDAL client is included in the Activo CT10 and this is where things start to get exciting: the CT10 is the first budget player out of the box that I’ve seen that can play MQA files straight off. MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated and it’s the next big thing in hi-res digital music. An MQA file can reproduce music that’s CD quality but with a far smaller file size and streaming rate. If you subscribe to TIDAL – and you probably should if you want to stream high-quality audio – you’ll find that there are already some 30,000 MQA tracks that sound as good as the original master tapes. What you hear from an MQA file should be pretty close to what the sound engineer in the studio heard when finalizing the mix of an album."

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksparrow/2018/07/17/activo-ct10-affordable-hi-res-music-player-aimed-at-the-younger-generation/#1574f3f45ab6

 

 

 

It truly is so deceiving as to be comical.  Every sentence in that paragraph contains not just a factual error, but a real "the sky is green" delusion.

 

MQA is a bridge too far even in Audiophiledom.  In the more general music consumption and electronics space, these deceptions would be found out oh so easily (like the file size assertion).  Thing is, "Mark Sparrow" is in all probability an astroturfer of one kind or another...

[Brinkman Ship]

57 minutes ago, Indydan said:

Another recent article that's good for a few laughs.

 

"A TIDAL client is included in the Activo CT10 and this is where things start to get exciting: the CT10 is the first budget player out of the box that I’ve seen that can play MQA files straight off. MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated and it’s the next big thing in hi-res digital music. An MQA file can reproduce music that’s CD quality but with a far smaller file size and streaming rate. If you subscribe to TIDAL – and you probably should if you want to stream high-quality audio – you’ll find that there are already some 30,000 MQA tracks that sound as good as the original master tapes. What you hear from an MQA file should be pretty close to what the sound engineer in the studio heard when finalizing the mix of an album."

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksparrow/2018/07/17/activo-ct10-affordable-hi-res-music-player-aimed-at-the-younger-generation/#1574f3f45ab6

 

 

I laughed so hard my belly aches...?

[Brinkman Ship]

The mconnect app just updated with "MQA Streaming" capability..and  DFF/DSF DSD formats...

[new_media]

I just noticed that Onkyo Music is now offering two MQA versions of the same titles, one high-res and one redbook, and at different price points.

 

 

If the purported purpose of MQA is to deliver "music just as it was recorded in the studio; an audio experience as the artist intended," then why offer a downgraded version?

 

Similarly, why would anyone want to buy a lesser version of "master quality," particularly one with a lossy codec that I assume has essentially the same bitrate as the lossless redbook offering?

[asdf1000]

On 6/2/2017 at 6:21 AM, Rt66indierock said:

I can live with that since my thoughts were have a vaporware thread until there were 10,000 albums, then start a thread about whether it is commercially viable and finally a thread about will MQA reach critical mass in terms of music availability .

 

While I'd prefer MQA go away, it may have just ticked past 10k albums this week (removing duplicate albums).

 

 

[mansr]

9 hours ago, Em2016 said:

While I'd prefer MQA go away, it may have just ticked past 10k albums this week (removing duplicate albums).

 

Did you account for minor differences in spelling and punctuation, various re-releases ("anniversary" and such), etc? I've previously found numerous such duplicates on that list, far more than the exact repetitions.

[asdf1000]

9 minutes ago, mansr said:

Did you account for minor differences in spelling and punctuation, various re-releases ("anniversary" and such), etc? I've previously found numerous such duplicates on that list, far more than the exact repetitions.

Absolutely not but it's a great point.

 

I spent about 10 seconds to just remove the duplicates using Excel's automatic function.

 

I'm not going to do any manual scanning/filtering.

 

[mansr]

22 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Absolutely not but it's a great point.

 

I spent about 10 seconds to just remove the duplicates using Excel's automatic function.

 

I'm not going to do any manual scanning/filtering.

Oh, I did it automatically using some elaborate regular expressions that I unfortunately didn't save.

[asdf1000]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

Oh, I did it automatically using some elaborate regular expressions that I unfortunately didn't save.

 

Oh nice. You're a lot smarter than me though. You could probably whip up a macro with your eyes closed.

[Rt66indierock]

On 4/30/2017 at 9:32 PM, Rt66indierock said:

 

Chris,

Just tell me when I can purchase and download the following MQA albums in The Valley of the Sun:

1.       Foghat Foghat

2.       Black Oak Arkansas Black Oak Arkansas

3.       Eagles On the Border

4.       Halestorm Into The Wild

5.       Jackson Browne Running on Empty

6.       Chicago Chicago Transit Authority

They are all available on TIDAL in the US and I believe in Europe for download. Why is my side of MQA so hard for you? I can’t buy MQA albums. It is no harder than that.

 

Since we are digging up old posts these albums are now all available on Onkyo Music. I'm going to acquire them and test them against the albums on my hard drive. 

[Brinkman Ship]

Jason VS sneaks in MQA Marketing in a review of an Esoteric streamer:

 

"MQA was a totally different story. When I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong sing "You Can't Take that Away from Me," from Ella & Louis (24/96 FLAC, 24/48 MQA FLAC, Verve 825 373-2), MQA increased color saturation in the midrange. Drums seemed especially vivid, and the edge of Armstrong's trumpet more lifelike. With John Atkinson's recording of the Portland State Chamber Choir performing "Amazing Grace" under director Ethan Sperry, from Into Unknown Worlds (24/88.2 FLAC, 24/88.2 MQA FLAC, CD Baby 888295153546), the pearly warmth of youthful voices and the remarkable sense of acoustic expanse were, with MQA, even more moving, and the lovely soprano soloist, Genna McAllister, seemed more "in the room." I also heard more air around the choral voices behind her, the male voices standing out more. MQA made both recordings sound more like the real thing. I'd rate Esoteric's implementation of MQA in the N-01 as between very good and excellent.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/esoteric-n-01-network-audio-player-page-3#kiJOeitE4VPzo0Ge.99

 

It is priced at that "$20,000" Art Dudley wrote about:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/skin-deep

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

What if he would have stopped with this as a complete sentence -> "MQA increased color."

 

:~)

[Shadders]

1 minute ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Jason VS sneaks in MQA Marketing in a review of an Esoteric streamer:

 

"MQA was a totally different story. When I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong sing "You Can't Take that Away from Me," from Ella & Louis (24/96 FLAC, 24/48 MQA FLAC, Verve 825 373-2), MQA increased color saturation in the midrange. Drums seemed especially vivid, and the edge of Armstrong's trumpet more lifelike. With John Atkinson's recording of the Portland State Chamber Choir performing "Amazing Grace" under director Ethan Sperry, from Into Unknown Worlds (24/88.2 FLAC, 24/88.2 MQA FLAC, CD Baby 888295153546), the pearly warmth of youthful voices and the remarkable sense of acoustic expanse were, with MQA, even more moving, and the lovely soprano soloist, Genna McAllister, seemed more "in the room." I also heard more air around the choral voices behind her, the male voices standing out more. MQA made both recordings sound more like the real thing. I'd rate Esoteric's implementation of MQA in the N-01 as between very good and excellent.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/esoteric-n-01-network-audio-player-page-3#kiJOeitE4VPzo0Ge.99

Hi,

They really are promoting it, aren't they.

So, John Atkinson has access to an MQA encoder ? (i assume the same JA).

Regards,

Shadders.