MQA is Vaporware

[John Dyson]

4 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 It would be interesting to hear some segments of the corrected versions vs. the non corrected versions if you get around to doing this.

 Can you name a specific Carly Simon recording that was undecoded ?

DO you want me to show some material?  I don't have a site anymore to demo -- but I can email a copy of a snippet or two if you want. (I am infinitely trustworthy.)  If you are serious -- I can provide a temporary email address so that we can get started...  (I also ahve dropbox, but it seems more complicated to use.)

 

This was an online purchase from somewhere a few years ago.  A lot of digital material hasn't been decoded (definitley not all.)  A lot of my originals are in storage, but I have an encoded Queen CD from Hollywood records (I think) immediately available also.  The Carpenters example was downloaded from HDtracks.

 

John

[John Dyson]

Okay -- anyone who wants to email me, and request some snippets (before and after) on the DolbyA compatible decoder (not supposed to say that) -- I can do so...  I am not sure about this temporary email thing -- so I hope I have done it correctly:

 

[email protected],

 

then I'll send you a short 'Carly Simon', 'Brasil'66', 'Carpenters', or  'ABBA' example.  Just tell me -- Carpenters isn't so good (but had been popular).  I think that I have Petula Clark also.  There are a few that I am NOT sure if they are encoded (sometimes hard to tell -- most of the time they sound like H*ll if not), but I do have more.  I'll keep it to something reasonable (maybe 60seconds), and really should send flac for the best quality.  (The decoder does certain things so well that mp3 can be embarassed.)  Sometimes, the decoder *does* choke, however.

 

John

[sandyk]

32 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

DO you want me to show some material?  I don't have a site anymore to demo -- but I can email a copy of a snippet or two if you want. (I am infinitely trustworthy.) 

 Hi John

 It's probably better to just name particular albums  for the members to check out themselves from their own collections if possible, than risk copyright infringement.

I would however be interested in hearing what you have done with the Carly Simon album sample.

Kind Regards

Alex

[John Dyson]

Just now, sandyk said:

 Hi John

 It's probably better to just name particular albums  for the members to check out themselves from their own collections if possible, than risk copyright infringement.

I would however be interested in hearing what you have done with the Carly Simon album sample.

Kind Regards

Alex

The problem is that a lot of my CDs are in storage.  As long as the cut is short, shouldn't be a problem (not talking about sending the enitre recording, but a chunk of it.)  I wouldn't transfer more than 1 minute in any case (yea, I know that 30seconds is usual and would cut it that short if it was enough to demo.)  I seem to remember that many of the ABBA Gold from the early 1990s are not decoded (ABBA Gold & More ABBA Gold.)  I have a Hollywood records copy of Queen from about 2004 (it is encoded.) 

 

Looking around for material that I still have metadata online (it just gets in the way.)  I'll look in the headers to see if I can find the album information for some examples.

 

I am trying to figure out a way to explain how to determine if something is DolbyA encoded (I can distinguish because of experience) -- for example, the sound has poor spatial image, and also the highs have a suspicious kind of compression -- it is faster than usual.  Often the hiss is stronger than it should be (look at a spectogram on Audacity, for example.)  I think that the strongest indication tends to be the very flat spatial image and the high hiss level on the recording.  The compression is sometimes difficult to disinguish because it is so very fast (I can describe the arrangement, but at freq above 3k, the release time is about 30msec 1pole for fast transients and for dwell times greater than about 10msec is something like 40msecs+30msec release time (2 poles).)  That is a very fast release time.  The saving grace is that the gain changes are mostly between -20dB and -40dB.  The DolbyA is roughly flat above about -10 to -20dB, but the compression at the lower levels really does significantly  boost the highs.

 

Unfortunately, I cannot send the decoder itself -- it is a matter of project integrity, we have been thinking about making a consumer version, but that is planned to NOT be the market for now.  So, this makes it difficult.  Once we start selling -- I hope to lobby for a consumer demo version that runs only at 44.1k/48k and only runs at the lower quality settings.   Low quality on the DHNRDS is generally better than DolbyA HW...  So -- it would be useful for the consumer app.  Once we get our acts together -- hopefully something might be able to happen in that market.  (I own the software, but the project is shared with two, and possibly a third person who wants Telcom C4.)  The project integrity must be maintained...

 

I'd like for the consumers to rattle the cages of the distributors, and at least get the old DolbyA units out to decode the material!!!  The 'real deal' sounds a LOT better than the mushed up compressed shrill sound (at least, they EQ it!!!)

 

John

 

 

[John Dyson]

The Carly Simon example:  Reflections, Carly Simon's Greatest Hits, 2004.  That IS DolbyA encoded (if you get the same one that I have.)

 

John

[Jud]

4 hours ago, Paul R said:

Speaking of which, has anyone compared the 2L samples of "Innocence"  against the MQA file? Dang if the MQA file isn't smaller and sounds better too.

 

Not tonight 'cause it's late, but I want to suggest what may be a better way to listen and compare MQA and original files using @pkane2001's Delta Wave software.

[Paul R]

24 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Not tonight 'cause it's late, but I want to suggest what may be a better way to listen and compare MQA and original files using @pkane2001's Delta Wave software.

That's a good idea. But tomorrow perhaps, as it is getting late. 

 

-Paul 

 

[Paul R]

4 hours ago, mansr said:

That is unacceptable, no way around it.

 

Is that track among the free samples they offer? As for your question, the MQA stream will first be decompressed to 88.2 kHz. The result will be close to whatever went into the compression stage of the encoder. If you have an MQA capable DAC, this will be further upsampled to some higher rate its chip can accept. This might be 352.8 kHz or something else. The number displayed by Roon is the sample rate of the original master. The decoding/rendering process is not required to produce this rate at any stage, and if it does, anything beyond 88.2 kHz is merely the result of upsampling. Any actual content above 44.1 kHz has been discarded by the encoder.

 

Yes, I was just playing around this afternoon, and setup a blind  A/B rotation on it for 4 plays each, skipping to the next track after 40 seconds. Surprised that 4 out of 4 times, I liked the MQA version better. I do not think it is better though. 

 

I captured the playback both in analog form to have a look, and will do a digital capture to see if I can figure it out. 

 

-Paul 

 

[firedog]

13 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I was so disappointed when I got my first CD player for Christmas and put in Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever, this was the first CD I’d ever heard. The sound? Underwhelming to say the least. 

 

I had some decent sounding cassettes 😀

I had a good "hi-fi"/ borderline audiophile system in the early 80's: Dual Turntable, Nakamichi cassette deck, top of the line Yamaha Receiver, Kef Bookshelf speakers. I loved CDs from the beginning: no surface noise, no clicks an pops, no tape hiss. Played louder (or seemed to), too.  Abd at first I had a pretty basic Sony CD player (not one of the early ones).
 

I'm perfectly willing to admit that says something about me - I still prefer well done digital.
 

Yeah, some early digital recordings didn't sound so hot. But the "collective" memory of audiophiles saying everyone "knew" CD sucked back then is a selective/edited memory. Go back to reviews from the mid 80's saying how CD sounds better than analog. This is from the 2nd generation of CD players and on. There was a reason lots of people not only switched to CD, but sold their LP collections. They preferred CD. Yes, there were the Michael Fremer types back then - but they were a minority.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/analog-vs-digital-home-brew-science-edge-art :
 

Quote

We started the listening experiments with what we hoped was no strong bias in favor of either CD or analog record. At the end of the testing, we were forced to conclude that, using the equipment at our disposal, the CD was not only a more accurate facsimile of a first-generation copy of the master tape, but was actually preferable to the best analog records available.

 

 

[firedog]

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

Just had had an amusing experience - received an "anonymous" email threatening me with havoc if I continued to "shill" for MQA, and that someone would totally ruin my online reputation.  

 

Then I log on here and see that someone named ""maxijazz is running through all my posts and disagreeing with them. Not that it particularly matters, or even that I care if someone disagrees with me. I am very liberatarian about that.  But it's funny!!  MQA will be taking over the world!!!  To Arms To Arms!!!!

 

 

Speaking of which, has anyone compared the 2L samples of "Innocence"  against the MQA file? Dang if the MQA file isn't smaller and sounds better too. It says it unfolds to this. I have not captured the output and ran it through an analyzer. Would someone please suggest what I will find when I do? 

 

Not challenging, but the correctness of any theory is the validity and accuracy of its predictions.  I think I know what I will see. 

 

-Paul 

 

 

 

 

Sorry for flogging the same dead horse once again, but I will point out that if your ifi DAC has been updated to the MQA capable firmware, then it is playing all files with the MQA filters - even non MQA ones - once the MQA filter kicks in during any listening session. It can't switch back and forth between the filters and corresponding file type. This gives a slanted result to the playback that favors MQA.

[fung0]

7 hours ago, Paul R said:

Yemen was a fairly rich country at one time, was it not?  What is the reason that is no longer true?

 

Very much off-topic... the answers are not hard to find.

 

Quote

The problem I have is that the opposite of that definition lands smack dab in socialism. Being told how much I am worth, how much my contribution to society must be, and so on. This is the very antithesis of freedom and free will to me. 

 

None of this is even remotely 'socialism.'

 

That's an even bigger topic... but, as it happens, not entirely irrelevant to the issue of MQA. Because it is our current monopoly-capitalist 'free market' that allows a handful of giant corporations to decide that consumers WILL have MQA, regardless of logic, science or the will of the majority.

 

This is the very antithesis of freedom and free will to me.

 

And it is why we must resist MQA by every means at our disposal. Not just because it's a horrible idea technically, or because it threatens to reduce our listening options. But, more importantly, because it represents the front line in our battle against growing corporate domination of our lives.

 

Sony, for example, previously imposed its corporate will on our buying choices in video. Technology and logic favored the HD DVD standard - a rather benign extrapolation of the previous DVD spec. But Sony wanted more control. So it built a Blu-ray drive into its PlayStation 3 and sold that games system at a tremendous loss. This deep-pockets ploy seeded enough Blu-ray drives into homes that Sony was able to claim market victory over HD DVD. (Even though the vast majority of those Blu-ray drives were used solely to load games, not HD video content.) Content producers acquiesced, and consumers were saddled with a far more cumbersome, far more proprietary, and more heavily DRM-ed distribution format. (Blu-ray had stronger region coding than DVD, for example, while HD DVD had none at all.)

 

We don't need to argue the relative merits of HD DVD and Blu-ray, to see the clear precedent for what is being done with MQA. This cumbersome and unnecessary new audio format is being quietly seeded into every distribution system, and into increasing numbers of hardware devices. Very soon, the big music publishers, including Sony, will be able to claim that MQA is a de facto standard. Even though consumers never asked for it, will derive less benefit from it than from any of the alternatives (e.g. FLAC), and will have no choice but to foot the bill.

 

Good luck getting rid of it after that.

[FredericV]

7 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

 

 

 

If they would tell it like it really is:
MQA decoded to 24/88.2 with max resolution of 17/88.2
17/88.2 upsampled to 24/352.8 with leaky filters

You can strip 1/3 from an MQA file and it will still lie about the resolution:
 

DAC's will still say it's 352.8 Khz - which is off course the upsampling resolution, and not the content resolution.

[Confused]

This is a snip of the Tidal / MQA email I received this week.  It states "iPhone now supports MQA". 

 

Of course, the iPhone supports the Tidal app, but the iPhone itself, in terms of it's DAC etc, does not.  I would say this is highly misleading?

 

 

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, fung0 said:

 

Very much off-topic... the answers are not hard to find.

 

It was your example, not mine. The answers are indeed easy to find, you just do not like them and so, invent reasons you like better. 

 

People  like to think problems the political civil war in Yemen have easy answers where nobody gets hurt.  It does not work that way in the real world. It is messy, and bloody, and a real real horror. People are killing babies over there, and there is not one damn thing we or anyone else can do about it without killing a lot of people. And even then, nothing will change without a vast social change first. 

 

Just look at Israel if you want to see an example of an oppressed people standing up for themselves. I do not agree with everything Israel does, but they do not hide from the cost of continuing to exist on their own terms. 

 

That is what you are comparing to MQA. Off topic? You bet. MQA is utterly meaningless beside any of that. 

 

1 hour ago, fung0 said:

 

 

None of this is even remotely 'socialism.'

 

Seriously? 

 

 

1 hour ago, fung0 said:

That's an even bigger topic... but, as it happens, not entirely irrelevant to the issue of MQA. Because it is our current monopoly-capitalist 'free market' that allows a handful of giant corporations to decide that consumers WILL have MQA, regardless of logic, science or the will of the majority.

 

Yet, nobody is holding a gun to anyone’s head and saying you must buy music. You disregard or ignore the facts that a large library of non-DRM material already exists, and that there are and always will be non-MQA venues to enjoy even audiophile grade music without MQA. When and if MQA has the power to prevent a live concert from happening, or someone from distributing their music without MQA, then... maybe. That is one big assed if too. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, fung0 said:

This is the very antithesis of freedom and free will to me.

 

And it is why we must resist MQA by every means at our disposal. Not just because it's a horrible idea technically, or because it threatens to reduce our listening options. But, more importantly, because it represents the front line in our battle against growing corporate domination of our lives.

 

While a future dominated by evil corporations is indeed a scary thing, there is an enormous way to go before that will get to a point where a corporation can literally put a gun to your head and force you to buy music. It is simply scare tactics to assume otherwise. Or to conflate resisting MQA with say, the situation in Yemen. 

 

1 hour ago, fung0 said:

Sony, for example, previously imposed its corporate will on our buying choices in video. Technology and logic favored the HD DVD standard - a rather benign extrapolation of the previous DVD spec. But Sony wanted more control. So it built a Blu-ray drive into its PlayStation 3 and sold that games system at a tremendous loss. This deep-pockets ploy seeded enough Blu-ray drives into homes that Sony was able to claim market victory over HD DVD. (Even though the vast majority of those Blu-ray drives were used solely to load games, not HD video content.) Content producers acquiesced, and consumers were saddled with a far more cumbersome, far more proprietary, and more heavily DRM-ed distribution format. (Blu-ray had stronger region coding than DVD, for example, while HD DVD had none at all.)

 

Okay, and what happened when streaming became a viable option for almost everyone? What was the impact on blu-Ray sales? 

 

And most importantly, Blu-Ray did offer significant improvement in video and sound over DVD. DVDs were a vast improvement over VHS and Laserdisc. 

 

Streaming offers significant improvement over Blu-Ray by the way, if you consider 4K an improvement. Certainly, a vast increase of video material is now available to almost anyone, anytime. Same is true in music. 

 

 

1 hour ago, fung0 said:

We don't need to argue the relative merits of HD DVD and Blu-ray, to see the clear precedent for what is being done with MQA. This cumbersome and unnecessary new audio format is being quietly seeded into every distribution system, and into increasing numbers of hardware devices. Very soon, the big music publishers, including Sony, will be able to claim that MQA is a de facto standard. Even though consumers never asked for it, will derive less benefit from it than from any of the alternatives (e.g. FLAC), and will have no choice but to foot the bill.

 

Good luck getting rid of it after that.

 

Won’t need luck. In the unlikely event your dystopian audio future does happen, we are only one technological jump away from obsoleting it.

 

The question is merely are there enough audiophiles with enough economic resources to make selling them non MQA music profitable? If the answer is yes, then they will continue to sell non-DRMed high res music at a premium. If not, they won’t. Simple as that. 

 

That’s assuming of course, a MQA distribution lock ever really happens, and that is a big assumption. 

 

 

 

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

 

Sorry for flogging the same dead horse once again, but I will point out that if your ifi DAC has been updated to the MQA capable firmware, then it is playing all files with the MQA filters - even non MQA ones - once the MQA filter kicks in during any listening session. It can't switch back and forth between the filters and corresponding file type. This gives a slanted result to the playback that favors MQA.

 

It is indeed using the same set of filters, but... there does not seem to be an easy way around that. 

 

[John Dyson]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

Yet, nobody is holding a gun to anyone’s head and saying you must buy music. You disregard or ignore the facts that a large library of non-DRM material already exists, and that there are and always will be non-MQA venues to enjoy even audiophile grade music without MQA. When and if MQA has the power to prevent a live concert from happening, or someone from distributing their music without MQA, then... maybe. That is one big assed if too.

 

 

At one time, Google wasn't the only real player, and always had the motto rougly said 'do good things' or something like that.  What do we have now? -- a singular major search engine -- lots of money -- lots of tentacles...  I knew one of the YAHOO guys -- they were reasonably big, but there was also Alta Vista, and others.  Google got a leg-up with some very good proprietary algorithms -- and blew everyone else away.  Now -- we certainly cannot say that MQA is anything like the leg-up that Google had... However, it is very possible that Google would have become the monster that it is -- whether or not they had the super technology.

 

What REALLY GOOD search engines do you have now?  We don't allow flac on any players that can use MQA -- sound like typical big corporation?  You got the idea?

 

DRM represents a 'control' over peoples choices IF THEY WANT MUSIC.  For example, my DolbyA thing -- imagine all of the music, left undecoded, in MQA format -- how can you REALLY recover the recording then?  Do you purchase the $1000 MQA DolbyA decoder -- because of the licensing, or purchase a reasonable cost decoder MAYBE $300 or so (like the DHNRDS) sometime in the future?

 

MQA represents an attempt at monopoly - simple as that.

 

John

[Shadders]

25 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Yet, nobody is holding a gun to anyone’s head and saying you must buy music

Hi,

I do not know why you wrote this. I assume you are attempting to inflame the discussion ?

 

As a comparison, if i want to design and build my own sound processor for decoding any current media format for sale such as DVD or Blu-ray, i have to implement Dolby or DTS. In both instances they are closed/proprietary systems, and to be able to sell such a product that can decode the datastream, i MUST pay Dolby or DTS, SIGNIFICANT sums of money for the licence and a cost per product sold. The entire video industry is proprietary in respect to the audio.

 

If MQA becomes the only format, then it forces EVERY person who builds a product such as a DAC or digital audio device, into the same situation - they MUST pay MQA Ltd the licence costs etc., per product sold.

 

If you do NOT pay the licence fees, then your product is automatically inferior, by virtue that you could only ever play the degraded MQA file (13bit to 15bit PCM + NOISE).

 

Why should an entertainment source such as music, suddenly become proprietary format only, where the format offers inferior sound ?

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[John Dyson]

 

9 minutes ago, Shadders said:

Why should an entertainment source such as music, suddenly become proprietary format only, where the format offers inferior sound ?

 

I can answer that specifically -- why should the source use an inferior/proprietary format?  Misinformation, disinformation, lies, and most important -- more control/opportunity for siphoning more money from the customer.

 

The  most responsible thing to do RIGHT NOW:  The customer to reject whole heartedly anything associated with MQA so that they don't get a foothold.  If they ever get a significant amount of control, then the audio world will  lose a lot of diversity/motivation for the little guy to innovate & will cause stagnation because of the raw profit motive/short term cost-benefit by large/controlling corps.  Even if a large number of people reject MQA - it won't really stop the owners of the IP, but might keep them from attaining monopoly control.  I am definitely not out to destroy anything or anyone, so that ideal makes me advocate at least some rejection of MQA -- if there is enough, then then can siphon some money, yet the customer still has some choice.  There is SOME room for MQA (however misguided), but schemes like that are dangerous, and best avoided.

 

See Google/Facebook for the expected kind of control and manipulation of the people.   Frankly, I believe Facebook to actually be inferior to what really should be happening -- and is functionally not all that big of a deal.  However, it is popular, and the fact that it is so popular that it can exert control over speech (proven politcial control, for example.)  (Sometimes free speech is misunderstood.. It is legal for a company like Facebook to do bad things and declare any certain kind of speech forbidden -- on personal/corp policy whim.)  However, the best thing is not let an entity like Facebook to attain much control.  Some kind of monopoly status might allow regulators to more strongly demand certain behaviors -- but the government solution is not always good either.  There is too much money involved (however diminished it might be) to expect enough people/corporations to truly be 'good citizens'.  Regulators are also a big mess -- not necessary altruistic, have problems with the enacted laws, and corrupt civilians in gov't agencies (the FBI leadership has actually had a poor history -- not just recently -- whether or not you agree that the recent FBI has been corrupt.)  There is nothing really pristine in the US gov't unlike other gov'ts :-).

 

The best thing -- try to keep monopolies from getting monopolistic control of anything.

 

MQA is just a bad thing for the consumer.  Too many problems for the future.  Too much control ceded by the customer.

 

John

[mansr]

4 hours ago, firedog said:

Sorry for flogging the same dead horse once again, but I will point out that if your ifi DAC has been updated to the MQA capable firmware, then it is playing all files with the MQA filters - even non MQA ones - once the MQA filter kicks in during any listening session. It can't switch back and forth between the filters and corresponding file type. This gives a slanted result to the playback that favors MQA.

The iFi DACs (not sure about Pro iDSD) do not degrade non-MQA material.

[4est]

2 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

It was your example, not mine. The answers are indeed easy to find, you just do not like them and so, invent reasons you like better. 

 

People  like to think problems the political civil war in Yemen have easy answers where nobody gets hurt.  It does not work that way in the real world. It is messy, and bloody, and a real real horror. People are killing babies over there, and there is not one damn thing we or anyone else can do about it without killing a lot of people. And even then, nothing will change without a vast social change first. 

 

Just look at Israel if you want to see an example of an oppressed people standing up for themselves. I do not agree with everything Israel does, but they do not hide from the cost of continuing to exist on their own terms. 

 

That is what you are comparing to MQA. Off topic? You bet. MQA is utterly meaningless beside any of that. 

 

 

Seriously? 

 

 

 

Yet, nobody is holding a gun to anyone’s head and saying you must buy music. You disregard or ignore the facts that a large library of non-DRM material already exists, and that there are and always will be non-MQA venues to enjoy even audiophile grade music without MQA. When and if MQA has the power to prevent a live concert from happening, or someone from distributing their music without MQA, then... maybe. That is one big assed if too. 

 

 

 

 

While a future dominated by evil corporations is indeed a scary thing, there is an enormous way to go before that will get to a point where a corporation can literally put a gun to your head and force you to buy music. It is simply scare tactics to assume otherwise. Or to conflate resisting MQA with say, the situation in Yemen. 

 

 

Okay, and what happened when streaming became a viable option for almost everyone? What was the impact on blu-Ray sales? 

 

And most importantly, Blu-Ray did offer significant improvement in video and sound over DVD. DVDs were a vast improvement over VHS and Laserdisc. 

 

Streaming offers significant improvement over Blu-Ray by the way, if you consider 4K an improvement. Certainly, a vast increase of video material is now available to almost anyone, anytime. Same is true in music. 

 

 

 

Won’t need luck. In the unlikely event your dystopian audio future does happen, we are only one technological jump away from obsoleting it.

 

The question is merely are there enough audiophiles with enough economic resources to make selling them non MQA music profitable? If the answer is yes, then they will continue to sell non-DRMed high res music at a premium. If not, they won’t. Simple as that. 

 

That’s assuming of course, a MQA distribution lock ever really happens, and that is a big assumption. 

 

 

 

For the life of me Paul, I cannot see how you of, all people here, would be pro MQA - even if you prefer the sound considering it has been reverse engineered. I am sure there must be something I missed...

[pkane2001]

9 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Not tonight 'cause it's late, but I want to suggest what may be a better way to listen and compare MQA and original files using @pkane2001's Delta Wave software.

 

Jud, while you can start testing this right now, I do have a couple of additions to the A/B comparator in DeltaWave that might help in the future. It already has a built-in ABX-style blind or sighted comparator, but I want to add two more:

 

1. Pair-wise blind comparator that lets you decide if the two files played in left/right stereo combination are the same or different

2. Subjective blind preference test that measures if there is a statistical support for you liking one track over the other

 

 

[rando]

6 hours ago, fung0 said:

(Blu-ray had stronger region coding than DVD, for example, while HD DVD had none at all.)

 

Not sure how you reasoned MQA=BD.

 

What you have effectively stated is we should accept MQA, which does not have region coding and does not have DRM, before someone bigger comes along and forces a format along the order of BD on us.  

 

Now I'm curious. In a DBT how many here would prefer audiophile BS to...?

[Paul R]

3 hours ago, Shadders said:

Hi,

I do not know why you wrote this. I assume you are attempting to inflame the discussion ?

 

I am am not of course. I do think that Opposing MQA is important, but MQA will never ever have the impact of a civil war (except among audiophiles perhaps) and it is also very important to remember that. No matter what, nobody is going to be killed over whether or not they support or do not support MQA.

 

And making ridiculous comparisons is only going to hurt any efforts to moderate or stop MQA. 

 

 

Quote

 

If MQA becomes the only format, then it forces EVERY person who builds a product such as a DAC or digital audio device, into the same situation - they MUST pay MQA Ltd the licence costs etc., per product sold.

 

If you do NOT pay the licence fees, then your product is automatically inferior, by virtue that you could only ever play the degraded MQA file (13bit to 15bit PCM + NOISE).

 

Why should an entertainment source such as music, suddenly become proprietary format only, where the format offers inferior sound ?

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

You can certainly create video today and stream it using no cost protocols, even hi res video. You can also create music to go along with that video and distribute it. You can even put what you create on disc and have a proprietary blu ray players play it back, without paying for copy protection, though the video industry froths vilely at that capability. 

 

Somehow, the music will survive. Even if all the opposition to MQA fails, which it certainly won’t. 

 

Unless it gets off into silly silly rants and personal attacks. 

 

4 hours ago, John Dyson said:

At one time, Google wasn't the only real player, and always had the motto rougly said 'do good things' or something like that.  What do we have now? -- a singular major search engine -- lots of money -- lots of tentacles...  I knew one of the YAHOO guys -- they were reasonably big, but there was also Alta Vista, and others.  Google got a leg-up with some very good proprietary algorithms -- and blew everyone else away.  Now -- we certainly cannot say that MQA is anything like the leg-up that Google had... However, it is very possible that Google would have become the monster that it is -- whether or not they had the super technology.

 

What REALLY GOOD search engines do you have now?  We don't allow flac on any players that can use MQA -- sound like typical big corporation?  You got the idea?

 

DRM represents a 'control' over peoples choices IF THEY WANT MUSIC.  For example, my DolbyA thing -- imagine all of the music, left undecoded, in MQA format -- how can you REALLY recover the recording then?  Do you purchase the $1000 MQA DolbyA decoder -- because of the licensing, or purchase a reasonable cost decoder MAYBE $300 or so (like the DHNRDS) sometime in the future?

 

MQA represents an attempt at monopoly - simple as that.

 

John

 

Just a matter of scale John. Google took over because they offered the service at no-cost to the entire internet, and made a point to “do no evil.”  Alta-Vista died more as a result of DEC being bought by Compaq than anything else. Wolfram-Alpha is out there, as are Bing and Ali-Baba. There is competition. 

 

I see your point, of course. Even agree with it. 

 

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, 4est said:

For the life of me Paul, I cannot see how you of, all people here, would be pro MQA - even if you prefer the sound considering it has been reverse engineered. I am sure there must be something I missed...

 

Oh, I am not Pro DSD Forrest, in fact, it would please me  greatly if both MQA ad Tidal just rolled over and went out of business.

 

The fact I liked a MQA version really surprised me, and means if I am honest, I need to find out why. I have some hearing loss at 58hz, and some issues with light tinitius in my left ear, which I think is changing how I hear a bit. It is annoying not to be able to trust what I hear, but then...  🤪

 

I expect to find pretty much exactly what Mansr pointed out today, and perhaps try Deltawave. 

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

The iFi DACs (not sure about Pro iDSD) do not degrade non-MQA material.

 

Are you sure? The latest firmware seems to claim to use the same filters for both MQA and non MQA. 

 

What I really need is to capture the completely unfolded digital signal of course, but since the last unfold(s) happen in the DAC... 

I was thinking to try a capture from S/PDIF, butterflies that does not go to 384khz. 

 

-Paul