MQA is Vaporware

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

EDIT: NEVER MIND. I see on Audio Asylum he drank the Kool Aid. Refused to believe it was lossy and cited the Stereophile articles as factual and definitive. Funny, for a guy who made fun of DSD for quite a long time. 

 

How long ago was he maintaining this position, and now in 2019 what does he say given that even Bob S admits to MQA being a lossy encoding?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

3 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

How long ago was he maintaining this position, and now in 2019 what does he say given that even Bob S admits to MQA being a lossy encoding?

https://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?searchtext=MQA&b=AND&topic=&topics_only=N&author=Thorsten&date1=&date2=&slowmessage=&sort=date&sortOrder=DESC&forum=ALL

 

the search above comes up with 3 posts from 2016. Perhaps I am missing others?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=153148.0

 

the above link from Audio Circle is interesting.

 

"Our Mr Loesch is busy handling and running the R&D team as iFi audio always has at least several projects in the works. Although he isn't available to reply on forums in person, we can assure you that Mr Loesch’s input is evident in every tech file/post we publish. In short, he's aware of what's going on in here as we relay comments back to him. "

 

Clearly he was gagged on MQA at some point.

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

https://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?searchtext=MQA&b=AND&topic=&topics_only=N&author=Thorsten&date1=&date2=&slowmessage=&sort=date&sortOrder=DESC&forum=ALL

 

the search above comes up with 3 posts from 2016. Perhaps I am missing others?

 

 

I know @Rt66indierockis keeping a kind of "MQA wall of shame" and I think it is unfortunately necessary.  Will these industry insiders be able to wipe all the egg off of their face?  They will try, and if there is a real mea culpa they should be allowed to.  However I suspect it will become necessary to reveal just how gullible, technically ignorant and lazy they have been with MQA when the Next Big Swindle comes along...

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

2 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

I know @Rt66indierockis keeping a kind of "MQA wall of shame" and I think it is unfortunately necessary.  Will these industry insiders be able to wipe all the egg off of their face?  They will try, and if there is a real mea culpa they should be allowed to.  However I suspect it will become necessary to reveal just how gullible, technically ignorant and lazy they have been with MQA when the Next Big Swindle comes along...

In Thorsten;'s case it is a shame. He was billed and seen as a top flight digital engineer and designer. With oddball views, no doubt.

 

So it was not ignorance, just commerce that was the factor.

[MikeyFresh]

I've sometimes wondered if that iDSD Pro is a prime example of consumers having to pay more for MQA.

 

That unit was very delayed in release, and while we'll never know for sure all of the different factors that caused it, one wonders if stupid MQA implementation represented a good portion of that delay in product release. Moreover, the original target retail price of $1,500 ended up being $2,500, which is not an insignificant increase.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

8 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

I've sometimes wondered if that iDSD Pro is a prime example of consumers having to pay more for MQA.

 

That unit was very delayed in release, and while we'll never know for sure all of the different factors that caused it, one wonders if stupid MQA implementation represented a good portion of that delay in product release. Moreover, the original target retail price of $1,500 ended up being $2,500, which is not an insignificant increase.

Wait, was it iFi that said they spend 1000 hours to get MQA implemented to their liking? I know BADA claimed they spent a year on it.

 

A year that could been better spend watching paint dry.

[rickca]

I pity the guys who worked on it.  Imagine mentioning MQA implementation on your resume and linkedin profile.  The hiring manager wonders what is MQA, does a google search and winds up reading this thread.

[sandyk]

38 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

In Thorsten;'s case it is a shame. He was billed and seen as a top flight digital engineer and designer. With oddball views, no doubt.

 

So it was not ignorance, just commerce that was the factor.

 

 A person's Integrity often gets thrown out the window when enough $$$ are to be made.

[KeenObserver]

Are we back to MQA?

[firedog]

8 hours ago, AMR/iFi audio said:

 

It always is an option to simply not listen to it if you don't like it. But if you really want to be MQA-immune, we provide firmware with it disabled. 

Yep. You have to give them credit for allowing customers choices. 

[firedog]

8 hours ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

For the iDSD Pro? 🙂

At least (unlike most other companies) they created a separate path in the iDSD Pro: if you don't send it MQA, the MQA filters aren't engaged. 

[mansr]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

Yep. You have to give them credit for allowing customers choices. 

Just like Microsoft gives users a choice of continuing to use Windows XP.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, firedog said:

At least (unlike most other companies) they created a separate path in the iDSD Pro: if you don't send it MQA, the MQA filters aren't engaged. 

Are you sure about that? The silly GTFO filter is the same as one of the MQA filters.

[John Dyson]

11 hours ago, FredericV said:

 

Auralic seems to have written their own lightning player which relies on sox (as analyzed by myself while intercepting a firmware file during download when I launched an update of my Auralic device, and later confirmed to me by their CEO that they use the sox library), while they also had a dormant version of MPD in an old version which they later removed.

More evil is adding a closed source MQA decoder to open source software by means of a bidirectional pipe sharing intimate data structures between both. According to the GPL FAQ such (ab)use of a pipe is problematic. The now gone MPD mailing list had some fine examples of these violators ... at least I feel a little bit more enlightened after seeing those source as posted on the mpd-devel list.

If using pipes with GPLed software is problematic -- then GPLed software becomes useless on Unix-like OSes.  I understand the matter, and frankly, if/when I do that, it will be using json (not fond of XML like schemes for various esoteric & low level protocol reasons) with a defined protcol so other programs can use the interface.  At that point, the GPL religious become (ab)surd in their complaints.

 

John

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

If using pipes with GPLed software is problematic -- then GPLed software becomes useless on Unix-like OSes.  I understand the matter, and frankly, if/when I do that, it will be using json (not fond of XML like schemes for various esoteric & low level protocol reasons) with a defined protcol so other programs can use the interface.  At that point, the GPL religious become (ab)surd in their complaints.

The objection is to people trying to circumvent the GPL by putting their additions in a separate process and piping raw internal data structures between them. A well-defined, reusable external interface is, or at least should be, a different matter. That said GPL fans often get quite religious about it.

 

As for that FAQ, one should not trust the FSF on the meaning of the GPL any more than one would trust Microsoft or Apple to interpret their own EULAs.

[mansr]

Getting back on topic, here's a scope capture showing the "improved" time domain performance of MQA. It's supposed to be a sine wave. A child with a crayon could do a better rendering.

 

[John_Atkinson]

9 minutes ago, mansr said:

Getting back on topic, here's a scope capture showing the "improved" time domain performance of MQA.

 

What is the frequency of the sinewave? (The horizontal scaling of the graph is ambiguous.)

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[mansr]

35 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

(The horizontal scaling of the graph is ambiguous.)

No, it is not.

[John_Atkinson]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

37 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

(The horizontal scaling of the graph is ambiguous.)

No, it is not.

 

Okay, does the "20.0µs" refer to the small horizontal marks, the mark at the center, or the entire width of the display? The reason I ask is that if the frequency of the sinewave is close to Nyquist and its amplitude is close to 0dBFS, the graph is showing the presence of an aliased tone due to the slow-rolloff reconstruction filter. This will be the case, not just with MQA, but with any DAC that uses a slow reconstruction filter, like the Ayres.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

[Paul R]

45 minutes ago, mansr said:

Getting back on topic, here's a scope capture showing the "improved" time domain performance of MQA. It's supposed to be a sine wave. A child with a crayon could do a better rendering.

 

 

Not sure what you are trying to show here and have no intention of guessing. In the same scale, what does the Non MQA version look like? 

 

This is is a bit disingenuous, since  you obviously know the frequency domain is the inverse of the time domain. Converting from one domain to another makes some problems easier to solve. It can very well be true that MQA solves some processing in the time domain instead of the frequency domain. A process that would very well result in the “sharpening” of the signal in the time domain. 

 

Nothing particularly earth shatteringly new or new or innovative about it. But it sure does “deblur” the signal. Does not really mean anything though, as other methods actually do the same thing in the frequency domain.  But then, you know that too. 

 

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

Okay, does the "20.0µs" refer to the small horizontal marks, the mark at the center, or the entire width of the display?

Have you ever used any oscilloscope? This calls all your Stereophile measurements into question. Or you're feigning ignorance.

 

4 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

The reason I ask is that if the frequency of the sinewave is close to Nyquist and its amplitude is close to 0dBFS,

Far from it.

[phosphorein]

31 minutes ago, mansr said:

Have you ever used any oscilloscope? This calls all your Stereophile measurements into question. Or you're feigning ignorance.

 

Far from it.

+1! Very clear if you’ve any experience with a ‘scope, even analog models.

[tmtomh]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

 

Not sure what you are trying to show here and have no intention of guessing. In the same scale, what does the Non MQA version look like? 

 

This is is a bit disingenuous, since  you obviously know the frequency domain is the inverse of the time domain. Converting from one domain to another makes some problems easier to solve. It can very well be true that MQA solves some processing in the time domain instead of the frequency domain. A process that would very well result in the “sharpening” of the signal in the time domain. 

 

Nothing particularly earth shatteringly new or new or innovative about it. But it sure does “deblur” the signal. Does not really mean anything though, as other methods actually do the same thing in the frequency domain.  But then, you know that too. 

 

 

if you are "not sure what [he is] trying to show here and have no intention of guessing," then logically you have no basis upon which to claim that @mansr's graph is "a bit disingenuous."

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Quote

The reason I ask is that if the frequency of the sinewave is close to Nyquist and its amplitude is close to 0dBFS,

Far from it.

 

Okay. Ignoring your nasty little insults, what was the frequency and the level of the sinewave?

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile