MQA is Vaporware

[KeenObserver]

Does this portend a new drive by MQA?

[mansr]

26 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

Does this portend a new drive by MQA?

A drive-by shilling?

[ARQuint]

On 12/25/2019 at 5:46 PM, bobbmd said:

@Paul R and @The Computer Audiophile Paul thanks for saying in a nicer way what I said or tried to convey and no Chris I wasn't having a rough day BUT like I said "I stuck my nose where it didn't belong" and should have kept my feelings to myself--I just contributed to the overload of incivility and apologize to anyone I might have offended(guess the abrasive comments and incivility become catching...)

I hope all you and yours had a Happy Holiday and have a good New Year.

bobbmd

 

I do understand where Bob and Paul are coming from, the two of them having paid the price of previously venturing into this thread without the single point of view acceptable to it's most partisan activists. But I hope they will note that something important has happened over the last few weeks. Joel Alperson's editorial and CC's now-shuttered request for commentary on "Forum Decorum" resulted in an outpouring of support for a more interventionalist response to bad behavior. There are now noticeably fewer gratuitous, sniping, two-sentence posts from members who have otherwise contributed nothing of substance to the discussion. Offensive posts are being deleted; threads that will inevitably lead to contempt-filled us-vs-them battles are being shut down. And I prefer to think that there's some self-moderation going on: people are waiting at least a few milliseconds longer before pressing "send."

 

I think Bob is right when he implies "Vaporware" is a vastly and unnecessarily bloated thread. It was bloated by angry, crude, and largely unsubstantiated attacks on people rather than ideas. I think this is what Chris meant when he said, regarding a growing skepticism among audiophiles about MQA: "I believe we would’ve got here way quicker without the incivility." So, I hope the thread will continue, accruing mass when there's something new and significant to talk about.

 

Andy

 

[Ralf11]

the most partisan activists are the audiophile press, by and large

 

or should I say most partisan adivists

[Rt66indierock]

The goat will have a few comments on civility Andy.

 

Chris I see some interesting revisions of history about MQA recently. I’ll go after John Darko’s memory failure on Audio Asylum. Did he think I threw our emails away?
 

[firedog]

7 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

It was bloated by angry, crude, and largely unsubstantiated attacks on people rather than ideas.

 

Andy

 

Very one sided POV. It was also bloated by incessant repetition of MQA marketing claptrap from MQA fanboys who refused to deal with any criticism in a factual way and insisted on red herring arguments. 

 

Also bloated by massive amounts of "civility" posts - which were often off topic and a way of deflecting the argument away from MQA itself and turning the thread into one dealing with the source of the criticism of MQA instead actually answering criticisms of MQA.

 

Your posts not entirely excluded among those, although far from the worst offenders. 

[KeenObserver]

All those "uncivil" posters kept saying " the king has no clothes".

 

The bastards kept searching for the truth and kept posting their findings!  How absolutely uncivil!

[KeenObserver]

Seems as though a site that allows free speech and technical analysis of the audiophile world poses a threat to the established status quo publications.

The growth of AS poses a threat to the old school publications.

AS has grown because it has openly examined many diverse areas of audiophiledom.

The fact that this thread has had nearly a million views says something.  Even Wikipedia has mentioned it.

[MikeyFresh]

11 hours ago, firedog said:

Very one sided POV. It was also bloated by incessant repetition of MQA marketing claptrap from MQA fanboys who refused to deal with any criticism in a factual way and insisted on red herring arguments. 

 

Also bloated by massive amounts of "civility" posts - which were often off topic and a way of deflecting the argument away from MQA itself and turning the thread into one dealing with the source of the criticism of MQA instead actually answering criticisms of MQA.

 

Your posts not entirely excluded among those, although far from the worst offenders. 

 

Very well stated, those are simply the facts, despite the efforts of others attempting to discredit this thread and indeed the entire forum as "uncivil".

 

ARQuint was not the worst offender, but that honor may very well fall on NextScreen's new President, who consistently deflected the conversation in different meaningless directions and regurgitated MQA marketing-speak in a futile attempt to dodge those facts. Poor show, but apparently it didn't harm his effort to land a new job.

[daverich4]

17 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

The goat will have a few comments on civility Andy.

 

Chris I see some interesting revisions of history about MQA recently. I’ll go after John Darko’s memory failure on Audio Asylum. Did he think I threw our emails away?
 

What on earth are you blathering on about now?

[bobbmd]

@ARQuint well well and thank you very much... happy new year...but i really stuck my nose where it didn't belong especially in a thread i could really care less about except( i enjoy all forms and formats of music and am purely a subjectionvist if there is such a word!) for the  gross examples of incivility that seems to pervade many other threads here lately thanks again not a bad comment and observation for a newbie

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, daverich4 said:

What on earth are you blathering on about now?

 

did he get your goat?

[christopher3393]

22 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

The goat will have a few comments on civility Andy.

 

Chris I see some interesting revisions of history about MQA recently. I’ll go after John Darko’s memory failure on Audio Asylum. Did he think I threw our emails away?
 

 

Congrats! Looks like you got him right where you want him!

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

6 hours ago, daverich4 said:

What on earth are you blathering on about now?

 

It never occurred to you Andy and I are friends did it?

 

The comment to Chris you wouldn't understand.

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, christopher3393 said:

 

Congrats! Looks like you got him right where you want him!

 

 

 

The goats in my neighborhood keep their dog friends in better shape.

[Rt66indierock]

6 hours ago, bobbmd said:

@ARQuint well well and thank you very much... happy new year...but i really stuck my nose where it didn't belong especially in a thread i could really care less about except( i enjoy all forms and formats of music and am purely a subjectionvist if there is such a word!) for the  gross examples of incivility that seems to pervade many other threads here lately thanks again not a bad comment and observation for a newbie

 

In my case I want the least processing in my music possible so no MQA, DSD only in limited cases as a sound effect and of course I see no reason to bother with hi-res. 

 

If you are purely subjective you aren't measuring the most important part of the system, you. 

 

As for the incivility in this thread, you are seeing the politics of high end audio laid bare for all to see. For me 
I have many people now I can ask to test things, measure and listen. A community was created to fight MQA. It will endure because we are a group of like minded people. One of the things we like is transparency to achieve it demands measurements sorry. 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Isn't this same bullshit that happens about once a month? Some new poster comes on to say how uncivil the thread is and they can't believe it is still open. Yawn. Then ARQuint comes on and blathers on and says absolutely zero of substance.. Rinse and repeat. 

[KeenObserver]

I stay out of other peoples threads that tout what I consider to be "magical" qualities. The bottom line is that I do not have to buy the exotic boutique power cord that improves sound.

Sometimes people will post on a thread that I start and try and impose their beliefs on me.  I may react to that.  Again, the bottom line is that I buy whatever I want. The choice is mine.

 

However, MQA is different.

 

The business model for MQA is that they want to become the controlling body for all music recording.  They want all music to be distributed as MQA.  They want all music reproducing systems to be MQA capable.  And they want to collect royalties at each step of the way.  Royalties are the tax that the music consumer pays for MQA.

If the MQA system is implemented, I would not have a choice in the matter.

So no, I will not willingly accept MQA.  And if MQA music was the only new music available, I would no longer buy new music.

[ARQuint]

3 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Isn't this same bullshit that happens about once a month? Some new poster comes on to say how uncivil the thread is and they can't believe it is still open. Yawn. Then ARQuint comes on and blathers on and says absolutely zero of substance.. Rinse and repeat. 

 

I think that progress is being made on the civility front, a reflection of how Chris wants this community to function. For me, that's substantive.

[Rt66indierock]

16 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

 

I think that progress is being made on the civility front, a reflection of how Chris wants this community to function. For me, that's substantive.

 

Andy, my thread is more civil because the people disrupting it have realized they are losing. If the hip hop folks are right Tidal may not be long for this world so goodbye to MQA streaming for most of the world. You of course are welcome to listen to C Pop MQA but I'm going to pass. And as I've predicted many times things are smoothing out and will be less volatile as MQA fades away.

 

I any case the battle has moved to whether high resolution audio has value in consumers listening rooms. 

 

The Blue Goat will have a few comments on civility and a history lesson just for you and the thought police in a new thread. Discussing civility on this thread is just littering. 

[MikeyFresh]

2 hours ago, ARQuint said:

I think that progress is being made on the civility front, a reflection of how Chris wants this community to function. For me, that's substantive.

 

That great, but for most of us the real progress had been made long ago when the facts presented here completely debunked MQA, and those facts were never rebutted in any substantive way at all.

 

TAS et al are guilty in that respect, attempting to change the narrative repeatedly to one of supposed rampant forum incivility, in lieu of any substance on those inconvenient truths about MQA.

 

TAS, and Stereophile, at one time were both highly respected publications despite always having been thinly veiled advertorials. I paid for and read both magazines for decades, as they were enjoyable even if they needed to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Now all those years of earned respect and goodwill have largely been pissed away vis-à-vis your indefensible position on the topic of MQA, and that harm has real substance. Only time will tell if NextScreen's new President can undo any of that. I know where my wager is.

[tmtomh]

5 hours ago, ARQuint said:

 

I think that progress is being made on the civility front, a reflection of how Chris wants this community to function. For me, that's substantive.

 

I agree that progress is being made on the civility front.

 

However, I also agree with those who say that you continue to misrepresent the conversation in this thread. Yes, there have been many antagonistic comments, some justified IMHO and some gratuitous and unnecessary. And there also have been many, many important, substantive comments that have brought information to light that would not have come out otherwise - and that despite your and others' steadfast refusal to admit it, clearly influenced the mainstream audiophile press and clearly played a role in some of the moderate walking-back of the earlier uncritical euphoria over MQA.

 

But most importantly, there's a third part of the conversation in this thread, and your repeated ignoring of it speaks volumes: the many, many posts by Lee Scoggins and several others that endlessly repeated MQA marketing lingo and technical talking points. These were not opinions to be disagreed with. Rather, they were demonstrably false claims, often contradicted by MQA reps' own statements. When someone keeps saying over and over and over that MQA is not lossy - and then finally "admits" it's lossy by saying. "it doesn't matter that it's lossy," that's not a disagreeable opinion - that's unaccountable, bad-faith behavior, and it doesn't deserve a civil response. 

 

And it's disingenuous in the extreme for you to keep banging the civility drum without calling out - or heck, just mentioning once - the shifty, bad-faith approach taken by Lee and some others in support of MQA. Unless or until you acknowledge that, you're not likely to find much of a welcoming reception here. You can of course continue to chalk that up the horrid incivility of members here, but to do that you have to ignore the many of us who are pro-civility and anti-MQA, and I would hope you'd not want to adopt such a simplistic and lazy posture here.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

10 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

 

I agree that progress is being made on the civility front.

 

However, I also agree with those who say that you continue to misrepresent the conversation in this thread. Yes, there have been many antagonistic comments, some justified IMHO and some gratuitous and unnecessary. And there also have been many, many important, substantive comments that have brought information to light that would not have come out otherwise - and that despite your and others' steadfast refusal to admit it, clearly influenced the mainstream audiophile press and clearly played a role in some of the moderate walking-back of the earlier uncritical euphoria over MQA.

 

But most importantly, there's a third part of the conversation in this thread, and your repeated ignoring of it speaks volumes: the many, many posts by Lee Scoggins and several others that endlessly repeated MQA marketing lingo and technical talking points. These were not opinions to be disagreed with. Rather, they were demonstrably false claims, often contradicted by MQA reps' own statements. When someone keeps saying over and over and over that MQA is not lossy - and then finally "admits" it's lossy by saying. "it doesn't matter that it's lossy," that's not a disagreeable opinion - that's unaccountable, bad-faith behavior, and it doesn't deserve a civil response. 

 

And it's disingenuous in the extreme for you to keep banging the civility drum without calling out - or heck, just mentioning once - the shifty, bad-faith approach taken by Lee and some others in support of MQA. Unless or until you acknowledge that, you're not likely to find much of a welcoming reception here. You can of course continue to chalk that up the horrid incivility of members here, but to do that you have to ignore the many of us who are pro-civility and anti-MQA, and I would hope you'd not want to adopt such a simplistic and lazy posture here.

Simply devastating, sir. If AR Q does not understand your points, then there is nothing to more to be done. 

[KeenObserver]

In the final analysis, this thread was critical in bringing out the TRUTH about MQA.

 

It boosted AS's presence in the audiophile world.

 

People came to AS to find the TRUTH.

[KeenObserver]

In his own way, Lee showed the TRUTH about MQA.  Perhaps not in the way he intended.

 

And MQA's performance at Rocky Mountain showed the TRUTH about MQA.