MQA is Vaporware

[Charles Hansen]

31 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

According to Wikipedia, Lucky and Goldstar merged and formed Lucky-GoldStar in 1958.   In 1995 the Lucky-GoldStar Corporation was renamed "LG".

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Corporation

 

... which seems to conflict with this Wikipedia page:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Electronics

 

You can't always trust Wikipedia.

 

While i completely agree that you can't always trust Wikipedia (especially when it comes to politics or history), something as simple as the history of a company shouldn't be that controversial. EDIT: Yes, there are discrepancies. "Corporation" says that GoldStar was founded in 1952 and merged with Lucky in 1958, while "Electronics" says that GoldStar was founded in 1958 and merged with Lucky in 1995.

 

Apparently something as simple as the history of a foreign company can be completely screwed up by Wikipedia...

 

Apologies to all!

[Charles Hansen]

14 minutes ago, lucretius said:

Different timelines:

 

You are correct - I was editing my post while you were making a new one. I can see that Fokus must have been looking at the "Electronics" entry. I can't see how it could be that hard to have two articles actually agree with each other. Surely someone in the world knows the right answer. Perhaps if one read Korean they could find out at Wikipedia.kr...

 

EDIT: None of this changes my point that I still think that Astell & Kern was selected as a deliberately deceptive name, just as the example of the Chinese TVs being sold under the "Bush" brand name (means nothing in the US, but apparently was big in the UK). Please note that LG purchased the Zenith brand name. I still remember their slogan from when their TV sets were all tubes, wired point-to-point by hand in the US - "The quality goes in before the name goes on".

 

2nd EDIT: Who said that advertising (programming) doesn't work?

[Charles Hansen]

21 hours ago, Confused said:

So taking a simple case as an example, an 80's digital copy made from a master tape, using a single ADC of known make and model, is there anything in MQA that can improve the digital copy?

 

Hi Confused,

 

Did you ever receive a satisfactory answer to your question? I think the real answer is that it depends. The sound quality of an analog transfer to digital will depend on dozens of different variables:

 

1) The sound quality of the heads and electronics in the tape playback machine.

2) The sound quality of the cables and connectors that brings that analog signal to the mixing board (assuming that is the signal flow - some recordings were mastered in the analog domain with analog EQ, analog mixers, and analog compressors, et cetera - others would convert to digital first and then use digital tools to do all of that.

3) The sound quality of the signal converters (A/D and often D/A so that analog tools can be used on a digital file).

4) The skill and ears of the mastering engineer.

 

I would say that in general, the sound quality of professional analog equipment has slowly but steadily degraded over the decades. Back in the '50s, everything was tubes and it is hard to make tubes sound bad. In the '60s a lot of pro equipment started going solid-state, and early solid-state simply didn't sound that good. By the '70s everything started going to IC op-amps, which in general sound even worse than discrete solid-state electronics. I'm truly unsure if modern IC op-amps sound better than the old crap, or if they have just become so pervasive that everyone is used to the way they sound now and thinks that is "normal".

 

On the other hand, there have been real advance (in general) in digital audio technology, from their preliminary introduction in the late-'70s to the current day.

 

The other thing is that there are always exceptions to the general rule. For example the Pacific Microsonics A/D converter was the first and one of the only A/D converters designed by someone with a high-end background who was proficient in both analog and digital electronic design. So that stands out as a classic even almost 20 years after it was made.

 

But I think the question you are looking for is if one has already made the transfer and there is no option to go back and re-transfer it with another, better sounding chain of electronics - which would definitely be best. Anything else is basically putting lipstick on a pig. Some pop albums (especially) sound like poop because the large multi-channel mixing console had hundreds of high-feedback IC op-amps, and there is no known way to ever get those to sound fantastic. The best we can hope for is that the playback system will not magnify the defects - something which is all too common and usually (and mistakenly) referred to as "ruthlessly revealing".

 

Instead what is happening is that are some types of signals in the recording that trigger misbehavior in the playback circuitry, exacerbating the existing problem. The goal is to instead make playback circuitry that is imperturbable by any signal (including RFI/EMI) that might be played through it.

 

As far as modifying a digital audio file to make it sound "better" (attempt to "correct" for errors in the A/D converter itself), MQA have basically painted themselves into a corner. All of their literature refers to the "time blur", which is the "ringing" of a digital filter that only occurs when it is hit by an illegal signal that violates sampling theorem. MQA claims that this happens more often than suspected, and based on my own experience, this may in fact be true.

 

But herein lies the problem. The only way to remove this type of ultrasonic noise (uncorrelated with the music signal) without cheating, by using already known tools such as EQ, compression, and so forth is to use digital filters that remove the ultrasonic "ringing". And therein lies the rub. There is nothing special about creating a digital filter to do exactly that. Dozens of companies (starting with Wadia in the late '80s, followed by Pioneer in the early '90s, and growing rapidly thereafter) do exactly that.

 

It became so popular to do so (a so-called "slow rolloff" digital filter) that it is hard to buy a DAC today that doesn't offer a slow-rolloff option, as all the current chips have them built in. The reason that MQA have painted themselves into a corner is that in essence, they are claiming that they have discovered the very best sounding digital filter for compensating for recording defects of all time and that it can never be improved upon. Which is of course, total nonsense.

 

There are around a dozen or more companies in high-end audio that have developed the ability to create their own custom digital filters. Some of them (such as Ayre) hew very closely to what MQA uses - slow-rolloff, minimum phase filters. Others (such as Schiit and Chord) use ultra-steep brickwall filters with many tens of thousands of taps. The nice things about this approach are:

'

1) Once you find an approach that you think sounds good to you on your system with the music you like to play, that the sonic improvement is completely free and will apply to every recording you own, no matter when you bought it or how it was encoded.

 

2) Many of these custom filters are now programmable via a firmware upgrade. If and when the manufacturer decides that they have created an improved set of filter coefficients for even better sound quality, it is trivial (and often free) to update the product.

 

The bottom line is that if MQA actually improved sound quality as they claim, the recording studios would be all over them to license the technology and resell their back catalog again. It would be a trivially simple way for them to make billions. As that is clearly not the case, we have to assume that something else is afoot. And the evidence for this grows stronger every day. Specifically, the sole reasons for the existence of MQA are:

 

1) To rescue Bob Stuart from decades of losses of running Meridian Audio and owing some very wealthy and powerful people many tens of millions of dollars.

 

2) For the record labels to sneak in DRM, which is key to the MQA process and allows for future control of music distribution and playback in ways that are potentially horrifyingly draconian.

 

3) There is some small incentive to the streaming companies to reduce bandwidth and storage requirements by using the lossy compression employed by MQA, but this was recently sharply undercut by Apple's announcement that iOS 11 will support FLAC. This cuts lossless storage for streaming services by half, as they currently have to store FLAC versions for Windows and Android machines and ALAC versions for Apple and iOS machines. The iOS upgrade is compatible with any iPhone or iPad with a 64-bit processor, which includes the iPhone 5 and newer.  It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that people will replace their old Apple devices far more quickly than the record labels can convert their entire back catalogs to MQA, and that there doesn't need to be any arm-twisting, deceptive marketing, or shady business practices required to do so.

 

Hope this helps.

[Charles Hansen]

6 hours ago, psjug said:

I have a pair of Usher V601 speakers.  I love how they sound and they did not cost very much.  Usher is Taiwanese, and they get a hand with engineering from Joe D'Appolito (at least that's my understanding).  So not mainland Chinese, but I don't see any reason a mainland chinese audio company would not be accepted if they did similar.  With or without without western collaboration, as long as the product is solid.

 

One thing that left a really bad taste in my mouth with Usher was their deceptive advertising practices. The had a stand mount monitor called the "Dancer" or "Tiny Dancer". It was claimed to have a 1" beryllium dome tweeter and engraved on the metal faceplate was a large "Be" the chemical symbol for beryllium. Be offers many performance advantages over virtually all dome materials, but is quite expensive.

 

It turned out that it was a flat out lie, and the dome was simply painted titanium (about 1/20 the cost). I'm unimpressed with the corporate culture that disrespects its customers so blatantly. YMMV.

[Charles Hansen]

3 hours ago, maxijazz said:

Support for FLAC in iOS11 is from iPhone 7 up. 

But I agree with sentiment, in general. 

 

That is not what I read from an official Apple press release. But they are free to do anything they want to try to induce you to upgrade, obviously. Perhaps they changed their mind? I really don't know. The article I saw said that iOS 11 was ready for all phone with 64-bit processors, but not yet for iPads with the same processor. Keep 'em confused... 

[Charles Hansen]

2 hours ago, Indydan said:

Mr. Hansen, I enjoy reading your posts, and I appreciate Ayre components. I am fortunate to have a dealer within walking distance from my home who sells Ayre, as well as Shunyata gear. I don't know Caelin Gabriel personally, but I have communicated with him on What's best forum a few times. Mr. Gabriel is a straight shooter. There is no deception on his part in choosing his company's name, nor in his technology. I consider myself to be a discerning person, and I do a lot of research and demo gear before I buy. I can say from experience, that Shunyata gear is worth it. 

 

Many cable companies create a marketing mystique around their cables. Shunyata does not. They are the company that best explains in technological terms why cables make a difference. My dealer only carries brands and equipment that are worthwhile and works, while being priced accordingly with regards to their performance. I know a good number of brands that tried to get this dealer to carry their products, only to be refused after the employees of the dealer tried out their stuff. And yes, Meridian tried hard recently to get this dealer to sell its gear. They were politely refused (after the dealer tried out its gear). 

 

I am sure that you know the people at my dealer. They will certainly vouch for Shunyata products if you speak to them.  I say this with respect, and with humour; Mr. Gabriel, like yourself, seems to not be shy about expressing his opinions. Maybe the two of you could have an online debate. It would be popcorn worthy no doubt!

 

I have linked a video in which Mr. Gabriel explains one of his concepts, DTCD. I would enjoy reading your comments about this concept if you care to offer your insights and opinion.

 

It's an interesting idea. And pretty much every cable company has their philosophy they espouse. The vast majority of them make some sort of sense, in at least a "hand-waving" way. However the linked video seemed to imply the "DTCD" was far and away the single most important parameter.

 

That always sets off alarm bells for me. I have "designed" some cables that Cardas made to Ayre's specifications, and my experience is somewhat different in that I find many, many factors will affect the "sound" of a cable.

 

One of my biggest gripes with cable companies is that they are almost universally designed to sound "impressive" and "spectacular" in a quick 5 minute back-and-forth demo at your dealer. This simply does not work for me. For example with power conditioners, I have found that the only reliable test is to put into your system for at least 3 weeks. This allows it to fully break in and for you to become accustomed to the sound.

 

It's only when you REMOVE the PLC that you can get a clear picture of how it helps and how it harms.

 

The other ridiculous thing is the pricing. I find it extremely hard to believe that any pari of speaker cables is worth as much as a pair of our top=-line monoblock amps. I've built some prototypes of interconnects and speaker cables tat would retail for between $300 and $500 that are simply the best sounding cables I've every used. (And no, I don't think they would do especially well on the DTCD test.

 

Cheers!

 

PS - Full disclosure - I've never tried any Shunyata cables. It is possible that they would become my new favorites. But my experience has always been the opposite - when I listen to the latest "must-have" cables, I am always left unimpressed overall. There will be certain aspects of their performance whereby I can understand how someone would be impressed, but I could never live with them long term.

[Charles Hansen]

2 hours ago, Indydan said:

He is not just some angry guy on the internet.

 

You mean he's not like me?

[Charles Hansen]

59 minutes ago, Indydan said:

It is the job of the power supply to convert alternating current (AC) from the wall outlet to direct current (DC) voltages that supply power to the component's electronic circuits.There are basically two types of power supplies: transformer and transformer-less (switched mode) power supplies.

 

This is just plain wrong. All switch mode power supplies have transformers to isolate the equipment from the AC mains. It is just smaller, cheaper, and lighter because it operates at a much higher frequency (often between 100kHz and 200kHz with modern MOSFET switching devices) than the typical AC mains of 50/60Hz. This is why aircraft have used 400Hz power for nearly a century - the higher operating frequency allows for smaller, lighter transformers - which is obviously critical for trying to increase the payload capacity of an aircraft.

 

Another "advantage" of switch-mode power supplies is that if there is any mechanical vibration that would normally be heard as a buzz or hum, it will be inaudible - except possibly to bats. The disadvantage is that you are putting a high powered RFI/EMI generator right inside the same box as your sensitive circuitry.

[Charles Hansen]

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

It’s time to get this thread back on track. The LV30 smartphone will not play Tidal MQA tracks even though it has an MQA decoder in the DAC chip. Apparently you need to have the Oreo operating system installed and Tidal has to release a mobile application allowing MQA to be streamed. The current operating system Nougat will not work and it is unclear when the operating system of the V30 will be updated.  Tidal’s customer support has been unresponsive to those that have asked about the problem.

 

Since nobody seems to have noticed except for a few guys on head-fi we can assume two things there aren’t many LGV30 smartphones in the public’s hands and nobody cares about streaming MQA.

 

Wow, what a fiasco! I'm sure those guys on Head-Fi bought the phone specifically to stream Tidal MQA files on-the-go. They must not be very happy after spending big bucks for the new LG flagship phone...

 

I'd bet right about now that the LG guys are regretting ever listening to Bob Stuart. It doesn't sound like this problem will be resolved for at least 6 to 12 months.

 

I was trying to figure out how many people subscribe to the Hi-Fi tier of Tidal. When they first came to the US, there were only 17,000 Hi-Fi subscribers in Europe. But I've read than almost half of the US market springs for the twice-as-expensive Hi-Fi service. It seems that Tidal is likely making most of its money from the US market. Maybe Jay Z. means something to the average consumer here. I sure wish Qobuz would enter the US market.

[Charles Hansen]

9 hours ago, mansr said:

https://code.videolan.org/mansr/mqa/blob/master/render-filters.txt

 

Hello Mansr,

 

Thank you very much for making these available. This is extremely useful for many. For those who are unfamiliar with the nitty-gritty of digital filters, there are several points of interest:

 

1) MQA has lied through their teeth when they say that the MQA filter is "customized to correct for the deficiencies of the DAC chip itself. At least four different DAC chips from at least two different manufacturers have been examined (at least visual plots thereof, if not to the detail of the actual 12-decimal point accuracy of the coefficients themselves) and there are no visible differences whatsoever.

 

2) The sum of the coefficients in any particular digital filter is (in general) = 1.

 

3) Any time there is a negative coefficient, it means that the impulse response of the filter will drop below zero and there will be undershoot and "ringing". The "ringing" will be at the corner frequency of the filter and is presumably inaudible, yet I've conducted many tests where by I can hear this effect - I think it is safe to say that there is more to be learned about the functioning of the ear/brain hearing mechanism than our current understanding. For example bone conduction responds up to two or three time the frequency response as conduction through the air, eardrum, and middle ear. If people don't think that bone conduction is real, just check out the music of profoundly deaf master musician Evelyn Glennie. (See for example: https://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen)

 

There have also been specific tests whereby transducers were attached to the bone in the jaw or skull of a participant and things like transposing the pitch of speech up to ultrasonic frequencies (while maintaining the original tempo) allowed the subject to "hear" identifiable speech. It is clear that that is at least part of the "mystery" of the importance of ultrasonic sound response.

 

One place that I agree with the "objectivists" is that with a properly limited bandwidth signal these artifacts ("ringing") of the filter should never be excited. Where I disagree is that something else is going on, specifically:

 

a) It is possible that the fact that no PCM A/D converter extant uses a filter that properly limits the bandwidth of the signal is the source of audible problems. A "proper" filter is the sinc function - a physical impossibility as it would require a filter with an infinite number of taps - while the vast majority of them use a linear-phase "half-band" filter that is only down -6dB at the Nyquist frequency - an old habit left over from the days that silicon memory and computational power was super-expensive, and a linear-phase half-band filter only needs half as many taps and coefficient memory storage than a minimum-phase filter, while a half-band filter only needs half the number of taps and coefficient memory storage as any other windowed digital filter. (A "window" is a means to truncate the infinite extent of a true "theoretically perfect" sinc filter.

 

In my experience even changing the windowing function used to limit the number of taps will change the subjective sound quality of the filter. Clearly something is going on which we don't yet understand.

 

I don't believe it has ever been demonstrated that simply inserting an ultra-sharp cutoff band-limiting filter of and by itself does not change the subjective quality of the audio. Doing so with an analog filter would introduce phase shift, at least in the top octave - which may or may not be audible. The only way to do so without introducing phase shift would be to implement the filter digitally - which merely continues the "digital vs analog" debate.

 

b) It is possible that there are events that occur during the processing or mixing of the digital signal that create signals on a digital audio file that (just like the artificially-generated single full-value impulse test signal) excite the misbehavior of one of the many digital filters in the record/playback chain.

 

In other words, I am following the example of the late Richard C. Heyser. I don't start with the theory and let it tell me what I can or cannot hear. Instead I observe (in this case listening, in the case of Newton looking at a falling apple) events in the real world and then try to understand what is the underlying mechanism that creates those events.

 

[Charles Hansen]

5 hours ago, daverich4 said:

 

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your post but for what it’s worth, my iPad Air 2 has a 64 bit processor and is running iOS 11.0.3. 

 

My understanding is that you should be able to import a FLAC file and play it merely by double-clicking (or whatever non-intuitive "gesture" Apple now uses). Can you play FLAC files now without the assistance of a 3rd-part app?

 

Thanks!

[Charles Hansen]

2 hours ago, rickca said:

This quote is from a recent John Darko article:

“No MQA, No Deal”

 

Wow!  Where does he get this crap?  MQA is just making stuff up,  it's alternative facts.  This is what sales guys call a presumptive close.

 

Great question! With TAS we are almost certain it was pure bribery. With Stereophile it is becoming clearer and clearer that JA considers Bob Stuart to be one of his "heroes", so when given a deliberately deceptive demo fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

 

But with Darko I don't know. I've pushed back on him many times via private e-mail correspondence. It is likely one of the above (or a combination). but I don't know which.

[Charles Hansen]

1 hour ago, Tony Lauck said:

Cut me out when it has anything to do with Dolby.

As far as I am concerned, Dolby was an evil force on audio, but made a lot of money.  And my take on MQA is that it is an ill-advised attempt to create negative technology in another "get rich quick" scam.

 

Hi Tony,

 

Agree 100%. The problem with Dolby is that unlike the "purist" approach that John Curl started with his JC-2 preamp for Mark Levinson - the first commercial preamp in the world to drop tone controls (and "loudness buttons"), Dolby noise reduction schemes sent the analog signal through a horribly complex maze of additional circuitry and filters. All else being equal, a simpler signal path is going to sound better than a long convoluted one - especially when Dolby B was implemented on consumer-grade tape decks with ICs and terrible-sounding capacitors.

 

Even in the pro world where Dolby A was used (with four separate bands of compansion rather than the single band of Dolby B used for consumer products), I know of at least one recording that was made with a pro deck using Dolby A. When the artist heard it played back he was horrified by the poor sound quality.  The only thing that could be done at that point was to play back those tracks (a complete symphony orchestra!) without the Dolby engaged on the playback side. Even though this caused measurable errors in the frequency response versus level and strange frequency-related compression artifacts, the artist felt that it was better to leave it like that than add another layer of horrible sounding Dolby circuitry to those tracks (which subsequently were part of the overall mix of many other instruments and vocals).

[Charles Hansen]

12 minutes ago, labjr said:

 

Yeah,  Darko suddenly flipped one day like someone got to him. Maybe he took an immunity deal.  I don't read his blog anymore for various reasons. I noticed he was censoring everything and deleting parts of my posts. I'm Done.

 

Interesting that he would censor your posts. I've no idea what they were about. But it is equally interesting that any time there was any mention of MQA, (paid?) fanboy Peter Veth would make dozens of comments on the article, which Darko had no problem publishing.

 

Which of your viewpoints was Darko trying to suppress?

[Charles Hansen]

16 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

Actually I believe that MQA was at least in part aimed exactly at the cell-phone market. Namely at Apple and Google which dominate this market - everybody else is also-runs loosing money.

 

Apple & Google not only sell phones and their operating systems, they provide platforms where music-streaming is part of the consumption-options. As such they basically control access to more than 90% of the listeners and certainly a sizeable chunk of the profits. The coming wave of smart-speakers will only extend this reach.

 

The labels are at their mercy. 

 

It could have worked if they didn't had it botched so badly with their "let's punk the audiophiles-first" marketing strategy.

 

Actually Apple and Google also lose money by streaming if you look at that business in isolation. But there are other offsetting compensations that allow Apple and Google to make money in other ways.

 

As an example, even though the music industry completely screwed themselves by giving 30% of the profit to Apple, and then allowing Apple to sell the individual songs on every album at 1/12 the album price (the old model in the days of vinyl was to sell the best song and a "throw-away" together for 1/4" of the album price, and if you wanted more songs than that you had to buy the entire album), Apple never made any money directly from iTunes.

 

Instead, iTunes was just a way to sell highly profitable iPods, which in turn pushed people towards buying highly profitable Mac computers, and highly profitable iPads. It's the exact same business mode where updates to the operating system are "free". Since the Mac OS only runs on Apple products,  they use it as a loss-leader to boost sales of their other highly profitable products.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Yes, at the present times the labels are at the mercy of the tech companies - first through the sales of downloads, and even more so through streaming. Currently over half the revenue of the record labels comes from royalties through streaming. YouTube (aka Google aka Alphabet) currently pays billions to the labels for all of the music that is streamed at 126kb/s (not 128 - I don't know why) on YouTube - which is pretty much everything out there except for a handful of artists (not record labels) who have demanded YouTube remove their copyrighted material.

 

The details of the real story are incredibly complex, but the basis of it is very simple -  money and greed.

 

By the way, I know for a fact that Google (at least) is completely and totally anti-MQA. So if either Bob Stuart - or even the record labels - think they can push MQA through, when Google is opposed, then Bob Stuart (and the labels) are deluding themselves. Unless the record labels think that they can live without the billions in revenue they currently receive from Google. I would assume that Apple's position is similar to Google's.

 

In a way it would be great for the record label to be independent of the tech giants. But if it comes at the cost of adding MQA to the mix, it's not worth it to me, at least. Google and Apple sell crap to people who don't care about quality. MQA removes quality and there is a strong potential that the record labels would stop making non-DRM'ed high-res (or even Redbook quality) files available if MQA ever becomes successful.

 

But at this point I don't think we have to worry. Google has been monitoring the situation fairly closely. Their assessment (particularly after the latest AES convention) is that MQA has already failed. Dead. Done. Not worth even worrying about. Interesting, eh?

[Charles Hansen]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

MQA was at first going to be used as the solution for Pono. Not sure what problem this solution addressed, but the team at Pono (when real businessmen ran the company, not Neil Young or his industry chronies) decided MQA didn't make sense.

 

Sources for this story, please?

 

Thanks!

[Charles Hansen]

14 hours ago, synn said:

Back on topic, has anyone compared MQA unfolded on an MQA certified DAC vs on an up scaling DAC?

 

Yes, many time by Frederic V. Using the some of the highest resolution playback systems in the world, he has both done personal listening tests and done demos at shows where nobody could tell the difference. The caveat is that the upsampling has to be done with a minimum-phse, slow-rolloff digital filter, similar to the digital filter used in MQA. See this link for more details:

 

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2017/07/kih-46-mqas-missing-link

[Charles Hansen]

4 hours ago, synn said:

The last thing I want is for Audio equipment to suffer the fate of AV receivers.

 

a plethora of proprietary tech logos in the front, which means a significant chunk of the purchase price goes into licensing costs, which in turn means that the internals of the devices will suffer from budget cuts.

 

Yes, but it's way, way worse than that. In the world of A/V receivers, everything is dominated by video. There are basically three organizations which control everything in the video industry - the DVD and Blu-ray Forum founding companies (about 7 mega-multi-national corporations), HDMI, and Dolby (arguably DTS also). When any of these changes anything or updates to a new standard, immediately the buying public has been trained to regard the old as "obsolete" and that they are now "missing out" on something.

 

This is all a deliberate plot to create planned obsolescence, which in turn creates product "churn", which in turn boosts corporate profits.

 

MQA is the first step in this happening to the audio industry, and why it must be stopped at all costs - if you care about music at all.

[Charles Hansen]

2 hours ago, synn said:

Yes, I read about that as well. I really hope that the delay has to do with getting the licensing sorted out rather than because of a lack of interest from the test group.

 

I cannot believe that this concept is so hard for people to understand. The only reason Spotify exists is to make money. When they run a test (such as they did with the lossless streaming), they simply crunch the numbers and see if the added costs of both storage and streaming more data are higher or lower than the money they will make by adding a new feature.

 

Since they have run the trial and not switched, it is 100% clear that streaming in lossless is currently a money-losing proposition compared with streaming in lossy. What is so hard about that to understand?

[Charles Hansen]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Zero truth to this one. 

 

Since you clearly have some "inside" information, why don't you share it rather than simply tease?

[Charles Hansen]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

OK, 8 pages moved to another thread. Let me know what comments I missed in this first pass through.

 

Thanks very much, Chris!

[Charles Hansen]

26 minutes ago, synn said:

MQA is still making very little buzz over here in Europe. No one i know is talking about it and the Hi-Fi shops are still putting good old stuff in the forefront.

 

What country do you live in? MQA is trying to establish a European "beachhead" in the Netherlands, but I don't think they are making very much progress.

26 minutes ago, synn said:

i was in the market for a network streamer a little while ago and I emailed Onkyo/ Pioneer Europe if they have any plans to offer MQA deciding in their current range of network players. The answer I got was that they currently have no plans. That’s interesting because they are both fully paid up members. So far, all that they have offered are rebranded versions of a portable player.

 

I am unaware of either Pioneer or Onkyo making rebranded anythings. Can you please specify the model of portable player  Pioneer/Onkyo is selling in Europe, and who the actual OEM manufacturer is?

 

26 minutes ago, synn said:

Either the PMPs are about “Testing the waters” to see if MQA sticks or they are planning to release “All new” versions of the network streamers with MQA.

 

Another reason I dislike the internet. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what "PMP" stood for. I even looked on an internet slang dictionary and found "Peed My Pants", "Practice Makes Perfect", "Poor Man's Pizza", and "Poor Man's Porsche". It wasn't until I was typing the above paragraph that I realized you meant "Portable Music Player". As I've said before, I'm not particularly quick-witted, but usually figure out things when given enough time.

 

EDIT: PS - No, they are not planning to release "All new" versions. They are only "testing the waters". Just look at when DVD was first released. All of the movie studios (more then than now, due to US government relaxation of anti-monopoly policies) released titles to "test the waters". Pretty much every release made lots of money, so within a few years there were tens of thousands of titles.  Contrast this to any other failed format, such as DVD-Audio, SACD, or MQA. All of the big companies that are driven solely by profit (eg, public and greedy private) stopped. The only companies making SACDs are tiny private ones, serving a niche market, and dedicated to quality over profit.

[Charles Hansen]

7 minutes ago, synn said:

what I meant by rebranded is that Pioneer’s hifi business is owned by Onkyo now, so they are selling the same device with their respective brand names and slightly different designs.

 

Thanks for clarifying - that makes perfect sense, given the current situation.

 

10 minutes ago, synn said:

i am in Germany, no MQA waves here so far.

 

Very interesting information, given that:

 

1) Germany is the largest market for almost everything (including audio) in Europe.

2) Not too long ago, Digital Audio Review relocated from Australia to Berlin, and that website has also been promoting MQA (although still in the English language. (www.digitalaudioreview.net).