MQA is Vaporware

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

I do not think you get the idea of what is being specified. The speaker itself may be capable of reproducing much higher frequencies, but it will be at an increased or a reduced volume.  

 

Yes, I get that.  Normally, those ultrasonic frequencies that the speaker can produce beyond its specified range will be produced at a much reduced volume -- so much so, that they could probably be ignored -- the drop off is really severe.  And the effect of these ultrasonic frequencies on the audible range, if such exists, is thusly reduced.

 

Let's face it. You're not going to get the benefits, if any, of hi-res from speakers with a specified range of 75Hz - 20kHz ±-3dB.

[mansr]

4 hours ago, Paul R said:

I do not think you get the idea of what is being specified.

I do not think you get how speakers actually work.

[psjug]

The frequency response of those Harbeth speakers to 30KHz is available.  Not too far down almost to 30KHz but it looks like it might be taking a dive after that.

 

Fig.3 Harbeth P3ESR, anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50" without grille, averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with nearfield woofer response plotted below 300Hz.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/harbeth-p3esr-loudspeaker-measurements#j8tdvBEYYv8WGoYe.99

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, psjug said:

The frequency response of those Harbeth speakers to 30KHz is available.  Not too far down almost to 30KHz but it looks like it might be taking a dive after that.

 

Fig.3 Harbeth P3ESR, anechoic response on tweeter axis at 50" without grille, averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with nearfield woofer response plotted below 300Hz.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/harbeth-p3esr-loudspeaker-measurements#j8tdvBEYYv8WGoYe.99

 

How can you tell where the 30kHz mark is?

[John_Atkinson]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

 

How can you tell where the 30kHz mark is?

 

I thought this clear: 30kHz is at the right-hand edge of the response graph.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

[John Dyson]

On 6/8/2019 at 3:53 PM, Paul R said:

 

Hi John - 

There is plenty of music content above 20khz, and nope, it ain't distortion. Vinyl can reproduce it just fine.  Has been that way for ages. Not saying anyone can actually hear it, at least not directly. However, if you stick your paw in an ultrasonic record cleaner bath you are sure able to feel something. 😉

 

Can you be a little more specific about what you are talking about? 

Methinks that you cannot hear the  'content',  and like noise/music above 20kHz from vinyl -- it is messed up anyway.   If you think that any signfiicant pop material made before 1990 has 'clean' highs -- well I have a bridge to sell you...  Most recording situations used DolbyA/DolbySR (and its littler brothers/sisters.)  The splats from the old HW are about as strong as any 'music' -- perhaps stronger when you have those nice 'cymbals' from 'high quality' recordings.  (reference:  when I decode professional material and compare with a true DolbyA -- on a specific recording, using DolbyA HW cymbals are decoded at a suppressed level -- guess where that suppressed energy goes?  think about 20kHz?  It isn't that the DolbyA cannot respond quickly -- it is that the response is SO FAST that intermod is so severe that much of the energy is lost outside of the audio band!!!)

 

Get a pair of Earthworks or good DPA microphones, and record directly onto digital -- then you have music material above 20kHz or so -- *that cannot be heard or detected by humans*.  Please do not count the resulting distortion products which do 'make a difference' when errant signals much above 20khz mess things up.  (I am not one of those 'must brickwall at 20kHz' people -- but every extra kHz above certain signal level will more and more likely be troublesome.)

 

One nice thing about my decoder -- it doesn't produce those splats...  (That is what I was talking about breaking my decoder.)  DolbyA encoded and decoded material is full of splts, similar to the vinyl being all contorted WRT signal quality above about -- say, 0Hz :-).

 

On the other hand, pros are 'big boys' and know how to deal with the HF problems, and they oftne like to keep high sample rates/raw bandwidths for purposes other than direct listening. (I am not counting myself as one of those 'big boys' -- just talking about the pros)

 

John

[Paul R]

6 hours ago, mansr said:

I do not think you get how speakers actually work.

 

If you think that, then I am quite sure you do jot know how speakers work, or how they are measured. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Are we in second grade again? Get over this type of stupid back and forth playground chatter. 

[Jud]

On 6/9/2019 at 8:51 AM, Rt66indierock said:

 

Tidal is virtually unknown in the streaming market and has no market share.

 

 

Don't know about "no market share," but not big enough to make the US-only list linked below.  OTOH (and this is always what concerns me), I'm hoping against hope that the industry doesn't take MQA's faceplant as meaning they ought not to contract with other streaming services offering open format "lossless" (quotes because pretty much everything we listen to has undergone lossy conversion at some point in the chain, even if just inside the ADC) hi res.

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/798125/most-popular-us-music-streaming-services-ranked-by-audience/

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Don't know about "no market share," but not big enough to make the US-only list linked below.  OTOH (and this is always what concerns me), I'm hoping against hope that the industry doesn't take MQA's faceplant as meaning they ought not to contract with other streaming services offering open format "lossless" (quotes because pretty much everything we listen to has undergone lossy conversion at some point in the chain, even if just inside the ADC) hi res.

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/798125/most-popular-us-music-streaming-services-ranked-by-audience/

Interesting numbers. I always thought Pandora was way bigger than the streaming services. Looking at the Pandora specific numbers it looks like it's larger than the monthly numbers suggest. 

 

 

 

[Jud]

2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Interesting numbers. I always thought Pandora was way bigger than the streaming services. Looking at the Pandora specific numbers it looks like it's larger than the monthly numbers suggest. 

 

 

 

 

US-only (my link) vs. world (yours)?

[lucretius]

55 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

US-only (my link) vs. world (yours)?

 

By 2018, It's all US.

[Paul R]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

Methinks that you cannot hear the  'content',  and like noise/music above 20kHz from vinyl -- it is messed up anyway.   If you think that any signfiicant pop material made before 1990 has 'clean' highs -- well I have a bridge to sell you...  Most recording situations used DolbyA/DolbySR (and its littler brothers/sisters.)  The splats from the old HW are about as strong as any 'music' -- perhaps stronger when you have those nice 'cymbals' from 'high quality' recordings.  (reference:  when I decode professional material and compare with a true DolbyA -- on a specific recording, using DolbyA HW cymbals are decoded at a suppressed level -- guess where that suppressed energy goes?  think about 20kHz?  It isn't that the DolbyA cannot respond quickly -- it is that the response is SO FAST that intermod is so severe that much of the energy is lost outside of the audio band!!!)

 

Get a pair of Earthworks or good DPA microphones, and record directly onto digital -- then you have music material above 20kHz or so -- *that cannot be heard or detected by humans*.  Please do not count the resulting distortion products which do 'make a difference' when errant signals much above 20khz mess things up.  (I am not one of those 'must brickwall at 20kHz' people -- but every extra kHz above certain signal level will more and more likely be troublesome.)

 

One nice thing about my decoder -- it doesn't produce those splats...  (That is what I was talking about breaking my decoder.)  DolbyA encoded and decoded material is full of splts, similar to the vinyl being all contorted WRT signal quality above about -- say, 0Hz :-).

 

On the other hand, pros are 'big boys' and know how to deal with the HF problems, and they oftne like to keep high sample rates/raw bandwidths for purposes other than direct listening. (I am not counting myself as one of those 'big boys' -- just talking about the pros)

 

John

 

Well, I think the higher sample rates can be very beneficial to listening, but should probably take this off line or to different topic. 

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Don't know about "no market share," but not big enough to make the US-only list linked below.  OTOH (and this is always what concerns me), I'm hoping against hope that the industry doesn't take MQA's faceplant as meaning they ought not to contract with other streaming services offering open format "lossless" (quotes because pretty much everything we listen to has undergone lossy conversion at some point in the chain, even if just inside the ADC) hi res.

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/798125/most-popular-us-music-streaming-services-ranked-by-audience/

 

Making an optimistic guess about Tidal's market share it is probably less than 2% with your data pretty much "no market share."

 

Tommy Faragher, Rafa Sardina and Tony Braunagel in the Golden Ear Seminar had a good chuckle when I asked about hi-res as a deliverable in record contracts. Tony I believe said even if the contract specified hi-res the mastering engineers convert it to analog anyway. Only a Mytek guy pointed out a label that now demands 24/96. 

 

And dash your hopes a bit in both of Mark Waldrep's seminars he called both MQA and hi-res a fraud.

[Rt66indierock]

22 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Well, I think the higher sample rates can be very beneficial to listening, but should probably take this off line or to different topic. 

 

I'm fine with this discussion and any points you want to make about how higher sample rates are beneficial to listening.

[tmtomh]

On 6/8/2019 at 3:53 PM, Paul R said:

Hi John - 

There is plenty of music content above 20khz, and nope, it ain't distortion. Vinyl can reproduce it just fine.  Has been that way for ages. Not saying anyone can actually hear it, at least not directly. However, if you stick your paw in an ultrasonic record cleaner bath you are sure able to feel something. 😉

 

Can you be a little more specific about what you are talking about? 

 

1. The evidence suggests that ultrasonics contain sufficient distortion and other non-musical noise that any musical harmonics present in the ultrasonics are swamped by the crud, or at best reproduced with levels of noise and distortion that everyone in this conversation would consider unacceptable for hi-fidelity reproduction. Therefore, if you are going to claim that "Vinyl can reproduce [ultrasonics] just fine," you need to provide some specific evidence.
2. Yes, you can feel something when you put your hand in an ultrasonic record cleaner (or ultrasonic cleaner of any kind). What you feel is the water agitated by the ultrasonic waves. But that doesn't mean you can hear or feel ultrasonic waves. Just because we can see birds and other wildlife fleeing an area in advance of an earthquake, doesn't mean humans are capable of feeling whatever tiny seismic or atmospheric changes are prompting the animals to high-tail it out of there.
3. What always strikes me most about these ultrasonics arguments - and this bears directly on MQA's claimed reason for being - is that everyone who argues that we can hear, feel, or otherwise sense musical ultrasonics always seems to assume that's a good thing. Even putting aside that there is zero evidence that the presence or absence of ultrasonics in a recorded musical signal impacts what we hear, where is the evidence suggesting that ultrasonics improve our perception of the musical signal in the audible range, rather than detracting from it?

 

31 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Well, I think the higher sample rates can be very beneficial to listening, but should probably take this off line or to different topic. 

 

Yes, best left for another topic (or better yet, offline as you suggest). It should be noted, however, that your "I think" here is not supported with any evidence, while @John Dyson's "methinks" comment about ultrasonic crud on Dolby A/SR encoded tapes is backed by an evidentiary claim that can be checked and either verified or refuted.

[esldude]

About this ultrasonic vinyl business.  I think I've mentioned it once.  Rather than name calling and insults, how about someone give us a 96 khz or higher needle drop.  Let us take out the lower stuff and slow it down to hear what is up there.  Then we can just listen to it and see without all the conjecture and disagreement. 

 

Now I have one from Paul at 192 khz.  Removed everything below 20 khz.  Slowed by a factor of 8.  Nothing you can hear.  I amplified it by 36 db.  You hear a lot of scratchiness, and every once in a while maybe a cymbal like sound faintly.  Of course there are no cymbals as it is a piano recording.  The cymbal like sounds do coincide with the loudest moments from the piano.  

 

If you want to argue there is something up there, well alright.  If you think it is something you'll hear or influence the sound. well don't be ridiculous.  Too low in level, too buried in noise and way too high in frequency.  Who knows if it is anything more than distortion harmonics.   Attached is a short segment of the most energetic and 'music filled' few seconds. 

 

The sound that is there would have been 20-32 khz and drop like a  rock after that.  

 

sample of ultrasonics on vinyl rip.zip

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, esldude said:

About this ultrasonic vinyl business.  I think I've mentioned it once.  Rather than name calling and insults, how about someone give us a 96 khz or higher needle drop.  Let us take out the lower stuff and slow it down to hear what is up there.  Then we can just listen to it and see without all the conjecture and disagreement. 

 

Now I have one from Paul at 192 khz.  Removed everything below 20 khz.  Slowed by a factor of 8.  Nothing you can hear.  I amplified it by 36 db.  You hear a lot of scratchiness, and every once in a while maybe a cymbal like sound faintly.  Of course there are no cymbals as it is a piano recording.  The cymbal like sounds do coincide with the loudest moments from the piano.  

 

If you want to argue there is something up there, well alright.  If you think it is something you'll hear or influence the sound. well don't be ridiculous.  Too low in level, too buried in noise and way too high in frequency.  Who knows if it is anything more than distortion harmonics.   Attached is a short segment of the most energetic and 'music filled' few seconds. 

 

sample of ultrasonics on vinyl rip.zip 2.9 MB · 1 download

To quote Abraham Lincoln, or was it Ariana Grande, "Thank U Next." 

 

In other words, thanks for the facts @esldude. Can we now move on / back to the topic at hand. 

[esldude]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

To quote Abraham Lincoln, or was it Ariana Grande, "Thank U Next." 

 

In other words, thanks for the facts @esldude. Can we now move on / back to the topic at hand. 

MQA encoded vinyl?

[lucretius]

53 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

And dash your hopes a bit in both of Mark Waldrep's seminars he called both MQA and hi-res a fraud. 

 Yes, they are both a fraud.

[Paul R]

2 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

 

1. The evidence suggests that ultrasonics contain sufficient distortion and other non-musical noise that any musical harmonics present in the ultrasonics are swamped by the crud, or at best reproduced with levels of noise and distortion that everyone in this conversation would consider unacceptable for hi-fidelity reproduction. Therefore, if you are going to claim that "Vinyl can reproduce [ultrasonics] just fine," you need to provide some specific evidence.
2. Yes, you can feel something when you put your hand in an ultrasonic record cleaner (or ultrasonic cleaner of any kind). What you feel is the water agitated by the ultrasonic waves. But that doesn't mean you can hear or feel ultrasonic waves. Just because we can see birds and other wildlife fleeing an area in advance of an earthquake, doesn't mean humans are capable of feeling whatever tiny seismic or atmospheric changes are prompting the animals to high-tail it out of there.
3. What always strikes me most about these ultrasonics arguments - and this bears directly on MQA's claimed reason for being - is that everyone who argues that we can hear, feel, or otherwise sense musical ultrasonics always seems to assume that's a good thing. Even putting aside that there is zero evidence that the presence or absence of ultrasonics in a recorded musical signal impacts what we hear, where is the evidence suggesting that ultrasonics improve our perception of the musical signal in the audible range, rather than detracting from it?

 

 

Yes, best left for another topic (or better yet, offline as you suggest). It should be noted, however, that your "I think" here is not supported with any evidence, while @John Dyson's "methinks" comment about ultrasonic crud on Dolby A/SR encoded tapes is backed by an evidentiary claim that can be checked and either verified or refuted.

 

Hi Tmtomh - I wrote “I think” out of politeness, not out of any uncertainty about what I meant or wrote.

 

Like others here, I have been working in Electronics since the days of building a Heathkit Color TV. Amplifiers least by some. are not mysterious things to me, nor is digital signal processing or software engineering. Almost four decades of working with them has given me the confidence of my convictions, and with no need to boost my ego at someone else’s expense. Usually, it does not cost me anything to be polite, and often means I can earn something new. Politeness here, however, seems to be consistently  misinterpreted, at least by some. 

 

People have already posted spectrograms with high frequency content, both from vinyl and digital sources. And from recorded vinyl sources as well. Anyone wishing to dispute that there is real valid musical content above 20khz should start a topic about it. I do not feel such a contention is worth arguing about, as it is demonstrably false to almost any interested party with no effort on my part.

 

A correct recording of a trumpet for example, will contain information above 20khz that is not noise. If you are saying we do not have the tech to reproduce that correctly, that is wrong. 

 

Rule of thumb is amplifier bandwidth should be an order of magnitude greater than the signal of interest.(Speaking here of [linear] signal reproduction.) It is also how one eliminates the fuzzy sound caused by IM distortion. The sound of an ultra wideband amp is often described as “lifting a veil” that was laid over the music. The elimination or significant reduction of IM distortion is why. 

 

That is also why really good phono amps are so dang expensive. Some have bandwidths that are two, or even three orders of magnitude greater than a 20khz signal. 

 

IM is not an issue (with suitable kit) in reproducing even ultrasonic sound from vinyl or digital. What proof do you offer that high frequency music information must be swamped by noise? Other than when noise shaping is used. 

 

Which comes back to what I said earlier. In digital music, high sample rate music often sounds better because the filters in the DAC are gentler or cause less damage in the audible spectrum. I do hold the opinion that digital always has the potential to sound better than vinyl. But it often does not.

 

Vinyl, despite other forms of distortion, often sounds better than most digital, even better than poorly recorded high res digital. Certainly it can sound better than red book, MP3s, and MQA. 

 

In in terms of MQA, Other people have strong opinions on that I am sure they will be willing to share. My opinions on MQA in this instance would be purely limited to - does it sound better than red book, high res, vinyl, or recorded vinyl?

[lucretius]

7 minutes ago, Paul R said:

In digital music, high sample rate music often sounds better because the filters in the DAC are gentler or cause less damage in the audible spectrum.

 

It's a problem that can be solved by a better DAC. In any case, up-sampling is all that would be needed -- no need for "musical" content above 22kHz.

[lucretius]

17 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Vinyl, despite other forms of distortion, often sounds better than most digital, even better than poorly recorded high res digital. Certainly it can sound better than red book, MP3s, and MQA. 

 

That says a lot about the mastering of digital, etc.  Nonetheless, you're going to get a lot of vinyl junkies who claim it is better regardless of the mastering of CDs or digital files, etc.  The world of "audiophiles" is an irrational one.

[kumakuma]

18 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

People have already posted spectrograms with high frequency content, both from vinyl and digital sources. And from recorded vinyl sources as well. Anyone wishing to dispute that there is real valid musical content above 20khz should start a topic about it. I do not feel such a contention is worth arguing about, as it is demonstrably false to almost any interested party with no effort on my part.

 

 

How do you reconcile this with Dennis''s post? Did you listen to the file he shared?

[John_Atkinson]

Just now, kumakuma said:

How do you reconcile this with Dennis''s post? Did you listen to the file he shared?

 

The recording was of a piano. The article of mine that I linked to earlier in the thread showed that piano is an instrument that has negligible spectral content above 15kHz or so. This file, as interesting as its provenance is, proves nothing either way.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile