MQA is Vaporware

[Ralf11]

the cochlea is highly over-rated

[jabbr]

40 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

the cochlea is highly over-rated

 

Totally aside from the benefit or not of having more information than 16/44.1 ... and to be clear, I am not convinced that 16/44.1 is enough but neither am I convinced that 16/44.1 isn't enough -- it seems to be a reasonable conclusion that there is a general consensus that 16/44.1 is a reasonable minimum resolution for what we call CD quality (obviously MP3 has less bits).

 

Its somewhat ridiculous to trade bits within the 16/44.1 range for ultrasonic bits: I mean who is suggesting that 13/88 is "better" than 16/44.1? (aside from MQA).  This really is lossy compression by any definition of the term.

 

At this point one is claiming that we only need 13 bits, and one can easily create a compressed "master" to "prove" that. So really "Mastered for MQA" means "even more compressed"           

 

Digital sleight of hand.                                                                                                  

[Ralf11]

Agreed.  Tho I find the mechanism(s) by which HiRes is distinguishable to be of some interest.

[new_media]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Decca Records drank the kool-aid. Now with MQA CDs:

 

https://shop.decca.com/British-Jazz-Explosion/*/The-Complete-Fontana-Albums-1961-1969/66FO00000Y7

 

Of course no mention of the fact that you don't get full CD resolution from a regular CD player. I will never buy an MQA CD.

[psjug]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Totally aside from the benefit or not of having more information than 16/44.1 ... and to be clear, I am not convinced that 16/44.1 is enough but neither am I convinced that 16/44.1 isn't enough -- it seems to be a reasonable conclusion that there is a general consensus that 16/44.1 is a reasonable minimum resolution for what we call CD quality (obviously MP3 has less bits).

 

Its somewhat ridiculous to trade bits within the 16/44.1 range for ultrasonic bits: I mean who is suggesting that 13/88 is "better" than 16/44.1? (aside from MQA).  This really is lossy compression by any definition of the term.

 

At this point one is claiming that we only need 13 bits, and one can easily create a compressed "master" to "prove" that. So really "Mastered for MQA" means "even more compressed"           

 

Digital sleight of hand.                                                                                                  

I am pretty sure that @mansr found that they typically use 15 bits, so on the one hand that's better than 13 bits, but on the other hand there is nothing left for ultrasonics.  However they are doing it, MQA-CD is a bunch of nonsense.

[Ran]

3 hours ago, new_media said:

 

Of course no mention of the fact that you don't get full CD resolution from a regular CD player. I will never buy an MQA CD.

 

Is there a stock reply I can use to complain about this? Did anyone send a compliant to a label before?

[sandyk]

15 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

You don’t agree that ultrasonics are handy for noise shaping? I think they are a great place to push noise into and subsequently, easily filter out. It is why DSD can and often does sound so superior to redbook. 

 

Going on about people being being able to hear ultrasonics or not is just a great big whale sized blue herring. 

 

 Hi Paul

Even the 16/48 Audio associated  with DVD Video is superior sounding to RBCD provided that it was originally created at no less than 16/48., yet most people can't even directly hear as high as 20kHz .

 

Regards

Alex

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 Hi Paul

Even the 16/48 Audio associated  with DVD Video is superior sounding to RBCD provided that it was originally created at no less than 16/48., yet most people can't even directly hear as high as 20kHz .

 

Regards

Alex

saying 16/48 is "superior" to 16/44.1 is pie in the sky.  The difference is imperceptible. But of course, you can hear a mosquito fart at 20 paces. 😍

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Is anyone else holding out for MQA cassette? 😎

 

[sandyk]

41 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

saying 16/48 is "superior" to 16/44.1 is pie in the sky.  The difference is imperceptible. But of course, you can hear a mosquito fart at 20 paces. 😍

 Many members will not agree with you. Many will even suggest that 16/48 should have been the original CD standard .

 

 Nowhere have I made such claims about my hearing abilities, and neither could I , as I am 80 years of age with severe hearing damage due to 43 years with Telstra in Telecommunications,  and as a result, a 21mm diameter Acoustic Neuroma pressing on my right ear canal.

 These days I mainly use headphones which have a tight coupling to my ears.

 

What's your excuse for not being able to hear these differences ?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

8 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Many members will not agree with you. Many will even suggest that 16/48 should have been the original CD standard .

 

 Nowhere have I made such claims about my hearing abilities, and neither could I , as I am 80 years of age with severe hearing damage due to 43 years with Telstra in Telecommunications,  and as a result, a 21mm diameter Acoustic Neuroma pressing on my right ear canal.

 These days I mainly use headphones which have a tight coupling to my ears.

 

What's your excuse for not being able to hear these differences ?

....you STILL maintain you can hear the difference? That is a hoot. 😎

 

Funny thing..there should never have been a "CD Standard"...digital recordings should have been delivered in the resolution of the recording...but kind of a moot point as most recording and mastering studios were working at 48 Khz max until the late 90s and even beyond. In fact, most new projects are probably tracked at 48 Khz even today. 

[Currawong]

28 minutes ago, sandyk said:

43 years with Telstra

 

May the Lord Have Mercy Upon You.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

....you STILL maintain you can hear the difference? That is a hoot. 😎

 

Funny thing..there should never have been a "CD Standard"...digital recordings should have been delivered in the resolution of the recording...but kind of a moot point as most recording and mastering studios were working at 48 Khz max until the late 90s and even beyond. In fact, most new projects are probably tracked at 48 Khz even today. 

 

 Wrong as usual.

Many such as Lady Gaga-Joanne were at 24/44.1

 Search HD tracks and you will find quite a few more.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

7 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Wrong as usual.

Many such as Lady Gaga-Joanne were at 24/44.1

 Search HD tracks and you will find quite a few more.

You don't have a clue what I am talking about. I said TRACKED at 48 Khz. Even if tracked at 96, the decision is often made to mix and/or master at 24/44.1.

 

In fact many albums feature songs tracked at different sample rates, recorded at different studios with different workstations...

[sandyk]

56 minutes ago, Currawong said:

 

May the Lord Have Mercy Upon You.

 

 The Telstra back then wasn't like the Telcos of today.

 Some of us actually cared about making things work as well as possible back then, and they welcomed innovations to improve service from their staff, not just the Engineers. One of my accepted innovations resulted in an Exchange with the worst performance in Sydney (Killara) dropping from over 800 Technical Assistance reports a month to a low of 297.

[Sal1950]

On 7/2/2019 at 2:49 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

The music isn’t playable anymore.

Was it ever? 

[sandyk]

6 hours ago, Currawong said:

 

May the Lord Have Mercy Upon You.

 P.S. You have an interesting Username.

 Is your wife (assuming you are married_) an Aussie bird too ?  

[John Dyson]

On 7/4/2019 at 3:35 AM, Paul R said:

 

You don’t agree that ultrasonics are handy for noise shaping? I think they are a great place to push noise into and subsequently, easily filter out. It is why DSD can and often does sound so superior to redbook. 

 

Going on about people being being able to hear ultrasonics or not is just a great big whale sized blue herring. 

 

That is a red-herring -- removing the potential distortion  without dithering has little to do with the audiblility of material which is at 20+kHz.  .  Material isn't ulrasonic until it is ready to be applied to a transducer.  Lots of good stuff can happen digitally, including oversampling/decimation (with processing in between, like filtering.)

At 44.1kHz, we aren't talking places where a lot of audio procesisng is going on.  Most of the audio processing going on in a consumer's hands is the on/off control and slow volume changes.

 

John

[John Dyson]

7 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

saying 16/48 is "superior" to 16/44.1 is pie in the sky.  The difference is imperceptible. But of course, you can hear a mosquito fart at 20 paces. 😍

I always say that I prefer 48k over 44.1k sample rate for various esoteric reasons -- but for direct listening, 44.1k and 48k are the same.  That is, unless one of the fortunate VERY few who can hear at 21k or above.   Even then, most of the actual material on at least older distributed recordings are NR distortion splats.

 

John

 

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, John Dyson said:

I always say that I prefer 48k over 44.1k sample rate for various esoteric reasons -- but for direct listening, 44.1k and 48k are the same.  That is, unless one of the fortunate VERY few who can hear at 21k or above.   Even then, most of the actual material on at least older distributed recordings are NR distortion splats.

 

John

 

I mean to say -- most of the signall above 20kHz on older, consumer material is NR distortion splats.  It is so easy to prove with the equipment used in the day.  It is not a matter of opinion, it is just what happens.  In the 'lab' or 'recording studio', there is a much greater likelihood of actual (unhearable) audio being represented by frequencies above 20kHz --  but then there is the responsibility of maintaining the quality of the analog electronics (avoiding the distortion mechanisms.)  Please refer to the op-amp distortion document that I pointed to a few weeks ago -- there be lots more dragons above 20kHz -- even starts happening sometimes around 10kHz --  than most people realize.

Much of the time (most of the time) the differences heard when changing filters at the 20kHz boundry are either timing issues with filter behaviors or differences due to distortion products reflecting into the audible range.

 

John

[lucretius]

11 hours ago, sandyk said:

I am 80 years of age with severe hearing damage

 

In other words, the typical golden ears.  ☺️

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

5 hours ago, John Dyson said:

I always say that I prefer 48k over 44.1k sample rate for various esoteric reasons -- but for direct listening, 44.1k and 48k are the same.  That is, unless one of the fortunate VERY few who can hear at 21k or above.   Even then, most of the actual material on at least older distributed recordings are NR distortion splats.

 

John

 

So in essence, it is exactly what i said, in practice, in the real world 16-48 is virtually indistinguishable from 16-44.1.

 

16-48 also makes me "feel better" for esoteric reasons.😍

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 hours ago, sandyk said:

I am 80 years of age with severe hearing damage

But you’re somehow one of only two people in the world who hear the difference between two identical files 😁

[Paul R]

6 hours ago, John Dyson said:

That is a red-herring -- removing the potential distortion  without dithering has little to do with the audiblility of material which is at 20+kHz.  .  Material isn't ulrasonic until it is ready to be applied to a transducer.  Lots of good stuff can happen digitally, including oversampling/decimation (with processing in between, like filtering.)

At 44.1kHz, we aren't talking places where a lot of audio procesisng is going on.  Most of the audio processing going on in a consumer's hands is the on/off control and slow volume changes.

 

John

 

Nope, not at all.  With say, 24/196k you have lots of room to push noise above the range of normal hearing, and then use simple non-damaging filters to get rid of it and any ultrasonic content. Has nothing at all to do with being able to hear ultrasonic content, which is very much a blue herring. 

 

With DSD, since it inherently is very noisy, you have to use noise shaping, pushing the vast majority of noise in the signal way above human hearing, and then just using a really simple filter to eliminate it. 

 

At 44.1k you can not do that. 

 

Practical point. Listen to a 44.1k recording. Then upsample that 44.1k recording to 24/192k on the fly while listening to it. Then upsample it to DSD while listening to it.  With most DACs, the 24/192k and DSD are going to sound very similar, but both quite different from the 44.1k playback. This will be even more evident if you use a DAC with selectable filters, like the Rega DAC, if it can do DSD. Or a DAC with bit perfect playback, like the iFi iDSD DACs with pre 5.3 filters. 

 

They may also sound sound different depending upon the SRC you use to do the upsampling or transcoding. 

 

In none one of the cases are you going to hear ultrasonic output. Blue herring, extra large economy size. Only significant fact to work from is that they sound different.

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

But you’re somehow one of only two people in the world who hear the difference between two identical files 😁

 

Back to relevant topics. The current one is who is tool of special interests like MQA Ltd and who is a pawn in the game of life? If you heard of HDTracks streaming before Munich in 2017 you were one of the people David Chesky wanted to know about it. If you heard about it at Munich 2017 you were part a select group of media. David got a lot of calls after the press release by 7digital from the audio press who didn't know.

 

It certainly looks like John Atkinson and David Chesky were used to raise funds in 2015 for both MQA Ltd and 7digital.