MQA is Vaporware

[KeenObserver]

The initial part of the Confirmation Statement went into detail about what happens to the assets upon liquidation.  That is what piqued my curiosity.

[botrytis]

Me too, actually.

 

On another topic, I belong to Audiokarma as well, but I haven't been on the site in a while, since they don't appreciate me posting actual facts about MQA. I was told I was a troll. Most there are blindly following Tidal into the sunset.

[KeenObserver]

I find it incredible how so many people will be blindly led today.  They do whatever their computer tells them.

I guess Bob Stuart makes for an attractive "Daddy" figure for them to follow.

[crenca]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

I find it incredible how so many people will be blindly led today.  They do whatever their computer tells them.

I guess Bob Stuart makes for an attractive "Daddy" figure for them to follow.

 

That is the position of most consumers (of digital anything) - they have to rely on an authority (i.e. the specialist) for knowledge about the reliability/truthfulness of fill_in_the_blank product/software/service.

 

In the audiophile niche, besides a handful of (mostly consumer driven) forums such as this one, where are the reliable authorities and specialists?  Certainly not writing for the traditional "Audio press" such as Stereophile and TAS.

 

Chrislayeruk, Barrowboy (who posts here as Tintinabulum), and the like are astroturfers fur sur.  Roon has a real astroturfer problem, but then they have a larger MQA problem in that a combination of circumstances (past working associations, being in the UK, etc. ) led them down the road of compromising with the MQA fraud in the first place.  They of course are not the only ones...

[FredericV]

5 hours ago, Dr Tone said:

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history

Interesting, this is one of the guys behind the MQA patent:

[Fast and Bulbous]

7 minutes ago, FredericV said:

Interesting, this is one of the guys behind the MQA patent:

https://patents.justia.com/inventor/peter-graham-craven

 

Respected figure...

[crenca]

2 minutes ago, Fast and Bulbous said:

 

Respected figure...

 

Bill Clinton was and is a respected figure...but he still had sex with that young women.

[Fast and Bulbous]

Do you know something of Peter Craven to justify such a comparison? Would be good to know if you do.

 

 

 

[crenca]

Just now, Fast and Bulbous said:

Do you know something of Peter Craven to justify such a comparison? Would be good to know if you do.

 

 

Sure, and so do you.  He is a principal architect and shareholder behind the fraud of MQA.  Just like Bill Clinton, he is a Big Fat Liar™

 

Your going to have to find another audio authority to revere...

[Ralf11]

https://www.audioauthority.com/

[Rt66indierock]

2 hours ago, FredericV said:

Interesting, this is one of the guys behind the MQA patent:

 

Sticking to facts he has sold a few shares lately.

 

we could discuss his compiler work but I can’t find anybody in North America who cares.

[John Dyson]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

That is the position of most consumers (of digital anything) - they have to rely on an authority (i.e. the specialist) for knowledge about the reliability/truthfulness of fill_in_the_blank product/software/service.

 

In the audiophile niche, besides a handful of (mostly consumer driven) forums such as this one, where are the reliable authorities and specialists?  Certainly not writing for the traditional "Audio press" such as Stereophile and TAS.

 

Chrislayeruk, Barrowboy (who posts here as Tintinabulum), and the like are astroturfers fur sur.  Roon has a real astroturfer problem, but then they have a larger MQA problem in that a combination of circumstances (past working associations, being in the UK, etc. ) led them down the road of compromising with the MQA fraud in the first place.  They of course are not the only ones...

I truly don't believe that there are fully reliable authorities in almost any field.  All too often, there are financial interests, personal interests or opinon/feeling that overrides rationality (lock-in to erroneous technical opinion.)  Sometimes, even if a person knows the actual facts, they end up demuring because of overly strong dissenting opinions -- often because of the error sources that I mentioned above.  Even when I truly, 100% know a technical answer, I will sometimes demure (not in the right mood to deal with controversy.)

 

Even in areas where I am truly an expert, I make errors, from time to time have erroneous opinions (because not having a current interest/forgetting details,etc.)  Lock-in is a problem that all technical people tend to have.

 

Even technical people can be led astray by other technical people.

 

I think that the biggest problems are financial interest or personal bias coming from misguided technical reasoning.  Here is an example:  I worked with a guy who was a pioneer in a certain field, he was far senior to me -- but he kept advocating using a really error prone source for an electrical delay (synthesizing the RAS/CAS delay for first generation dynamic ram) -- he actually advocated using a series resistor, depending on input capacitance and threshold for CMOS gate -- this RAS/CAS delay had a rather precise timing requirement.  I tried to come up with a reliable digital timing method (TTL wasn't fast enough), finally I 'gave up' and advocated using an analog  delay line (we couldn't clock our circuits fast enough for proper digital resolution) -- but he advocated the R/C & threshold delay scheme, using a pot for a production tweak -- implementing the RAS/CAS delay that needed to work over the entire industrial temperature range.   That expert (truly, he was a technical expert) lost his contract job because of that conceptual lock-in error.  Using a tweak for the RAS/CAS timing over industrial temperature range (CMOS thresholds/characteristics/etc) - it would have been a production/maintenance/support disaster.  (Early 1970s')

 

I know that my little anecdote wasn't all that 'short', but I am trying to explain that it is very tricky to find someone who really does give an accurate technical opinion all of the time.  Best that one can do -- listen to more than just a few experts with differing agendas, and then use common sense.  No-one is immune to both sides of the problem.

 

I do believe that 'technical experts' should try to strive for more integrity* (myself included), and also the user base shouldn't 'buy-in' so very quickly to snake-oil...  How does one detect 'snake-oil?'  I have no good answer for that.  I wish I did.

* When I speak of integrity, I don't just mean 'honesty', but I mean the entire package that includes knowing-ones-own-limits.

 

John

 

[Ralf11]

can someone Photoshop the color MQA symbol into the Eye of Sauron for me?

[fas42]

The need to suck up to authority is endemic - I despair at times when I read the nonsense sprouted by "authorative figures", when they proclaim that audio reproduction is inherently limited by various simplistic factors, which they consider the human mind is not capable of taking into account. Which is why much audio playback is so mediocre - if the standards aspired to are so low, how can it be otherwise out there in the real world - if you believe Model T travel is as good as it gets, then what are the chances of moving beyond that?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

5 hours ago, botrytis said:

Interesting, only 22 shareholders in MQA and 14,414 shares in total. Merlin Assets, Sony Music, Universal Music (not much left after that fire in their vault), Warner Music, Reinet S.A.R.L. and, Muse Holdings S.A.R.L. are the only companies. The rest are individuals....

 

 

Note, the labels were GIVEN their shares as compensation for "services rendered"...still have not figured that one out yet.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

6 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Just in case you were wondering, you have made that perfectly clear...again...and again...and again. 🙄

 

So?????

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Note, the labels were GIVEN their shares as compensation for "services rendered"...still have not figured that one out yet.

 

You haven't? 'Services rendered' - OK it was just 'massages'.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, John Dyson said:

I truly don't believe that there are fully reliable authorities in almost any field.  All too often, there are financial interests, personal interests or opinon/feeling that overrides rationality (lock-in to erroneous technical opinion.)  Sometimes, even if a person knows the actual facts, they end up demuring because of overly strong dissenting opinions -- often because of the error sources that I mentioned above.  Even when I truly, 100% know a technical answer, I will sometimes demure (not in the right mood to deal with controversy.)

 

Even in areas where I am truly an expert, I make errors, from time to time have erroneous opinions (because not having a current interest/forgetting details,etc.)  Lock-in is a problem that all technical people tend to have.

 

Even technical people can be led astray by other technical people.

 

I think that the biggest problems are financial interest or personal bias coming from misguided technical reasoning.  Here is an example:  I worked with a guy who was a pioneer in a certain field, he was far senior to me -- but he kept advocating using a really error prone source for an electrical delay (synthesizing the RAS/CAS delay for first generation dynamic ram) -- he actually advocated using a series resistor, depending on input capacitance and threshold for CMOS gate -- this RAS/CAS delay had a rather precise timing requirement.  I tried to come up with a reliable digital timing method (TTL wasn't fast enough), finally I 'gave up' and advocated using an analog  delay line (we couldn't clock our circuits fast enough for proper digital resolution) -- but he advocated the R/C & threshold delay scheme, using a pot for a production tweak -- implementing the RAS/CAS delay that needed to work over the entire industrial temperature range.   That expert (truly, he was a technical expert) lost his contract job because of that conceptual lock-in error.  Using a tweak for the RAS/CAS timing over industrial temperature range (CMOS thresholds/characteristics/etc) - it would have been a production/maintenance/support disaster.  (Early 1970s')

 

I know that my little anecdote wasn't all that 'short', but I am trying to explain that it is very tricky to find someone who really does give an accurate technical opinion all of the time.  Best that one can do -- listen to more than just a few experts with differing agendas, and then use common sense.  No-one is immune to both sides of the problem.

 

I do believe that 'technical experts' should try to strive for more integrity* (myself included), and also the user base shouldn't 'buy-in' so very quickly to snake-oil...  How does one detect 'snake-oil?'  I have no good answer for that.  I wish I did.

* When I speak of integrity, I don't just mean 'honesty', but I mean the entire package that includes knowing-ones-own-limits.

 

John

 

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. I wish it worked the same for those who know less. 

[Paul R]

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. I wish it worked the same for those who know less. 

 

There real problems are with those that think they know something, but really have no understanding of what they are talking about. Nor the will to study hard enough to learn. 

Those are the people that poison our hobby, especially those who "get on a mission to save the poor audiophools..."

[Fast and Bulbous]

6 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. I wish it worked the same for those who know less. 

Could not agree more. Have observed BS and co for a long time. Used to be a Meridian customer back in the MCD Pro days and found that to be a really good product, feeding an SP-8 and then active Meridian speakers. Walked away from Meridian a long time ago when it lost its way for me. And have watched this community here since it formed.

 

Learning about how innovations become successful - or not - is something that I feel is really important to get to grips with MQA and what is happening. I have done that for a long time, working in industries for which such knowledge is vital for success. Looking at MQA through that lens, the moves made by MQA - not the tech moves, the strategy moves - have always looked like a coordinated attempt to become the default, proprietary codex in overall infrastructure. Where revenue flows back from every angle to MQA, record companies solve their rights problems and hardware manufacturers that do not have a really good digital filter have that problem solved in return for their loyalty.  For me, every move points to that. And from BS learning from MLP and how it got to the infrastructure position alright, but not the revenue streams. And whether anyone here likes it or not, MQA has been successful in getting some in the audiophile community to advocate it. Any successful ploy will mean changing bevahior as the innovation progresses. Again MQA has done that. There is cunning and seeming inconsistency in these things. 

 

Also for me, so that others here do not jump on me with crass projections, assumptions and comments as a few have done so far,  I dread MQA success as I dreaded VHS winning over Betamax - but it could be seen coming. JVC's strategy out manoeuvred Sony's superior tech hands down.  MQA is a tech ploy that may or may not be good enough to win that infrastructure position with the strategy being deployed. The relationships formed, the seeming lock in with shares and licencing, the NDAs and opacity of the resulting communications, the advocacy by very visible "authorities" all point that way for me. 

 

MQA is a discontinuous innovation - one where the customer has to change their behaviour to get the benefit of the innovation. But who is the customer for that innovation? It isn't the highly informed discerning minority - that is now proven, and they will not change because they are discerning and will only change if by adopting the new they discern something of sufficient benefit to do so.   It ain't there for them / us. They are not needed for success as long as a few will advocate. And they will and they have and they do.  As for all the nonsense of using MP3 as the codec with which to compare MQA in the early dems, that was insulting. 

 

Argue the toss about the tech if you still want to - for me that argument was over a long time ago with objective data from key assessors and subjective insight of discerning review. 

 

My earnest hope is that it will all fail, but remember VHS... And it has some inertia in the "industry" and seemingly has financial resources to play a long game. 

 

I await September with interest.

 

[John Dyson]

2 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

There real problems are with those that think they know something, but really have no understanding of what they are talking about. Nor the will to study hard enough to learn. 

Those are the people that poison our hobby, especially those who "get on a mission to save the poor audiophools..."

Even trying to correct a easily technically provable error is sometimes not easy or helpful unless it is possible to relate to common sense and day-to-day usage. *I believe that pushing the facts about every little misunderstanding isn't a good thing...  When there IS an ongoing discussion, an actual bit of technical accuracy CAN be helpful -- I hope 🙂.  I wish more people with actual knowledge were more easily accessible.   Better access to experts in specific fields could have been incredibly helpful for some of my recent misconceptions, but information is sometimes difficult to find.

 

Some issues, like MQA, bother/worry me personally because I want to maintain my own access to good quality, unmolested, non-DRM music.  I also worry about the rest of the world -- working effectively full time for years to learn enough about a specific field that will help 'OLD' (1960s through 1990s) music quality/availability in the future.  There IS altruism in the world, and I know of maybe 2 or 3 people working very hard, and others contributing from time-to-time in the somewhat altruistic effort. (Common participants to this forum and some fairly well known professional names have helped the effort.)  My own project is NOT limited to (for example) DolbyA at all, and requires resurrecting a lot of difficult to find long-lost common knowledge (and also some hidden know-how.)  I have been a big-time victim of misconception -- much of it due to my own resolvable limitations.  It has taken a LONG time to get some kinds of accurate information.

 

Can you 'save' people from totally misguided ideas?  My answer is -- maybe, if the idea is important enough, but otherwise it is best just to let-go of any kind of 'crusade' (no religious intent for the usage) to correct everything.  This is a hobby for most people -- a little bit of misunderstanding is perfectly fine :-). 

 

Frankly, I wish MORE people who can contribute actual technical facts could find a way (and the time) to discuss things without being perceived as being know-it-alls or stir controversy.  Gaining access to real information, beyond what is currently available, has been troublesome in my current project.  Some actual experts DO demure.   Maybe the most difficult problem for those of us who don' t know everything -- trying to find people who understand their own limitations, and who TRY to avoid passing on their own possible misconceptions.

 

Audio/recording/etc can be very technical -- and there sometimes might be a tension between the artistic temperament and the kind of knowledge needed to truly understand what is going on.  I guess - most important -- remember the goal.  Participating in the hobby can required a very different mindset than the technical knowledge needed to implement the tools of the hobby.  It is easy to wrongly assume that 'understanding the use' is the same as 'understanding the supporting technology'.  They are NOT the same things.

 

John

 

[mansr]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. I wish it worked the same for those who know less. 

It does. The less you know, the less you know you don't know.

[mansr]

10 hours ago, John Dyson said:

How does one detect 'snake-oil?'

Here's one method:

1. Take sales pitch.
2. Rearrange words and parts of words (spoonerisms).
3. If the result makes as much (or more) sense as the original, it's snake oil.

[Fast and Bulbous]

13 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Sure, and so do you.  He is a principal architect and shareholder behind the fraud of MQA.  Just like Bill Clinton, he is a Big Fat Liar™

 

Your going to have to find another audio authority to revere...

Oh, sorry. I see. You know me. Errr.... no you don't.  No ad hominen attacks based on false and untested assumptions please. 

 

As for big fat liar, so you mean he tells big fat lies? Please enlighten us on what they are, specifically for Craven.

[daverich4]

14 hours ago, crenca said:

 

That is the position of most consumers (of digital anything) - they have to rely on an authority (i.e. the specialist) for knowledge about the reliability/truthfulness of fill_in_the_blank product/software/service.

 

Sort of like this forum where as soon as @mansr sez or @Archimago sez there can be no other truth...