MQA is Vaporware

[Confused]

I see the author has as email link, maybe someone should contact him and put him straight with regard to the facts?

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/users/simoncohen/

 

Or comment here if you prefer something a bit more visible ...

 

 

[KeenObserver]

14 hours ago, UkPhil said:

Latest marketing spin from the MQA camp https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/mqa-best-high-resolution-file-format-htc/

 

Do people actually fall for that BS?

[KeenObserver]

Just when you thought that MQA is in remission and is gone, it rears its ugly head to threaten the music consumer again.

 

Has MQA secured new funding?  Will it continue to be a threat to the music consumer?

[Archimago]

6 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Just when you thought that MQA is in remission and is gone, it rears its ugly head to threaten the music consumer again.

 

Has MQA secured new funding?  Will it continue to be a threat to the music consumer?

 

A bit like COVID-19 going forward I think...

 

Although I'd be less concerned about MQA...

 

[Archimago]

16 hours ago, opus101 said:

 

So to put this more succinctly, BS cannot stop because it is, at least in part, a psychological projection.

 

Correct.

 

I would say to a large part, psychological (referring to subjective reviews). It's done in the service of an industry catering to luxury goods but needs the "legitimacy" of being able to claim that their products definitely "sounds better" than other consumer products that continue to improve over time and compete at lower prices.

 

Without the ability to claim objective improvements - measurement equipment too getting less expensive and better quality over time - where else to obtain validation than through subjective testimony? The value of Golden Ear subjective reviewers is to be measured in the amount of faith/credibility they have. The moment audiophiles lose "confidence" in the reviewer or magazine, there're really nothing of value left but a decline into further irrelevance...

[JoeWhip]

I have friends in whose hearing I trust. Reviewers and mags, not so much.

[opus101]

6 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

Correct.

 

Ironic as it may seem, I am sure you misunderstood my meaning.

[alekc]

One interesting statistic may be this masterswitch article about best 2020 DACs: https://www.themasterswitch.com/best-dacs

 

Out of 18 selected products only 4 support MQA. Considering there are products that definitively are being used with Tidal for example it shows there must not be a very strong demand for MQA enabled DACs from customer end.  

[Cebolla]

19 hours ago, alekc said:

One interesting statistic may be this masterswitch article about best 2020 DACs: https://www.themasterswitch.com/best-dacs

 

Out of 18 selected products only 4 support MQA.

 

That's actually 3 DACs in that list that support MQA, not 4. The Vega in common with all Auralic devices doesn't officially support MQA and uses an in-house method which 'pseudo decodes' MQA:

Quote

This pretty much means we at AURALiC are saying no to MQA. We are no longer interested in their technology. We want to keep everything open but they want to keep it closed. We are not in the same boat. I don’t believe the very High End will benefit from MQA as it only degrades sound quality, not improve it.

 

Quote

We do not use any MQA technology, this is not MQA certificated or MQA licensed. We are up-sampling the file using our algorithm, applying our own in-house developed filter, to optimize sound quality, not just for a particular DAC but all devices.

Xuanqian Wang, Auralic CEO

https://darko.audio/2017/04/auralic-firmware-v5-0-adds-dsp-engine-web-browser-control/

 

[Confused]

This is a bit of fun, MQA mentioned at the Bristol Hifi show in the U.K. From 14 minutes in the clip below.

 

As an aside, I mentioned in an earlier post that I particularly enjoyed the rather curious combination of the £9k Hegel with the £900 LS50’s. 
 

The MQA bit here amused me too.

 

Less speaker, that’s where it’s at.
 

  

[bambadoo]

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/86-ultra-hi-end-ht-gear-20-000/1516103-trinnov-altitude-361.html#post59346144

 

What is the meaning of the "Meridian 16 channel number"?
 

 

Meridian sold their MLP technology to Dolby, who renamed it Dolby TrueHD. Until a few years ago, Meridian received a royalty on every disc produced using MLP/TrueHD. Then the patent period, or contract, or whatever ran out.
 

 

And by mere coincidence, the MQA royalty scheme showed up just about the time that the previous patent and royalties expired.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

From an email newsletter by David Elias: Are you streaming audio?  Do you listen to hi-res?  If not, do you want to? TIDAL streams hi-res as MQA Remasters. Their iOS/Android/Windows player decodes to 24/96 without buying any new hardware. Right now there are over 23,000 albums and singles in the TIDAL "Masters" catalog. These usually appear with the letter "M" on the thumbnail.   There is a list online that gets updated twice a week with the current MQA Masters album list on TIDAL. You can download it as a CSV file and open it in Excel anytime. Here is the Forum that created and manages the list. The link to the list is in the first post you see "MQA_List.csv":   https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php   Most remasters are 24/96 or 24/192k but some are CD (44k) remasters (where MQA sound quality improvements are most noticeable to my ears) and some are up to DXD rates (352.8k and 384k). My albums are in this list:

There are some of my all time favorite albums in this list including (random picks) Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Todd Rundgren's Faithful, Talking Heads 77, The Stones Let It Bleed, Yes Fragile, Steve Earle Copperhead Road, Tom Petty (they have just about all of them). Create your own playlists and have at it. Yeah But Does It Really Sound Better? Yeah, it does. PCM never sounded so good to my ears after about 35 years of trying, until I heard MQA encoded masters. I'm talking about CDs (PCM) and other hi-res up to 24/192k. I hated CD sound then I found DSD and never looked back for what sounded good digitally for audio. But everyone was still listened to CD and PCM streaming....Then I found MQA for all of those people hearing CD quality and worse (MP3, AAC) all the time. I had a lot of music recorded for CD since the mid 90's. It needed help. MQA helped it a lot. It could also make my DSD available for listening to people not setup to hear DSD. And it still sounded darn (damn) good. MQA is good for CD, it doesn't have to be hi-res. I don't notice the press talking/writing/blogging much about this but I hear the most improvement on regular CD masters at 16 or 24/44.1k. I have my work to compare first and foremost to my ears here. That's why I had my whole CD collection reencoded as MQA. They all sounded much better that way, more like what I heard when I was recording and mixing them. The MQA "math" also points to its biggest improvements at the lower resolution masters like CD where brickwall filters typically used for studio recording/mastering induce the highest incidence of pre-echo ringing on the results. MQA removes this unnatural edgy artifact from the master so it sounds more like analog when you listen to it, especially if it's acoustic and vocal and not compressed to start with.

[sandyk]

8 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

From an email newsletter by David Elias:

 

Is it the 1st of April already ? 

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

From an email newsletter by David Elias: Are you streaming audio?  Do you listen to hi-res?  If not, do you want to? TIDAL streams hi-res as MQA Remasters. Their iOS/Android/Windows player decodes to 24/96 without buying any new hardware. Right now there are over 23,000 albums and singles in the TIDAL "Masters" catalog. These usually appear with the letter "M" on the thumbnail.   There is a list online that gets updated twice a week with the current MQA Masters album list on TIDAL. You can download it as a CSV file and open it in Excel anytime. Here is the Forum that created and manages the list. The link to the list is in the first post you see "MQA_List.csv":   https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php   Most remasters are 24/96 or 24/192k but some are CD (44k) remasters (where MQA sound quality improvements are most noticeable to my ears) and some are up to DXD rates (352.8k and 384k). My albums are in this list:

There are some of my all time favorite albums in this list including (random picks) Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Todd Rundgren's Faithful, Talking Heads 77, The Stones Let It Bleed, Yes Fragile, Steve Earle Copperhead Road, Tom Petty (they have just about all of them). Create your own playlists and have at it. Yeah But Does It Really Sound Better? Yeah, it does. PCM never sounded so good to my ears after about 35 years of trying, until I heard MQA encoded masters. I'm talking about CDs (PCM) and other hi-res up to 24/192k. I hated CD sound then I found DSD and never looked back for what sounded good digitally for audio. But everyone was still listened to CD and PCM streaming....Then I found MQA for all of those people hearing CD quality and worse (MP3, AAC) all the time. I had a lot of music recorded for CD since the mid 90's. It needed help. MQA helped it a lot. It could also make my DSD available for listening to people not setup to hear DSD. And it still sounded darn (damn) good. MQA is good for CD, it doesn't have to be hi-res. I don't notice the press talking/writing/blogging much about this but I hear the most improvement on regular CD masters at 16 or 24/44.1k. I have my work to compare first and foremost to my ears here. That's why I had my whole CD collection reencoded as MQA. They all sounded much better that way, more like what I heard when I was recording and mixing them. The MQA "math" also points to its biggest improvements at the lower resolution masters like CD where brickwall filters typically used for studio recording/mastering induce the highest incidence of pre-echo ringing on the results. MQA removes this unnatural edgy artifact from the master so it sounds more like analog when you listen to it, especially if it's acoustic and vocal and not compressed to start with.

What’s the date on this?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

5 minutes ago, lucretius said:

What’s the date on this?

Today.🤣

[KeenObserver]

Please don't tell me the line of BS is going to start all over again!

[Currawong]

2 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Please don't tell me the line of BS is going to start all over again!

 

It seems to be rather like ISIS, with pockets of true believers continuing the fight. 

[FredericV]

I would not take any medical advice from members of the MQA group:



Corona in Belgium is now an issue; restaurants, bars & shops are being closed to prevent further spreading. It's a partial lock down to prevent what happened in Italy. Shops are only open during the week, and except for food stores, they will be closed during the weekend.

So Munich cancelled, hifi shops probably closed during the weekend to conform with the government's advice (when they make the most revenue ...) what's next? Also all music events with > 1000 people are forbidden.

The current countermeasures are for a period of one month, but it's normally one of the top months for the hifi business. Export so far does not suffer and shipping companies are more busy as customers buy more from the web. Roads are almost empty today in Belgium.

[FredericV]

Data caps are likely to be removed, now that so many will be forced to work from home.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/03/13/2016239/coronavirus-could-force-isps-to-abandon-data-caps-forever

 

Data caps are designed to make more money. MQA leeches on that principle. But for how long?

 

Quote

There are two simple truths at play here. The first is that any company that sends its subscriber a $150 overage fee because they had to work from home for a month and ran over their data cap is going to be radioactive. The optics on that are so bad that my guess is most companies are quietly setting forgiveness policies in place to prevent it from happening -- though of course it probably will anyway. The second is that these caps are completely unnecessary, existing only as a way to squeeze more money from subscribers. Data caps just don't matter any more. As I pointed out during the whole zero-rating debacle, the very fact that the limits can be lifted at will or certain high-traffic categories (such as a broadband company's own streaming TV channels) can be exempted fundamentally beggars the concept of these caps.

Think about it: If the internet provider can even temporarily lift the data caps, then there is definitively enough capacity for the network to be used without those caps. If there's enough capacity, then why did the caps exist in the first place? Answer: Because they make money.

 

[Archimago]

On 3/10/2020 at 2:25 PM, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

From an email newsletter by David Elias: Are you streaming audio?  Do you listen to hi-res?  If not, do you want to? TIDAL streams hi-res as MQA Remasters. Their iOS/Android/Windows player decodes to 24/96 without buying any new hardware. Right now there are over 23,000 albums and singles in the TIDAL "Masters" catalog. These usually appear with the letter "M" on the thumbnail.   There is a list online that gets updated twice a week with the current MQA Masters album list on TIDAL. You can download it as a CSV file and open it in Excel anytime. Here is the Forum that created and manages the list. The link to the list is in the first post you see "MQA_List.csv":   https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php   Most remasters are 24/96 or 24/192k but some are CD (44k) remasters (where MQA sound quality improvements are most noticeable to my ears) and some are up to DXD rates (352.8k and 384k). My albums are in this list:

There are some of my all time favorite albums in this list including (random picks) Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Todd Rundgren's Faithful, Talking Heads 77, The Stones Let It Bleed, Yes Fragile, Steve Earle Copperhead Road, Tom Petty (they have just about all of them). Create your own playlists and have at it. Yeah But Does It Really Sound Better? Yeah, it does. PCM never sounded so good to my ears after about 35 years of trying, until I heard MQA encoded masters. I'm talking about CDs (PCM) and other hi-res up to 24/192k. I hated CD sound then I found DSD and never looked back for what sounded good digitally for audio. But everyone was still listened to CD and PCM streaming....Then I found MQA for all of those people hearing CD quality and worse (MP3, AAC) all the time. I had a lot of music recorded for CD since the mid 90's. It needed help. MQA helped it a lot. It could also make my DSD available for listening to people not setup to hear DSD. And it still sounded darn (damn) good. MQA is good for CD, it doesn't have to be hi-res. I don't notice the press talking/writing/blogging much about this but I hear the most improvement on regular CD masters at 16 or 24/44.1k. I have my work to compare first and foremost to my ears here. That's why I had my whole CD collection reencoded as MQA. They all sounded much better that way, more like what I heard when I was recording and mixing them. The MQA "math" also points to its biggest improvements at the lower resolution masters like CD where brickwall filters typically used for studio recording/mastering induce the highest incidence of pre-echo ringing on the results. MQA removes this unnatural edgy artifact from the master so it sounds more like analog when you listen to it, especially if it's acoustic and vocal and not compressed to start with.

 

@david elias Yikes. You should be careful about talking like this.

 

I agree that your recordings sound good and thanks for the demo tracks. But without a doubt, the MQA "math" does not work out and in fact, applying MQA to a CD-resolution track lowers the effective resolution. It does not make CD "high res" in any fashion.

 

It's OK to "like" the sound of MQA since it could impart its own signature using their upsampling filters (just like one could prefer the application of different EQ and remastering effots). But let's not confuse this with any actual resolution benefits.

[F208Frank]

I left Tidal because of MQA. I dislike how MQA tries to sell music twice, tries to solve a problem that is not there, tries to get audio gear to be "MQA compliant" and dislike how it complicates things. As I was trying to figure out how to do the first unfold with my Roon and Lumin streamer, something hit me and made me realize I do not have to deal with all that, and switch to Qobuz. I dealth with Tidal/MQA for the longest time since Tidal had a better selection of songs, but Qobuz is now cheaper (not main reason for my switch) and Qobuz now has a better selection compared to before.

 

In my personal opinion, no one should support the implementation of MQA. Disgusting.

[Archimago]

37 minutes ago, F208Frank said:

I left Tidal because of MQA. I dislike how MQA tries to sell music twice, tries to solve a problem that is not there, tries to get audio gear to be "MQA compliant" and dislike how it complicates things. As I was trying to figure out how to do the first unfold with my Roon and Lumin streamer, something hit me and made me realize I do not have to deal with all that, and switch to Qobuz. I dealth with Tidal/MQA for the longest time since Tidal had a better selection of songs, but Qobuz is now cheaper (not main reason for my switch) and Qobuz now has a better selection compared to before.

 

In my personal opinion, no one should support the implementation of MQA. Disgusting.

 

Agreed. It's a theme I think we as audiophiles will revisit in the days ahead. At some point, it all becomes a worthless circle jerk.

 

New formats applied to material that was never "hi-res" to begin with. New remasters that just sound louder. PCM vs. DSD. All sorts of upsampling filters. Revisiting LPs and calling that "hi-res". All of these were ways for companies to recycle and extract as much as possible. At some point audiophiles become exhausted and rightly lose interest. Of them all, MQA was the most egregious and lacked any face value except for those who drank the Kool-Aid.

 

I suspect MQA will be seen in the days ahead as the biggest waste of time and money for audiophiles. An enduring example of how the purely subjective audiophile writers got it wrong when they don't take the time to confirm and show a bit of discretion when dealing with Industry and placing faith in those who have interests in promoting something "better" for the sake of keeping the recycling going.

 

Take care folks... Keep healthy...

 

Enjoy the music!

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

New formats applied to material that was never "hi-res" to begin with. New remasters that just sound louder. PCM vs. DSD. All sorts of upsampling filters. Revisiting LPs and calling that "hi-res". All of these were ways for companies to recycle and extract as much as possible. At some point audiophiles become exhausted and rightly lose interest. Of them all, MQA was the most egregious and lacked any face value except for those who drank the Kool-Aid.

 

I agree with most of what you wrote but not all of this. For a lot of remasters, including from  old tapes-LP master tapes, the hi-res and DSD versions do sound better than the older versions and show a real intent to produce a better version.

 

The problem is that a lot of other remasters don't-they actually sound worse than previous versions and many of the labels seem only to be in it for the money. 

 

As audiophiles, we've probably all been burnt by such versions and it makes us less likely to buy more newer versions. Just another example of the labels shooting themselves in the foot b/c of greed. 

[alekc]

Keep in mind that services like Qobuz are not yet available in all regions/markets where Tidal is. So sometimes there is no real choice if you consider only streaming services as source of your music.

[F208Frank]

Fair enough, sorry did not realize that.