MQA is Vaporware

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, firedog said:

MQA. That's what they started claiming after their original claim that it was lossless was shown to be a lie.

 

Aha. So after it came out it wasn't lossless it was audibly lossless.

No.

You guys make this up by now.

But I think I see Lee saying it. Or maybe I saw Lee saying that (David) Chesky is saying it.

 

So what is worse, MQA or Brexit ?

Both come from the UK.

No wait, one will leave from there.

Eh ...

[firedog]

20 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Aha. So after it came out it wasn't lossless it was audibly lossless.

No.

You guys make this up by now.

But I think I see Lee saying it. Or maybe I saw Lee saying that (David) Chesky is saying it.

 

So what is worse, MQA or Brexit ?

Both come from the UK.

No wait, one will leave from there.

Eh ...

Peter, the “audibly lossless”phrase has come directly from MQA.That’s the phrase they’ve fed the audio press after their claim of being lossless was blown up. 

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

There is only source code there. It can probably be compiled for Windows 10, but I haven't attempted it.

I have just built a copy to run under cygwin.   I do NOT know if it works, and was built with the exact Makefile as supplied on the git source tree.  Absolutely no changes were needed to build under the cygwin environment.  This should run nicely with all of the included constituent DLLs -- cygwin should not be needed to run as all of the components are included.  I built for X86_64...

 

Some of the components come under the GPL, and are 100% available on the cygwin distribution.   The source for the main part resides in the git mqa test program distribution.

mqadist.zip

[PeterSt]

4 minutes ago, firedog said:

Peter, the “audibly lossless”phrase has come directly from MQA.That’s the phrase they’ve fed the audio press after their claim of being lossless was blown up.

 

Can I ask ... from what era was this "blow up" ? 

You must be talking about before I got involved. All I know is that some smart man came up with a lossless MQA logo that ever has existed (indeed). From there other smart men including the former started to spread the "lie" as such, which I never ran into because it was a fact as such already for years. It is only that I wasn't there from day one. Maybe day two, yes.

 

Next is that from before those times some Bob's should have named/defined the Audibly Lossless thing. Well, not that I have ever seen.

So it must be a new Bananas thing, fully made up. And I know it will be hard to follow, but this is about a change of state. This did not happen yesterday or last year. It can only have happened prior to, beginning of ... 2017 or so (I started with MQA in April 2017). And it was as lossy as lossy can be. But I now see that some have defined lesslossy as well, so YMMV.

haha

[PeterSt]

10 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

I have just built a copy to run under cygwin.   I do NOT know if it works

 

Not much ...

 

[Ralf11]

10 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Apparently someone mentioned "Beetlejuice".  Lee and Paul have reappeared.

 

Please tell me the cycle of MQA BS is not going to repeat itself.

 

They DO seem to have a very strong connection.

 

It is telling that one refuses to disavow any connection with MQA...  ...and whines that he is being "attacked" when asked about it.

[John Dyson]

16 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Not much ...

 

 

Sorry about the mistake -- my machine has all of the libs installed onto it, and I missed one that was needed.  Here is a zipfile that contains the gmp package also.  No difference other than adding the gmp constituents.  If any more is needed, then I would have to test with an mqa file I guess.

 

 

 

mqadist.zip

[PeterSt]

 

13 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Sorry about the mistake

 

Works now ...

[PeterSt]

Btw, if it was the idea that mqbgen creates undecoded output ... that does not work. But I'm just guessing that's the idea about mqbgen from some logic. Maybe that logic is off a mile or three.

[John Dyson]

Just now, PeterSt said:

Btw, if it was the idea that mqbgen creates undecoded output ... that does not work. But I'm just guessing that's the idea about mqbgen from some logic. Maybe that logic is off a mile or three.

I would help but I just did the mechanics of compiling the code...  You probably already know that you'll have to talk to the author about the issue that you have.

 

However, if the author would like anothe recompile with some corrections or whatever, just send a private message, and I can act as a 'compile machine'  for a few times to help a little. (we can get most of this traffic noise off the forum and then the author might announce new versions/attempts on the forum or wherever as he sees fit.)

 

John

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, John Dyson said:

You probably already know that you'll have to talk to the author about the issue that you have.

 

Hi John - I have no issue anywhere. Just tried to help others and you. That's done now.

Regards,

Peter

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

12 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

Isn't it remarkable that an audio engineer could be so easily fooled? I mean seriously...

 

To not see that true 24-bit high samplerate resolution stuffed into a "compatible" 16/44 carrier is simply fantasy should be obvious. I simply cannot believe Chesky can't see thru this. If he truly believed that, his understanding of digital is rather worrisome. Alternatively, he may have such low regard of audiophiles that he thinks he can say these things and believes audiophile would just swallow the claims with no questions asked!

 

Either way, this doesn't look good...

Remarkable is indeed the operative word sir.

[PeterSt]

PS: with "does not work" I should have said: the output is only decoded FLAC (hence WAV). Not decoded MQA (thus still encoded MQA hence poor WAV, for those who can follow ...).

 

 

[PeterSt]

 

 

Quote

I simply cannot believe Chesky can't see thru this.

 

So again ... how many kazillion fake Hires did they put up there for you to pay for ?

Everything is thus possible.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Two points:

 

1.  Based on the Chesky test with engineers, the compression scheme is at least audibly lossless which differs from the mantra here around "17 bits", "lower quality than CD", etc.

 

2.  I do find MQA files to sound better based on listening to files that I am familiar with that I can A/B with identical mastering.

 

I know you probably disagree with either or both of these points but that's my honest opinion.

 

So we remain with the value of MQA as I see it:

 

1.  It offers better sound quality.

2.  The compression scheme is audibly lossless.

3.  There is value at scale of having smaller file sizes from both a bandwidth and mobile phone storage perspective.

You cannot have it both ways. You are demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that your posts are intellectually dishonest at the very least.

 

You stepped in a steaming pile and you are trying to BS your way out of it. It cannot have been null when pro engineers heard it and ALSO better. Sorry, big fail for you. I don't think any poster here, and many with more technical understanding than myself think your opinion is "honest, it is anything but.

 

You made a mockery of your presence here with that post...top pro engineers hand picked by David Chesky heard NO difference...and yet it sounds better. Thanks for the laugh.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 minute ago, PeterSt said:

 

So again ... how many kazillion fake Hires did they put up there for you to pay for ?

Everything is thus possible.

ZERO for me. Everything I purchased was thoroughly researched and tested via Musicscope, Audacity, and others.

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

hand picked by David Chesky heard NO difference

 

They are deaf.

 

2 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

and yet it sounds better.

 

Deaf again.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 minute ago, PeterSt said:

 

They are deaf.

 

 

Deaf again.

Yes, because a lossless master file will always sound WORSE when processed by 2nd rate DSP..😃

[gdpr]

35 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

 

Sorry about the mistake -- my machine has all of the libs installed onto it, and I missed one that was needed.  Here is a zipfile that contains the gmp package also.  No difference other than adding the gmp constituents.  If any more is needed, then I would have to test with an mqa file I guess.

 

 

 

mqadist.zip 2.19 MB · 2 downloads

Hi John

 

Could you please explain to me which executable to us and how to use it?

I have unpacked your zip file, resulting in 3 executables - mqascan, mqbscan & mqbgen.

 

When I try to execute mqascan, nothing happens (except some security warnings, which I all have 'accepted')

 

Thanks in advance

 

Dirk

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just watched this. Shades of the reality distortion field and some parallels to MQA. 

 

We can’t tell you what we’re doing, it’s our intellectual property and nobody has done it before. Turns out, not even close. Those with nothing to hide (in the bad way) pretend like they have mountains of IP to hide. 

 

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Two points:

 

1.  Based on the Chesky test with engineers, the compression scheme is at least audibly lossless which differs from the mantra here around "17 bits", "lower quality than CD", etc.

 

2.  I do find MQA files to sound better based on listening to files that I am familiar with that I can A/B with identical mastering.

 

I know you probably disagree with either or both of these points but that's my honest opinion.

 

So we remain with the value of MQA as I see it:

 

1.  It offers better sound quality.

2.  The compression scheme is audibly lossless.

3.  There is value at scale of having smaller file sizes from both a bandwidth and mobile phone storage perspective.

 

Your point 3 is incorrect - it absolutely does not offer any economy of scale over existing technology. 

 

Whomever is telling you that it is extraordinarily math challenged.  

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, ddetaey said:

Could you please explain to me which executable to us and how to use it?

 

Hey Dirk - I think John announced not to know that.

 

From a Command Prompt:

 

mqascan inputfile

(inputfile can be a flac file)

 

Use your imagination at looking at the output. It's not difficult.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Just watched this. Shades of the reality distortion field and some parallels to MQA. 

 

We can’t tell you what we’re doing, it’s our intellectual property and nobody has done it before. Turns out, not even close. Those with nothing to hide (in the bad way) pretend like they have mountains of IP to hide. 

 

Oh my yes! This is on my DVR!

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Your point 3 is incorrect - it absolutely does not offer any economy of scale over existing technology. 

 

Whomever is telling you that it is extraordinarily math challenged.  

@Lee Scoggins like to use the term “at scale” quite a bit like high resolution audio files are some massive chunks of data the likes of which Netflix has never dealt with. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Oh my yes! This is on my DVR!

It’s really good.