MQA is Vaporware

[Doug Schneider]

6 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

This is one of the big issues. MQA hasn't proven anything about it. All they say, you know *WINK WINK* and that is it. It causes me to pause.

 

It should cause many pause for thought. Unfortunately, it didn't give some writers pause, but anyone with critical thinking skills would get their guard up. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, but when I asked for details and got NONE, sorry, that doesn't cut it...

 

Doug Schneider
SoundStage!

[crenca]

38 minutes ago, Doug Schneider said:

This whole deblurring thing, if true, could've been so easily proved. Get an ADC that's the supposed culprit. Record something that's "blurry." Then "unblur" it.

 

Thing is Doug, even those who assert that Gibbs effect is significant (such as @John_Atkinson) can not prove its significance even outside of MQA.  @esldudeposted some impressive looking graphs just upstream, but to get them he admitted he had to concoct an "illegal" signal to get them.  What is the real effect of Gibbs to real transient behavior of real music?  Nobody seems to know or to have devised a test  - if someone does please post it or a link here!

 

What Atkinson, Bob S, and others have is a philosophy that does not seem to rise above a mere (idiosyncratic)- audiophile assertion.  They then have devised a certain philosophy that "fixes" this problem, but of course this philosophy introduces other problems and trade offs.  Rather than being honest about this in a pro/con matrix, they announce Copernicus level "birth of new worlds".

 

In other words, it's all a smokescreen for what they are really doing...

[botrytis]

4 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Thing is Doug, even those who assert that Gibbs effect is significant (such as @John_Atkinson) can not prove its significance outside of even outside of MQA.  @esldudeposted some impressive looking graphs just upstream, but to get them he admitted he had to concoct an "illegal" signal to get them.  What is the real effect of Gibbs to real transient behavior of real music?  Nobody seems to know or to have devised a test  - if someone does please post it or a link here!

 

What Atkinson, Bob S, and others have is a philosophy that does not seem to rise above a mere (idiosyncratic)- audiophile assertion.  They then have devised a certain philosophy that "fixes" this problem, but of course this philosophy introduces other problems and trade offs.  Rather than being honest about this in a pro/con matrix, they announce Copernicus level "birth of new worlds".

 

In other words, it's all a smokescreen for what they are really doing...

 

 

[marce]

5 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Or get one of these:

 

http://argoasecurity.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=21

Finally a supertweeter that can do my  64/2048 true audiophile recordings justice...

Sorry for OT😐

[botrytis]

1 minute ago, marce said:

Finally a supertweeter that can do my  64/2048 true audiophile recordings justice...

Sorry for OT😐

 

Is that the new rodent repellent system?

[Doug Schneider]

11 minutes ago, crenca said:

What Atkinson, Bob S, and others have is a philosophy that does not seem to rise above a mere (idiosyncratic)- audiophile assertion.  They then have devised a certain philosophy that "fixes" this problem, but of course this philosophy introduces other problems and trade offs.  Rather than being honest about this in a pro/con matrix, they announce Copernicus level "birth of new worlds".

 

I think what's unfortunate in this case is that this so-called philosophy and assertions, not supported by facts, has made any reasonable debate fruitless. One the one side you have people who want the technical claims proven and/or they've proven that they're not what they say, and on the other side you have people standing their ground -- even if there's no ground to stand on. They just dig their heels in and hope someone will believe them.

 

The truth of the matter is, however, that it really no longer matters. Any new technology has a limited time to catch on. A few writers in the flagging print press tried to make it their lightning rod a few years ago. MQA being picked up by Tidal WAS kind of a big deal -- but WAS was put in caps there for a reason. That's now ages ago.

 

Today, no one really cares and if Tidal goes away or flips themselves to FLAC files like other high-res services use, no one would be surprised. It's a small topic, really, that only exists in forums like this one and the odd article in an audiophile magazine from someone who won't let go. I feel no compulsion to write about it in any way on any of our sites. IMO, the marketplace has already relegated it to the scrapheap.

 

Doug

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Did anyone note in Austin's Mytek review that he quoted a recording engineer as saying that a modern album may

go through as many 5 conversions by the time it is mastered? So does MQA "de-blur" and "correct" the timing for all

conversions? Me thinks not. Me thinks MQA was DOA theoretically and in practice on Day One.😍

[Jud]

3 minutes ago, Doug Schneider said:

Today, no one really cares and if Tidal goes away or flips themselves to FLAC files like other high-res services use, no one would be surprised. It's a small topic, really, that only exists in forums like this one and the odd article in an audiophile magazine from someone who won't let go. I feel no compulsion to write about it in any way on any of our sites. IMO, the marketplace has already relegated it to the scrapheap.

I hope that’s right. The one thing that gives me pause is that the music industry has never shown itself to be attuned to what consumers want. They had to be saved kicking and screaming by Apple, and swore they wouldn’t allow themselves to be saved again. (It’s in the Steve Jobs biography - worthwhile if you haven’t read it.) So I agree it makes no sense in terms of the market, and wish I was a little more reassured by that.

[Doug Schneider]

28 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Did anyone note in Austin's Mytek review that he quoted a recording engineer as saying that a modern album may

go through as many 5 conversions by the time it is mastered? So does MQA "de-blur" and "correct" the timing for all

conversions? Me thinks not. Me thinks MQA was DOA theoretically and in practice on Day One.😍

 

This sort of thing came up time and again -- What about multiple conversions? What about multiple converter types? What if someone doesn't really know what converters were used? And on and on...

 

I think you're probably right about Day One.

 

Doug Schneider

[The Computer Audiophile]

34 minutes ago, Doug Schneider said:

Today, no one really cares and if Tidal goes away or flips themselves to FLAC files like other high-res services use, no one would be surprised. It's a small topic, really, that only exists in forums like this one and the odd article in an audiophile magazine from someone who won't let go. I feel no compulsion to write about it in any way on any of our sites. IMO, the marketplace has already relegated it to the scrapheap.

 

No consumers want DRM bluray and to go through HDCP issues galore, yet the movie industry has shown it couldn't care less. The music industry now has much of its content as MQA and controls who uses it and how they use it. If Universal tells Apple that Apple music must stream MQA, Apple can't re-invent Kind of Blue as Kind of Bluish. 

[KeenObserver]

The reality is that if the financials that are supposed to come out in September show that there is a new infusion of cash into MQA Ltd,  the MQA underwriters expect MQA to become the new music distribution standard.  MQA and the majors have a vested and invested stake in making MQA the de-facto standard.  If they all collude and state that going forward all music sold will be MQA they could push it through.

I would think that after the Sony root kit fiasco that Sony would be a little leery of trying to foist a scheme that screws the music consumer.  But, judging from history, the studios are not averse to screwing the music consumer.

The only thing that would keep them from going forward would be the fear of an adverse reaction.

[KeenObserver]

I have several thousand albums in various formats.  I continue to buy music in non MQA format. If ever the sad state of affairs came to be that I could no longer buy non MQA music,  I would no longer buy music.

I was bit by the Sony root kit scam.  Since that time I refuse to buy any Sony product.  To be honest, I may have unthinkingly bought a Sony Blu-Ray, but I refuse to have any Sony electronics in my house.

[Sonicularity]

40 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

No consumers want DRM bluray and to go through HDCP issues galore, yet the movie industry has shown it couldn't care less. The music industry now has much of its content as MQA and controls who uses it and how they use it. If Universal tells Apple that Apple music must stream MQA, Apple can't re-invent Kind of Blue as Kind of Bluish. 

 

The subtle difference in my opinion is that movies and TV shows are not quite as personal to most people. 

 

I don't know a lot of people that buy movies except for a few A/V enthusiasts and parents with young children that watch the same movie a billion times and never get tired of it.  Still, they don't normally purchase a lot of them.  Movies were rented at Block Buster, watched and returned.   Now we just purchase and stream it from one of many different services.

 

Lots of people still purchase music, even with streaming services, though these are now mostly digital sales.  I think the consumer backlash will be much more severe if prices increase too much and access is artificially restricted with onerous DRM schemes.  

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

The reality is that if the financials that are supposed to come out in September show that there is a new infusion of cash into MQA Ltd,  the MQA underwriters expect MQA to become the new music distribution standard.  MQA and the majors have a vested and invested stake in making MQA the de-facto standard.  If they all collude and state that going forward all music sold will be MQA they could push it through.

I would think that after the Sony root kit fiasco that Sony would be a little leery of trying to foist a scheme that screws the music consumer.  But, judging from history, the studios are not averse to screwing the music consumer.

The only thing that would keep them from going forward would be the fear of an adverse reaction.

 

Your answers are in the 2017 financial statements and notes. People forget the capacity problem of converting music files to MQA. And if they are going to China they have a lot of Chinese Pop to convert.

[asdf1000]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The music industry now has much of its content as MQA

 

Hi @The Computer Audiophile

 

What do you mean by “much of its content as MQA”?

 

It’s only a little, no?

 

Or have you heard something about conversions happening in the background?

[John_Atkinson]

3 hours ago, crenca said:

5 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

 I am note sure what filter that is, other than a simple moving-average type.  If you look at fig.2 in my measurements of the Mytek Liberty DAC (below) - which uses one of the MQA filters for all PCM data - see https://www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-liberty-da-processor-measurements - the filter has a slow rolloff off above the audioband, with very little suppression of the image at 25kHz of a 19.1kHz tone. However, there are no aliased images of this high-level tone in the audioband and the stop-band attenuation is consistent with frequency..

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

Read more  

 

Before I scrolled down to @mansrpost JA I saw this and said "this is not an MQA filter".

 

An error has been made...

 

No error. I as I wrote, this is the filter that a DAC that doesn't have any other reconstruction filters other than MQA applies to non-MQA, linear PCM data. The spectrum was taken from the Mytek processor's analog output and extends to 100kHz because 200kHz is the A/D converter's sample-rate limit of my current Audio Precision analyzer. Given that the analog stage of a D/A processor is rolling off above 100kHz, I don't see that as any kind of limitation in the measurement.

 

I do note that mansr's spectrum extended to >384kHz, which implies his analyzer supports an A/D sample rate of at least 768kHz. Perhaps he would share with us what analyzer he used. If, that is, he examined the analog output of a D.A processor and didn't simulate the spectrum with, for example, MatLab.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

No consumers want DRM bluray and to go through HDCP issues galore, yet the movie industry has shown it couldn't care less. The music industry now has much of its content as MQA and controls who uses it and how they use it. If Universal tells Apple that Apple music must stream MQA, Apple can't re-invent Kind of Blue as Kind of Bluish. 

 

As a repeat, Universal Music doesn't have anymore leverage than Warner Music Group and they say their leverage is declining in their latest  10-k.

 

Last year I had a hoses mouth (Mike Jbara) number of about 1.1 million tracks converted to MQA. 7digital claims to have 70 million tracks licensed. Apple currently has about 45 million tracks.  I don't like the math if they can only convert 10,000 tracks a day. 

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

No error. I as I wrote, this is the filter that a DAC that doesn't have any other reconstruction filters other than MQA applies to non-MQA, linear PCM data.

I don't doubt that, but it's still not an MQA filter.

 

4 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

I do note that mansr's spectrum extended to >384kHz, which implies his analyzer supports an A/D sample rate of at least 768kHz. Perhaps he would share with us what analyzer he used. If, that is, he examined the analog output of a D.A processor and didn't simulate the spectrum with, for example, MatLab.

My graph was created using the Matlab 'freqz' function with the actual filter coefficients extracted from a DAC.

[John_Atkinson]

8 minutes ago, mansr said:

My graph was created using the Matlab 'freqz' function with the actual filter coefficients extracted from a DAC.

 

Thank you.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[crenca]

37 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

I as I wrote, this is the filter that a DAC that doesn't have any other reconstruction filters other than MQA applies to non-MQA, linear PCM data.

 

This sentence is garbled a bit - trying to figure out what you are saying.

 

1)  MQA (as what - a software application I assume you mean) has a particular filter it applies to non MQA encoded PCM?  Is this what you mean to assert?  Is there one, or is there more than one  - and what determines which one is used?

2)  In relation to #1, do you mean by "a DAC" (supporting an internal MQA filter for non MQA encoded PCM) or did you mean "this DAC", meaning this particular Mytek DAC?

3)  If #2 is true, then is this really a Myteck filter application - in the same way that other manufacturers (PSAudio and dCS I believe are two examples) have negotiated (apparently) with MQA to have their own particular flavor of filter(s)?

[John_Atkinson]

4 minutes ago, crenca said:

MQA (as what - a software application I assume you mean) has a particular filter it applies to non MQA encoded PCM? 

 

The set of MQA's digital filters that a D/A processor uses to decode MQA-encoded files includes this filter that is intended to be used with conventional linear-PCM files if the processor doesn't have other filters. Like this Mytek, for example, or the Bel Canto Black and Aurender A10 I mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

The identical filter is used in every D/A processor Stereophile has reviewed that will decode MQA files, so no, it is not exclusive to Mytek.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

The set of MQA's digital filters that a D/A processor uses to decode MQA-encoded files includes this filter that is intended to be used with conventional linear-PCM files if the processor doesn't have other filters. Like this Mytek, for example, or the Bel Canto Black and Aurender A10 I mentioned earlier in this thread.

 

The identical filter is used in every D/A processor Stereophile has reviewed that will decode MQA files, so no, it is not exclusive to Mytek.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

 

 

So this is not the particular Mytek model that was applying one or more of the filter(s) that were created by MQA for MQA encoded files to standard PCM, unless the end user rebooted (or something - going from memory), which behavior may or may not have been fixed with a firmware upgrade...

[John_Atkinson]

1 minute ago, crenca said:

So this is not the particular Mytek model that was applying one or more of the filter(s) that were created by MQA for MQA encoded files to standard PCM, unless the end user rebooted (or something...

 

No, this is the Mytek Liberty, which applies this MQA filter to all PCM files.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

[Kal Rubinson]

41 minutes ago, crenca said:

So this is not the particular Mytek model that was applying one or more of the filter(s) that were created by MQA for MQA encoded files to standard PCM, unless the end user rebooted (or something - going from memory), which behavior may or may not have been fixed with a firmware upgrade...

I think you are referring to the Mytek Brooklyn.  A reboot is not effective but would be easier.  If you select the MQA option, it invokes the MQA filter.  If you un-select the MQA option, the MQA filter sticks and you must go into the filter setup menu to revert to a non-MQA filter.  With the small buttons, it is a tedious process and frustrates efforts to make back-to-back fair comparisons. 

[rickca]

44 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

No, this is the Mytek Liberty, which applies this MQA filter to all PCM files.

Ironic that they call such a device Liberty.  Maybe they should call it Orwell.