MQA is Vaporware

[Rt66indierock]

21 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Lots of fire leveled at MQA, but what about the real shills selling it?   Perhaps the reasons have to do with some folks secretly (or not so secretly) listening to MQA on Tidal? (grin)

 

Okay okay, I know, low blow. But the actual question is, why is there not more pressure on Tidal to stop supporting the product that is supposedly so universally hated? 

 

 

Why do "we" need to apply more pressure on TIDAL? They are a mess of company that can't pay its bills. And as I've said before they don't have enough subscribers to the entire Hi-Fi tier to worry about.

[mansr]

28 minutes ago, Paul R said:

why is there not more pressure on Tidal

It's poor form to kick someone who's already down.

[Paul R]

24 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

I don't think Tidal can be challenged for selling what it wants. Free world and all that etc.

 

What i would disagree with is the "..MQA to deliver something infinitely better", and "...highest possible resolution...."

 

Neither can it ever be infinitely better (at best 48dB better), nor highest possible resolution - there are 32bit DAC's available - not sure if there are 32bit recordings available.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

You challenge MQA for selling "what it wants", but will not challenge Tidal for selling MQA?  

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

You challenge MQA for selling "what it wants", but will not challenge Tidal for selling MQA?  

 

 

Tidal also has copious amounts of UMG content that is audibly watermarked (sounds just awful).  Qobuz seems to have none (haven't found any yet), so it seems Tidal didn't have to take the watermarked content.  But they've remained a willing co-conspirator.  They can't go out of business fast enough, I say.

[Shadders]

6 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

You challenge MQA for selling "what it wants", but will not challenge Tidal for selling MQA?  

 

Hi,

No, the challenge on MQA is that it is NOT what it is claimed to be.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[firedog]

38 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Lots of fire leveled at MQA, but what about the real shills selling it?   Perhaps the reasons have to do with some folks secretly (or not so secretly) listening to MQA on Tidal? (grin)

 

Okay okay, I know, low blow. But the actual question is, why is there not more pressure on Tidal to stop supporting the product that is supposedly so universally hated? 

 

  

I don’t think anyone is claiming it is universally hated - clearly there are lots of people that  like it, for whatever reason. 

 Tidal probably made the deal with MQA thinking it would bring them lots of additional subscribers to the hifi tier. Clearly, that also hasn’t happened. But it probably is costing Tidal little, and gives them a supposed marketing/prestige advantage. In the big picture it is costing them little - so why drop it, even if it hasn’t done what you expected?

[crenca]

On 3/9/2019 at 12:00 AM, Jud said:

 

Hi Paul - 

 

Here are the reasons why that's not possible:

 

- The more the interpolation filter in a DAC cuts, the more it rings, or to use MQA's non-standard parlance, "blurs."  In order to avoid the DAC filter itself being a cause of "blurring," it can't cut much.

 

- A filter that doesn't cut much doesn't remove frequencies in the near ultrasonic, which has two effects: (1) It cannot remove ringing caused by the ADC filters, which occurs in the low ultrasonic range; and (2) it allows low ultrasonic frequencies to intermodulate with themselves and with audible frequencies, causing harmonic and intermodulation distortion.

 

- If you don't want your technology copied, and don't want to spend time and money chasing down alleged patent violations, you must somehow obscure the precise effect of the technology.  Therefore you cannot use lossless compression, since simple decompression will reveal the effect of the technology.  You must use lossy compression, which obscures the effect of the technology at the cost of unrecoverably throwing away information from the original file.

 

- Since your DAC filters don't cut in the low ultrasonic, with the potential bad effects we've described, if you don't want those bad effects realized, you must remove the low ultrasonics from what you are feeding the DAC filters, and the only place you can do this, other than mics that don't have any ultrasonic response, is in the decimation filtering in the ADC.

 

- If you use an ADC filter with a strong cut, it will ring ("blur"), and we know that the DAC filter can't remove this (cannot "deblur"), or it will ring itself.  So the only thing you can do is cut gently, but start in the audible range so that you have sufficient cut by the time you reach ultrasonic frequencies.

 

- Therefore you will either be feeding your DAC filter a file with rolled-off highs, or one with ringing and ultrasonics it can't remove, which will cause distortion.  And you will be applying lossy compression to this file as well.

 

Thus what one might call the "central dogma" of MQA is itself impossible; it isn't just this particular implementation that is bad, any attempt to apply the principles MQA advertises itself as built on will inevitably, due to sheer mathematics, have the same set of problems.

 

There are ways to do filtering well, and wind up with a product that doesn't have a great deal of ringing, or IM or harmonic distortion.  And of course it isn't necessary to use lossy compression.  But it's not possible through application of "MQA technology."

 

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

This.  This is what a functioning press worthy of the name does.

1 hour ago, Thuaveta said:

 

I'd be surprised if it was linked to MQA. Finances, old age, maybe. MQA ? Nah. Plus Austin hasn't shown better journalistic ability, which in the case of MQA, becomes rather ominous given his distinguished scientific credentials.

 

It's all fine, as long as they either don't pretend to be journalists or investigative journalists, or, which is much more unlikely, if they start acting like ones (the language ("subjectivist audio journal", "more engaging, more relevant, more entertaining") in the passing-of-the-golden-dong piece makes it clear to me there's no intention of that).

 

That was a nice write up Jud.

 

You guys know there is no functioning "Audiophile Press".  We have a few mavericks with web zines, but they are not really journalists - they are more like pundits.  It's all review oriented trade publications...

[Paul R]

26 minutes ago, mansr said:

It's poor form to kick someone who's already down.

ROTFLMAO!!!

 

Do you have stock in Tidal or something? 

 

-Paul 

 

[Paul R]

14 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

No, the challenge on MQA is that it is NOT what it is claimed to be.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

Is it then, what Tidal claims it to be? 

 

[Shadders]

Just now, Paul R said:

 

Is it then, what Tidal claims it to be? 

 

Hi,

The claims against MQA are objective, and provable - in fact, they have scored an own goal in their AES paper.

 

The disagreement with Tidal is objective on what they have written, and not the subjective claims of MQA.

 

No one can really dispute the subjective claims of MQA nor Tidal - since they are subjective.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[Paul R]

16 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

The claims against MQA are objective, and provable - in fact, they have scored an own goal in their AES paper.

 

The disagreement with Tidal is objective on what they have written, and not the subjective claims of MQA.

 

No one can really dispute the subjective claims of MQA nor Tidal - since they are subjective.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

We will have to disagree then - Tidal is not only charging more for MQA, it is hawking it as perfect authenticated sound, at 24/96k. So either MQA and Tidal are delivering at least 24/96k perfect sound, which would mean neither Tidal or MQA is lying,  or Tidal and MQA are not telling the truth. That is hardly subjective to my thinking.  

 

If MQA is delivering true 24/96k lossless sound, then the arguments against MQA start to fall apart. If not, then Tidal can hardly be an innocent party here and,  should be treated as any other MQA supporter.

 

I do *not* know the facts there. I expect someone here will though. 

 

P.S.  I am playing Devil's Advocate here just a bit. The differences in the way MQA is treated vs. MQA supporters vs. commercial supporters is a bit extreme. 

[Daccord]

9 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Tidal is not only charging more for MQA...

 

Tidal isn't charging more for MQA. They have two tiers - the low cost version includes "normal" and "high" mp3, and the HiFi tier includes "HiFi - Lossless audio" and "Master - The best audio experience".  Despite the fact that I have selected "HiFi" in the streaming audio quality settings, Tidal constantly tries to shove MQA content my way. In fact, it takes some effort to avoid MQA, which would suggest to me Tidal is being paid to promote it.

[daverich4]

19 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Now that everyone, even MQA,  has agreed that MQA is lossy, we should understand that a lossy system is, of itself, DRM.  Creating a lossy system is the first step in creating a DRM system

 

 Not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. MP3’s which are lossy, don’t have DRM built into them yet SACD’s which aren’t lossy, do. What does lossy or not have to do with DRM?

[Sonicularity]

Yes, MQA was added to any existing Tidal HiFi subscriber's access.  Similar to an unwanted TV channel included in a package with more popular choices.  It would be interesting to see how MQA would fair if it were an added service with an additional cost, such as with Qobuz's Studio tier.

[Paul R]

8 minutes ago, Daccord said:

 

Tidal isn't charging more for MQA. They have two tiers - the low cost version includes "normal" and "high" mp3, and the HiFi tier includes "HiFi - Lossless audio" and "Master - The best audio experience".  Despite the fact that I have selected "HiFi" in the streaming audio quality settings, Tidal constantly tries to shove MQA content my way. In fact, it takes some effort to avoid MQA, which would suggest to me Tidal is being paid to promote it.

 

To get MQA content, you have to pay a premium. As you point out, that premium buys you both "HiFi" and MQA "Tidal Masters".  

 

-Paul

 

[mansr]

14 minutes ago, Paul R said:

If MQA is delivering true 24/96k lossless sound, then the arguments against MQA start to fall apart.

It is mathematically impossible to provide lossless compression of arbitrary inputs. For any lossless encoding that reduces the size of one input, there must exist another input resulting in a size increase. Since MQA compresses by a fixed factor, it follows that it must be lossy.

 

14 minutes ago, Paul R said:

If not, then Tidal can hardly be an innocent party here and,  should be treated as any other MQA supporter.

Tidal is free to use a lossy, proprietary format if they want to. They provide the decoder, so it doesn't really matter to the user what format comes down the wire from their servers. When MQA goes away, if Tidal is still around then, they will simply switch to another format. It's streaming, so their choices have no lasting effects. That said, their claims about the greatness of MQA are rather obnoxious.

 

MQA itself is a different beast. They are aiming to replace all music distribution with their proprietary format. When decoders are no longer available, you'll be stuck with useless files, should you have purchased any MQA downloads. If they have their way, your choices will be MQA or nothing. The risk here is that downloads and even CDs will be effectively unavailable as options for however long they manage to stick around, unless you're willing to buy all your music again when it becomes unplayable.

[KeenObserver]

5 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

 Not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. MP3’s which are lossy, don’t have DRM built into them yet SACD’s which aren’t lossy, do. What does lossy or not have to do with DRM?

 

I thought that was self evident.  If it is lossy,  it cannot be reconstituted back to the original.

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

 Not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. MP3’s which are lossy, don’t have DRM built into them yet SACD’s which aren’t lossy, do. What does lossy or not have to do with DRM?

 

It is part of the "freemium" DRM scheme which is MQA.  Your rights are managed by the design of MQA - being lossless ensures that you don't have access/possession of the "crown jewels" of the labels.  

[Sonicularity]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

To get MQA content, you have to pay a premium. As you point out, that premium buys you both "HiFi" and MQA "Tidal Masters".  

 

-Paul

 

 

Though, the ~165K subscribers to Tidal HiFi did not necessarily choose MQA.  It was added to everyone's access with no option to exclude MQA files.

[Paul R]

1 minute ago, Sonicularity said:

 

Though, the ~165K subscribers to Tidal HiFi did not necessarily choose MQA.  It was added to everyone's access with no option to exclude MQA files.

 

No, they do not have to pay for MQA, they can choose the lower tier that does not include it. 

 

As has been pointed out, most of the subscribers to Tidal do choose the lower, lossy tier. Only those willing to pay a premium get to hear the more expensive lossy MQA product, while thinking they are hearing a studio master at 24/96k.  

 

 

[tmtomh]

8 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

To get MQA content, you have to pay a premium. As you point out, that premium buys you both "HiFi" and MQA "Tidal Masters".  

 

-Paul

 

 

Yes, this is a key point, which @Lee Scoggins and other MQA promoters studiously refuse to acknowledge: One cannot gauge consumer sentiment about MQA except by looking at MQA CD purchases and MQA digital-file purchases. One cannot gauge consumer sentiment about MQA because consumers cannot choose MQA streaming - MQA becomes part of a streaming subscription tier that includes lossless redbook, lossless high-res, and MQA. The choice to opt in to a higher tier cannot be read as a choice in favor of MQA.

[daverich4]

1 minute ago, KeenObserver said:

 

I thought that was self evident.  If it is lossy,  it cannot be reconstituted back to the original.

 

Well, if I record something as an MP3, that is the original. So no, lossy doesn’t automatically mean DRM. And as I pointed out previously, SACD does utilize DRM but isn’t lossy. There’s no connection between the two. 

[Rt66indierock]

2 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

No, they do not have to pay for MQA, they can choose the lower tier that does not include it. 

 

As has been pointed out, most of the subscribers to Tidal do choose the lower, lossy tier. Only those willing to pay a premium get to hear the more expensive lossy MQA product, while thinking they are hearing a studio master at 24/96k.  

 

 

 

The Hi-Fi tier is CD quality. Most if not all tracks are available, a number north of 40 million tracks. The number of MQA tracks is less than 166k. And a lot of MQA files are 16/44.1.

[crenca]

5 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

Well, if I record something as an MP3, that is the original. So no, lossy doesn’t automatically mean DRM. And as I pointed out previously, SACD does utilize DRM but isn’t lossy. There’s no connection between the two. 

 

On the contrary, there is an essential connection between the two in MQA's case:

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30381-mqa-is-vaporware/page/475/?tab=comments#comment-937525

 

[daverich4]

10 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

It is part of the "freemium" DRM scheme which is MQA.  Your rights are managed by the design of MQA - being lossless ensures that you don't have access/possession of the "crown jewels" of the labels.  

 

I think you meant “being lossy ensures” not lossless but that isn’t what I was asking about. KeenObserver said that if something was in a lossy format that it automatically included DRM. That’s not a true statement.