MQA is Vaporware

[gdpr]

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

You would think John that such a thing would have already occured, out of fear/self preservation if not (more positively) self awareness/respect.  All that we have seen is a continual doubling down.

 

This is why the cultural stuff is important.  They promote themselves, and we like to think of them as, just "audiophiles".  They are not, they are "trade promoters" and they do what they see is in the trades best interest 1st, 2nd, and last.  

 

In a sense they are right - both their customers and their readers are part of a luxury niche market and not a real hobbyist pursuit of high fidelity.   A luxury market is all about feeling good about an otherwise absurd and impractical purchase.  Even more, a luxury buyer wants to be conned, because he is not paying for truth (such as fidelity) he is paying for image, ego, and the like....he knows he is getting a reach around while being pumped up the arse...

I plead guilty as charged. My arse is still itching

Dirk

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, FredericV said:

This is complete BS:

 

http://thehbproject.com/nl/artikelen/38/6/MQA---Kwaliteitsgarantie

To bury data below 144dB you would need a 32 bit distribution file instead of the 24 bit MQA distribution files.

That's not quite correct. The y axis in the graph should be labelled dB/Hz. The -144 dB value is the integral of this across the full frequency range.

 

9 minutes ago, FredericV said:

There is no third unfold.

That is 100% true.

[KeenObserver]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I always enjoy when the old guard parachutes into a topic and explains how I should do my job and that I should control this community. 

 

I think that is what provokes people here.  The assumption that we need to be controlled and shown how to be "civil" (tow the line).

 

I think what provokes the "old guard" is that there are people who don't regard their word as gospel.

 

I think the old saying that you don't argue with people that buy ink by the barrel went out with the advent of the internet.  We can all "buy ink by the barrel".

[KeenObserver]

And I am not saying that posters should not actually be civil or violate protocols, but the "old guards" concept of being uncivil is that you disagree with their pronouncements from on high.

[Tintinabulum]

47 minutes ago, FredericV said:

He is not interested in telling the truth

Still, as long as it sounds great...

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Doug Schneider said:

If I recall, someone compared an 18-bit/96kHz FLAC file to an MQA file and found that it was smaller. Hmmmm...

 

Doug

 

Miska. A very, very long time ago in terms of the MQA discussion.

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Yes, a magazine like Stereophile reviews a lot of products that its typical reader will not be able to afford. See my essay at

https://www.stereophile.com/content/conspicuous-consumption

in which I both offer an answer to the question "Why does a magazine read by regular middle-class people devote space to products that might as well be made from unobtainium?" and examine why the high-end audio industry is undergoing an upward price spiral.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

 

 

Thanks for the article.  The article states that "many people who will never be able to buy these products still want to read about them."  That seems to be the conventional wisdom. However, It's definitely not true for me.  I'm wondering if there are any studies to support it.  As far as car mags go, I may read the car mags that deal with the same stuff I'll deal with in real life -- seems to me only young kids stare at unobtanium.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, Doug Schneider said:

 

Come on, John. We've been around the block more than a few times on these topics -- well, maybe not this one, so let me have a go.

 

You casually mention it in the technical measurements, by your own admission here. But have you actually put something in bold like you did with "MQA's Sound Convinces Hardened Showgoers" or the umpteen other articles that trumpeted this brave new digital world?

 

I think in service of the readers, an article about this titled something like "Warning to DAC Purchasers - Watch Out for How MQA Is Implement In Your DAC" might've brought the subject more to the forefront. Then explore it instead of grand-standing with those VERY flawed listening tests that got the front-page news.

 

And in case you think that's not necessarily your job to (I would think the Technical Editor would willfully explore these subjects in great detail), your boss, Paul Miller, did a good job of bringing to light the aliasing artifacts that can arise from the MQA process -- and even allowed me to reprint it with permission in my article, which questioned those things, too.

 

https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/opinion/1104-mismatched-masters-and-false-frequencies-is-mqa-better-worse-or-just-different

 

I think if servicing the readers is #1, the pros and cons should be equally distributed. That's how I see it, anyway.

 

Doug Schneider

SoundStage!

 

Your article reminds me of a comment in this thread almost 6 months ago  :

 

 

 

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

2.      How about Mark Waldrep or John Siau?

 

They easily get my vote!

[lucretius]

delete

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Any technology or product worth its salt will only get stronger once subjected to objective critical examination. 

 

The people who who love MQA should be demanding the old guard put it through its paces. 

 

What say you @ARQuint?

 

It may be a moot point.  By the time the "old guard" gets on this, MQA will be long dead.

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

As explained in the essay of mine that I linked to, it is what readers, who vote with the wallets, want.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

 

Perhaps the readers subcribe to the mag in spite of the unobtainium reviews (i.e. for the other material in the mag)? Have you asked them?

[Tintinabulum]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

Have you asked them?

They vote with their wallets? 

[lucretius]

3 minutes ago, Tintinabulum said:

They vote with their wallets? 

 

Yes.  But as JA says, there's other material (relating to obtainable items) in the mag. So maybe that's what they're "voting" for? It's not like there's a cornacopia of mags to choose from.

[james45974]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Interesting how JA uses refers to this issue as "this problem", yet his publication did not say it was a problem as such, they just noted it...in the context of Stereophiles otherwise breathless promotion...so a reader would read this qualification in the positive and not negative.

 

That said, JA and the rest have truly dug themselves a hole and they are going to mine their current and past promotion of MQA for anything that can be interpreted as them reporting a "con" to MQA.  It won't work, there is too little there...

Until they decide to come clean they are in a lose, lose, lose position

[lucretius]

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

The testing equipment I have access to is very expensive. A QuantAsylum QA401 is $450.

 

Where's the sarcasm font?

 

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

I'm giving reviewers until next year to get one or I'm viewing them as third class citizens in the audio world.

 

Surely, Stereophile can afford one of those.

 

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

Anyone thinking about spending more than $30k should probably get one too.

 

Not a bad idea.

[John_Atkinson]

3 hours ago, Doug Schneider said:

You casually mention it in the technical measurements, by your own admission here.

 

Nothing I write is "casual," Doug. I was merely pointing out that your statement that "a number of DAC makers . . . used  the MQA filter for all PCM  . . .  why didn't the magazines that championed MQA report on that?" was wrong, at least as far as Stereophile is concerned.

 

Quote

 

. . . your boss, Paul Miller, did a good job of bringing to light the aliasing artifacts that can arise from the MQA process -- and even allowed me to reprint it with permission in my article, which questioned those things, too.

 

As I mentioned both much earlier in this thread and in Stereophile, I think that the probability of audible aliasing products appearing in the audioband with slow filters and the spectra of typical high-quality music recordings is very low, even negligible. And as I also mentioned, my experience has been that listeners prefer the sound of recordings made with slow-rolloff anti-aliasing filters and played back with slow-rolloff reconstruction filters. This is something the late Charley Hansen and I agreed about, despite our intense arguments over MQA.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

7 minutes ago, lucretius said:

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

I'm giving reviewers until next year to get one or I'm viewing them as third class citizens in the audio world.

 

Surely, Stereophile can afford one of those.

 

Stereophile the magazine doesn't own any test equipment. Senior management at the company that owned Stereophile in 2004 decided to discontinue Stereophile publishing technical tests. I therefore decided at that time to invest personally in the necessary test equipment so that the magazine could keep publishing reviews accompanied by measurements. Since then I have spent more than $40k on test equipment. My measurement system is based on the Audio Precision SYS2722, but I am currently trying an Audio Precision 5-series analyzer, which is not inexpensive.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[james45974]

59 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Thanks for the article.  The article states that "many people who will never be able to buy these products still want to read about them."  That seems to be the conventional wisdom. However, It's definitely not true for me.  I'm wondering if there are any studies to support it.  As far as car mags go, I may read the car mags that deal with the same stuff I'll deal with in real life -- seems to me only young kids stare at unobtanium.

I second this.  I gave up my subscriptions to Stereophile and TAS about 10 years ago and never looked back, I outgrew them.  Now I am more interested in minimalist audio, not maximalist.  MQA just adds unnecessary gobbledygook to audio.

[kumakuma]

Just now, james45974 said:

I gave up my subscriptions to Stereophile and TAS about 10 years ago and never looked back, I outgrew them.

 

I still read both publications but mainly just for the music reviews.

[Doug Schneider]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Nothing I write is "casual," Doug.

 

Of course not John -- the words always come from high up on a mountain.

 

Now come on, though -- let's talk for real. As a former editor, you're not going to try to tell me that your measurements and text get looked at more than the reviews. If they do, I think they should headline the equipment reviews and the subjective evaluations should be cut down to one-fourth.

 

With that in mind, a mention buried into a measurement write-up is, well, buried, isn't it? Like I said, I've never seen a topic like this one on the filter get a bold headline anywhere in your magazine or the website -- but the casual listening tests where no verification of the source material do get out there. So like I said, let's get real.

 

As for Charles Hansen, in the last months, I talked to him more than anyone else I know -- he would phone me and talk for hours. Literally hours. And a lot of that was on MQA. I can say that you can't try to equate your thoughts with Charles's. He was aghast at the MQA promotion in the magazines -- and you know that from Audio Asylum. And as to the minimum-phase filters, Charles was equally aghast that you couldn't separate that from the MQA puzzle. "He likes the sound of an minimum-phase filter. Why doesn't he says that instead of all this bullshit about MQA?" (There were probably quite a few more expletives, actually.)

 

Doug

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Yikes. This has been a brutal week for the audio press here. What is one level up from being beaten to a pulp?

The ref needs to step in and show some compassion. 😎

[crenca]

9 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Yikes. This has been a brutal week for the audio press here. What is one level up from being beaten to a pulp?

The ref needs to step in and show some compassion. 😎

 

The quiet, demure, "let's not cause a scene" stance of most in the press is what Bob S was counting on...rightly it turns out.

[esldude]

32 minutes ago, Doug Schneider said:

 

Of course not John -- the words always come from high up on a mountain.

 

Now come on, though -- let's talk for real. As a former editor, you're not going to try to tell me that your measurements and text get looked at more than the reviews. If they do, I think they should headline the equipment reviews and the subjective evaluations should be cut down to one-fourth.

 

With that in mind, a mention buried into a measurement write-up is, well, buried, isn't it? Like I said, I've never seen a topic like this one on the filter get a bold headline anywhere in your magazine or the website -- but the casual listening tests where no verification of the source material do get out there. So like I said, let's get real.

 

As for Charles Hansen, in the last months, I talked to him more than anyone else I know -- he would phone me and talk for hours. Literally hours. And a lot of that was on MQA. I can say that you can't try to equate your thoughts with Charles's. He was aghast at the MQA promotion in the magazines -- and you know that from Audio Asylum. And as to the minimum-phase filters, Charles was equally aghast that you couldn't separate that from the MQA puzzle. "He likes the sound of an minimum-phase filter. Why doesn't he says that instead of all this bullshit about MQA?" (There were probably quite a few more expletives, actually.)

 

Doug

This will be off topic.  I know, a first for this thread. 

 

Minimum phase filters.  When I've had the chance to hear the direct mike feed and then the captures done and played back with minimum phase filtering, it seems to soften the sound most especially of sharp transients.  If you are listening to the final mix and mastering with all the compression and other processing done I can see where you might prefer the sound that way.  It however isn't fidelity to the signal.  Preferences need no justification, but one of the big issues in audiophiledom is confusing preference with fidelity and truth.  

[Doug Schneider]

2 minutes ago, esldude said:

Preferences need no justification, but one of the big issues in audiophiledom is confusing preference with fidelity and truth.  

 

And that is a really, really good point. What sounds "good" isn't necessarily what sounds accurate. Really, to know that, you must, as you've done, be at the recording session.

When you look at the behavior of some of these filters, you do often see a frequency-response rolloff, so the question is: Is that softening the supposed time behavior or is it a frequency-response effect?

Doug
SoundStage!