MQA is Vaporware

[esldude]

1 hour ago, garrardguy60 said:

 

What 'reviews'?  By my count, Jason has posted 31 stories'on Stereophile between June 7 and today. The vast majority [all? ] are only a few paragraphs long, with their most notable characteristic being the bold-faced names of multiple manufacturers/products concatenated in the respective headline, which I guess is aimed at the advertising community.

 

Regardless, Jason knows nothing of Ohm's or Kirchhoff's laws, thinks cables impart [indeed can 'improve'] sound at baseband, and is, he has said, immune from expectation and confirmation bias. Why we put any stock in what people without any technical education have to say about electronics is beyond me. Jason is legit to review records, given his music background, but as for the other stuff, well. . .  At least Fremer [another non-engineer] is entertaining.

 

When I was young, I used to enjoy Audio magazine [in the pocket of industry but still trying to do good tech articles] and Hi Fidelity [hackish but fun] and most of all Popular Electronics [Hirsch-Houck Labs, wonderful but with a business model that would be unsustainable today; what, they'd get $99 a pop per freelance review]. Today, and I mean this in all honesty, the best audio outlets in terms of delivering value are this site and Archimago's site [followed by Patrick Turner's, but Turner's is for archival tube gawking value not journalism].

Come on now!  You don't need to know Ohm's law or Kirschoff's to listen to music.  You forgot Thevenin and Norton btw.  

 

And who wouldn't want the reviewer to be an unusual chap with immunity to expectation and confirmation bias.  

 

OTOH, could the lack of biasability be a clue that the current Jason is really an AI?  That cuts down on your cost of publication.  I wonder if we could program an AI with a microphone input, and some sensory modeling based upon humans what would the results be?  Would the AI in time come to hear differences in cables?  Would it become co-opted by the MQA cabal?

[rando]

I've found speakers are rated more on their ability to talk to an audience than volubility of people outside of it moved to upbraid them.  Other than what gets linked (now ) due to the presence of staff members here I couldn't tell you squat about Stereophile or what it publishes. 

 

Clearly there must be an audience or they'd find work elsewhere.  

 

MQA Evangelists possibly.  🧐

 

[firedog]

13 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I talked with Jason briefly Saturday night. Told him the rooms didn't sound good and the high frequencies were AOL. He may have fallen for the demo tricks some of us were laughing about on the third floor.

What were the tricks? I'd be interested to know what they think they need to do to fool people.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

What were the tricks? I'd be interested to know what they think they need to do to fool people.

Let me guess:

• Raise the volume slightly when deploying the expensive cables, magical thimbles, or whatever.
• Use different CD tracks containing the same music but with slightly different EQ.
• Use different music selections and let the power of suggestion make people "clearly" hear the improvement.

[Rt66indierock]

3 hours ago, firedog said:

What were the tricks? I'd be interested to know what they think they need to do to fool people.

 

See mansr’s comment. Part of the fun of going to audio shows is demo tricks.

[mansr]

Someone should bring a remote control jammer to one of those demos.

[mevdinc]

On 6/13/2019 at 6:10 PM, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Strereophile...All MQA, All the time..no matter the time, place or venue!

 

Mr. MQA at the Long Beach show:

 

"A 96K MQA file of Muddy Waters’ “Never Go Back Again” revealed just how much depth this lovely-sounding system could produce (even if MQA-haters are praying we go back, back, back to the pre-MQA era)."

https://www.stereophile.com/content/vandersteen-quatro-loudspeakers-and-m5-hpa-monoblocks-jeff-rowland-corus-stereo-preamplifier#tHMXfVrqVGvISCj0.99

I really wanted to listen to this amazing track by Muddy Waters to experience the same depth on my system but couldn't find it on Tidal or even on Google.
Anyone with any info, please?
Otherwise, I'm going to assume the sound emanated from a black hole!

[new_media]

48 minutes ago, mevdinc said:

I really wanted to listen to this amazing track by Muddy Waters to experience the same depth on my system but couldn't find it on Tidal or even on Google.
Anyone with any info, please?
Otherwise, I'm going to assume the sound emanated from a black hole!

 

MQA is so remarkable that it can extract songs from the master tapes that were never even recorded.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

3 hours ago, mevdinc said:

I really wanted to listen to this amazing track by Muddy Waters to experience the same depth on my system but couldn't find it on Tidal or even on Google.
Anyone with any info, please?
Otherwise, I'm going to assume the sound emanated from a black hole!

It emanated from reviewer flights of fancy....that file is copyrighted...😎

[Rt66indierock]

4 hours ago, mevdinc said:

I really wanted to listen to this amazing track by Muddy Waters to experience the same depth on my system but couldn't find it on Tidal or even on Google.
Anyone with any info, please?
Otherwise, I'm going to assume the sound emanated from a black hole!

 

MQA has a history of demoing stuff we can’t listen to ourselves. This may another example.

[mansr]

9 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

MQA has a history of demoing stuff we can’t listen to ourselves.

I do so wonder why.

[Rt66indierock]

19 minutes ago, mansr said:

I do so wonder why.

 

MQA Ltd doesn’t want files compared like is done here or Agitator or Archimago did. 

 

I think they thought reviewers and editors were highest level of people they needed to convince. I’m sure it was a surprise we challenged the audio establishment and found them lacking. 

[mansr]

19 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

MQA Ltd doesn’t want files compared like is done here or Agitator or Archimago did. 

 

I think they thought reviewers and editors were highest level of people they needed to convince. I’m sure it was a surprise we challenged the audio establishment and found them lacking. 

Just FYI, your sarcasm detector appears to be broken.

[Rt66indierock]

12 minutes ago, mansr said:

Just FYI, your sarcasm detector appears to be broken.

 

Sorry I had to turn it off for an estate planning conference yesterday. The second case study involved 80 stuffed animals, like elephants and other big animals. “You know these are endangered.” “And this guy was the one who did the  endangering.”

[Ralf11]

7 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

MQA Ltd doesn’t want files compared like is done here or Agitator or Archimago did. 

 

 

also, cockroaches avoid light

[crenca]

On 6/10/2019 at 2:57 PM, Jud said:

Now that we're back around to one of our perpetual topics, I'll repeat what I said a few pages ago:

 

- Some instruments' harmonics involve an appreciable amount of ultrasonic content that intermodulates to produce the sounds we can hear. I haven't seen studies regarding whether it's somehow audibly better or worse to capture this with mics and put it out through ultrasonic-capable speakers, versus reproducing the audible-range results without ultrasonics.

 

- Seems to me the advantage of hi res vs equivalent Redbook mastering, if any, wouldn't lie so much in ultrasonics but in the non-use of low quality decimation filtering at the ADC end of the chain.

 

- I've heard both Redbook and hi res that sounds great. I'd rather enjoy myself than be doctrinaire.

 

On 6/10/2019 at 4:11 PM, esldude said:

Well let me see on the higher sampling rates.  You can make a case for 96 khz.  40 khz analog bandwidth.  Few microphones have response past this.  Quite a few that are only spec'd to 20 khz have some response up to 30 khz or a bit more.  Few instruments produce sound higher than this and what there is will be really down in level.  So the microphones and instruments are all going to drop out in this general area effectively.  Even ol'Bob says so which is how he encodes this wonderful MQA.  So microphones are a bottleneck, then speakers usually, and then audiophile ears absolutely.  Any ringing in transition bands or other yucky processing effects are too high to matter to us.  There just isn't a reason to go higher.  

 

There is very little reason to go that high.

 

If I rated sound quality with high speed RTR as a reference, I'd rate super excellent cassette as maybe 75%.  Regular cassette maybe 40%.  I'm not sure on LP.  It actually is just an odd beast.  No higher than 80% and I could be persuaded it is 50%.  

 

How would you rate high rate PCM or MQA vs 48/24 or 4816?  I don't think there is 5% gained.  Or no more than that.  You have no problem at all hearing the differences in the analog mediums I mentioned above.  Hearing these hires vs regular res digital files isn't so easy.  

 

So getting on topic, if MQA works it doesn't mean much.  It is not clear it is a transparent process (we know it is lossy and we know undecoded it isn't transparent).  So like said probably hundreds of thousands of times now it is a solution in search of a problem.  I mean if the encoding/decoding end to end process took the streamed 96 kbps mp3 and made it sound like CD for the same bit rate, it would be obvious and maybe it would catch on.   

 

So it isn't vaporware as it exists somewhat.  It might be termed irrelevant-ware.  Do we need a new fresh MQA thread.  MQA is irrelevant.  Somebody might have missed this one.  🧐

 

I don't know if you guys fully groked what @Kal Rubinsonwas saying a few pages back (perhaps you did but reject it):    there is no reason to capture or playback ultrasonics because whatever the effect audiably/musically is (i.e. in the audible band), this intermodulation effect is capture by the mics themselves because this effect has already occured by the time the waveform reaches the microphone and is recorded.  In other words, the effect (rather positive, negative, or indifferent) of ultrasonic overtones or anything else is already in the recording.  

[crenca]

On 6/13/2019 at 9:14 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

Scorched earth I guess. They all be long retired by the time it really blows up in their faces. 

 

I think they are assuming that the Audiophile Confidence Game will continue on for the rest of their careers and well beyond.  I think they are right.

 

 

[esldude]

8 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

I don't know if you guys fully groked what @Kal Rubinsonwas saying a few pages back (perhaps you did but reject it):    there is no reason to capture or playback ultrasonics because whatever the effect audiably/musically is (i.e. in the audible band), this intermodulation effect is capture by the mics themselves because this effect has already occured by the time the waveform reaches the microphone and is recorded.  In other words, the effect (rather positive, negative, or indifferent) of ultrasonic overtones or anything else is already in the recording.  

I've understood that.  I'm not a big proponent of higher rates.  Only that there may be edge cases for going to 88 or 96.  Also some people believe we should capture everything coming off the microphone just as a matter of maximum possible fidelity.  That would be beyond 20 khz for most condenser microphones.  

 

I personally think its 20 khz and more doesn't matter except negatively in some small number of cases.  

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

 

I don't know if you guys fully groked what @Kal Rubinsonwas saying a few pages back (perhaps you did but reject it):    there is no reason to capture or playback ultrasonics because whatever the effect audiably/musically is (i.e. in the audible band), this intermodulation effect is capture by the mics themselves because this effect has already occured by the time the waveform reaches the microphone and is recorded.  In other words, the effect (rather positive, negative, or indifferent) of ultrasonic overtones or anything else is already in the recording.   

 

Of course, I reject it. First, If the presence of ultrasonics has an audible effect on the audible band, then removing the ultrasonics must remove the effect -- the ultrasonic overtones of instruments are distinct from intermodulation (and intermodulation is always bad). Second, I also maintain that the ultrasonic overtones of instruments have no effect on the audible range -- I can't hear it.

[Ralf11]

I don't reject what Kal said.  The intermodulation effects are present.

 

But it doesn't cover everything.  Any ultrasonics present in the signal beside the above could, conceivably affect either the listener (+ ot -) or the equipment used to reproduce the music (likely -).

 

I expect the + effects to be small, but hope the record co.s are prudent and use HiRes to capture the performance (whcih can then be burned thru recklessly storing them in a risky way).

[Jud]

22 hours ago, crenca said:

 

 

I don't know if you guys fully groked what @Kal Rubinsonwas saying a few pages back (perhaps you did but reject it):    there is no reason to capture or playback ultrasonics because whatever the effect audiably/musically is (i.e. in the audible band), this intermodulation effect is capture by the mics themselves because this effect has already occured by the time the waveform reaches the microphone and is recorded.  In other words, the effect (rather positive, negative, or indifferent) of ultrasonic overtones or anything else is already in the recording.  

 

I did.  Part of my comment that you quoted said this: 

 

"I haven't seen studies regarding whether it's somehow audibly better or worse to capture this with mics and put it out through ultrasonic-capable speakers, versus reproducing the audible-range results without ultrasonics."

 

So I read what Kal said, but haven't seen studies to back up his thinking that speakers putting out the audible-range product fully duplicates the live experience of the ultrasonics intermodulating with the audible-range sound.  I haven't seen studies saying the opposite, either.

[John Dyson]

On 6/8/2019 at 6:38 PM, John_Atkinson said:

 

Yes, the >20kHz content is correlated with the sounds of recorded musical instruments.  When the music stops the overtones disappear.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

The > 20kHz content is correlated because the distortion splats are correlated.  It can really fool even an experienced observer -- which are distortion splats, which are music or which are both....   Since normal humans cannot hear anything at reasonable SPL above 20kHz, then the only real engineering answer is to remove the (mostly) splats.  I never say that one MUST remove the useless information much above 20kHz, it is just that it doesn't help in any audible way, and increases the burden on the subsequent electronics.  Nothing wrong with keeping some material above 20kHz, sometimes there is benefit to avoiding sharp rolloffs (but has nothing to do with pre-ringing -- a bogus concept.)

 

John

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, John Dyson said:

  Since normal humans cannot hear anything at reasonable SPL above 20kHz, then the only real engineering answer is to remove the (mostly) splats.  I never say that one MUST remove the useless information much above 20kHz

 

 Sorry John, but highly experienced Recording and Mastering Engineers such as Barry Diament who these days only records in 24/192 .aiff with GENUINE musical content to >55kHz do NOT agree with you.

He finds that recording at  24/192 gets him to virtually identical to what his mic feed sounds like.

Recording at 16/44.1 doesn't even get close for Barry.

 

Regards

Alex

[crenca]

3 hours ago, Jud said:

 

So I read what Kal said, but haven't seen studies to back up his thinking that speakers putting out the audible-range product fully duplicates the live experience of the ultrasonics intermodulating with the audible-range sound.  I haven't seen studies saying the opposite, either.

 

I have not seen a physics/scientific reading either.  Anyone have a link?  What he says is correct from the perspective of my limited understanding of (the physics behind) sound.  There is only one waveform, as sound is a single composite, "one waveform to rule them all".

 

If you applied a theoretically perfect brick wall low pass filter to say 1khz to a recording of an instrument with a lot HF (yet still in the audible band) overtones (say, a trumpet), the < 1khz sound would still be "correct" or fidelitous because the < 1khz waveform would already have the intermodulation effects "baked in" so to speak.  So recordings (and the playback thereof) of real instruments in real space at least don't need anything other than the audible band - you don't need "super tweeters" and the like to properly reproduce the audible band.  Studio concoctions I believe would also be correct (i.e the intermodulation effects of ultrasonic overtones are already in the audible band) when they are "mixed" - perhaps @esldudeor someone with firsthand knowledge can confirm or deny this.

[MikeyFresh]

On 6/14/2019 at 6:52 PM, new_media said:

MQA is so remarkable that it can extract songs from the master tapes that were never even recorded.

 

Yes but only if those tapes are given the full white glove treatment, in which case the Adulterator LED glows a special chartreuse color not to be confused with plain yellow or green. 

 

Chartreuse  = 768 kHz.

 

You can stream some of these unrecorded tracks on Tidal (only), or they can be upfolded from MQA-CD.