MQA is Vaporware

[Ralf11]

42 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Past history has shown that my attempts to move forward in a positive direction have only resulted in many personal attacks and snide comments from Steve.  I would apologize if it would make a difference but it won't.

 

Please don't confuse "personal attacks and snide comments" with facts.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

35 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

That has become quite a common thing here in recent years.

 It is quite often used to try and get a member banned who disagrees with them, or as recent poster has done,

capture a comment that was made in the spur of the moment, and would likely have been quickly edited out by the poster, so that it can be reported to Admin with the hope that those who do not agree with them will be either censured or banned from the forum.

Right, but a totally incorrect assumption, since this is the second time the banned poster made a vulgar, name calling post within a week. Sorry.

[rickca]

So now for the post game show.  All the discussion will be civil and reasonable, if only you would stick around for it.

[MetalNuts]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

To be fair, MQA is not removing musical content.  The triangular encoding is just removing stuff below the audible level. 

 

I suspect you like the deblurring of the filters.  There is no boosting of volume.  All the tests I've done have been level matched. 

 

It is strange and contradictory for MQA to remove "stuff" beyond audible level while Meridian has manufactured equipment with capability to go beyond the audible level.  What is that for?  I think I should confine myself with equipment of 35Hz to 18,000Hz since that is my audible capability now.😀 Otherwise, it is just a waste of my money.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

That's a straw man argument.  MQA differences can be heard on modest systems.  But like anything else, the more resolving the system is, the easier the differences can be heard.  Same thing applies to the CD vs. hirez debate.

 

2 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

This doesn't match the "no difference" results from Chesky's engineers and the McGill study. 

 

Took the words right out of my mouth.

 

Although since the man continues to claim at one and the same time that the process is "audibly lossless" (i.e., identical) and also "better" (i.e., different), we are not dealing with any sort of logic, but simply rote repetitive (oh so repetitive) sloganeering.

[sandyk]

10 minutes ago, rickca said:

So now for the post game show.  All the discussion will be civil and reasonable, if only you would stick around for it.

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

 

Took the words right out of my mouth.

 

Although since the man continues to claim at one and the same time that the process is "audibly lossless" (i.e., identical) and also "better" (i.e., different), we are not dealing with any sort of logic, but simply rote repetitive (oh so repetitive) sloganeering.

Well, thankfully, that has all come to an end. 😍

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

The triangular encoding

 

There is no "triangular encoding."  MQA claims a "triangular filter kernel," for the meaning of which see Figure 15-3 here: http://www.dspguide.com/CH15.PDF

 

It's just a 2-pass moving average filter, nothing special at all.

[wdw]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Bye Lee. I have to ban you after this behavior. The same rules apply to you as they do Lavorgna, Brian Lucey, and all the others who talk to people this way. 

 

Chris,

With all due respect, we're big boys and girls so the occasional FU has to be expected...Lee is the energizer bunny of "useful idiot" but this site may become quite dull if these guys are continually banned.  Lee's apprently pathological need to extend and support MQA is certainly odd to me (why would a single soul spend so much time on such a marginal system?)  but this will become so one-sided a site if there is no one left to post and oppose the attendant bully pulpit.....also, please tell me that Slapowitz is Brinkmann 2.0

wdw

[The Computer Audiophile]

As others have stated, this is the thread that keeps on giving. I can see the MQA supporters huddling now. 

 

“OK your turn.”

”Hell no, you first.”

”Alright send the new guy in to defend MQA.”

[Daccord]

7 minutes ago, wdw said:

 

Chris,

With all due respect, we're big boys and girls so the occasional FU has to be expected...Lee is the energizer bunny of "useful idiot" but this site may become quite dull if these guys are continually banned.  Lee's pathological need to extend and support MQA is certainly odd (why would a single soul spend so much time on such a marginal system?)  but this will become so one-sided a site if there is no one left to post and oppose the attendant hosts.....also, please tell me that Slapowitz is Brinkmann 2.0

wdw

 

It's been obvious for a long time that Lee was just winding everyone up. But after the mistake of claiming to hear an audible difference while attempting to prove the audibly lossless claim by saying "engineers" heard no difference, he was forced to take the sword and rip his guts with an FU to the owner of the thread. Really, there was no other way out.

[rickca]

33 minutes ago, Daccord said:

Really, there was no other way out.

He could have just called it a witch hunt by 13 angry audiophiles.

[sandyk]

36 minutes ago, rickca said:

He could have just called it a witch hunt by 13 angry audiophiles.

 

 Now he knows how Donald Drumpf must feel !

[Ralf11]

What is interesting is that Scroggie attacked Rt66indierock - twice, and not any of the people who posted more negative comments about him.

 

The truth about MQA must have really gotten under his skin.

[firedog]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I have to agree. There’s no market for high resolution or MQA and now some say you need a highly revolving system to hear it. Wow, that puts about 0.000001% of the music consuming public in line to really get into MQA. Oh, subtract the thousands here who know what it really is so tack another zero after the decimal point. 

I've got one of the most highly resolving systems around and I can hear the differences - nothing good enough or consistent enough to make me want MQA. 

[firedog]

5 hours ago, wdw said:

please tell me that Slapowitz is Brinkmann 2.0

Not a chance. Totally different style and vocabulary.

[firedog]

5 hours ago, Daccord said:

 

It's been obvious for a long time that Lee was just winding everyone up. But after the mistake of claiming to hear an audible difference while attempting to prove the audibly lossless claim by saying "engineers" heard no difference, he was forced to take the sword and rip his guts with an FU to the owner of the thread. Really, there was no other way out.

No, I think he was totally sincere. Just shows you how people who want to can exist with logical contradictions in their outlook, and not even be aware of any cognitive dissonance. 

[4est]

17 hours ago, ipeverywhere said:

 

But... as I browse other audio forums that are not this one...   I am seeing a pretty significant following for MQA. To the extreme that when someone says they "dislike" MQA or say it doesn't sound as good as some other format the respondents are all over the original poster on how to "fix" their system because "it's just not possible you didn't find MQA to be the best". 

What fora if I might ask? Perhaps THEY need some new members!

[John Dyson]

9 hours ago, sandyk said:

 John

" Engineering  and mathematical fact"  isn't always as cut and dried as many E.E.s may wish to believe.

This is also evidenced in many anecdotally confirmed subjective reports in this thread in Music Servers.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/

 It's not always due to " Groupthink" either. It never hurts to question long held beliefs , and find out for yourself the correctness or otherwise of these "facts".

 Many of the posters in that thread may not be qualified E.E.s , but many do have a technical background or are experienced DIY people.

 

Kind Regards

Alex

As I implied before -- some of the problem between really technical people and less technical audiophiles (generally the customer) is the insular langauge not used in common.   If the audiophile could make their observations known in a way that the technical person can identify with, and likewise, if the technical person could explain what is really going on -- then the audiphile will get more of what they want.   For example, the word 'air' is especially frustrating to me.  I can guess at what it really means -- but without communication and an interatively improved definition, it will be confusing for everyone.  I have tried to be unbiased in my commentary because it is NOT in my interest to make people frustrated with me or hate me.  (It doesn't make any difference for my project -- I am insular within it, but it does make a difference to ME.)

 

I probably listen to much 10X more than a lot of audiophiles and probably 3X more than most (listening intensively 1/3 or more of my waking hours.)  When carefully evaluating I visualize in my mind what is happening to the signal (and am usually accurate unless fatigue sets in.)  It isn't because I am enjoying it (even though I am careful to choose selections that I used to enjoy or help diagnose specific problems), it is because I have to do it.  I understand all of the hearing/learning phenomena -- because I experience them.  It is so frustrating when something changes in my hearing -- yet the recording is identical.  This stuff is frustrating when trying to produce perfection.  (My situation is NOT that I cannot design software that follows a spec, it is just that the spec is 1965 or 1969 HW design -- luckily I am both a fully fledged EE and software developer with 40yrs experience each.)  Also, my hearing is probably 2/3  intact, which all allow me to do somthing that had previously been nearly impossible.

I am NOT claiming perfection -- but my toes are dipped in both worlds, and I see some of the problems.  I am NOT a developer who does consumer goods either -- so I don't have any skin in the game, other than simply watch/listening and helping when I can.  I have my frustrations also -- some of the bridged both worlds.

Far from perfect, but I know that it is best to simply be as helpful as I can -- that benefits everyone.  When there is something bogus that only benefits a few -- then I might speak up.  Otherwise -- what does 'air' really mean in physical/engineering terms?  I am not criticizing, but again trying to make it clear about the communcations gap.

 

So PLEASE don't misunderstand about my kind observation -- when needed, I try to see both sides of issues, then I make my kind evaluation.

 

John

 

[mevdinc]

9 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Well, to be fair, MQA removes content from the original material. Regardless of whether the content is important or even audible, that is technically "degrading" the data.  

 

But then again, we often decimate an audio data file, for very valid reasons and with the result of providing the best sound. Decimation is still, technically, a form of degrading the file. 

 

Does MQA degrade sound quality? A much more difficult question. It necessarily must take into account the audience. For high-end audiophiles, it probably does, though there are certain MQA files I like better than the originals.  Subjectively, MQA improved sound quality on those files for me. There are other files I think the MQA version inferior on. 

 

What I do not have a clear understanding of is why I liked those MQA files slightly better. Did they boost the volume in the MQA process? Is the DAC just "louder" when processing these files, similar to how almost all DACs are "softer" when processing DSD? Some other factor? I do not know and it is difficult to find out. 

 

 

-Paul 

 

I have said this many times before and it's worth repeating after reading the last paragraph above.

 

I definitely find the MQA version of the same music to be almost always louder and the highs more pronounced. My initial impression of MQA was positive thinking that it was more dynamic and alive.

But I eventually found the MQA sound tiring/fatiguing, and stop listening to it altogether, I now always prefer the non-MQA versions of the same albums.
 

[Currawong]

9 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I think the MQA team has made a decision to trim off non-musical data and preserve the hjrez content in order to reach a smaller file size goal. 

 

I know Lee has now been banned, but it still gets me how someone can't see the contradictions in their own comments, i.e: The high-res part could be chopped off (rather than the bits within the audible range) and people probably wouldn't hear it either. Heck, given a lot of the "hires content" is supposedly ADC noise (according to Dan Lavry and others) it would make more sense. 

[Jud]

12 minutes ago, Currawong said:

 

I know Lee has now been banned, but it still gets me how someone can't see the contradictions in their own comments, i.e: The high-res part could be chopped off (rather than the bits within the audible range) and people probably wouldn't hear it either. Heck, given a lot of the "hires content" is supposedly ADC noise (according to Dan Lavry and others) it would make more sense. 

 

I haven't trusted Dan Lavry much since he "proved" that a max frequency in the neighborhood of 96Hz (coincidentally that of Lavry DACs - theirs don't use that exact frequency, I think it's slightly lower) was better than anything higher or lower, by showing a single DAC's response to just 3 input frequencies, one of them 16mHz.  This DAC didn't handle 16mHz input well, which supposedly demonstrated that, for example, 176.4Hz was just too much for any DAC (or ADC).  (This was all in a Lavry white paper, not spelled out, but there if you read closely.)

[daverich4]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

As others have stated, this is the thread that keeps on giving. I can see the MQA supporters huddling now. 

 

“OK your turn.”

”Hell no, you first.”

”Alright send the new guy in to defend MQA.”

 

Well, the thread has given quite a bit of web traffic to you. But you just screwed up. The thread was basically shut down until Lee showed up again. Now what we’re going to have is a couple of days of the White Knights on this forum patting themselves on the back for once again saving us from the terrible, awful blight on the earth that is MQA and then this thread is going back to sleep. 

[John Dyson]

15 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

Well, the thread has given quite a bit of web traffic to you. But you just screwed up. The thread was basically shut down until Lee showed up again. Now what we’re going to have is a couple of days of the White Knights on this forum patting themselves on the back for once again saving us from the terrible, awful blight on the earth that is MQA and then this thread is going back to sleep. 

Maybe a thread like 'audio imperfections and how we describe them'  what does it mean?  Rather than being confrontational, it might actually be helpful (at least, a catharsis.)  MQA was partially  about changing the sound for a non-sound purpose...  What kinds of changes are we talking about there and elsewhere?  Oh well -- probably best for me to shut-up...

 

John

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, John Dyson said:

So PLEASE don't misunderstand about my kind observation -- when needed, I try to see both sides of issues, then I make my kind evaluation.

 Thanks for the explanation John.