MQA is Vaporware

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

MQA/Tidal/Audioquest seems to still be stuck on getting MQA Core working on ARM processors.  AQ is way behind on that firmware update for the new Dragonflys, apparently blaming Tidal.  But I've heard the actual code comes from MQA themselves.

 

I know of two software MQA Core implementations: Tidal desktop and Audirvana+ 3.0.  Are there any others?

 

 

 

There's an ARM version used on Bluesound devices and possibly others. This is probably built from the same source code as the library used by Tidal and A+. There is nothing platform specific in the code.

 

The Explorer 2 has an XMOS processor, so clearly a decoder exists for that as well. They also state as much on the MQA website.

 

The AQ Dragonfly is different beast. It has only a puny MIPS processor that is far too slow to do even the "render" part in software. My guess is that the firmware will only extract the metadata from the LSB and program the ESS DAC with the requested filters. It's ridiculous that it's taking them this long.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

I hear you.  Can you characterize the difference between Bluesound's ARM implementation and a typical mobile one?  Perhaps the issue is Android/iOS integration?

 

It's just a software library with very minimal dependencies. The Bluesound binaries run without fuss on just about any Linux system with a compatible CPU. Another application would probably integrate the MQA library as delivered by MQA (the company) a bit differently, but this is all trivial stuff.

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, crenca said:

Nice summary and well stated.  Chris and Jud have a "wait and see" attitude, but I am not sure what we are waiting for in that the motivations, goals, and desired outcomes are here and present - no waiting required/needed...

 

Is that a hungry tiger stalking us? Let's wait and see what he does. Maybe he just wants a cuddle.

[mansr]

48 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Yes, there's no doubt the label wants the artist, or there would be no contract talk, even of the "Take it or leave it" variety.

 

But not signing over publishing makes the artist less valuable to the company.  At that point the company can far better afford to stick to its position than the artist can (with vanishingly few exceptions for the most popular artists).  Sure the artist can say no, if he or she wants to remain poor and unappreciated.  Some people will, but the consequences for them are more significant than for the company.

The labels control the scarce resources, distribution channels and, to a diminishing extent, recording facilities. An artist who wants access to these has no choice but to sign. The label can always find a different artist. There's no shortage of aspiring rock stars, even talented ones.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

With few exceptions, people who can negotiate with large companies in groups come up with deals that are better than folks who have to represent themselves individually.

That's called a union. It's a communist thing.

[mansr]

51 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

There are certainly charlatans and rip off artists out there in audio.   Believe what you will, but I see absolutely no reason to put Bob Stuart in that category.

Stuart is the most dangerous kind, a charlatan with real credentials.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

I think the reason to make the compression lossy was to make whatever encryption is used harder to bypass/crack, because you can't know what went in from what comes out.

That's not the reason. The difficulty of "cracking" the encryption doesn't depend on the lossy or lossless nature of the compression.

 

The main reason for making it lossy is that achieving the desired compression ratio is impossible otherwise.

[mansr]

11 hours ago, jhwalker said:

MQA do not market or describe their process as lossless.  I've seen others use the term lossless rather loosely, but I've not seen that from MQA themselves - they are quite careful *not* to say it.

You must not be looking very carefully.

 

Here's an example from Bob Stuart himself: http://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-questions-and-answers-losslessness-questions

Quote

More important is to capture and protect (in a lossless manner) all the information in the file that relates to the music content. This means capturing safely at least everything in the triangle on the Origami diagrams; this is then conveyed and protected without loss.

 

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

But, his statement is qualified - "all the information in the file that relates to music content" and "everything in the triangle on the Origami diagrams".

Like this whole technology, what these qualifications truly mean might be highly debatable.

 

I am not his attorney or representative, but I believe the "lossless" issue is a red herring brought up by those wishing to lynch Stuart and MQA.  I do not think losslessness is ever relevant except in discussing digital signal transmission, such as simple compression/decompression schemes.  MQA contains compression/decompression, but purports to do much more than that.

The term lossless has always had a specific meaning when discussing codecs. Stuart has deliberately chosen to misapply this word to mean something else when talking about MQA. I can only see that as intended to mislead the reader. The correct term, in this context, for inaudible degradation is "transparent." That's the word everybody else has always used.

 

"All the information that relates to music content" as opposed to simply "all the information" is the very definition of a lossy codec. To then throw in the word lossless is nothing short of fraudulent.

7 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Something cannot not be both strictly lossless and provide a sonic improvement over the original at the same time.  Insisting that it be lossless in the strictest sense would make it just a different way of transmitting the same sound we have now. We don't need that.

The lossless or not question applies only to the compression stage. The alleged "de-blurring" is a distinct process applied before the compression. Obviously, this manipulation, if it exists, is expected to alter the data.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

I think I understand what "de-blurring" is.

Well, that's a first. Do you also understand quantum electrodynamics?

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Were they all finagled by remastering?  No.  2L and some of the classical labels we heard would not and do not have the time and resources to do that, I do not think.  

At least one 2L album (2L-038) has been remastered for MQA.

[mansr]

31 minutes ago, new_media said:

If MQA has an effective automobile analogy, it's Delorean, not Porsche.

Expecting Bob Stuart to get arrested for drug trafficking?

[mansr]

31 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Chris, Last thing I want to do is have this become personal. But you ask for evidence and without drawing this out the evidence is in all posts you have made to debate us making anti-MQA statements.

Do you see the DRM nature of MQA, and the reasoning it is being pushed?

If as crenea said your OK with that, that's your decision. But I would much rather see you and CA taking a more consumer friendly position.

His regurgitating of MQA marketing material also comes off as somewhat biased. That said, I do commend Chris for allowing critical discussion, something certain other sites do not.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

When explaining to an eager audience, how a proprietary technology works, the only available information comes from the company. Nothing else I can do. 

You could do nothing.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Some people say MQA contains DRM. 

Some people say MQA contains no DRM. 

MQA Ltd says its product contains no DRM. 

 

Other than that, you can read all the discussions here debating the topic. 

Some of those people are telling porkies. Some of those telling porkies do it for profit.

[mansr]

6 hours ago, GUTB said:

Misinformation -- to get the full quality of DSD, you are, in fact, stuck with a specific company. Sony only allowed encrypted streaming of DSD which limited you to a very small number of incredibly expensive products. Technology has since defeated Sony's protection schemes, and once MQA is reverse-engineered it will enter the "de-facto" public domain too.

DSD != SACD. There are other formats for delivering DSD. In fact, most DSD content these days is distributed as unencrypted downloads. No DRM there.

[mansr]

10 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

That may kind of be already happening though I'll admit my understanding of this is very foggy., The MQA CD,

http://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-encoded-cds-yes#jLTzPdmPgxSsGe5X.97

They are claiming a hi rez file is being MQA encoded on the CD, That a undecoded playback will offer better than RB sound as the file has already been deblurred and a decoder in not needed for the SQ improvement?

They also then claim the CD can be decoded by a MQA DAC for a 176/24 data rate?

Is the process for the MQA CD somehow different than regular MQA that reduces a undecoded file to a lossy factsimilie of RB?

If the deblurring process can be offered without data reduction, why not just offer it separately as a DAC enhancement and leave our lossless files alone?

I freely admit again this new processing has me scratching my head to understand.

Most likely, these CDs are simply the usual MQA data with the low 8 bits removed. These bits contain the compressed high frequencies while the 9th bit, which becomes the LSB in 16-bit format, carries the authentication signatures and some kind of peak extension data (similar to HDCD).

[mansr]

13 minutes ago, Jud said:

I would (seriously) love to see some figures on this.

I don't have any sales figures, but consider these facts:

- There are only 3 SACD manufacturing facilities in the world.

- Lots of websites sell DSD downloads but not SACDs.

- DSD128 and higher is by definition not SACD.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

11,596 items under SACD format on HRAudio.net: http://www.hraudio.net/music.php?format=1&genre=0&label=0&page=1

 

I assume all are not currently for sale.  However, I believe the SACD market in Asia and in the classical genre are doing all right, which is why I'd like to see actual sales figures for silver discs compared to DSD downloads.

The exact numbers are beside the point which is that DSD downloads don't have DRM.

[mansr]

25 minutes ago, Jud said:

[Emphasis added.]

 

Right - were you distinguishing SACDs from "DSD content"?  I wasn't, which is one reason I asked if there were sales figures on this (the other reason is because I'm just curious to know).

Ok, I shouldn't have said "most" without having figures to show. If I instead say "lots of" it doesn't change the point I was trying to make. That said, when shopping around for music, I personally come across far more downloads than SACDs.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Don Hills said:

If the patents are any indication, they lossy compress the information above 22 KHz and store it in the lowest 3 of the 16 bits. So an undecoded MQA CD is 13/44.1 audio - OK for modern overcompressed music, not so good for orchestral.

The bit allocations mentioned in the patents are just examples. The actual decoder supports other values as well.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Jud said:

Yep, this is obviously one of many advantages of streaming.  I don't want to give the impression I'm against it.  I do have some concern over whether it might eventually make some of the music I like less available to me.

Downloads can be backed up in a secure location to protect against loss from theft, fire, etc.

[mansr]

Just now, Sal1950 said:

Been keeping my eyes open for a CHEAP cloud based backup for my whole collection. Ideas?

Amazon unlimited storage for $60/year is cheap enough for me.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, ShawnC said:

Western Digital Mycloud are NAS units with there own cloud.  No charge.  Just purchase the NAS unit and you have your cloud.  I bought a 4TB unit for just under $200.

Not much help if your house burns down though.

[mansr]

32 minutes ago, Fyper said:

Nothing personal Judd :-)

But I kind of like the idea of not subscribing to streaming providers and own your files to then subscribe remote storage and store these files in a place that you don't own => in the end it's the same : you stop paying, you've nothing. :-)

(unless it's a remote back up of your local HDrives...)

Even if it's your only copy, as long as you keep paying, it won't suddenly go away. With streaming services this can and does happen.