MQA is Vaporware

[Jud]

6 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

This.  The data/computer industry has been selling this model for years.  How does Microsoft even out its cash flow and not have to rush new versions of Windows/Office out every year?  The subscription model.  Apple largely avoided this by marking profit in hardware -the software being and integral part of the hardware and user experience but not the source of Apple's $profits$.  

 

Streaming is a subscription model - but many consumers are "ok" with it for all sorts of reasons.  They undervalue their current digital musical systems and/or think they are a hassle and value the subscription model more.

 

So when MQA comes along and promises better SQ - they have trouble grasping why others would not value it as much as they do...

 

MQA is completely unnecessary to accomplish what we are concerned about, which is my basic point.  Folks are wasting too much time worrying about MQA, which is, relatively speaking, at the "demonstration project" stage, while streaming, arguably equally or more more destructive to the goals of sound quality and consumer choice, is the largest segment of the music industry already and growing fast.

[Jud]

13 minutes ago, Norton said:

I don't know if this is actually happening, but compared to the fuss about MQA, it's certainly a much more plausible concern that streaming will develop to the point where "possessable" media, along with the consumer choices therein,  are no longer available.

 

And even "possessable" I wouldn't be so concerned with; it's more that what I've seen so far of the streaming world doesn't show me (1) many of the relatively obscure artists I love, especially new ones (that's why I dropped Tidal before picking it up again for A+ testing purposes - I found exactly one new artist I liked that I hadn't known about before during a several month long subscription); and (2) the best-recorded versions of the music I love.  That, ultimately, is for me the reason to be in this hobby at all: hearing the music I love at its best.  So if silver discs (likely) and even downloads (possible - their market share is diminishing every year) vanish, that's what I may stand to lose.

[Jud]

11 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

If they wanted the rights and there was money to be made, they'd have them. 

 

Or to to get even more specific, if they thought they could make enough money on MQA's licensing terms.

 

I'm guessing they'll see how it goes for the current licensees before deciding (unless they've decided not to give MQA leverage over both streaming and downloads).

[Jud]

40 minutes ago, realhifi said:

(PS.  My whole album collection was stolen twice during those turbulent years and with it all my Black Oak albums so just being able to bring them up at the touch of a button?  Priceless. )

 

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.

[Jud]

9 minutes ago, mansr said:

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

 

Certainly.  I'm always on the lookout for new artists, and there, as I mentioned before, a several-months-long subscription to Tidal netted me exactly one new artist I liked who I hadn't known about before.  In that same time I encountered several new-to-me artists by other means who I liked and whose music was not available on Tidal (or if it was available, I couldn't find it).  It's those new artists I'm concerned about.

 

Edit: You may have been referring to what realhifi said about having albums stolen.  My files are backed up both at home and remotely, but I have something around 500 LPs, and I don't intend in the foreseeable future to do needle drops on all those.

[Jud]

39 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Time consuming yes, but It does give you the opportunity to revisit music you may not have heard in a long time...  You get your recording chain set up and then just start spinning disc's while your doing other chores. One day you spin the last piece of vinyl and think "wow, that wasn't so bad". 

I didn't do any track divisions on my drops, just Side 1 and 2 files. I always listened to whole albums for the 40 years before CD so I don't find it a sacrifice.

The convenience of having my LP collection on my computer and not having to mess with that whole vinyl handling ritual is heaven to me.

YMMV

 

Yep, my mileage definitely varies. 

 

The needle drop project you were able to say "that wasn't so bad" about is something I have no desire to do (recognizing that you and others have done it and thoroughly enjoyed the results), while occasionally putting a record on my turntable, which bugged you enough that you digitized your whole LP collection, doesn't bother me a bit.

 

Edit: It's interesting that when I began playing around with computer audio, digitizing my LP collection is one of the first things I thought of.  But for whatever reason, over the years it's gotten less and less appealing to me.

[Jud]

Just now, Sal1950 said:

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

 

Is 60 bucks a year for unlimited secure remote storage cheap to you?

 

https://www.amazon.com/b/?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0&node=15547130011

[Jud]

18 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...)

 

That's exactly what it is, a remote backup for the three copies of all my music files I have at home (two HDDs in separate locations, and SD cards that double as backup and my music collection when I travel).

[Jud]

28 minutes ago, Fyper said:

Isn't that the laws of supply and demand?

Eventually, streaming or no streaming, if there is a market for the music you like (the one difficult to find), then some clever mind will put it back on the market.

If there never was a market for that music, then you benefited from marketing glitches of the record companies back in the day.

They'll do some more in the future and they'll likely stay in the catalog even if streamed by 2 people in the world (because it won't cost them anything to do so and it'll inflate the catalog).

 

The problem is that it doesn't cost "nothing" to have downloadable files *and the infrastructure needed to support them*.  I'm old enough to remember not being able to buy new LPs any more - it was silver discs or nothing.  How much longer do you think the infrastructure for silver discs (including production facilities, sales and distribution networks) will be maintained?  After that, do you think Amazon will suddenly change all its mp3 offerings to RedBook or hi res?  Do you think they will offer everything even in mp3 they had on CD?

[Jud]

2 minutes ago, Fyper said:

No, as said I think it'll disappear, unless there is enough demand for it.

I can imagine someone buying the majors' catalog of unsold "rarities" for a few bucks and put them back on the market to see if there is hunger for it.

I actually I don't see what prevents it from happening today (making those available for download or streaming) a part from the fact that there is not enough demand for it.

I failed to see how streaming influence that.

 

The infrastructure is in place for streaming and is financially favorable to the music industry.  What financial incentive is there for the industry to help the download segment (i.e., Apple, or Amazon if they wished) gear up?  Those companies are so large they would have tremendous negotiating leverage, resulting in less favorable deals for the industry.  Ask yourself how many corporate CEOs want to repeat the experience of giving control of their content to Apple.

 

And of course there is the fact that if you are worried about piracy, copying and distributing a file is trivial, capturing a stream a little less so.

[Jud]

21 minutes ago, mansr said:

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.

 

Even if Amazon decided to jack up prices, limit storage space to less than you need, or stop the service for individual consumers altogether, they'd presumably give sufficient notice to allow you to find alternatives.

[Jud]

50 minutes ago, Fyper said:

I quite agree with that but I think that wasn't your original point.

If I understood well, your point was that the development of streaming would make the catalog of available titles poorer.

And I'm saying that if there is an identified demand (and therefore profit) for a record, streaming or no streaming, it'll be made available to the market.

 

It's all interconnected.

 

Disc and download sales are less economically favorable for the industry in part because artists get paid a bigger share of the proceeds than they get from streaming.  Many fewer artists can make a living from streaming than disc or download sales, so fewer artists will be available.

 

Streaming has less of a "long tail" than downloads or CDs because streaming companies also get a lower share per stream than Apple gets for downloads or Amazon gets for discs.  Spotify today has 30 million tracks; back in 2013 Apple already had 35 million on iTunes.  30 million tracks is, let's say, about 2.5 million albums; between CDs and mp3s (remember, declining segments of the industry), do you suppose Amazon has that many or more albums/tracks for sale?  

 

So the economics I talked about has a direct bearing on availability of tracks from less well known artists and particular masterings even from famous artists.  (This is aside from distribution contracts and rights disputes that affect availability of tracks from current famous artists.)

[Jud]

3 minutes ago, mansr said:

It doesn't seem to be stopping video pirates.

 

That's why I said "a little." That was part of the genius of iTunes, making ownership so trivially affordable there is next to no incentive for piracy.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Labels don't care about artists, only profits. If they make more money from a small number of vigorously promoted, auto-tuned, no-talent ass-clowns, that's exactly what they'll serve up.

 

Yes, but that's a constant, not a variable, across distribution modes.

[Jud]

11 minutes ago, mansr said:

The most profitable balance might vary between distribution modes.

 

Amusing to contemplate corporate pie charts with color coded segment in various proportions per distribution channel reading "No talent Auto-Tuned ass clowns."

[Jud]

29 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Jud,

I’ve been following your concerns about less popular groups not producing physical media. I don’t think smaller acts are going to stop making CDs because part of their revenue at a concert is the sales of CDs. They travel well and are easy to make. And as long as concert revenue is how bands survive and market themselves I think CDs will be available.

 

As far as having the best available version one of my favorite bands (unfortunately on life support) Zoe Muth and the Lost High Rollers goes like this: Vinyl dull, CD the same, streaming pass, MP3 pass but the live set at Threadgills on YouTube is awesome.

 

Amazon today has 5.5 million albums in the category vinyl and CD. When I wrote the original post TIDAL had 46 million tracks. But there is still a lot of music that you can’t get except through the bands themselves.

 

It's not that artists would choose to stop making physical CDs, but that the option would be taken away from them if/when the industry decides to stop producing them and the pressing plants go out of business.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I wouldn't worry about CDs or replicating facilities. What you're probably talking about is physical media. In the future that can just as easily be a flash drive if you want to purchase something. or, the artist can offer a download via bandcamp. I think you get to the same place. It's not streaming. 

 

Problem with Bandcamp and similar is not variety but discovery.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Compared to what?

 

The current system that provides more publicity by labels.

[Jud]

39 minutes ago, mansr said:

Chris is starting to sound a lot like a climate change denier. No matter what evidence emerges, he still insists on maintaining a "balanced" debate.

 

Yes, this is just like climate change, with 97% of music scientists in firm agreement.

[Jud]

mansr, I thought that (your bulleted list plus the last statement) was quite nicely stated.

[Jud]

To me, MQA presents a much less than compelling technical argument (anyone who likes the way it sounds, peace, I have no quarrel with your taste) and a very tiny likelihood of monopolizing the market so thoroughly as to exclude any room for technically superior open formats.

 

What would present a more interesting question to me is if the rumors about Apple lying in wait with millions of 24/96 files came true.  Would you jump on the bandwagon with Apple's enormous market share and the possibility for it to effectively take over the hi res download and streaming markets in return for convenient reasonably priced access to open format 24/96 files?

[Jud]

19 minutes ago, mansr said:

That's a flawed comparison. Converting from hi-res to CD quality does two things: 1) limits the bandwidth to ~20 kHz, and 2) reduces the dynamic range to ~90 dB. While both of these operations discard some information, the loss is precisely defined, and if implemented properly, there is negligible effect on the remaining information content. In contrast, what is generally termed lossy compression (MP3, AAC, and indeed MQA) goes further and meddles with the entire bandwidth in ways meant to be minimally audible but with no hard limits on what it might do. For any such compression scheme, there exist inputs for which the compression algorithm breaks down more or less catastrophically with readily audible (if not outright terrible) results. When and how this will occur is difficult to predict, and if it does happen, there is nothing you can do about it. Simple bandwidth reduction does not exhibit any such unpredictable behaviour.

 

11 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Many pages ago you argued for the fundamentalist approach to the definition of lossy. When it suits your interest, you argue that even though something is lost it shouldn't be called lossy. Hmmm. 

 

Maybe another way to think about it is that losses in conversion to CD are required to fit the product to an existing distribution network.  Same with MP3 and AAC.  MQA doesn't have to but does anyway, which is perhaps a greater "sin."

[Jud]

22 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

But this gives some credence to the wholesale redefinition of "lossy".  ALL recordings (no matter what the encoding method) are "lossy" in that wrong use of the term to refer to the fact that all recordings and equipment are not perfect reproductions of the original signal/impulse.  Who cares - that is not what MQA/Bob was referring to and that is not how the term is defined/used...

 

Sure, we can use the proper mathematical definition.  Every CD is lossy then, because it comes originally from an SDM-encoded bitstream in an ADC that is almost certainly converted (in a lossy, irreversible conversion) to PCM at some resolution.  Every edit, effect, and all PCM conversions done thereafter (except if the latter would be done using a closed form filter, which no one uses) are mathematically irreversible and thus lossy.  Inside your DAC there are more mathematically irreversible and thus lossy conversions (again unless you are using a closed form filter for PCM conversions).

 

What MQA does is add a lossy *compression* step to these dozens of lossy conversions, in contrast to, for example, FLAC, which uses *lossless* compression.  So dozens of lossy steps versus dozens plus one.  Obviously a huge qualitative distinction! 

[Jud]

Just now, mansr said:

That's the only place were the terms lossy and lossless have ever been discussed.

 

Strange, since I've been part of discussions of those terms in other places.    (Thus the references to PCM sample rate conversions via closed form filters.)

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

Are you a professional codec developer? Perhaps you should listen to those who are (or have been) instead of making a fool of yourself.

 

You might want to advise Mike Moffat, who invented the DAC as a separate piece of equipment (and perhaps Miska, though I may recall that incorrectly), who I've been "listening to," that he's getting it all wrong.

 

But in any case, before we went off on this tangent about definitions, I was saying MQA's use of lossy compression was unnecessary.  Do you think it audibly degrades quality?

 

(Edit: Substituted "compression" for the incorrect "conversion.")