MQA is Vaporware

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

I doubt it - he may disagree, but I doubt he will respond with BS.   I do think someone is guilty of feeding him a bit of a line here. One thing I can assure you though, you do not want to be the target of an angry journalist who has been played. A whole lot of interesting byproducts ensue. 

 

Just my $0.02 - people should give the guy a little bit of a break. It's hard to (re-)examine your position when you are under attack you know. Pretty much everyone deserves a few "extra" second chances. 

 

-Paul

 

As informative as your last post was, this one is pure nonsense. Mr. Lee has done nothing but spew BS,  

[MikeyFresh]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

streaming businesses are extremely difficult to make profitable

 

Ya think?

 

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

If we get people saving hirez files to the phone, then MQA has advantages there.

 

Isn't the whole point of streaming files as opposed to local playback negated when hi-rez files are then saved to the phone? 

 

If I were going to save hi-rez files to the phone, they would be actual hi-rez files and not Master Quality Adulterated/Approximated lossy crap.

 

You know, the kind of actual hi-rez files that I already own, and that playback at full resolution through my existing mobile DACs including the Oppo HA-2, and the Resonessence Labs Herus, as opposed to some sort of fake hi-rez BS that requires all new hardware and proprietary licensed decoded crypto DRM nonsense?

 

Ever heard of a 512GB microSDXC card? Plenty of Android devices can make use of them, including both my phone and tablet.

[Paul R]

12 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

As informative as your last post was, this one is pure nonsense. Mr. Lee has done nothing but spew BS,  

 

How and When to Judge Another: A Taste of Text—Shoftim

There is always some explanation, some justification, some perspective for another’s behavior. If you cannot see it, you are not fit to be a judge.

[Jud]

13 minutes ago, Paul R said:

I do think someone is guilty of feeding him a bit of a line here.

 

Heck, he still thinks people in the industry said LH Labs' crowdfunding campaigns would come to a bad end because of jealousy at their likely success.  I'd say the likelihood of his coming to the realization that MQA folks have fed him a line of BS - or even being terribly interested in investigating the possibility - is nearly nil.

 

He seems to have successfully resisted all attempts so far to explain any technical problems with what MQA has told him, whether from you, me, Miska, mansr, or anyone else in the thread. He's done so even after having it brought to his attention that he's simultaneously claiming MQA sounds the same as the non-lossy equivalent, and that it sounds better.

 

So I'm not waiting for a road-to-Damascus moment from Lee.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

3 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Heck, he still thinks people in the industry said LH Labs' crowdfunding campaigns would come to a bad end because of jealousy at their likely success.  I'd say the likelihood of his coming to the realization that MQA folks have fed him a line of BS - or even being terribly interested in investigating the possibility - is nearly nil.

 

He seems to have successfully resisted all attempts so far to explain any technical problems with what MQA has told him, whether from you, me, Miska, mansr, or anyone else in the thread. He's done so even after having it brought to his attention that he's simultaneously claiming MQA sounds the same as the non-lossy equivalent, and that it sounds better.

 

So I'm not waiting for a road-to-Damascus moment from Lee.

...Putin is not the only one with a "useful idiot." 🤣

[Currawong]

I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that "MQA sounds better to me" but leading industry professionals couldn't discern any difference between MQA and the high-res original. 

 

I don't think we should be rude to him though. Heck, I have relatives that are both respected scientists and Marxists. I don't understand how they can hold those contradictions in their heads either.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

4 minutes ago, Currawong said:

I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that "MQA sounds better to me" but leading industry professionals couldn't discern any difference between MQA and the high-res original. 

 

I don't think we should be rude to him though. Heck, I have relatives that are both respected scientists and Marxists. I don't understand how they can hold those contradictions in their heads either.

He seems to have lost the privilege of  a courteous discussion. He addressed the author of this thread with a rude name that implied he was a feminine hygiene product. That post was reported and removed several days ago.  

[Currawong]

I think showing that we're better than that is important. If you're goaded into being rude, then it's easy to say (as has essentially happened) "That chap is rude, so everything he says can be disregarded."

[Paul R]

10 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

You guys make this up by now.

 

 

Peter, J.R.R. Tolkien could not make this stuff up. 👀

[lucretius]

On 3/22/2019 at 5:45 PM, Rt66indierock said:

 

Wouldn't it be more fun to politely ask questions they can't answer?

 

The problem is they will answer -- in non-technical gobbledygook, you know the kind that Lee Scoggins will repeat ad nauseum.

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

I doubt it - he may disagree, but I doubt he will respond with BS.   I do think someone is guilty of feeding him a bit of a line here. One thing I can assure you though, you do not want to be the target of an angry journalist who has been played. A whole lot of interesting byproducts ensue. 

 

Just my $0.02 - people should give the guy a little bit of a break. It's hard to (re-)examine your position when you are under attack you know. Pretty much everyone deserves a few "extra" second chances. 

 

-Paul

 

Paul-

Have you read the whole thread? Unfortunately, Lee's natural reaction to any logical analysis (read: not just subjective musings) based on actual data is to obfuscate and retreat to repeating his stories of his subjective impressions, the glory of his "ecosystem" idea and all it's supposed benefits,  or  to repeat "what he's been told" by others in the industry - invariably those  with an agenda to promote MQA. 
It's hard to find any instance where he's responded to objectively true critiques of MQA with anything other than what can fairly be called BS.
He may believe the BS, but sincerely holding on to false ideas doesn't get him much credit in my book. I'd call it intentional ignorance. This thread is over two years old. How many chances and how much time does it take for a reasonable person to re-examine his/her ideas? Apparently, some people aren't capable of doing such a re-examination....

[Paul R]

28 minutes ago, firedog said:

Paul-

Have you read the whole thread? Unfortunately, Lee's natural reaction to any logical analysis (read: not just subjective musings) based on actual data is to obfuscate and retreat to repeating his stories of his subjective impressions, the glory of his "ecosystem" idea and all it's supposed benefits,  or  to repeat "what he's been told" by others in the industry - invariably those  with an agenda to promote MQA. 
It's hard to find any instance where he's responded to objectively true critiques of MQA with anything other than what can fairly be called BS.
He may believe the BS, but sincerely holding on to false ideas doesn't get him much credit in my book. I'd call it intentional ignorance. This thread is over two years old. How many chances and how much time does it take for a reasonable person to re-examine his/her ideas? Apparently, some people aren't capable of doing such a re-examination....

 

Yep, read it all -  though I avoided posting for a long time. 

 

I don't know my friend, but I do know that *I* might have turtled up and gotten very stubborn if I had that much hostility directed towards me. Karen would say  something she read somewhere - "Every day is a fresh new day, with no mistakes in it. Yet."

 

-Paul

 

 

[firedog]

10 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Yep, read it all -  though I avoided posting for a long time. 

 

I don't know my friend, but I do know that *I* might have turtled up and gotten very stubborn if I had that much hostility directed towards me. Karen would say  something she read somewhere - "Every day is a fresh new day, with no mistakes in it. Yet."

 

-Paul

 

 

I guess you have more faith in humanity than I do, or are more of an optimist. 

[Currawong]

  I'm with firedog on this. I think that some people just don't want to see. Even though I don't think people should have been as hostile, I can understand the frustration when dealing with such people.

[John Dyson]

8 hours ago, Currawong said:

 

 

It's the same with R2R DACs, tube amps, and cleverly tuned circuits that add even-order or 3rd-order harmonic distortion to make you believe you're hearing more than you really are in the music. It sounds better! I have experienced that (I'm listening with a NOS R2R DAC right now in fact) but that is not the same thing as actually "better". 

 

 

Off topic a little, but backing this statement with historical fact.  Remember the 'Aphex Aural Exciter'? -- I call it 'distorter'.  A lot of people had historically liked the sound (including Linda Ronstadt, who demanded her recordings be made with it.)  It is a phase scrambler that doesn't really add normal distortion, but might as well do so.

The 'Distorter' is about the most egregious and clear example of someone preferring distortion.  Artists actually imprinting their forever works with that travesty is so very sad -- but apparently fairly common.  (I can undo some of the early version of the distorters' damage, but it is tedious to do so.)

 

Bottom line -- doing subjective comparisons doesn't really always support determining the best quality or the most accuracy...  Emotions MUST be removed from the comparisons, and even then -- personal preference can confuse the comparison using accurate references.

 

Making mistakes in comparisons based upon personal preferences make future comparsions totally confusing.  It is best to be accurate and intellectually honest, while using actual engineering/mathematical know-how, and scientific method.  (The reason why I use the term 'intellectually honest' instead of 'honest' is that I truly believe that most people are trying to be 'honest' from their own viewpoint -- but it is important to base that honesty on facts, rather than feeling & wishfulness.)

Just my two cents, but I would REALLY WISH that non-technical audiophiles could be kindly and respectfully educated about engineering and mathematical fact --- also be given some understanding about scientific method, instead of the snake-oil merchants encouraging a confused muddle of emotional feeling that results in nonsensical conclusions (and profits for the manipulatively dishonest.)

 

John

[Jud]

27 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Remember the 'Aphex Aural Exciter'? -- I call it 'distorter'.

 

An example I've used myself here from time to time.   

[Jud]

29 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

(I can undo some of the early version of the distorters' damage, but it is tedious to do so.)

 

Would be very interesting to see how that would sound with Born to Run, for example.

[mansr]

9 hours ago, Paul R said:

I doubt it - he may disagree, but I doubt he will respond with BS.   I do think someone is guilty of feeding him a bit of a line here. One thing I can assure you though, you do not want to be the target of an angry journalist who has been played. A whole lot of interesting byproducts ensue.

Lee is not a journalist. He is a sycophant. He is incapable of anger towards his industry idols.

[mansr]

11 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Paul, people who run streaming businesses are telling me that the smaller MQA file sizes matter from a business standpoint.  Since I don't know your or others expertise in this area, I tend to give those comments some credit.  These same people tell me that streaming businesses are extremely difficult to make profitable which further places emphasis of the bandwidth and storage issues.  Third, space on the phone is limited.  If we get people saving hirez files to the phone, then MQA has advantages there.

This argument is assuming a priori that MQA saves bandwidth. Since this assumption is false, so are the conclusions, regardless of whether or not bandwidth is of concern for music streaming.

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Would be very interesting to see how that would sound with Born to Run, for example.

 

Off topic about undoing the exciter nonsense with the 'unexciter' program:

 

I did run it on a near-master tape of Blue Bayou friend recording engineer (still very messy sounding) and the audio recording engineer reviewing the results after processing with the 'unexciter' program, and said that he could hear her 's' sounds with less of a lsip. :-).

Undoing the 'distorter HW'  damage usually requires 3-5 passes through an undistorter program with varied, monotonically incremental  settings  (I seem to remember it is some kind of proportionality of phase-shifted vs. straight through.)

The original distorter device has a well defined phase vs. frequency curve, so I wrote a totally brute force program that can mitigate a big part of the phase damage - undoing that curve.  It takes multiple iterations to eventually remove most of the damage.  The material remains damaged, but does sound cleaner -- and the 's' sound ends up at the beginning of the utterance instead of weirdly at the end with an odd lisp (that is one artifact of the distorter.)

 

The ONLY reason why I haven't freed the source is that my 'undistorter' program is both hacker cr*p and also difficult to use because of all of the settings and iterations needed.

 

I am willing to hand the program to anyone who wants it -- with only a casual discussion as how to use it, and a log of an attempt to clean-up Blue Bayou or something similar.  The major restriction -- the program is total cr*p, and I am disgusted with how ugly and brute force the source code is.  I hide my head in shame :-).  (If I could have made it simpler to use, I would have rewritten and cleaned up the experiment.  After actually using the 'unexciter', I realized that forever it would be tweaky to use.)

 

John

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

Off topic a little, but backing this statement with historical fact.  Remember the 'Aphex Aural Exciter'? -- I call it 'distorter'.  A lot of people had historically liked the sound (including Linda Ronstadt, who demanded her recordings be made with it.)  It is a phase scrambler that doesn't really add normal distortion, but might as well do so.

The 'Distorter' is about the most egregious and clear example of someone preferring distortion.  Artists actually imprinting their forever works with that travesty is so very sad -- but apparently fairly common.  (I can undo some of the early version of the distorters' damage, but it is tedious to do so.)

 

Bottom line -- doing subjective comparisons doesn't really always support determining the best quality or the most accuracy...  Emotions MUST be removed from the comparisons, and even then -- personal preference can confuse the comparison using accurate references.

 

Making mistakes in comparisons based upon personal preferences make future comparsions totally confusing.  It is best to be accurate and intellectually honest, while using actual engineering/mathematical know-how, and scientific method.  (The reason why I use the term 'intellectually honest' instead of 'honest' is that I truly believe that most people are trying to be 'honest' from their own viewpoint -- but it is important to base that honesty on facts, rather than feeling & wishfulness.)

Just my two cents, but I would REALLY WISH that non-technical audiophiles could be kindly and respectfully educated about engineering and mathematical fact --- also be given some understanding about scientific method, instead of the snake-oil merchants encouraging a confused muddle of emotional feeling that results in nonsensical conclusions (and profits for the manipulatively dishonest.)

 

John

 

Well said. The only thing I would add is that it works both ways too. Being kind to those interested but who do not speak the vernacular can be a good thing to. 

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

This argument is assuming a priori that MQA saves bandwidth. Since this assumption is false, so are the conclusions, regardless of whether or not bandwidth is of concern for music streaming.

 

A good point.

 

[mav52]

7 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

The problem is they will answer -- in non-technical gobbledygook, you know the kind that Lee Scoggins will repeat ad nauseum.

They (MQA) will answer the way they were trained to answer in the Bob Stuart MQA FAQ class. (1) You are wrong, (2) No its better I've hear it (3) You're DAC is not good enough (5) Or you're DAC doesn't plays MQA natively, (6) You don't understand MQA (7) You're MQA music is not the best example, (6) Trust me, I've heard it,  (8) I can't answer that, let me call Bob and on and on and on.  

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Lee is not a journalist. He is a sycophant. He is incapable of anger towards his industry idols.

 

1 hour ago, mansr said:

This argument is assuming a priori that MQA saves bandwidth. Since this assumption is false, so are the conclusions, regardless of whether or not bandwidth is of concern for music streaming.

 

Your counter-argument assumes Lee is in fact making an argument.    I don't think he is, at least not in the way most of us conceive of it - some logical predicate, followed by reasoned steps therefrom.

 

The feeling I get is more of someone just being chatty, imparting to us the "facts" as he has been given to know them by the people he considers the most reliable sources, insiders.  For their part, the insiders would want to use people they trust to pass along their message intact to consumers, and I would assume Lee has proved reliable in this regard in the past.  So Lee is happy to report to fellow audiophiles what he thinks of as solid information from people in a position to know, and the industry folks are happy too.

 

Technical counter-arguments are thus evaluated not so much in terms of whether they make logical sense, but rather as noise getting in the way of imparting the valuable inside information he's been told (and confirmed for himself through subjective listening impressions).

[Rt66indierock]

9 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

The problem is they will answer -- in non-technical gobbledygook, you know the kind that Lee Scoggins will repeat ad nauseum.

 

How people evade a question is valuable to me at least.