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MQA is Vaporware


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2 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Mansr says no, but Stuart says yes, repeatedly, over and over, about the entire frequency spectrum up to a 384k sampling, not just a piece of it.  Stuart's secret sauce is proprietary, and it is not even in patent applications.  But, we know part of the secret is a dramatically reduced ultrasonic dynamic range, as he has said over and over. Check out that MQA Origami video, with its A, B and C portions of the frequency spectrum.  It is not great, but it is a start.

 

It is a matter of who you wish to believe, mansr or Stuart.  Don't believe me.   I am willing to listen to the evidence wherever it goes, but mansr has not convinced me.  As I said, mansr's claims are cheap, Stuart's are huge and existential if he is defrauding us. As I also said, this issue is one of provable, measurable substance, unlike typical audio marketing claims, which are unverifiable.  

 

 

 

As always watch the video. Up to 20kHz nothing is folded. This is region A. Region B is above 20kHZ to 50KHz. This is where a small component of the music is that impacts region A. At about 1:30 in Bob says that there is no music above 50kHz. Region C is in the video from above 50kHZ to 96kHz. Region C is important because it allows the D/A converter to run faster but there is no music up there just noise.

 

Region C is folded under region B then region B and C are folded under region A. Since nothing is happening above the noise floor in Region A no unfolding occurs. Regions B and C are unfolded. Two regions are unfolded when the MQA file is decoded.

 

This is consistent with what Bob said at the Los Angeles Audio Show seminar. I agree with him that there is no music above 50kHz. His statements are similar to the reasoning and research for the first digital recording systems in studios that went to 50kHz in the late seventies.

 

If there is no music above 50kHz then what is up there is of little significance if its purpose is to allow the D/A converter to run faster.  

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23 minutes ago, mansr said:

There is only one (un)fold. Your region C is simply discarded. The renderer replaces it with aliases of A+B and dither noise.

 

I'm only relaying what the MQA video said and what Bob said at the LAAS. That I agree with him that there is no music above 50kHz and what is above 50kHz is of little significance. 

 

You can say what the render does today, but I can't due to my professions confidentiality rules and NDAs of the people who I've talked with. I accepted a couple of invitations that will not be covered by either in July. But in the MQA Ltd Group Strategic Report approved by the board April 6, 2017 notes that approved decoder availability is an issue. You noted the decoder is pretty generic that leaves the renderer as an issue.

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.

  On 6/23/2017 at 8:33 PM, Rt66indierock said:

 

I'm only relaying what the MQA video said and what Bob said at the LAAS. That I agree with him that there is no music above 50kHz and what is above 50kHz is of little significance. 

 

Bob had told us, "No A/B demo can be done effectively in 45 seconds, or against prejudice, or on the basis of one trial. Frankly, it makes it a non-event.

"According to ECG measurements around content with and without components above 20kHz, the brain needs 100–200 seconds to process information before it can effectively move from A to B. We at MQA infer this is primarily a response to more or less temporal smearing, and therefore probably also applies to comparisons between grades of higher rate content." (footnote 1)

 

Footnote 1: In subsequent discussion by email, Bob referred us to four papers, one of which can be found here. The others are "High-resolution music with inaudible high-frequency components produces a lagged effect on human electroencephalographic activities," by Ryuma Kuribayashi, Ryuta Yamamoto and Hiroshi Nittono (Clinical neuroscience, 2014); "Multidisciplinary study on the hypersonic effect," by Tsutomu Oohashi, Emi Nishina, Manabu Honda (International Congress Series 1226), and "Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect" by Tsutomu Oohashi, Emi Nishina, Manabu Honda, Yoshiharu Yonekura, Yoshitaka Fuwamoto, Norie Kawai, Tadao Maekawa, Satoshi Nakamura, Hidenao Fukuyama, and Hiroshi Shibasaki (The American Physiological Society, 2000).

 

On 6/24/2017 at 4:09 AM, AJ Soundfield said:

Ummm, do you know what all those papers he referenced say about >50kHz content? :)

Did he really say that?

 

AJ,

I was referencing the seminar Bob put on not the presentation he made later reported by Stereophile. By the time the event Jason reported on was scheduled I have already talked with Bob twice and listened to his seminar. The only digital activities I had planned Saturday afternoon were with Jon Whitledge to see and hear the improvements he made to the Magic Bus. Everything else was analog.

 

Bob’s Saturday Seminar was an expanded technical version of the MQA Origami geared toward music industry people, high end audio vendors and manufactures. He spent some time discussing how content from 20kHz to 50kHz reinforces content in the audible range according to my notes. There was very little discussion of content above 50kHz basically a rehash of the MQA Origami video. My notes from the seminar all stop at 48 kHz.

 

I have the graph of digital content from the Kuribayashi, Yamamoto and Nittono paper in front of me (figure 1). The frequency goes from 0 to 60 kHz. If there is any difference between content and background noise 50 kHz and 60 kHz I can’t see it.

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18 minutes ago, soxr said:

I came to the conclusion that in case of the available 2L.no test tracks which exists in a 352.8K real DXD studiomaster file and their decimated MQA counterparts, it's now possible to derive a file using the MQA file as only input, that sounds indistinguishable from the DXD original studio master that was used to encode this MQA file.

I used the open source SOX tool. No code from MQA was used to do this.

Anyone can peer review this research as I decided to open source my findings. Archimago, this topic and several gearslutz's MQA topics were a great help to come to this method:

I have been following these topics for months, but now the time has come to disclose my findings.

 

Welcome to CA I appreciate your time and effort to study MQA. Thank you for posting this in the Vaporware thread. 

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Enough

 

While this argument may have been fun let’s get back to the topic MQA.

 

As I’ve talked with studio people one thing is getting clearer. MQA does change the sound of the master. The proponents of MQA say in general MQA is like a better DAC but it changes the master. These changes are generally described as linearity and image changes.  The opponents of MQA say it changes the soundstage of the master. There seems to be an agreement that there is an increased presence in the midrange but differing opinions on other changes to the sound.

 

I’ve discovered is MQA Ltd is recruiting mastering engineers to be area representatives. So when you hear a mastering engineer support MQA you have to ask two questions. One are they an area representative and did they receive equipment or other forms of compensation to say what they did.

 

Miguelito I thought about your system pictures a bit when I was traveling to New York City recently. I ‘m familiar with all the sources Bob Stuart uses to support detection of ultrasonics as basis for MQA. I use many of the same sources to say there isn’t any evidence a person’s brain will be affected by ultrasonics in a normal listening position at a concert say sixty to eighty feet from the stage. After looking at your system pictures I can’t see how enough ultrasonic energy would be above the noise floor of your listening space to be able to record differences in brain activity sitting on the couch. I have more doubt than ever about whether ultrasonics matter.

 

Finally, opponents of MQA have formed a group to collate, organize and disseminate information about MQA. The group includes people from high end audio manufacturers, major labels, studios and me.

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5 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

 

Very interesting! Glad to hear that finally something is happening and a better, more informed discussion can commence.

 

Could you give any more specific info on timeframes and planned steps? IFA Berlin?

 

I am wondering about the major labels though - thought all majors are backing MQA?!

 

Things have been happening since mid-2016. I’ve certainly been pretty open about it. There is a lot of great information out there.  It just needs to be organized.

 

I can give you no timeframes. I am still watching the effect of Meridian Audio and MQA Ltd financial statements becoming public information. And I just started analyzing the Sprint/TIDAL/4:44 giveaways.

 

IFA Berlin not me I’ll be in the Pacific Northwest playing in a golf tournament.

 

The majors have licensed MQA but as of the Los Angeles Audio Show Warner has converted about 3,000 albums just as they announced at CES 2017, Universal none, Sony none. You license a format to protect your company. But if the majors had converted all their hi-res files to MQA where would they sell them? Based on who isn’t getting paid by TIDAL more analysis has to be going on at the majors as to how stream hi-res files since there is no indication that MQA has helped TIDAL gain subscribers.

 

Finally you need to reread what you quoted. Not everyone at the majors is supporting MQA. In fact many oppose it.

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2 hours ago, soxr said:


This story is very similar to 4G in my country. One foreign provider jumped on the license and paid insane amounts to get it. This provider has done nothing with his assigned 4G frequencies, except hold the license so that no other party can occupy the spectrum, just to be ready when they want to be ready.

Well it never happened ... so signing a deal does not mean that the license will be used.



 

 

Except nobody has paid MQA Ltd much money at all. Total turnover from inception to December 31, 2016 is less than 31,000 Pounds.

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3 minutes ago, rickca said:

It's pretty clear that MQA has been investing heavily in business development to recruit partners and attract press coverage and spinning it as business success.

 

Look how long Meridian fooled people. I have difficulty understanding why someone would choose to lose one million Pounds a year for 24 years but Meridian did.

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7 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

 

Thx - could you be more specific which ones and/or point me to statements confirming this?

 

 

 

If I could decide whose side you are on I might. But your post in KIH #47 has me wondering whether you are wrong or posting nonsense.  To quote Wolfgang Pauli “What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not.” I generally don’t respond until I believe you are wrong.

 

You are following the MQA debate close enough that you should know of one person. He uses his name and his company and location are in his profile.

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4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Oh how blasphemous, they are even charging real money for their product. 

 

Only joking. 

 

Considering what can be done in software I see endless opportunities in the near future for you to review, compare and write how to articles. This is type of software is only beginning. I seem to remember writing about wanting control of the filters a while back.

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1 minute ago, rickca said:

Who provides MQA financial backing?  Is there a list of major shareholders?  I imagine it's private equity/venture capital firms, but who knows?  Maybe the labels themselves have taken a stake.

 

See beta House Companies. All the information you seek is public information. See the last page of the 2016 MQA  group reports and the 2015 Meridian Audio group report. 

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21 minutes ago, Digital Assassin said:

You can continue to bleed money until the cows come home if you marry an incredibly wealthy American woman whose family pumps cash into your failing business.

 

I find it ironic I'm preparing two trust returns today. But at some point you stop pumping money into it.

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10 hours ago, Fokus said:

 

Not too long ago you could find threads here on CA about people fussing over the parameters for iZotope sample rate conversion, with tiny fractions of changes allegedly responsible for massive changes in sound. These threads were all the more funny because many of these people did not even understand what the parameters meant, and how illegal/invalid many of the filters they generated were. But blacks were blackerder, veils were lifted and then removed totally, the musicians were here and the listeners were there, over and over again, that much closer to the true sound.

 

 

 

Now that I’ve stopped laughing, I’ve listened to systems that reproduce ultrasonic sounds and I prefer a 20 kHz filter similar the one used in the Kuribayashi, Yamamoto & Nittono study to cut them off. At the bass end I can’t hear anything below 24 Hz. I can detect lower frequencies but the effect is unpleasant so I don’t want them reproduced.

 

I don’t like the effects on me of ultrasonic sound whether it is created by welding equipment or crash cymbals so I want it filtered out. Sorry no blackness mumbo jumbo or magic improvements to the sound.

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6 hours ago, Digital Assassin said:

So...would does it seem credible on any level that tenured for decades editors of the only two US remaining audiophile print magazines are clueless? One who markets himself as an electronics engineer, a recording engineer, a musician, and who has measured thousands of components and speakers...clueless?

 

Or buttering the bread. I don't mind at all defending colleagues, and providing counterpoints, all sides need to make their points, but....

 

 

I've met both of them clueless is as good a one word definition of them as any. Both are good at putting out their product a print magazine.

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Just to lighten things up a bit, Stuart Dredge writing for Music Ally and reporting on the June 6, 2017 MIDEM Stream the Studio panel session.

 

“(Marc)Finer (Digital Entertainment Group)talked about the challenges of synchronising technological development with the marketing curve”

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My opposition to MQA is mainly economic. Does it put money in the hands of artists? No it does not. For studios it is a simple capital project question. Does the cost of equipment and labor to record and encode MQA files have a revenue stream to justify making the conversion? The answer is no.

 

On the consumer side the market has rejected high resolution audio or there would be more than 20,000 albums available. On that basis we don’t need another high resolution format.

 

Then there are capacity issues. Very few studios can make high resolution recordings. The vast majority of music in the marketplace is mastered for CD. And only Warner and MQA can convert files to MQA.

 

There are technical issues my iPhone 7 can play files up to 24/48. Will a file format work with mainstream consumers if you need any other equipment than headphones for their  phones probably not.

 

Finally the economic argument high resolution supporters make to Apple, Amazon and Spotify is average revenue per user. It will take more than 20,000 albums to get people to pay more for enough high resolution music to change ARPU.

 

No paranoia, fear or hysteria.

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5 hours ago, Jud said:

 

They could.  Currently, they seem to be taking a long time to succeed.

 

Vote with your dollars (as in, the absence of them from MQA).  It's a language that gets listened to.

 

The MQA folks are certainly making it easy to vote with your pocketbook. I can only stream TIDAL something Sprint is finding hard to give away.

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9 minutes ago, Tin said:

On another forum I used a less technical but a more logical approach to be critical about the claims that MQA makes:

 

- if MQA is designed to battle ringing effects caused by ADCs, it will break digital recordings and recordings using samples.

- you need to have access to the original recordings to be able to distinguish analogue and digital parts, effectively meaning you need to manually remaster most if not all studio recordings after 1980 (or 1930 if you start at the rhythmicon) to be sure you don't fix things that aren't broken. The amount of effort that will take means MQA cannot get a huge library.

- if MQA does have a large library, it means they just used a somewhat generic filter over an already mastered album, which will have very unreliable effects.

Bonus question:

- lossy formats have ringing effects because math tells them they should. How weird is it to introduce ringing while trying to battle ringing?

 

A marketing director of Meridian (long story) wasn't able to find faults in my reasoning, and obviously neither can I. So, does my reasoning make any sense or am I wrong?

 

Freely free to tell a long story I got 600 miles to go today and tomorrow.

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2 hours ago, Tin said:

This is the long story (which like this thread is also contaminated by a lot of opinions, including my own):

https://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=35574

 

A slightly shorter version is that the beforementioned marketing director used a false identity to ask 'interested questions' about MQA while obviously trying to steer the answers. His problem was that he lacked the basic technical knowledge to discuss the subject, and when he was forced to reveal his true identity all that left was a somewhat sad sales guy in a room full of agitated audiophiles.

Thanks 

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