MQA is Vaporware

[Confused]

On 2/18/2020 at 7:06 AM, KeenObserver said:

Is MQA dead yet?

 

I'd like to move on, but I don't feel I can if the threat of MQA still hangs over the heads of the music consumer.

 

Is there any way of determining if MQA Ltd secured further funding to stay in business?

 

Has MQA had a presence at any Hi-Fi events?

As a follow up to my post earlier this week, I can now report back after my visit yesterday to the Bristol Sound and Vision show. 

 

Personally I was going because GIK were exhibiting for the first time, and I was interested in taking a look at some of their products and having a chat with them regarding some ideas and questions that I have.  This much worked out well, in fact I am very glad I made the effort to go.  Lets put it this way, I can look at GIK products on their website and pick the style and colour that I prefer, but when I see the actual products in the flesh, it is a different colour and style that really like.  The internet is great but it has its limitations, if I had selected products on line rather than seeing for real, I would not have made the best choices.

 

Anyway, back to MQA.  I drove to Bristol with a friend that was interested in going and listening to a couple of things that were on demo.  When driving, we came up with a plan and some rules for the show.  If we were ever in a room and an MQA logo was visible and a sales person was either on hand or actually pestering, the rule was that we had to ask the question "what is MQA".  This was just a bit of a lark, and we thought it might be fun to see what responses we got.  We made it all the way through the morning, past lunch, and to be honest had not seen an MQA logo, no posters displaying MQA capability or anything else.  So as a general impression, I think is quite possible that someone could visit the show not knowing MQA existed, and leaving still not knowing.  It was not being pushed by anyone.  I even wandered into the Pro-ject room, knowing that they had MQA DAC / streamers at the show.  What I had not fully realised is that they do not actually have MQA logos on them, so even looking at MQA capable devices you could miss MQA completely, you might just spot it if you read the little specification cards displayed next to some of the products, but nobody seemed to be making a big thing out of it.

 

Then we visited the Hegel room.  Hegel were actually doing a very interesting demo.  They had a relatively small room, with the Hegel H190, H390 and H590 and a pair of KEF LS50's, they were playing a couple of tracks then swapping the amps for comparison.  When I was there I heard the H590, then the H190, and for me it was very interesting to hear the difference between the two, even with the relatively modest, perhaps price inappropriate, KEF LS50's.  As a off topic subjective comment, I have to say that the H590 LS50 combo was actually amongst the very best sounding rooms in the show, quite impressive.

 

Back on topic, during the amp swap, it happened!  The Hegel rep was running through the streaming options offered by the H590, so the normal stuff "It'll do AirPlay, UPnP, Spotify Connect, all your streaming services, it even has full MQA decoding and rendering".  Bingo!  That was it, MQA is alive and well, it was mentioned by the Hegel rep!  Plus full credit to my companion for the day, straight in there with the key question, zero hesitation, "what is MQA"?  I thought the Hegel rep's answer was actually quite interesting, he said something along the lines of "it is for when you want to listen to high-res material from Tidal, they use MQA to reduce the file size for streaming, you need the MQA decoder to bring this back to high-res".  The point is, it was quite a dry and matter of fact response, no mention of deblurring, time domain accuracy or anything else, he just pitched it as something that might be useful to have if you want to stream Tidal.

 

So based on what I saw at Bristol, MQA is not entirely dead.  It does look a little sad though, like a withering plant that you don't think will survive the winter.  Oh, an Qobuz has a stand there, pushing their new reduced price hi-res streaming deal.

 

To put this in perspective, I noticed that on the Bristol Sound and Vision website, there are links to this year's show guide, and those from past years.  If you search the pdf's, there are no references to MQA in the 2020 or 2019 show guide.  The 2018 show guide has three MQA mentions, in iFi and Bluesound listings. The 2017 show guide has 10 mentions, from Tidal, Bluesound, Technics, Pioneer and Audioquest.  Then to 2016, just the one mention, for the Pioneer XDP-100R DAP.  The 2015 show guide is particularly interesting, there are three MQA mentions, but these all exist in press listings, for What Hifi and Hifi Critic.  Then back to 2014, no mentions, basically MQA does not exist yet.  So from 2015, you see it mentioned by the press, then listed for one manufacturer in 2016, by 2017 you hit the peak, then by 2018 there are signs of withering, and for 2019 / 2020 is has basically disappeared, or at least it has in terms of anything that manufacturers actually want in their show guide listing.

 

The show guides are here if you want to take a look for yourself, I quite enjoyed seeing how the listings have evolved over the last few years:

 

https://www.bristolshow.co.uk/showguide.lasso

 

As a complete off topic aside, the weather is appalling in the UK at the moment and the driving conditions were quite bad at times when heading to Bristol on the M4.  Nevertheless, I was surprised at just how quickly we got there.  Not so on the way home, multiple accidents on the motorway, one was quite spectacular with overturned vehicles etc.  We made it back safe and sound though (eventually).  I am having a quiet day at home today! 

[Confused]

1 hour ago, UkPhil said:

Not a lot going on it seems with MQA at the Bristol Hifi Show, only a handful of supporters mentioned looking at the latest social media advertising push this week.

This example of MQA News looks like an excellent effort at "positive spin".  Some nice pictures though, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I particularly enjoyed listening to the Hegel / KEF LS50 system that is pictured bottom right.

 

Although the Arcam picture rather fails to convey that Arcam were showcasing a 16 channel surround system running from a 4K Blu-ray player.  

 

https://www.facebook.com/ArcamUK/

 

[Confused]

I see the author has as email link, maybe someone should contact him and put him straight with regard to the facts?

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/users/simoncohen/

 

Or comment here if you prefer something a bit more visible ...

 

 

[Confused]

This is a bit of fun, MQA mentioned at the Bristol Hifi show in the U.K. From 14 minutes in the clip below.

 

As an aside, I mentioned in an earlier post that I particularly enjoyed the rather curious combination of the £9k Hegel with the £900 LS50’s. 
 

The MQA bit here amused me too.

 

Less speaker, that’s where it’s at.
 

  

[Confused]

Slightly off the MQA topic I know, but perhaps relevant to the greater "hi-res" market situation.  Does anyone know what is behind this?

 

Maybe nothing more than an efficiency related consolidation to HDtracks.com?

 

https://www.hiresaudio.online/hdtracks-co-uk-to-close-on-31st-march/

[Confused]

9 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

It is still running as of this morning 

 

 

Yes, the shutdown was planned for the end of March, but now postponed until the end of April.

[Confused]

I was at a dealer event last year, two guys from Devialet were there.  In a q & a session, the question of Devialet implanting MQA was raised.  Devialet made it clear they had no intention of implementing MQA, and gave their technical reasons for this.  Some of those present made statements like “who the hell wants MQA anyway, don’t do it”.  The point is though, some members of the hifi buying public were interested in MQA implementation and were asking why Devialet would not implement it.  Presumably they were Tidal subscribers, but I could not say for sure.

 

I have heard other manufacturers claiming they implemented MQA due to public demand, and there does seem to be evidence of this, right or wrong.

 

Picking up on an earlier post, I noted some months ago that Hifi News equipment reviews would mention if a product included MQA decoding as a simple fact that the feature was included , but never expanded on this or commented on the merit of MQA itself.  What Hifi used to be very different, with MQA being reported as the next great thing, and singing the praises of products that enabled this wonderful feature.  So it looks like their stance has changed somewhat in more recent reviews. 

[Confused]

17 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Nice to see a high resolution/streaming article in the more mainstream press that isn’t injected with MQA marketing. 
 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksparrow/2020/05/27/qobuz-ditches-mp3s-and-welcomes-sonos-into-the-world-of-hi-res-music/amp/

To be fair, this is probably because the article is little more than an advertorial for Qobuz....

 

Although interestingly, this one does not mention MQA either

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2020/05/28/tidal-opens-up-dolby-atmos-music-streaming-to-any-dolby-atmos-sound-system/#5828f016cce1

 

and neither does this one ...

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/frankwoodworth/2020/01/24/how-tidal-can-embrace-its-mission-to-win-the-music-streaming-wars/#62b087535fce

 

or this one ...

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2019/12/09/jay-zs-return-to-spotify-could-be-the-nail-in-tidals-coffin/#742393df6b98

[Confused]

14 hours ago, jma2 said:

Could it be that those guys both missed "the elephant in the city bus"?

😉

Maybe MQA is elephantware? 

[Confused]

24 minutes ago, FredericV said:

 

When we researched MQA's & Ayre's filter, which is minimum phase with one cycle of postringing, everything sounded too tight. For EDM and euro dance hits from the 90's, this would be a nice gimmick, but as the post-ringing has been artificially shortened, something is missing. Voices are not natural with this filter, something is truly missing. Having a more natural post-tail also gives our neurological system some extra post-info after transients or point source events, which helps a lot. The reason being post-echo's are sustained a little bit longer, which helps our neurologic system. The only thing we cannot handle well, is having audio before the actual event occurs, so pre-ringing with linear phase, smears the time domain. So I actually oppose all of MQA's time domain hocus pocus claims as they sound wrong to my ears. The way MQA tries to solve this pre-ringing is wrong.

To my ears, the ultimate filter is Archimago's Intermediate Phase filter: phase correct in the audible spectrum, and almost no pre-ringing and mainly post-ringing, but with a longer tail than MQA's fake content generator aka it's leaky filter which causes fake ultrasonics, which uses the shortest possible upsampling post-ringing tail, but with all side effects associated with such filter..

So some time ago we decided to implement this filter and give it away as a free software update.Anyone can google the filter specifications and modify their upsampler, and this filter sounds in every way superior than MQA's second unfold upsampler.

A little off topic here (more like MQA isn't Vaporware), but have you tried the MQA filters in HQPlayer?

[Confused]

Some interesting comments:

 

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/best-music-streaming-service-for-2020-spotify-apple-amazon-and-youtube-music/

 

Note that MQA is listed in the bad section of Tidal’s good / bad summary.

[Confused]

They can get away with it though ....

 

https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/mqa-ltd-a18-470395.html

[Confused]

43 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It really blows my mind that audiophiles are onboard with MQA. It has zero to do with sound quality. If MQA was truly better, the content owners would be archiving content in MQA as fast as possible. The fact that none of them will archive a single album in MQA should be all that one needs to know. 

 

Think about it. MQA is all about control and money. The labels want control of the Crown Jewels and as for profit companies they want more money (nothing wrong with either). MQA enables both of these because the MQA files released are far less than the Crown Jewels and the labels are part owners of MQA. The labels can't lose with MQA. If the labels can't lose, how can any audiophile think he can win?

 

With Meridian losing tens of millions of dollars it was time to mine the intellectual property for money. MQA was just sitting there on the shelf. Clearly a solution for content owners, not consumers. That's what Bob invents. Solutions for content owners. How do I know this? Because people can't keep secrets. People on the inside leak information like a sieve, especially when they know lies are being told and something isn't right about the situation. 

 

All the companies that jumped onboard with MQA DACs, will now be struggling to find other ways to differentiate themselves because MQA homogenizes digital playback in a mediocre way. Forced leaky filters leaves one less point of differentiation for HiFi manufacturers. 

 

P.S. If people have paid attention to the MQA employees talk over the years, they've heard MQA Ltd say the quiet parts out loud many times. It's hard to keep a lie contained when one speaks so much. 

The thing is, you can try doing a few internet searches re MQA, and the vast majority of results are positive.

 

OK - You can deliberately look for the bad stuff, say by doing a search on "is MQA bad", and you'll find some links for content critical of MQA, it is out there.  But do a general search on say MQA sound quality, and the vast majority of links will be to content that is incredibly positive about MQA.  Fake news, mis-selling, poor journalism just repeating press release content, call it what you will, but there is an awful lot of it out there.

 

Not everyone is fanatical enough to fully check the facts, and I think the end result is that a lot of people are being thoroughly, but perhaps understandably , mislead.

[Confused]

11 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Watch out for those blue lights:

 

 

My Mutec kit has a whole row of blue lights on it.  Time for a party maybe?

[Confused]

I have found the forth unfold......

 

[Confused]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

I have found the forth unfold......

 

 

My apologies, I have just noticed that my spelling of "fourth" needed deblurring.... 

[Confused]

22 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

 

I just realized why I have been unsuccessful in selling that bridge in Brooklyn all these years.  I didn't advertise it on Peter Veth's blog!

Us Brits are quite good at selling bridges:

 

https://www.history.com/news/how-london-bridge-ended-up-in-arizona

 

That and dodgy music file formats.

[Confused]

11 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

"By designing MQA based on how sound travels through air – the purest distribution platform – MQA puts great emphasis on the preservation of natural dynamic range and timing information. "

 

My God, that Mike Jbara is a true genius!  And Bob Stuart, he has crossed over into a new paradigm! He designed MQA to be listened to in AIR! My God, no wonder they gave him the Prince Phillip award!

 

That has been our problem all along, we have been listening to music in a vacuum! We have not been getting the full sound (or any sound).  And, we died!

 

Yes, I think Mike Jbara was brought over to MQA for his connection to Warner music. And maybe his ethical standards.  It was definitely not for his intelligence.

This sounds like bad news, it will seriously stuff things up for those using headphones or earbuds.

[Confused]

16 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Here is a nice example of how clueless the press is.

 

 

Michael Fremer, from Analog Planet-

 

"The TIDAL MQA streamed 96/24 version was like another recording altogether. The piano sounded more like a piano made of wood. The church space on the live performance was well-separated from the instrument and it was overall far more coherent and satisfying. I don’t understand those who are MQA resistant especially those who view it as a “plot” to control their recorded musical existence.  And, not surprising (to me at least), the extremely well mastered and flawlessly pressed vinyl record sounded very much like the MQA 96/24 stream.

 

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/lang-lang—-classical-music-superstar-critics-love-hate-hate-delivers-his-goldberg-variations

 

 

Not all of the press is quite so clueless.  A couple of examples linked below.  I would describe these as more "matter of fact" than particularly opinionated regarding MQA.  Or to put it another way, I see no shrilling here .....

 

Wolfgang Muthspiel : Rising Grace (mqa) | Hi-Fi News

 

Christian Weidner : Every Hour Of The Light And Dark (mqa) | Hi-Fi News

[Confused]

Having abondened my quest to find the Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot, I have found the third unfold! 

(and I thought an MQA renderer would do the first unfold?)

 

A new article from What Hi Fi:

 

iDSD Diablo is iFi's new flagship portable DAC/headphone amp | What Hi-Fi?

 

To quote:

 

MQA – the hi-res streaming codec used by Tidal’s ‘Masters’ tier – is also supported through the USB and S/PDIF inputs, with full decoding of MQA files up to 384kHz thanks to the processing power of that new 16-core XMOS chip. This means that the full ‘three unfold’ decoding process is performed internally, as opposed to only the final unfold in the manner of an MQA ‘renderer’. 

[Confused]

6 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

And does this take it even further, I need a lie down 

Yes, 33% further it would seem.

[Confused]

15 hours ago, DuckToller said:

If I am not mistaken, your source is just guilty of unfiltered copy-paste of source material:

Agreed, it's just a cut and paste of the manufacturer's marketing fluff. 

 

Althought regarding my "source", the What Hi Fi writer is Becky Scarott, and we have seen her here before:

 

 

 

[Confused]

4 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

By the way, does your wife know that you follow Becky Scarrott on instagram ??? ;-)

If I'm honest, I'm having more than enough fun just following her on What Hi Fi.

[Confused]

Who's this guy?

 

 

[Confused]

Some interesting analysis comparing sound quality differences via streaming services.  (the original text is German, link uses Google Tranlate)

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https://www.bwgroup.ch/2018/10/29/streaming-gibt-es-klangunterschiede-vorsicht-bei-vergleichen-trugschluesse-lauern/