MQA is Vaporware

[lucretius]

12 minutes ago, mansr said:

Why don't you share a short sample? Then someone could verify that your capture process is working properly.

 

OK. Here is a small slice of the file. I would have uploaded the whole file/track, except that Audiophile Style prevents it. 

slice.flac

 

I should also mention that this was my first successful capture of an MQA file. So I also added the metadata to see if that would change anything.

[new_media]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

OK. Here is a small slice of the file. I would have uploaded the whole file/track, except that Audiophile Style prevents it. 

slice.flac 2.48 MB · 4 downloads

 

I should also mention that this was my first successful capture of an MQA file. So I also added the metadata to see if that would change anything.

 

Roon sees this as an MQA file.

[lucretius]

19 minutes ago, new_media said:

 

Roon sees this as an MQA file.

 

So does my DAC!

[esldude]

10 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

Perhaps comments were disabled to make the blog smaller.

This gives me a great idea.  I'm sure Bob would allow commenting if it were implemented. 

 

Here is the idea:

People submit their comments.  But written words are imprecise with significant amounts of meaning blur.  So we implement Meaning Quality Assurance eXpression programming.  Algorithms will parse the submitted comments, compensate for Meaning blur, derive the true intent of the commenting person, and then post the cleaned up and improved commentary.  Everyone wins.  It prevents unfortunate misunderstandings, prevents unintended censure, and is not censoring.  It is just the reverse. 

 

So for instance someone comments:

I don't find MQA files always the better sounding version of recordings. 

 

MQAX algorithms correctly post the comment:

MQA does make recordings sound better.  

 

Notice there are fewer words involved.  The meaning is much more concise, precise and lacks any ambiguity that was in the original commentary. 

 

So many websites have articles or blogs that once took comments and they've done away with them.  A piece of software like MQAX could allow these outlets to implement comments once again with this technology.  I'm sure they'd be willing to pay a small fee, and surely everyone benefits form having their comments posted and posted with more clear and concise meanings.  

 

 

 

[crenca]

Just an update:  I checked under advanced device settings and I have "Enable MQA Core Decoder" set to 'off' as well, so apparently Roon is ignoring settings and decoding MQA now matter what.  Now why would they do that?  Another "bug" (an example:  up until the most recent update MQA was privileged over the equivalent or better Hi Res from Qobuz) that just happens to go MQA's way?  

 

Anyone else with Roon and a non-MQA DAC who can correlate this behavior?

 

 

[Paul R]

4 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

Many, many members are still curious about the hundreds of people you talked to and your journal entries about their HiFi Habits, not to mention your career as a mathematician, or graduate background in that area.

 

I promise, it really is easy to strike up a conversation about audio systems just about anywhere. (Or Jeeps, or computers, or good places to eat.) 

 

But, here we go again... "many, many, members"?  Want to share the names of your mysterious behind the scenes clique? I and I expect many others, would find it very questionable that many, many members are that interested in me or what I have to say. Sounds like a puffed up small group of people trying to impress themselves with their own importance. 

 

The subject is simple- is MQA gaining more acceptance, or is it losing approval?

 

Everything I see, more and more announcements, more articles accepting it, more articles questioning it, more people trying it, and more people apparently interested in it.

 

That does not reflect my personal opinion.

 

More telling, I see no compelling evidence on the other side, except for the "passionate" opinions here. (Well, the financials are really helpful, but it is a dang startup, and it can be drawing money from elsewhere.) There is plenty of evidence that MQA is not what it is marketed as, and that it has inferior technical specs. 

 

There is also plenty of evidence that it sounds better to a goodly number of people. Both in the press and in personal interactions. 

 

I cordially invite anyone to take the action recommended in the first sentence of this reply.  Just talk to your local friends and see how they feel, if nothing else. 

 

Surely you talk to your friends, right?  Pick up the phone and ask them --  if you can't meet them for a beer or coffee. 
 

 

 

-Paul 

 

 

[lucretius]

26 minutes ago, crenca said:

Just an update:  I checked under advanced device settings and I have "Enable MQA Core Decoder" set to 'off' as well, so apparently Roon is ignoring settings and decoding MQA now matter what.  Now why would they do that?  Another "bug" (an example:  up until the most recent update MQA was privileged over the equivalent or better Hi Res from Qobuz) that just happens to go MQA's way?  

 

Anyone else with Roon and a non-MQA DAC who can correlate this behavior?

 

 

 

Out of curiosity, what happens if you set the MQA Capabilities to "Decoder and Renderer" while keeping the Enable MQA Core Decoder set to "No"?

[Paul R]

3 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Out of curiosity, what happens if you set the MQA Capabilities to "Decoder and Renderer" while keeping the Enable MQA Core Decoder set to "No"?

I think the DAC capabilities take precedence.  I have your exact settings on this DAC, and this is what it reports. I am unclear if the DAC is unfolding any further though. 

 

[asdf1000]

40 minutes ago, crenca said:

Just an update:  I checked under advanced device settings and I have "Enable MQA Core Decoder" set to 'off' as well, so apparently Roon is ignoring settings and decoding MQA now matter what.  Now why would they do that?

 

What makes you think Roon is doing this? Does your DAC show incoming sample rate to confirm this?

[lucretius]

47 minutes ago, Paul R said:

I think the DAC capabilities take precedence.  I have your exact settings on this DAC, and this is what it reports. I am unclear if the DAC is unfolding any further though.

 

Can you log into the microrendu and see what it reports?  And the DAC attached to the microrendu, what does it display/report?

 

I have a similar path and the signal is sent bit-perfect to my DAC (per the DAC's display):

 

 

 

 

[Paul R]

Not a lot of access to the DAC, though the LEDs say it is getting MQA. 

 

The MicroRendu appears to think it is sending bit perfect 24/48K data to the DAC. I think that makes sense, since all the MQA processing in Roon is turned off. 

I could easily be wrong here though. The uRendu and the iFi iDSD Micro BL do not allow a lot of access. 

 

-Paul 

[Thuaveta]

3 hours ago, Paul R said:

The subject is simple- is MQA gaining more acceptance, or is it losing approval?

  

Everything I see, more and more announcements, more articles accepting it, more articles questioning it, more people trying it, and more people apparently interested in it.

 

That does not reflect my personal opinion.

 

More telling, I see no compelling evidence on the other side, except for the "passionate" opinions here. (Well, the financials are really helpful, but it is a dang startup, and it can be drawing money from elsewhere.) There is plenty of evidence that MQA is not what it is marketed as, and that it has inferior technical specs. 

 

 

I'm not entirely sure your premise is the right one here.

 

MQA isn't a consumer-driven format, though BS and Jbarra are trying hard to make that happen. As others have said, the one service that uses it this far (Tidal) is a midget compared to the big guys, and although the Sprint deal might help change that, I don't see Sprint customers clamouring for the crystal-clear quality of HiDef Kanye or Queen Bey, if only because they're probably smart enough to understand HiDef in a noisy environment is just about the stupidest idea since the jade egg.

 

Audiophilia is a minuscule market, and within that, people that participate in the forums, read TAS, Stereophile or Darko is even smaller. Just so you get how small exactly, Stereophile had a print circulation of 70'000 in 2013. What Hifi is hovering around 30'000, apparently. To put that in perspective, National Fisherman, the commercial fishing trade magazine, has a circulation that's comparable to that of What Hifi.

 

MQA Ltd. isn't "drawing money from elsewhere" (and neither is Meridian, for that matter). What you see is what there is: a marketing-heavy IP midget, led by a failed businessman and a few washed-out music business execs, owned by the heir to a cigarette fortune.

 

So megalomaniacal hegemonic aims put aside, nothing to really be passionate about, indeed.

[mansr]

9 hours ago, lucretius said:

OK. Here is a small slice of the file. I would have uploaded the whole file/track, except that Audiophile Style prevents it. 

slice.flac 2.48 MB · 6 downloads

 

I should also mention that this was my first successful capture of an MQA file. So I also added the metadata to see if that would change anything.

My tools recognise that as MQA, so the capture is good.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, Paul R said:

Not a lot of access to the DAC, though the LEDs say it is getting MQA. 

 

The MicroRendu appears to think it is sending bit perfect 24/48K data to the DAC. I think that makes sense, since all the MQA processing in Roon is turned off. 

I could easily be wrong here though. The uRendu and the iFi iDSD Micro BL do not allow a lot of access. 

The iFi DACs (other than the recently released Pro) do not support full MQA decoding, only "rendering." What firmware version do you have on yours?

[firedog]

I have about 3 audiophile friends who are aware what DSD and MQA are, but none of them listen to either.
No one else I know has any awareness of MQA or even DSD. Both are tiny niche of niche of niche markets known only to the types of people who frequent audiophile forums. 

[mcgillroy]

8 hours ago, esldude said:

Here is the idea:

People submit their comments.  But written words are imprecise with significant amounts of meaning blur.  So we implement Meaning Quality Assurance eXpression programming.  Algorithms will parse the submitted comments, compensate for Meaning blur, derive the true intent of the commenting person, and then post the cleaned up and improved commentary.  Everyone wins.  It prevents unfortunate misunderstandings, prevents unintended censure, and is not censoring.  It is just the reverse. 

 

(...) 

 

MQAX algorithms correctly post the comment.

 

 

Quick get a patent for this! Might have application also to law: who wouldn't want contracts deblurred

[asdf1000]

On 5/2/2019 at 10:39 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Netflix is going up to 640Kbps for audio and says that is perceptually lossless. So much for that market for high resolution, at least when it comes to video. 

 

https://www.wired.com/story/netflix-adaptive-audio/

 

Interesting.

 

Of the Big 5 in streaming (not just music - Netflix, Amazon, Google, Spotify, Apple) Netflix now offer the best audio sound quality with this change.

 

I've converted many of my CD's into 320 kbps AAC to go into my Apple iCloud Music Library for mobile listening (in parallel to Apple Music) and they sound fantastic.

 

I don't know of any way to convert to 640 kbps otherwise I would try and have a listen to compare with the RBCD versions. iTunes and XLD converter are limited to 320 kbps for conversion.

 

[kumakuma]

10 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

But, here we go again... "many, many, members"?  Want to share the names of your mysterious behind the scenes clique? I and I expect many others, would find it very questionable that many, many members are that interested in me or what I have to say. Sounds like a puffed up small group of people trying to impress themselves with their own importance. 

 

 

The "many, many members" part was an obvious dig at another member who often uses this kind of hyperbole to justify his claims.

 

You may not have gotten the joke but there are hundreds of thousands of members of this forum who did.  👺

[Sonicularity]

11 hours ago, crenca said:

Just an update:  I checked under advanced device settings and I have "Enable MQA Core Decoder" set to 'off' as well, so apparently Roon is ignoring settings and decoding MQA now matter what.  Now why would they do that?  Another "bug" (an example:  up until the most recent update MQA was privileged over the equivalent or better Hi Res from Qobuz) that just happens to go MQA's way?  

 

Anyone else with Roon and a non-MQA DAC who can correlate this behavior?

 

 

 

Roon seems to be working as expected with my DAC, and RME ADI-2 DAC.

 

I played the sample provided by @lucretius (thanks!) in Roon with the setting of "No MQA Support" and "Enable MQA Core Decoder" set to off

 

The file was played back at 24/48 on my DAC with ASIO drivers provided by RME.

 

Here is the Roon signal path with MQA decoding disabled:

 

 

This is what is being sent to my DAC via USB:

 

 

 

Then I went into the Roon's advanced audio settings for my DAC and set  "Enable MQA Core Decoder" to on.  

 

Now when I played back the sample I was seeing the decoded MQA at 24/96 with my DAC.

 

Here is the Roon signal path with MQA decoding enabled:

 

 

 

This is what was being sent to the DAC via USB:

 

 

 

Everything appears to be working as expected with Roon with regards to the DAC I was using.

 

 

Edit Update:  My DAC shows the sample rate on the front display, and it corresponded to what I found in the screenshots above, though, rather than taking a photo of the front of the DAC, I sent the snippet of the MADIface tool instead. 

[Dr Tone]

3 hours ago, Em2016 said:

 

Interesting.

 

Of the Big 5 in streaming (not just music - Netflix, Amazon, Google, Spotify, Apple) Netflix now offer the best audio sound quality with this change.

 

I've converted many of my CD's into 320 kbps AAC to go into my Apple iCloud Music Library for mobile listening (in parallel to Apple Music) and they sound fantastic.

 

I don't know of any way to convert to 640 kbps otherwise I would try and have a listen to compare with the RBCD versions. iTunes and XLD converter are limited to 320 kbps for conversion.

 

 

Netflix would be doing multi channel in that bitrate not 2 channel.  5.1 at least maybe more.

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

Netflix would be doing multi channel in that bitrate not 2 channel.  5.1 at least maybe more.

Netflix is 5.1 Dolby Digital+ (E-AC-3).

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, Sonicularity said:

Here is the Roon signal path with MQA decoding enabled:

 

 

 

 

I see that when the software decoder is turned on, you get "MQA Core Decoder" in the path.  Now we know what we should be looking for.  Thanks.

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, kumakuma said:

 

The "many, many members" part was an obvious dig at another member who often uses this kind of hyperbole to justify his claims.

 

You may not have gotten the joke but there are hundreds of thousands of members of this forum who did.  👺

 

Perhaps that number is somewhat inflated?  🎣?

 

The only way to know is if people get out and actually ask people what they feel about MQA. To real live people, not screens.  Might actually have to explain to real people face to face why it isn't a good idea to support MQA then. Much harder than sniping online. 

[Paul R]

7 hours ago, mansr said:

The iFi DACs (other than the recently released Pro) do not support full MQA decoding, only "rendering." What firmware version do you have on yours?

 

5.30C,  10 Sep 2018.  It is supposed to support full MQA decoding, same as on the Pro.  iDSD Micro BL. 

[Paul R]

6 hours ago, firedog said:

I have about 3 audiophile friends who are aware what DSD and MQA are, but none of them listen to either.
No one else I know has any awareness of MQA or even DSD. Both are tiny niche of niche of niche markets known only to the types of people who frequent audiophile forums. 

 

Ah, thank you.  If I may ask, do you interact with them in audio surroundings, like at an audio store or convention, or at other places? (Bars, restaurants, home, etc?)