MQA is Vaporware

[crenca]

35 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Excellent.  I did not think to compare the Qobuz hi res to the MQA.  Interesting you could tell the differing masterings so easily, and through speakers.  I was using HP's so the differing mastering came through load in clear - it is immediately obvious.

 

So here we have an example of a brand new album that is using differing mastering for the 16/44 and the MQA/Hi Res.  Must be what the artist intended... 😋

 

Ok, just compared the MQA (unencoded - so sent natively to my "legacy" DAC 😋) to the real Hi Res on Tidal.  These two are the same mastering, which is obviously different from the 16/44.

 

I did not take much time/effort to try to discern a SQ difference between the MQA and Hi Res, but they are very close which confirms what we know:  as a SuperMP3, MQA is pretty good.

[Rt66indierock]

8 minutes ago, shtf said:

 

And here I thought mine was the only valid critisim back in late 2014 / early 2015 when I called MQA a fraud then in several forums and to this day I've yet to see a little green light emitting to know I'm authenticating (I've yet to listen to a single MQA recording). 

 

Sorry to break the news to you but this thread doesn't exist because of you as you (all of us) are but the effect and the cause is fraud and MQA, as the thread title clearly indicates.  MQA fraud is why this and other threads exists.  Fraud perpetrated by charlatans.  Well, that and because of the cowardly or compromised many who remained silent. 

 

 

 

Actually the green light says something different  according to Bob.  

[lucretius]

29 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Actually the green light says something different  according to Bob.  

 

Yes but apparently it varies among DACs.

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

After 553 pages, one thing stands out in this thread:  somebody said they were "lucky" ... "to live in Philly"

I have not heard that since the '70s

Probably right at the beginning of this thread.  

[Sonicularity]

1 hour ago, manisandher said:

 

So you identified decoded-MQA vs. hires correctly 5/9 times, right?

 

Mani.

 

I would say that any results with regards to differences between the HiRes Qobuz or decoded MQA were inconclusive to my ears from the testing I performed.   I wasn't necessarily testing for a difference with those 2 files, as they sounded similar to me.  Now, whatever Tidal is using for their lossless 16/44.1 version was much easier to identify when compared to either MQA or Qobuz HiRes.  I'm confident that I could identify a difference between the Tidal 16/4.1 and the Qobus 24/96 HiRes or the MQA file decoded to 24/96 by Roon.

 

In summary, to me, MQA decoded by Roon to 24/96 and Qobuz 24/96 sounded very similar.  It seemed like the same mastering.  The Tidal 16/44.1 was noticeably different to either. 

 

I know that there is a delay for Roon to have new music available.  I'd be very curious to see if Qobuz offers a 16/44.1 version so I could test that one as well.  Maybe it will be available in the next day or two.

[Sonicularity]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

Ok, just compared the MQA (unencoded - so sent natively to my "legacy" DAC 😋) to the real Hi Res on Tidal.  These two are the same mastering, which is obviously different from the 16/44.

 

I did not take much time/effort to try to discern a SQ difference between the MQA and Hi Res, but they are very close which confirms what we know:  as a SuperMP3, MQA is pretty good.

 

It seems we both came to similar conclusions.  MQA sounds similarly unencoded or encoded with software to the first unfold.  For this particular music, MQA sounds very close, if not identical, to the Qobuz HiRes version.  Tidal offers a lossless 16/44.1 version of the same music, and this seems different.

 

What we are not sure of is whether the HiRes/MQA sounds different because of the format or if something else is responsible for this audible difference.  I've never heard any difference between HiRes and Red Book with any music, so I think this is something intentional and not merely the same music converted to a lower bit depth and sample rate.

 

 

[Archimago]

I see this announcement for AXPONA on TAS:

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/mqa-champions-master-quality-sound-at-axpona-2019/

 

Looks like primarily the Mike Jbara Show... 

 

Why doesn't Bob Stuart show up anymore?

[The Computer Audiophile]

29 minutes ago, Archimago said:

Why doesn't Bob Stuart show up anymore?

 

Did someone say this is the thread that keeps on giving?

 

.. and away we go 😊

[crenca]

54 minutes ago, Archimago said:

I see this announcement for AXPONA on TAS:

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/mqa-champions-master-quality-sound-at-axpona-2019/

 

Looks like primarily the Mike Jbara Show... 

 

Why doesn't Bob Stuart show up anymore?

 

The thing to notice is that TAS/Stereophile are "championing" MQA - they mention it any chance they get.  This is the gift that keeps on giving, because as we all know Stereophile, TAS and their writers are not getting $compensated$ by MQA to do this championing.  How do we know this?  They have told us 😉

[Thuaveta]

29 minutes ago, crenca said:

we all know Stereophile, TAS and their writers are not getting $compensated$ by MQA

 

(...) we all know Stereophile, TAS and their writers are not getting directly $compensated$ by MQA (...)

 

FTFY

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Did someone say this is the thread that keeps on giving?

 

.. and away we go 😊

 

I actually do know why he isn't showing up.

[christopher3393]

52 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

The thing to notice is that TAS/Stereophile are "championing" MQA - they mention it any chance they get.  This is the gift that keeps on giving, because as we all know Stereophile, TAS and their writers are not getting $compensated$ by MQA to do this championing.  How do we know this?  They have told us 😉

 

And you believe otherwise (as you have stated so many times in so many ways)

 

"crenca" means belief, doesn't it? Same Latin root that gives us the word credo?

 

To what extent do these expressions of belief ride on the coattails of the hard objective work done by others?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

3 hours ago, Archimago said:

I see this announcement for AXPONA on TAS:

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/mqa-champions-master-quality-sound-at-axpona-2019/

 

Looks like primarily the Mike Jbara Show... 

 

Why doesn't Bob Stuart show up anymore?

I think it is pretty clear why Stuart won't attend. When MQA blows up and the shit flies far and wide, he can pretend to be immaculate and carry on unsullied. I think that is also the reason MQA was ultimately spun off from Meridian. I bet once MQA dies they will try to pump life back into Meridian as an upscale "respectable" brand that London Hedge Fund managers would want in their flats. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I actually do know why he isn't showing up.

....he doesn't like tomatoes? 

[Axial]

 

[Sonicularity]

It is mandatory that the 'Pale Blue Dot' video is followed by this most profound scene from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life."

 

[Archimago]

7 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I actually do know why he isn't showing up.

 

Perhaps I missed it... Please do tell (if you can).

[Rt66indierock]

46 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Perhaps I missed it... Please do tell (if you can).

 

I was standing with the label guys and MQA Ltd representatives just before Bob's presentation at the the Los Angles Audio Show in 2017. The MQA people said that Bob would give technical presentations from now on. He wasn't effective with other audiences.  This presentation ended with Bob Stuart and Robert Harley called liars. 

[Archimago]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I was standing with the label guys and MQA Ltd representatives just before Bob's presentation at the the Los Angles Audio Show in 2017. The MQA people said that Bob would give technical presentations from now on. He wasn't effective with other audiences.  This presentation ended with Bob Stuart and Robert Harley called liars. 

 

I see... Not playing well to the demographic, eh?

 

Actually, if the message doesn't resonate with the audiophile public at LAAS literally from the guru's mouth, it's hard to imagine any other open public forum where the message would be accepted with open arms. As I recall, the message also did not play well at the 2017 AES resulting in Bruno Putzeys' Facebook post - the technical folks clearly not impressed. That was 2017... Hard to imagine much difference in 2019, plus time has gone by and internet speeds have improved even further to not need this kind of data compression.

 

In any event, will be interesting to see if Jbara and team bring with them any new graphs, charts, or if it's all "just so" feel-good stories of the "pioneering revolutionary studio authenticated deblurred perceptually lossless sound" packaged in a box typically with a beautifully reassuring "blue light" :-).

 

[Ralf11]

maybe they will intro "MQA 5G"

[Don Hills]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

maybe they will intro "MQA 5G"

 

Given that the marketing message for 5G is that it has bandwidth to spare, it will make the bandwidth saving of MQA even less relevant.

(If one were to go through this thread and change all references to MQA to 5G, the thread title and contents would be perfectly at home in a telecommunications forum.)

[John Dyson]

When I hear about 'audio guru this' or 'audio guru that', I don't quite understand.  All too often, I hear nonsense from people with that label.  I am not claiming that they are always wrong, but there is a lower signal to noise than should be.  Everytime I hear about 'audio guru said', I start thinking about 'Gibbs ringing' or just thought about 'pre-ringing' as another interesting misunderstood thing.  (Linear phase DOES sometimes sound different from minimium phase, but often the diagnosis is a little off.)  On the pre-ringing thing, it is more accurately that some frequencies are delayed differently in the minmum phase, and sometimes might sound better.  (When dealing with filters other than linear phase in complex signal processing -- it can be much more challenging...  When signals are split with linear phase,, and then re-assembled, there is no real difference other than delay -- so there is really NO ringing.  It is more of a difference sound and sometimes Gibbs effect -- NOT Gibbs ringing.  Most of the time, the 'ringing' is actually removal of expected signal components, thereby causing a residual near-sine-like wobble in the signal.)

 

Point being -- beware audio 'gurus', you really want to hear from EEs with long term expertise in DSP (actually writing code and/or designing -- NOT COPYING -- circuits.)  They might agree with an effect looking the same -- but the manifestation might be from a place different than common knowledge.

 

John

[firedog]

6 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

In any event, will be interesting to see if Jbara and team bring with them any new graphs, charts, or if it's all "just so" feel-good stories of the "pioneering revolutionary studio authenticated deblurred perceptually lossless sound" packaged in a box typically with a beautifully reassuring "blue light" :-).

I'm sure they will bring the same stuff we have all seen before-stuff that "proves" all sorts of irrelevant things. 

[crenca]

10 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

In any event, will be interesting to see if Jbara and team bring with them any new graphs, charts, or if it's all "just so" feel-good stories of the "pioneering revolutionary studio authenticated deblurred perceptually lossless sound" packaged in a box typically with a beautifully reassuring "blue light" :-).

 

 

I think you nailed it.  What else can they do?  When you don't have the substance, all you have is a sells narrative.

[mav52]

5 hours ago, firedog said:

I'm sure they will bring the same stuff we have all seen before-stuff that "proves" all sorts of irrelevant things. 

 

Don't worry the smoke and mirror show will be performed to only support MQA and no doubt bash the truth which has been shown here many, many times.