MQA is Vaporware

[Rt66indierock]

On 5/28/2017 at 2:20 PM, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

We are just short of 2,500 posts in this thread mainly by my seat of the pants guess of primarily about 100 or so people with strong beliefs mostly one way, but also some the other way.

 

The "vaporware" premise of the thread title is obviously exposed now as false, since it is clear MQA now exists commercially as a product you can buy.  But, the overriding tone here still sees it as monstrous existential threat that needs to have a stake driven through its evil heart.

 

The ultimate answer will, of course, not come from the speculative opinions or beliefs from this or any other internet thread.  It will come from the greater marketplace, as it should in a free society.

 

On this Memorial Day weekend, Americans should slow down and reflect on many things, like those who have sacrificed for all of us. 

 

I think it is also a good weekend to think about larger issues.  Here, for example, is a fascinating essay well worth reading that may summarize some of the essential underpinnings of the debate in this thread, as well as what in the hell is going on on planet Earth in this day and age.  It is a really good read, not too long, but worthwhile:

 

http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/

 

 

 

Your post is worth making a few comments on.

 

I always have regrets when I can’t visit graves of high school classmates who died in Vietnam on Memorial Day I but remember them all.

 

As for expertise in high end audio it started going away in 1982.

 

At least in the Valley of the Sun I could buy no mainstream MQA music until last week when some concerts became available in MQA. So under your premise MQA was vaporware from December 2014 to the fourth week of May 2017. I can live with that since my thoughts were have a vaporware thread until there were 10,000 albums, then start a thread about whether it is commercially viable and finally a thread about will MQA reach critical mass in terms of music availability .

 

However since I was there when the term vaporware was coined (Xenix) in 1982, it involved my profession (accounting) and Microsoft I prefer keep the term vaporware on MQA for the time being.  After all the Xenix  operating system was declared vaporware when it was shipping. You can’t do anything commercially viable with less than 10,000 albums and just like a few Microsoft rollouts there is a lack of transparency and the roll out is painfully long. Bill Gates received a Golden Vaporware award for taking eighteen months to roll out Windows.

[Rt66indierock]

I talked with Bob Stuart of MQA this morning at the LAAS. There will be downloads available in the United States this summer.

[Rt66indierock]

The Vaporware Trails Los Angles Audio Show Update

 

I just returned to The Valley of the Sun from the Los Angles Audio Show. I did not bring enough warm clothes and show attendance was disappointing.

 

Starting with High Resolution Audio in General

 

There is a free DSD streaming service from Japan. It is classical so I don’t have any details.

 

What is high resolution now can be 51% 24/44.1 and rest can be anything less. One topic discussed at Cookie Marenco’s DSD seminar was why isn’t there more high resolution music made. Piper Payne a Bay Area mastering engineer told us that it takes an elite studio and personnel to make high resolution music and there are not many around. She also pointed out that it doesn’t make economic sense to make high resolution recordings in today’s music environment.

 

After this seminar I found out the original post MQA is Vaporware had been distributed among the Producers and Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy during a discussion about resolution with some of the Academies members.

 

On Saturday Marc Finer of the Digital Entertainment Group told us there are about 20,000 high resolution albums available. Jim Belcher of Universal said they had 8,000 to 10,000 albums. Not as slippery a number as I would think because of the number of Extended Plays in hi res. Brad Spahr of Sony said they had 4.500 hi res albums but the number goes up to about 7,000 if you count Singles and Extended Plays. George Lydecker of Warner Music Group said they had 7,670 hi res albums. However remember the 24/44.1 resolution above? 3,900 of the 7,670 are 24/44.1.

 

MQA Specifically

 

Bob put on a nice technical seminar about MQA Saturday. It was a lot to take in even for someone like me who has studied it extensively. He talked about the front end process of original recordings in MQA a bit. He spent some of his time on theory and how air attenuates sound. And how sounds from 24kHz to 48kHz correlated to sounds in the audible range.

 

I talked with Bob Stuart twice. He told me HDTracks will start selling downloads this summer and that the MQA plug in for Pro Tools is available. We exchanged business cards and if I have a question I have no doubt he will answer it.

 

It was very clear the Digital Entertainment Group and the Majors are taking over the marketing of MQA (two separate conversations). Between the two Saturday morning seminars (MQA and Streaming the Studio) I talked with Marc Finer, Jim Belcher and George Lydecker. I pushed them a little on the market for high resolution audio just to see what might come out in the Streaming the Studio seminar. Here’s what came out. Universal hasn’t started converting files to MQA.  Neither has Sony. The Warner catalog converted up to April was converted by MQA. A group from Warner spent several months in Cambridge learning the conversion process including how to make the keys in MQA. Since April Warner has been doing their own conversion of files to MQA so they should be able to convert the remaining hi res files themselves. This means that Universal and Sony need to go through similar training before they can convert files to MQA. Until they do MQA will be doing the conversions. It also means the Independent labels are dependent on MQA for their file conversions.

 

Finally the Digital Entertainment Group sees high resolution streaming as 12 million person market out of 150 million current streaming subscribers. Interesting to note the market for hi res streaming isn’t getting bigger as streaming subscriptions have grown from 100 million to 150 million. But if you are counting on the major labels to actually accomplish any of this Michael Fremer reminded us Sunday in his seminar how poor they are at doing anything.

[Rt66indierock]

52 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

Not to go too far off topic but another side of this coin is the call for analog recordings. What started a few years back as a cute bit of nostalgia in audiophile circles spread into a huge hipster fad. A lot of the Joe Sixpacks have read the Forbes, etc; articles on how wonderful analog/vinyl sounds, and on and on. Almost daily I read of some performers talking about wanting to record in analog. On and on and on the mis-guided intentions have actually slowed the progress of true High Fidelity.

Sad

 

Sal

As best I can tell bands want to sell vinyl records not always make analog recordings. More vinyl than you think comes from digital sources. Some of the new pressing equipment only has digital inputs. My source for the last two sentences is Michael Fremer’s Sunday Seminar on The Future of Vinyl at the Los Angles Audio Show. He is okay with digital sources as long as they are 24/96 or higher.

[Rt66indierock]

5 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Interesting Rt66 as always.

 

So, based on all this in your opinion is Hi Res going over to MQA?  with the recent announcements of HDTracks and others, does the future of Hi Res = the future of MQA?  In other words, will there be any Hi Res ( >24/44) PCM,DSD (or any other open format) from the majors in the future?

 

I don’t think High Resolution PCM or DSD is going to be replaced by MQA. First the artists’ and musicians are spread all over the world. Second recording and mastering are too decentralized.

 

To record in MQA takes equipment and training as does converting files to MQA. George Lydecker of Warner Music Group described the training process to convert files as lengthy. Several Warner employees spent a couple of months to learn the MQA conversion process in Cambridge. There must be some training involved to record and create an original MQA file as well.  

 

MQA will be doing the conversions for Universal and Sony until they receive the same lengthy training as Warner went through. Independent labels will be dependent on MQA to do their conversions because they lack the staff to go off for training. There is a capacity issue here. How many files can be converted?

 

MQA is small company with significant money behind it. But they haven’t had success marketing the format in Europe. And I’m not seeing any success marketing MQA to Japanese consumers. Now turn to America only TIDAL is streaming MQA. Adding HDTracks streaming MQA will require the resources of others because HDTracks lacks the resources to stream audio. 7 Digital can handle the infrastructure but their latest financial statements give me reason to doubt they have the resources to cover the losses of streaming MQA.

 

People need to remember where the feet of audio journalists are at audio shows. In almost no cases are they in the seminars or talking with the panelists before and after the seminars. When it comes to High Resolution and MQA the information is spread over several seminars in bits and pieces. I’m looking for information supporting or refuting marketing claims. I’m not seeing information supporting claims that MQA is gaining traction or has momentum in the United States. Tidal streams MQA. HD Tracks will have downloads available in the summer and in the second half of the year will launch a streaming service with MQA. That is not reaching enough mainstream consumers to matter.

[Rt66indierock]

11 hours ago, esldude said:

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6013

 

So at least one Grammy award winning mastering engineer does not Authenticate MQA.

 

I was sitting in the same row with Brian Lucy when he shouted out a question and called Bob a liar. Lots of recording engineers were in the room making it even more uncomfortable. Had I asked the question it would have gone like this. Bob, in my studio I prefer an open sound as opposed to a closed sound more commonly used. My pop, rock and alternative clients prefer this type of sound and when my work is converted into MQA I lose the openness in my recordings.  Is there something in the MQA process that changes or interprets how a studio sounds?

 

This was an opportunity missed to have a good discussion since Brain seeks a specific sound and wasn’t getting it in MQA.

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Do the preferences of people really matter to anyone here? If one guy likes it and others don't, how does that change anything? Or is it just food for discussion?

 

Chris,

If your studio signature sound changed in the conversion to MQA then it isn’t a master. In Bob Lucy’s case he uses a Pacific Microsonics ADC and has his studio set up differently to get that sound in 24/44.1. If he used a Forssell ADC instead the sound would be different and would not be a master. If he took his equipment to another location it would sound different and not be a master. When you convert master to MQA and it sounds different it is not a master. There is no difference in the three examples.

[Rt66indierock]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

First, before I get to Brian Lucey: The recent news does seem rather depressing from the lack of anything (at least in @Rt66indierock's report) about movement in regular hi-res, streaming or download.  Wonder how many (few?) of the Pepper purchases on Amazon had anything to do with the 24/96 versions?

 

Now, re Brian Lucey: This quote from him didn't fill me with confidence in his knowledge or musical judgment (though I could as always be wrong):

 

 

Maybe it's worse or better with "higher math" - he doesn't know - than 24/44.1, which he likes for "density."  He then throws in a swipe at one of his colleagues (always charming).

 

Then he says "the math is solid" after just remarking he doesn't know about it.  OK, a really solid source. 

 

Well as far as regular hi-res everyone is hopeful Apple will do something but the Warner Music Group guy in the Streaming the Studio seminar let slip that Apple doesn’t have a treasure trove of h-res stuff in the Mastered for iTunes program at least from them. They sent Apple 3,900 24/44.1 files as well as shopping list of other actual hi-res formats including totaling around 3,800.

 

The discussion of St Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at LAAS was the digital was louder get the vinyl. No discussion of numbers.

 

I wish I had better news about hi-res but I’ve been focused on encouraging indifference about MQA among artists, bands, producers recording engineers and mastering engineers around everything else I do. The general public needs no encouragement to be indifferent about h-res much less MQA.

[Rt66indierock]

Tomorrow Sprint customers can get TIDAL HiFi free for six months. After six months Tidal Premium will cost $9.99 per month. There is no mention of the HiFi service after six month free trial in the press release.

[Rt66indierock]

8 hours ago, Jud said:

 

And that it's usually a good thing for a frenzy to have frenzied anti- as well as pro-, to really gin up the level.

 

In this case the pro MQA people in the audiophile community are actually more helpful than the anti MQA people.

Any non-audiophile reading MQA is great is going to be disappointed when they hear it for themselves. There are so many people to thank for raising expectations about MQA but the Digital Entertainment Group couldn't be doing a better job of convincing people this is an audiophile product. 

[Rt66indierock]

10 hours ago, realhifi said:

 

WHAT?!!  Sacrilegious!  How can you not flip over these little classics?

 

On Velocity this morning there was a 1963 split window, fuelie, red on red.

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, daverich4 said:

HDTracks is having a sale on new music and I noticed something that had been brought up earlier in this thread. Not one album I looked at was available in anything higher than 24/48. HDTracks has announced they're going to start a streaming service so does this mean the only way to get higher resolution is going to be MQA? I'm one of the Luddites that has no interest in streaming so I'm sort of concerned where this is all going. 

 

No way King Crimson is going available in greater than 24/48 unless you want it to be dumped in a bigger container like The Eagles on the Border at 24/192. I will take a good effort at 16/44.1, 24/44.1 or 24/48 over some of the stuff on HDTracks at higher resolutions.

 

After all why was the definition of hi-res lowered to 24/44.1? 

[Rt66indierock]

5 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

Except this isn't old music remastered. New albums by London Grammar and Lindsey Buckingham. 

 

What do you gain by going above 24/48 on Lindsay Buckingham's album?

[Rt66indierock]

Just now, daverich4 said:

 

It was recorded in 2017 so I'd guess that it was recorded at a higher resolution and then downsampled for some reason. 

 

I don't know for sure but remember my LAAS report only a few elite studios can do hi-res. Stuff above 24/48 is unusual not the norm. That's why there is so little stuff 24/96 and above.

[Rt66indierock]

Just now, daverich4 said:

For years HDTracks has been selling music at 24/88, 24/96 and 24/192. Now the new stuff tops out at 24/48. I'm not arguing about how it got to be higher resolution or even if it's worth it as far as sound. Something has changed in their business model and I'm not feeling that it's to the consumers benefit. 

 

And for years their quality control has been criticized. Bob Stuart told me HDTracks is going to sell MQA downloads LAAS. Others have reported HDTracks will team up with 7 Digital to stream MQA. Do you think either of those steps benefit consumers? Especially since 7 Digital had to raise new equity capital to do the streaming venture.

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Bissie (nickname for the head of the BIS recording label, which puts out some really beautiful classical recordings) always said the word length was more important than the sample rate.

 

I don’t disagree with that. I’ve had Lydia Loveless’ Somewhere Else, DR Dog and Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band as the playlist this afternoon. Brian Lucy and his 24/48 Pacific Microsonic’s ADC sure sound good. That’s all I’m going to judge the man on.

[Rt66indierock]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

The lower limit is usually because they use so many channels. 

 

Thank you for responding to elsdude. The answer seemed obvious to me. 

 

 I went to Esoteric Audio's event this afternoon. I'm always saddened by the people I meet  who feel isolated because they can't socialize with other audiophiles but won't join us for the listening sessions we have in my office from time to time because it is too far away. 

 

I agree with you on cars my 2004 Miata Mazdaspeed still stops traffic even in a car crazy town like Scottsdale.

 

If people want to get this thread back on track we can discuss which Paul McGowan is causing grief in the audiophile world.

[Rt66indierock]

45 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Fine, do it, if it will make you feel better.  But, I expect it will have zero credibility since it will be dominated by true believers only, one way or another.  It will be hardly a representative, random sample. Here at CA, the outcome is predictable, and it is unlikely to affect the course of future events.

 

FWIW, nope, I do not agree with your conclusions. I have been through the echo chamber of this entire thread and several others, as well as doing a fair bit of reading of technical papers. I have also listened to it.  However, its ultimate success and survival is not guaranteed, in my view.

 

I've been following the money. Why did 7 Digital's directors put in a lot of new equity to finance HDTracks streaming MQA? Why did Sprint decide to give Tidal HiFI away for six months? 

[Rt66indierock]

5 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Are you linking the first to the second?  

 

The two are not linked. Sprint giving away six months of TIDAL HiFi tells me the subscription numbers are low. The HDTracks streaming financed by 7 Digital is interesting because of who put the money in and why are they creating a small streaming service when it is impossible to be a small player in streaming music. 

[Rt66indierock]

2 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Nope, not at all.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with that.  Yours is just wishful thinking that It seems others have expressed also.  

 

The sauce, while highly technical in some ways, is not all secret, although it may seem that way to some when it is, in reality, just over their heads as to their ability to grasp it.  Hence, many do not understand it, but they do not know that.  They only think they do, leading to many ignorant and unfounded objections nonetheless.

 

Some detailed aspects of it are indeed proprietary secrets.   And, that both infuriates and misdirects some technical gurus to unreliable speculation rather than facts, i.e., fake news.  Some detractors are also deeply invested in technologies to which MQA would be upstart completion.  That bias might explain some, though not all, technical detractors and nay-sayers.

 

Somewhere in the muddle of all this, there might be some legitimate, constructive criticisms of MQA.  But, at this point, especially in this and other threads at CA, good luck finding them.

 

 

That why I'm following the number of albums converted and the number of people who can stream MQA. Those two things cause enough issues for MQA. I have the 2016 Annual report and it raises even more questions.

[Rt66indierock]

Another good reason for keep bringing up the encryption in MQA is in the Group Strategic Report in the MQA Ltd 2016 Annual Report.

 

“Given the widespread acceptance by key opinion makers in the music industry and journalists, as well as the business model adopted by the first licensees, the board remains confident that MQA is well positioned to succeed.”

 

All the people MQA Ltd thought were key opinion makers in audio journalism who denied DRM was in MQA are finding they are no longer key opinion makers when it comes to MQA.  When enough key opinion makers lose their status it makes it harder accomplish the things that drive MQA Ltd’s financial key performance indicators.

[Rt66indierock]

MQA Ltd Financial key performance indicators from the 2016 Annual Report

 

In the short term, the board will:

 

Remain focused on the cash burn rate; the rate which the company is losing money generally computed per month. For 2016 the burn rate was about $360,000 a month. They had about two and a half years of cash left at December 31, 2016.

 

Ensure that approved decoders are available in hardware and software to enable easy access to the MQA format; if this is a key financial indicator then I can assume there are significant costs involved to accomplish the task of easy access to the MQA format.

 

Complete the Merlin independent label agreement; this has been done.

 

Support a program of getting MQA decoders and content into more music services – streaming and download. This is the main issue to drive revenue. TIDAL and HDTracks streaming will not create enough revenue in 2017 to reduce the burn rate. HDTracks streaming service will not be able to ramp up subscribers fast enough as a new service. TIDAL is giving away six months of its HIFI service which includes MQA. This will increase the number TIDAL subscribers during the promotion but won’t help MQA much since it still requires a PC to decode. Where is other revenue going to come from? The only revenue source with a big enough market is streaming to mobile phones. For MQA to reach even a small part of Sprint’s mobile phone market it will take content an order of magnitude greater than all the high resolution music available today converted to MQA.

[Rt66indierock]

On 6/17/2017 at 0:06 AM, Sal1950 said:

Whoa,  $360k a month x 30 is $10.8 million to burn before they tap out, where does all that seed money come from? Staggering to a blue collar guy like me.

 

 

The ultimate control of MQA Ltd rests with Reinet Investments SCA. They own or control over 75% of the stock as of June 2016. Bob Stuart apparently put in a little over 14 million Pounds early in 2015 and owned 9,234 shares according to the Annual Report filed by MQA Ltd December 8, 2015. But by June 7, 2015 two individuals owned other than Bob Stuart owned 1,880 shares, Muse owns 3,999 shares, Reinet owns 3,355 shares. Muse is now owned by Reinet.

 

The interesting part is Meridian Audio recognized 13.5 million Pounds of income in 2015 for the sale of intellectual property. It allowed them a rare profit. A big shout out to the people creating the beta Companies House website now we can look up British Companies financial information.

[Rt66indierock]

On 6/17/2017 at 6:26 PM, AJ Soundfield said:

I missed this bit of MQA comedy previously:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/jason-approaches-finish-line-laas

 

Well, I read footnote 1 and that's when it became even funnier:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00093/full

They repeatedly state numerous times and reference studies, that Hi Rez is inaudible . Ouch.

Median age of the subjects 20.6 years old, a couple decades off the average audiophile/HF hearing acuity 

As Archimago points out in comments, they are simultaneously viewing a CRT, with the speakers very nearfield (1.5m) to maximize the possibility of >20k content to reach their ears, so nothing remotely like typical audiophile listening conditions.

Conclusions:

There is a huge amount of speculation about what the results mean, but essentially, there is zero correlation to what Bob Stuart is pitching, because they are using 24/192, NOT MQA "remastered" files with who knows what amount of HF aliasing distortion and HF re-EQ going on.

Quite frankly, this is more nonsense like Oohashi (and subsequent 2014 follow up finding "Negative Hypersonic Effects" ), with the same highly inconclusive and speculative results based on a test regime with no connection to reality.

Amazing that Stuart would cite this, but alas...

 

I haven’t found any research to support an ultrasonic sound is detectable in any listening position I would use listening to live music. And when Bob Stuart made his presentation at LAAS I wondered why he was citing research that I use to show high resolution hasn’t made a case that it is worthwhile.

[Rt66indierock]

The Ten Years War

The first eight studio albums by Black Sabbath in vinyl with a crucifix containing all eight albums in MQA will be available September 29th. All have been on my MQA list.  I think its great MQA supporters can show their support by wearing the crucifix.