MQA is Vaporware

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hmm. No more Space Oddity in pure PCM from Tidal?

 

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/how-to-play-non-mqa-version/128298

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Tidal app says it's the MQA version of Space Oddity, I've selected HiFi in the settings, Tidal app says HiFi when playing, but it's sending me MQA as evidenced on the DAC I'm using that now says MQA. 

 

Wow, it's MP3 or MQA. Ouch. Thanks to all who assisted in removing our freedom of choice. 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I'm a big advocate of consumer choice. MQA said it could remove consumer choice and it has. Wish everyone believed them from the start.

[The Computer Audiophile]

I like to think of MQA this way:

 

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is a treasured work of art owned by the Government of France.

 

The Government of France says it can make adjustments to the Mona Lisa because some new colors are available that were unavailable in the early 1500s and they can make the painting how Leonardo intended it. These new colors require special glasses to see them in their full glory. Patrons of the Louvre can pay the standard fee to see the Mona Lisa as it is, but with some smear on it due to the new colors, or they can pay an added fee for the glasses to see the Mona Lisa as the artist intended (note: France has no idea if this is what Leonardo intended because and it just processed the Mona Lisa with thousands of other paintings, using a few of the 15 colors it developed specifically for this purpose). 

 

Now consider, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is a treasured work of art own by Sony Music Entertainment. Need I go further?

[The Computer Audiophile]

OMG, it just dawned on me. The 16/44.1 MQA version of Space Oddity is MQA CD. Oh boy. It's even worse than I thought. MQA CD is an abomination of engineering.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Tintinabulum said:

Are you referring to the recent forensic work which has revealed more details of the Mona Lisa?

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/mona-lisa-hidden-drawing-photos-1911271

Is this what you mean, that modern technology's revealed more information about the painting the allows us to appreciate it more? Or am I getting confused? Yes please, go further.

Yes, you're confused. 

 

MQA changes the original, and requires payment to hear what the company did to it.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Tintinabulum said:

No Chris, you're the one who's confused, we're talking about the Mona Lisa, not MQA. There is more detail in the Mona Lisa, did you look at the link? Modern technology revealing more information, was that your point?

 

You asked need I say more, I just wanted to confirm what you were going on about?

Dude, you asked if you were confused. I said yes you are confused. Then you told me I was confused.

 

I can't communicate with you. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

9 minutes ago, hmartin said:

Out of ~800 tidal albums in my library ~150 had been converted to Mqa, was a real pain deleting them with Roon user interface. So stupid!

 

Oh wow. 

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

13 bit lossless 🙄

 

Yes. It's worse than CD. Paying more for less is nobody's definition of an enjoyable hobby. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

17 minutes ago, Mayfair said:

Yep, kind of like paying for a dozen eggs at the grocery store and discovering that there are only 11 in the box.

 

13 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

More like only 10.

 

 

And, you're being told it's a baker's dozen of 13 of the best eggs you've ever tasted. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

57 minutes ago, FredericV said:

Update:

I did add the first Space Oddity track to my LMS favorites, which is marked Hi Res in the search results of the LMS Tidal plugin, and has the following wimp url:
 

URL:wimp://68735594.flac

 

I managed to set the LMS Tidal plugin to debug mode, which gave the exact HTTPS URL towards the flac file, when playing it:

[20-11-18 22:44:26.2239] Slim::Plugin::WiMP::ProtocolHandler::new (74) Remote streaming TIDAL track: https://sp-pr-fa.audio.tidal.com/mediatracks/CAEaKRInY2YzNTVkYTJhMWJjZDE2MTcwZTczOTYxNmFkZDg4MDlfNjEubXA0/0.flac?token=CENSORED

I removed the token by CENSORED, not to anger Tidal by posting tokens. These tokens are not one time tokens, they can be reused with a wget.

Now when playing with metaflac --list, I do not see any MQA encoder tags on the file ...

2L-125_stereo-352k-24b_04.mqa.flac would have these tags:

 

METADATA block #0
  type: 0 (STREAMINFO)
  is last: false
  length: 34
  minimum blocksize: 4096 samples
  maximum blocksize: 4096 samples
  minimum framesize: 6392 bytes
  maximum framesize: 19217 bytes
  sample_rate: 44100 Hz
  channels: 2
  bits-per-sample: 24
  total samples: 4311216
  MD5 signature: 1f280edba56b9f48da3cc7fc43a762bf
METADATA block #1
  type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
  is last: false
  length: 1328
  vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917
  comments: 25
    comment[0]: ALBUM=REFLECTIONS
    comment[1]: ALBUMARTIST=TrondheimSolistene
    comment[2]: ARTIST=TrondheimSolistene
    comment[3]: BARCODE=7041888521525
    comment[4]: CATALOGNUMBER=2L-125
    comment[5]: COMPOSER=Benjamin Britten
    comment[6]: DATE=2016
    comment[7]: DISCNUMBER=1
    comment[8]: ENCODEDBY=Merging Technologies Album Publishing
    comment[9]: ENCODER=MQAEncode v1.1, 2.1.0+0 (01450a4), DF77A107-A71F-4e57-A322-872C6D0E99C8, Apr 16 2016 08:37:12
    comment[10]: GENRE=Classical
    comment[11]: ISRC=NOMPP1603040
    comment[12]: LABEL=2L
    comment[13]: ORIGINALSAMPLERATE=352800
    comment[14]: TITLE=Frank Bridge Variations: 4. Romance
    comment[15]: TRACKNUMBER=4
    comment[16]: TRACKTOTAL=22
    comment[17]: EAN/UPN=7041888521525
    comment[18]: CONDUCTOR=Øyvind Gimse
    comment[19]: COMMENT=www.2L.no
    comment[20]: DESCRIPTION=Composers reflect their contemporary world and today’s performers mirror our time. The three works on this album all have a high degree of intensity and a strong personal character, as tributes, visions, fantasies, interpretations. As musical reflections they have these qualities in common, but at the same time they are very different works composed by three distinct musical personalities. Passion. Perfection. Raw intensity. With these fundamentals, the chamber orchestra TrondheimSolistene is carving out its own musical images in immersive audio.
    comment[21]: ENGINEER=Morten Lindberg
    comment[22]: PRODUCER=Morten Lindberg
    comment[23]: RECORDINGDATE=June and August 2015, Selbu Church, Norway
    comment[24]: WEBSITE=www.2L.no

 

The space oddity file which I renamed to space.flac, is just 16/44.1:

# file space.flac
space.flac: FLAC audio bitstream data, 16 bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz, 14025156 samples

and there are no MQA tags in the metadata:

 

METADATA block #0
  type: 0 (STREAMINFO)
  is last: false
  length: 34
  minimum blocksize: 4096 samples
  maximum blocksize: 4096 samples
  minimum framesize: 324 bytes
  maximum framesize: 12947 bytes
  sample_rate: 44100 Hz
  channels: 2
  bits-per-sample: 16
  total samples: 14025156
  MD5 signature: a11b8d3b0f90795dfc0fb6b445d8bf7c
METADATA block #1
  type: 3 (SEEKTABLE)
  is last: true
  length: 576
  seek points: 32
    point 0: sample_number=0, stream_offset=0, frame_samples=4096
    point 1: sample_number=442368, stream_offset=659528, frame_samples=4096
    point 2: sample_number=884736, stream_offset=1413363, frame_samples=4096
    point 3: sample_number=1327104, stream_offset=2280046, frame_samples=4096
    point 4: sample_number=1769472, stream_offset=3263244, frame_samples=4096
    point 5: sample_number=2211840, stream_offset=4251427, frame_samples=4096
    point 6: sample_number=2654208, stream_offset=5258889, frame_samples=4096
    point 7: sample_number=3096576, stream_offset=6267173, frame_samples=4096
    point 8: sample_number=3538944, stream_offset=7263149, frame_samples=4096
    point 9: sample_number=3981312, stream_offset=8410359, frame_samples=4096
    point 10: sample_number=4423680, stream_offset=9541287, frame_samples=4096
    point 11: sample_number=4866048, stream_offset=10676135, frame_samples=4096
    point 12: sample_number=5308416, stream_offset=11809304, frame_samples=4096
    point 13: sample_number=5750784, stream_offset=12942652, frame_samples=4096
    point 14: sample_number=6193152, stream_offset=14060283, frame_samples=4096
    point 15: sample_number=6635520, stream_offset=15201642, frame_samples=4096
    point 16: sample_number=7077888, stream_offset=16273076, frame_samples=4096
    point 17: sample_number=7520256, stream_offset=17421150, frame_samples=4096
    point 18: sample_number=7962624, stream_offset=18592348, frame_samples=4096
    point 19: sample_number=8404992, stream_offset=19732288, frame_samples=4096
    point 20: sample_number=8847360, stream_offset=20871567, frame_samples=4096
    point 21: sample_number=9289728, stream_offset=22036490, frame_samples=4096
    point 22: sample_number=9732096, stream_offset=23210415, frame_samples=4096
    point 23: sample_number=10174464, stream_offset=24369317, frame_samples=4096
    point 24: sample_number=10616832, stream_offset=25540808, frame_samples=4096
    point 25: sample_number=11059200, stream_offset=26664388, frame_samples=4096
    point 26: sample_number=11501568, stream_offset=27796314, frame_samples=4096
    point 27: sample_number=11943936, stream_offset=28976408, frame_samples=4096
    point 28: sample_number=12386304, stream_offset=30164692, frame_samples=4096
    point 29: sample_number=12828672, stream_offset=31314853, frame_samples=4096
    point 30: sample_number=13271040, stream_offset=32340440, frame_samples=4096
    point 31: sample_number=13713408, stream_offset=33151082, frame_samples=4096

Now running @mansrmqascan on this file, indicates it's not MQA:

# ./mqascan  /storage/music/flac/space.flac

-> nothing

Running mqascan on a known mqa file:

# ./mqascan  /storage/music/flac/2Lno/Britten\:\ Frank\ Bridge\ Variations\ -\ Romance/*mqa* | head
00000000: MQA signature at bit 8
00000000: [5] datasync
          magic                     36: 0x11319207d
          stream_pos_flag            1: 0
          pad                        1: 1
          orig_rate                  5: 0x03 [352.8 kHz]
          src_rate                   5: 0x00 [44.1 kHz]
          render_filter              5: 4
          unknown_1                  2: 0
          render_bitdepth            2: 2 [16 bits]

So for LMS, we have the opposite situation: search results do indicate Hi Res (aka MQA), but depending on the album you are either getting MQA or no MQA.

Which now proves the files have not disappeared from Tidal, but the search results are fuzzy?

 

Is LMS using the newest Tidal API? If so, you won’t get MQA files unless you pay the piper. LMS isn’t MQA certified. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

43 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

...

 

We have an operating system that tracks your every move and reports back to the mother ship.  Ostensibly so that they can create a better computer experience for you.

We have a major search engine that tracks your every move.

We have shopping sites and video sites that track your every move so that they can provide buy lists and play lists.

 

...

 

I was sick and tired of all this tracking business and the tracking companies tracking what I tracked, so I got rid of it all here on AS. I don't want to be tracked, so I can't in good conscience track you guys who make this community what it is. 

 

P.S. I also love to see this in the new Safari. I encourage people to go to other sites and see what's being collected about them. 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, sphinxsix said:

 

The only counterattack strategy may be getting as loud as MQA clan but with telling the truth about the format and even that IMO wouldn't guarantee a success since most music 'enthusiasts' simply don't care. And the MQA clan obviously does.

I haven't been following the mainstream audio magazines but it would be interesting to see where they stand now..

 

As long as the labels have a financial stake in MQA ltd, it's hard for them to lose. The only way I can see the labels backing out of MQA is if there's another piracy scare caused by this. With the uptick in streaming I just don't see that happening either. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

Record labels / magazines and most mainstream media, and a lot of DAC manufacturers have bought into MQA over the last four years it will be a tough nut to crack now, they only need one of the lossy companies to jump and it could be game over MP3 Mk2 will reign over us

And all the old guard press, who pushed MQA like nothing before it, will retire and leave us with a soup sandwich on our plate. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, asdf1000 said:

 

Well recently was due to the Warner announcement.

 

But I'm noticing more non-Warner "MQA CD" releases.

 

I can live with some types with MQA if forced (even though I'd prefer it disappears) ... but 'MQA CD' quality is a technical downgrade on the 'CD quality or better' Tidal HiFi subscription I signed up for and am paying for....

 

 

Agree. MQA CD is such a joke. It’s even worse when offered without the restrictions of a physical medium. Sure, the real master may be 16/44.1, but then don’t create a lossy MQA version just for the sake of MQA. 
 

It’s only going to get worse. Trust me folks. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

People must also be very vocal. If you have social media accounts, you must tag/mention Tidal and the labels and demand things change.
 

Start a hashtag #BoycottMQA #BoycottTidal #BoycottWarner etc...
 

Most companies hate being called out in public. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, asdf1000 said:

 

Can you expand. This is a serious issue.

Not right now. The communications I’ve received lately were in confidence. Stuff will come out. I’ll be able to post some in due time. I hate doing this but I keep my word with everyone. 
 

The manufacturers reading this can have confidence I won’t say a word until it’s appropriate. 
 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

 

Without going into what this stuff is at all , are you expecting this stuff to come out before the end of 2020?

 

My guess is there will be some around the first of the year. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

 

The labels have a stake in MQA Ltd?

 

If they do and they decide to go full throttle with MQA (still yet to be seen though), then millions of non-MQA tracks that Qobuz currently streams may switch over to MQA only (like 2L recordings).

 

Oh yes, both the labels and people who work at the labels have an individual stake. For example, Warner Music, and Atlantic Records (Owned by Warner) CEO Craig Kallman have stakes in MQA. Have a look.

 

application-pdf.pdf

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Tintinabulum said:

For balance, innocent readers may want to see the other side of the argument, which is the opposite of what you said above.

 

Please show us one side of this argument that's based on facts. 

 

 

1 minute ago, Tintinabulum said:

All innocent readers get is the tired views of anti-MQA campaigners who have been at it for years/become jaded/done no good/are in it to the death/make stuff up.

 

The length of time one dislikes a company or product has no bearing on the validity of one's argument or the efficacy of the company/product.

 

You've been here for seemingly ever, offering nothing of value other than snarky comments. I would never attack you as a person as I'm sure we'd have some tea and enjoy the conversation, but your comments are nothing but trolling, sophomoric, and troublemaking. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, sp25 said:

I expect this has been done already, but for any boycott Tidal, boycott MQA campaign to gather ground there needs to be a relatively non-technical summary of this that I and other enthusiasts who haven't time or patience to read and absorb the finer details can understand, and also an easily accessible location point eg on this site. Both sides of the debate can too easily blind with science/BS!. Education, Education, Education. While we are at it can we have a boycott compression campaign too LOL

Here are some pieces of information.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

MQA is a pox on the music consumer.

Or put another way, a tax with no benefit. People claim to have no added cost right now. That's not totally true, but wait until we move further down the path of MQA only. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

 

With places like Bandcamp and Artist taking control of their music, the labels would like to be in charge but the industry is failing big time. Artists need to survive, labels not so mush.

The major labels are doing fantastic. Streaming is bring them back to the revenue levels of CD. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

24 minutes ago, Tintinabulum said:

I thought the theory was that the characteristics of the ADC in the original studio recording are compensated for by (filtering) in the replaying DAC. So yeah, sausage.

That’s laughable. Batch converting files that used multiple ADC converters in even a single song works terrific. Or so we’re told by MQA. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Think about all the recordings being made in 2020 and 2021 while distanced. Multiple studios, home studios, etc...  It’s comical that MQA tries to say it’s fixing ADC issues when multiple ADCs are used within each track. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

9 minutes ago, Alex McBellott said:

Guys, feel free to continue with your crusades. 
I prefer to listen to music. Qobuz, Tidal, Amazon, Sacd, Vinyl: I don't really care. 
i'm just interested in quality and I find it with or without Mqa. 

Call it whatever you want, that doesn’t make it so. 
 

We want quality as well. That’s why we don’t want MQA.