MQA is Vaporware

[daverich4]

6 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

Could be. Music reproduction technology hasn’t changed in over three decades. The science of audio is continuously evolving. I understand change can be hard for many, but we should give MQA a chance. It’s changed my life for the better.

 

@the computer audiophile - You apparently have some way to tell if previously banned members are back under a new name. Any chance you could take a peek at this user? I don’t see anything wrong with someone declaring their belief that MQA is an improvement if that is what they think but whoever this is, they’re just looking to stir things up, not discuss the topic. 

[StreamHiRes]

9 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

@the computer audiophile - You apparently have some way to tell if previously banned members are back under a new name. Any chance you could take a peek at this user? I don’t see anything wrong with someone declaring their belief that MQA is an improvement if that is what they think but whoever this is, they’re just looking to stir things up, not discuss the topic. 

You get banned for discussing MQA in this forum?  I’m not trying to stir things up, but rather calm the rhetoric and unnecessary controversy that’s directed towards MQA. 

[firedog]

46 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

Why the radical change of heart?

Maybe because almost every claim MQA made back then has been shown to be false. Start with "master"  then "quality" and then "authenticated" - each word is at least partially, if not fully - a lie Especially "authenticated". 

BTW, I'm glad you think MQA sounds great. Many others find it at best - slightly better, and at worst - worse.
So since they don't hear any consistent improvement, they see no reason for a closed proprietary format.

[firedog]

3 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

You get banned for discussing MQA in this forum?  I’m not trying to stir things up, but rather calm the rhetoric and unnecessary controversy that’s directed towards MQA. 

You don't get banned for discussing the topic. You get banned for bad behavior.

[daverich4]

4 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

You get banned for discussing MQA in this forum?  I’m not trying to stir things up, but rather calm the rhetoric and unnecessary controversy that’s directed towards MQA. 

 

Nope, but people do get banned for being jerks and personal attacks. So far you don’t appear to be guilty of either of those things but you also aren’t trying to “calm” anything down. In fact, it’s quite clear your goal is the opposite. 

[StreamHiRes]

12 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

Nope, but people do get banned for being jerks and personal attacks. So far you don’t appear to be guilty of either of those things but you also aren’t trying to “calm” anything down. In fact, it’s quite clear your goal is the opposite. 

Like I previously stated; I just don’t understand why the all hatred. Nobody is forced to use MQA. I find it very pleasing to the ear. The title of this controversial post unjustly attacks the MQA technology. Bob Stuart has a long track record of audio innovation. It’s not like some Joe Blow just made this MQA thing up in his basement. Why all the bashing? The audiophile hobby is supposed to be fun. Come on guys, give MQA some credit. At least it’s not another small MP3 bit rate increase that many streaming providers now call premium.

[DuckToller]

Chris,
I was wondering whether you can reproduce the TIDAL MQA effect when you use the Optical Rendu & LMS with Tidal plugin ?
If yes, that may sort out Roon from the equation somehow ...
Best, Tom

[firedog]

18 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

Like I previously stated; I just don’t understand why the all hatred. Nobody is forced to use MQA. I find it very pleasing to the ear. The title of this controversial post unjustly attacks the MQA technology. Bob Stuart has a long track record of audio innovation. It’s not like some Joe Blow just made this MQA thing up in his basement. Why all the bashing? The audiophile hobby is supposed to be fun. Come on guys, give MQA some credit. At least it’s not another small MP3 bit rate increase that many streaming providers now call premium.

This post shows you are highly misinformed. Bob Stuart is trying to make money. So far his other businesses haven't done so. MQA's real purpose is to establish a closed proprietary format that creates revenue for Bob. Read the "controversies" thread about MQA and you will see that much of what he says or has said about MQA is either deceptive or even an outright lie.

The only objective testing of MQA shows listeners don't prefer it over non MQA. 

A few years ago we were told there was nothing to worry about because standard and MQA versions of music would both always be available. We are starting to see that this isn't true. One of the issues with MQA is the potential to use it as a vehicle  for lack of choice for consumers and the removal of other hi-res masters from the market. 
 

"Give MQA some credit". For what? What have they actually  brought to the table? As far as I can see - nothing of value. The format isn't needed for streaming, - perfectly good streaming of hi-res is available from Qobuz and some of the classical sites. Regular unadulterated hi-res is in no way inferior to MQA - and doesn't need a "special" DAC. So please tell us again, what is it for?

[vortecjr]

The only think that is going to end this debate is a “class action law suit”. 

[Thuaveta]

48 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

 I’m not trying to stir things up, but rather calm the rhetoric and unnecessary controversy that’s directed towards MQA. 

 

Are you paid to do this ? Because they just posted a job for someone to do pretty much just that...

[kumakuma]

Just now, Thuaveta said:

 

Are you paid to do this ? Because they just posted a job for someone to do pretty much just that...

 

Maybe he's "auditioning" for the job?

[StreamHiRes]

14 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Maybe he's "auditioning" for the job?

I can get paid for this? Please send me the link.😉

[MikeyFresh]

1 hour ago, StreamHiRes said:

Why the radical change of heart?

 

Maybe read the thread for those answers? Thats assuming of course you care to actually know why Chris and others have taken the position they have, it's all there over the course of 4+ year's worth of posts.

 

What you can't do is just skip all of that very thought provoking discussion, and then jump in now pretending that it never occurred. It did, and it is archived here for all who care to read it, MQA has been fully debunked on a technical level, and also proven to be an anti-consumer technology.

 

Note: I seriously doubt you are just some bystander consumer that loves MQA, no one is fooled by that charade, you've so far done a very poor job of masquerading.

[StreamHiRes]

31 minutes ago, firedog said:

This post shows you are highly misinformed. Bob Stuart is trying to make money. So far his other businesses haven't done so. MQA's real purpose is to establish a closed proprietary format that creates revenue for Bob. Read the "controversies" thread about MQA and you will see that much of what he says or has said about MQA is either deceptive or even an outright lie.

The only objective testing of MQA shows listeners don't prefer it over non MQA. 

A few years ago we were told there was nothing to worry about because standard and MQA versions of music would both always be available. We are starting to see that this isn't true. One of the issues with MQA is the potential to use it as a vehicle  for lack of choice for consumers and the removal of other hi-res masters from the market. 
 

"Give MQA some credit". For what? What have they actually  brought to the table? As far as I can see - nothing of value. The format isn't needed for streaming, - perfectly good streaming of hi-res is available from Qobuz and some of the classical sites. Regular unadulterated hi-res is in no way inferior to MQA - and doesn't need a "special" DAC. So please tell us again, what is it for?

https://darko.audio/2016/06/an-inconvenient-truth-mqa-sounds-better/

[StreamHiRes]

9 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

.

 

Note: I seriously doubt you are just some bystander consumer that loves MQA, no one is fooled by that charade, you've so far done a very poor job of masquerading.

 No really, I really do love MQA. Some have a favorite team; I have a favorite stream.😉

[Paul R]

5 hours ago, Sal1950 said:

Whoa, Linus Torvalds should get a whiff of that post.  😖

 

Whoa yourself - Linux was basically annoyed that AT&T was locking up Unix, and inspired by Minix. So far as I know, he had no thoughts about the music industry with Linux. If you know different please share with the rest of us. 

 

I will say in the history of Unix, software that had similar aims to a MQA crashed and burned very quickly, mostly due to open source software and being ignored by mist people unwilling to pay for software they had no way to customize or fix if it broke.  Linux was one of the open source software releases that put paid to some rather evil AT&T ambitions. The young folks here won’t remember those days, but you certainly should. 

 

And Apple with iTunes and the iPod, followed up by the iPhone did the same to the computer music market. By the way, at that time, everything Apple had moved to an open source based Unix. Which is, if you included Linux these days, the kernel underlying MacOS, iOS, Android, your TV, Microwave, and pretty much every music player not based upon Windows out there.  

 

And let let us not forget that Macs led the way in audio production. GarageBand and Logic are responsible for how many new artists and music out there?

 

Innovation today is not really coming from Apple, at least, not a lot of innovation. Where is it coming from? 

 

Prediction - someone will get annoyed with MQA or something like it and totally revolutionize the audio marketplace with something. What, I can’t imagine. But it is about time someone changed the world again. If Jobs were here, perhaps the Apple Holodeck would about to hit the market.

 

[Paul R]

59 minutes ago, firedog said:

This post shows you are highly misinformed. Bob Stuart is trying to make money. So far his other businesses haven't done so. MQA's real purpose is to establish a closed proprietary format that creates revenue for Bob. Read the "controversies" thread about MQA and you will see that much of what he says or has said about MQA is either deceptive or even an outright lie.

The only objective testing of MQA shows listeners don't prefer it over non MQA. 

A few years ago we were told there was nothing to worry about because standard and MQA versions of music would both always be available. We are starting to see that this isn't true. One of the issues with MQA is the potential to use it as a vehicle  for lack of choice for consumers and the removal of other hi-res masters from the market. 
 

"Give MQA some credit". For what? What have they actually  brought to the table? As far as I can see - nothing of value. The format isn't needed for streaming, - perfectly good streaming of hi-res is available from Qobuz and some of the classical sites. Regular unadulterated hi-res is in no way inferior to MQA - and doesn't need a "special" DAC. So please tell us again, what is it for?

 

I missed something, what music is only available in MQA? Streaming does not count unless you can’t buy a CD or Download of the music. Admittedly, I only spent 20 minutes looking, and I did not look on Tidal. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, StreamHiRes said:

Why the radical change of heart?

 

I followed the facts and the truth. It isn’t a change of heart so much as getting educated and debunking all the false MQA claims. 

 

A company with nothing to hide doesn’t act like those guys did. 

[new_media]

2 hours ago, StreamHiRes said:

Could be. Music reproduction technology hasn’t changed in over three decades. The science of audio is continuously evolving. I understand change can be hard for many, but we should give MQA a chance. It’s changed my life for the better.

 

MQA is a step backwards.

 

Plenty of bandwidth for lossless hi-res streaming these days.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

 

I missed something, what music is only available in MQA? Streaming does not count unless you can’t buy a CD or Download of the music. Admittedly, I only spent 20 minutes looking, and I did not look on Tidal. 

Don’t agree. If streaming is your main or one of your main media for listening to music, it matters. And there are more and more people who only stream. 
 

[Paul R]

3 minutes ago, firedog said:

Don’t agree. If streaming is your main or one of your main media for listening to music, it matters. And there are more and more people who only stream. 
 

 

Well, that’s cool for you. To me, that. Sounds much more like a rationalization than an example, but potaytoes potahtoes.

[firedog]

1 hour ago, StreamHiRes said:

https://darko.audio/2016/06/an-inconvenient-truth-mqa-sounds-better/

You’ve come to this thread too late and way too uninformed. Your link is meaningless. One guys opinion. As I wrote (and you are apparently unaware of), the only objective test of MQA at McGill U showed users to have no preference for it. All the rest is individual anecdotal and sighted listening. Means zip and proves nothing. 

 

Beyond that, if MQA was so clearly superior sounding, everyone or almost everyone would hear it. I’m not arguing with what you personally hear, but the perception that MQA sounds better is far from universal, and that’s putting it delicately. 

[StreamHiRes]

39 minutes ago, new_media said:

 

MQA is a step backwards.

 

Plenty of bandwidth for lossless hi-res streaming these days.

From what I have heard with my own ears and an MQA capable DAC; MQA is a major leap forward. I can once again enjoy music in it’s highest quality and know that it’s authentic by the illumination of the blue MQA DAC light and not some upsampled MP3 file. Listening to digital music without temporal blurring, reproduced using MQA, is non-fatiguing and a very pleasurable pastime. I still like regular 24/96 Hi-Res, but this new technology is definitely revolutionary. I can’t understand how “audiophiles” don’t hear the marked improvement over regular FLAC; Unless your the type that listens with a slide rule and calculator.

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

 

I missed something, what music is only available in MQA? Streaming does not count unless you can’t buy a CD or Download of the music. Admittedly, I only spent 20 minutes looking, and I did not look on Tidal. 

 

On one hand MQA is harmless because its yet another proprietary compression format which promises to be better yet isn't.

On the other hand its a proprietary locked format and proprietary formats are intrinsically evil and so deserving of vehement disapproval.

 

On one hand Tidal is owned by artists and I would thus wish it well.

On the other hand Tidal uses a proprietary format and thus I won't use it and hope it fails.

[jabbr]

2 minutes ago, StreamHiRes said:

I can’t understand how “audiophiles” don’t hear the marked improvement over regular FLAC

 

What makes your opinion matter to me? You've got 10 posts, all about MQA and I have have zero reason to trust your listening skills. We've seen this pattern of shills come and go. Come back when you have something interesting to say, or good advice that helps us.