MQA is Vaporware

[Dr Tone]

36 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

'll just turn off those settings and not lose any sleep over it.  Thanks for the reply.

 

If you listen to MQA, I'd leave Roon doing the first unfold.  If you want the best quality to feed your Devialet feed it regular PCM.

[Dr Tone]

31 minutes ago, botrytis said:

MQA wants to be the Covid-19 of audio world......

 

Some can't social distance from it and keep spreading it around.

[Dr Tone]

The special facebook MQA advertising group is branching out and still spewing disinformation.

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/comparison-of-pcm-and-mqa/149787/277?u=drtone

 

 

 

 

 

[Dr Tone]

1 hour ago, GoldenOne said:

The fact that amir has suddenly 180'd from his usual stance that gear can be evaluated solely using steady state signals and ideal test conditions, to now saying that this testing is invalid because it doesn't represent music, is rather odd.....

 

He's been an MQA fanboy for a while.  He sells a few high dollar MQA pieces through his business, bashing MQA wouldn't be good for that business.

[Dr Tone]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

Madrona Digital distributes for many brands I believe, so who knows if MQA capability is present in some of the lineup and whether this affects his thinking. Anyone know which brands the company deals in?

Berkeley as mentioned by Amir himself in his review of a Alpha prototype.

[Dr Tone]

Interesting content from Danny @ Roon, it turns out that MQA gets payed per track played using software decoding.

 

 Those still using Tidal and software decoding are continually feeding MQA money.

 

 

[Dr Tone]

18 minutes ago, firedog said:

Wow, Roon pays per play decode. That's way worse than I would ever have imagined. Of course, the MQA fanboys over at Roon said, (prarphrase) "then just buy a full MQA DAC, and don't ask Roon to decode".....

No wonder Roon costs so much...

You would think the rest of the software decoders do as well.

 

Worst yet it seems the software decoder phones home so MQA knows what you play so they can bill.

[Dr Tone]

2 minutes ago, firedog said:

Roon also pays for the users' accessing metadata. From what was said on the Roon site, it's Roon collecting the data for decoder royalty payments, not MQA. But Tidal of course, does know what you play from there, MQA or not.

With the vision of MQA world dominance, I would think it’s more elaborate than Roon or any other player just counting and reporting.  Those numbers could be fudged.
 

My guess is the core decoder supplies the data encrypted with checks and validation that Roon needs to report.  I still consider that MQA calling home.

[Dr Tone]

6 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

We don't all have options available to us.  In Canada, and using Roon, the only streaming platforms configured are Tidal, Qobuz and DropBox.  

 

Unfortunately, Qobuz won't allow accounts from Canada, at least not yet.  I did send them an email, and received a very polite reply that said "not available."  I would prefer Qobuz, not only for highres files but also to be able to buy music I would like to add permanently to my library.

 

In the meantime, my only option is Tidal.  

I’m Canadian.  I choose not to stream via Roon.

 

You can use Roon/Tidal with the MQA core decoder turned off as Danny suggests.

[Dr Tone]

28 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

I have been following a few Roon community threads in the last few days, jeez I’m seeing some serious censoring going on with deleted posts that attempts to argue against MQA, could desperation be setting in only this morning one thread went from 139 to 105 posts in a matter of hours 

To be fair to the Roon forum mods that thread has rules in the first post to limit the discussion to why hardware manufacturers implement MQA and was full of the usual personal bickering and sound quality observations.

[Dr Tone]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Does anyone know the relation of Roon's Sarah Stuart to MQA's Bob Stuart?

 

"Sarah works on music editorial and research as part of Roon’s Music Team." https://blog.roonlabs.com/author/sarah/

 

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sarah-stuart-7889b1150

 

 

Isn’t Bob married to ridiculous amounts of money?  Not sure it would be a family member having to work.

[Dr Tone]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

Then I would need to pay for a VPN service and get an American issued credit card.

I did it with paypal last time, not sure if that isn’t an option anymore.

[Dr Tone]

52 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

It seems Tidal has gone into meltdown, if they are going to offer 24bit PCM too in the hifi plus package this could be the end of MQA's reign 

I doubt it, it looks like it’s sourced from MQA at all tier levels.

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-hifi-plus-mqa-damage-control/157461/16?u=drtone

 

[Dr Tone]

11 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Then I would need to pay for a VPN service and get an American issued credit card.

And you only need the vpn to initially sign up after that it isn’t needed.  They can’t expect you to be at home to use their service.

 

Any free vpn client on an iphone would work for sign up.  I used tunnel bear.

[Dr Tone]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Anyone heard anything about Apple’s HiFi tier?

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/01/apple-music-hifi-tier-new-airpods-coming-weeks/

 

Looks like some actual proof…

https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/01/ios-14-6-beta-1-hinted-at-apple-music-hifi-support-with-dolby-audio-references/

[Dr Tone]

1 hour ago, Daren F said:

FLAC's intent was to provide a free compression algorithm for PCM. It wasn't developed so that Tidal/MQA could mislead and lie to their customers, disguising MQA as FLAC and then (supposedly) profiting from it.

MQA is encoded into PCM, which is then put into binary compressed FLAC container.

[Dr Tone]

7 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

@John_Atkinson

I would like to hear your point of view on 16 bit MQA. I’m struggling to see the logic behind red book being converted into MQA. 

No difference than higher bit depth and sample rate content,  control and licensing $.