KeenObserver Posted September 10, 2020 Share Posted September 10, 2020 The most fervent promoters of green marker back in the day are the most fervent promoters of MQA today. Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
daverich4 Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 This is old and might even have been posted in this thread in the past but it’s still relevant... https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music Currawong 1 Link to comment
MikeyFresh Posted September 13, 2020 Share Posted September 13, 2020 39 minutes ago, daverich4 said: This is old and might even have been posted in this thread in the past but it’s still relevant... https://www.linn.co.uk/blog/mqa-is-bad-for-music It was posted here previously, but it bears repeating as it's just as true and relevant today as it ever was. Though the MQA performance claims are dubious/specious at best, this blog post illustrates the crux of the matter. Boycott HDtracks Boycott Lenbrook Boycott Warner Music Group Link to comment
UkPhil Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 More plaudits for Bob https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/bob-stuart-royal-academy-of-engineering-award Link to comment
Popular Post KeenObserver Posted September 14, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted September 14, 2020 He should be given the Prince Andrew award for what he's trying to give the music consumer. Currawong, lucretius, Confused and 2 others 5 Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
Popular Post lucretius Posted September 15, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted September 15, 2020 20 hours ago, UkPhil said: More plaudits for Bob https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/bob-stuart-royal-academy-of-engineering-award Sadly, this cheapens the prize for previous and future recipients. MikeyFresh and botrytis 2 mQa is dead! Link to comment
John Dyson Posted September 15, 2020 Share Posted September 15, 2020 1 hour ago, lucretius said: Sadly, this cheapens the prize for previous and future recipients. In the past, other awards have been cheapened for doing NOTHING, and the self-congratulation prices in various industries (movie, publishing) have also been totally devalued. When I worked in industry, I saw a lot of true innovation, and people seldom get acknowledgement. Well, once in a while people would get a $200-$1k prize from a company for a truly innovative patent, but even stupid patents get the same prize. (I am a party to some really dumb patents, but was pushed into getting them by office politics. They meant so little to me, I don't even remember how many actually got past scrutiny -- because they were TOTALLY bogus. If I was an employee instead of long term contractor, I would have gotten a 'prize' also.) There is just too much public acknowledgement for being mediocre, but true innovation is so often ignored because of political or PR reasons. Public prizes: mostly, bah Humbug. A few acknowledgements ARE clean/accurate/worthy, but devalued. John Currawong 1 Link to comment
Popular Post FredericV Posted September 15, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted September 15, 2020 On 9/14/2020 at 2:28 PM, UkPhil said: More plaudits for Bob https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/bob-stuart-royal-academy-of-engineering-award The article has a misleading writing style, as it tries to distinguish MQA from lossy formats, while being a lossy format. Quote Unlike lossy coding (which discards up to 90% of audible information) and unlike conventional digital (which is inefficient for high resolution recordings) MQA uses a unique folding technique that efficiently packs complete information into the recording. MQA is not packing the complete information, and it cannot encode but up to the first octave above redbook. It can't pack the second or third octave above redbook's frequency range. It cannot encode any analog signal above 48 Khz in case of multiples of 48K as input rate , as any input sample rate is always decimated by MQA's encoder to 17/96 at best, and this band limits MQA to 48 Khz in the analog domain at best. To bring back original resolution, they merely use upsampling in the renderer with a fake resolution indication towards consumers. 100 Khz microphones exist, and MQA cannot reproduce the full spectrum these microphones can capture: https://www.edn.com/audio-microphones-hear-up-to-100-khz/ and instruments which require more bandwidth than what MQA can provide: http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm Furthermore MQA is lossy, and not more efficient than flac with entropy optimizations. Nikhil, lucretius and botrytis 2 1 Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing. Link to comment
Popular Post FredericV Posted September 15, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted September 15, 2020 MQA will fail at the signals indicated with red, it cannot fully reproduce them: botrytis, troubleahead and MikeyFresh 2 1 Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing. Link to comment
sandyk Posted September 15, 2020 Share Posted September 15, 2020 41 minutes ago, FredericV said: MQA will fail at the signals indicated with red, it cannot fully reproduce them: You are of course absolutely correct, however many qualified people refuse to accept that they even matter due to current widely accepted knowledge about the limits of human hearing. 😟 How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file. PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020 Link to comment
UkPhil Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 Do you think hardware manufacturers are proactively looking at adding MQA into their new product or is the audiophile consumer asking for it still so putting pressure on them to include it anyway, It's now 2020 and we still see reputable manufacture's integrating MQA into their new products, as seen in KEFs refresh of the LS50 speaker ? https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/kef-ls50-wireless-ii Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 45 minutes ago, UkPhil said: Do you think hardware manufacturers are proactively looking at adding MQA into their new product or is the audiophile consumer asking for it still so putting pressure on them to include it anyway, It's now 2020 and we still see reputable manufacture's integrating MQA into their new products, as seen in KEFs refresh of the LS50 speaker ? https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/kef-ls50-wireless-ii The KEF speakers likely use a module from StreamUnlimited that offers MQA support in addition to DLNA, Roon Ready, AirPlay, Chromecast, etc... It’s just a checkbox KEF selected and didn’t need to develop anything itself. UkPhil 1 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
bambadoo Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 Dont understand much spanish but it seems as a 30minutes rant over MQA. Possible to add texting and to translate comments to english. Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 25 minutes ago, Odd Magnus Bjerkvik said: Dont understand much spanish but it seems as a 30minutes rant over MQA. Possible to add texting and to translate comments to english. It's possible to enable closed captioning and auto translation to many languages. It works OK. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
Popular Post dmackta Posted September 23, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted September 23, 2020 1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said: It's possible to enable closed captioning and auto translation to many languages. It works OK. MQA works OK? 😇 lucretius and The Computer Audiophile 2 Link to comment
FredericV Posted September 26, 2020 Share Posted September 26, 2020 On 9/23/2020 at 12:00 PM, The Computer Audiophile said: The KEF speakers likely use a module from StreamUnlimited that offers MQA support in addition to DLNA, Roon Ready, AirPlay, Chromecast, etc... It’s just a checkbox KEF selected and didn’t need to develop anything itself. They were not far from our room at Munich 2017. Consumers were not allowed to enter their booth. Usually with these OEM's you pay for every checkbox. I had the chance to ask some in depth questions, and they are more oriented to features than research sound quality (e.g. custom kernels and linux OS tuning for software defined sound quality, is not what they offer). Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing. Link to comment
KeenObserver Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 I have noticed that some people are reporting that " Hi Rez" masters being supplied to streamers and downloading services by some of the studios are MQA mastered. They are supposedly being distributed without informing the consumer. Can anyone confirm this? Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 Just now, KeenObserver said: I have noticed that some people are reporting that " Hi Rez" masters being supplied to streamers and downloading services by some of the studios are MQA mastered. They are supposedly being distributed without informing the consumer. Can anyone confirm this? This has been the case with 2L. I haven't seen anything new, but can test if anyone has an idea which albums to test. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
KeenObserver Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 I'm in the middle of a major changeover. I don't stream and haven't downloaded in a while. I imagine if such is the case, then it is probably the most recent additions to the services catalogues. I'll see if I can track down anything. Seems like a backdoor way of initiating DRM and taking control of the mastering business. Has the smell of the Sony rootkit fiasco. Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 45 minutes ago, KeenObserver said: I'm in the middle of a major changeover. I don't stream and haven't downloaded in a while. I imagine if such is the case, then it is probably the most recent additions to the services catalogues. I'll see if I can track down anything. Seems like a backdoor way of initiating DRM and taking control of the mastering business. Has the smell of the Sony rootkit fiasco. I know this is a glass half empty view, but this could get bad if the labels seed the services with MQA material and hardware manufacturers no longer implement it. Leave everyone with a half baked listening experience. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
KeenObserver Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 Looking at past history of the labels, I wouldn't put it past them to try and slip this in. It slips in DRM and gives them a chance down the road to sell their library over again. They'll claim their MQA versions are a corrupted, lossy version. I've made inquiries as to whether the labels are supplying MQA masters and the end consumer is unaware. Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 3 minutes ago, KeenObserver said: Looking at past history of the labels, I wouldn't put it past them to try and slip this in. It slips in DRM and gives them a chance down the road to sell their library over again. They'll claim their MQA versions are a corrupted, lossy version. I've made inquiries as to whether the labels are supplying MQA masters and the end consumer is unaware. Also people should keep in mind that MQA was sold to the labels as a single deliverable for all outlets. One MQA file delivered to all the streaming services etc... In addition, labels would rather streamline things and provide an MQA file everywhere rather than 44.1, 96, 192 files to Qobuz and MQA to Tidal etc... People take the path of least resistance. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
KeenObserver Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 People could be unaware that they are playing a corrupted music file. The labels are not going to archive their libraries in MQA, so they are still going to have "Hi Rez" archives. The way the labels see it: if they sell an uncorrupted version now, they won't be able to sell an "uncorrupted" version in the future. Or at least won't be able to dangle that carrot in front of the music consumer. Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
KeenObserver Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 This whole MQA thing is tiresome. But it is something that we need to be aware of. Otherwise, we will all be paying for it down the road. When the financials come out next month perhaps we will get a better idea if the underwriters are continuing to fund this scheme. If they are still underwriting it after the losses they have incurred, they must expect to make substantial profits in the future and take absolute control of the music business. All at the expense of the music consumer. Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
992Sam Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 is it me, or does an MQA version of a piece just sound the same as the original piece but maybe with a "loudness" button pushed, or a V shaped EQ? I was listening to a recording of Steely Dans "Hey Nineteen" in both 44.1/16 and MQA ... and the MQA just sounded like the loudness button was activated. troubleahead 1 McIntosh MC462 Amplifier, McIntosh C1100 Pre-Amp, Accuphase DP-560 SACD player, dCS Rossini DAC, dCS Rossini Clock, McIntosh XR50 speakers, SolidSteel HF-2 rack and Speaker Stands, Gutwire 4-Bar power conditioner, Gutwire SV12 power cable (amp), Gutwire B10 power cables,, McIntosh XLR, Digital and Speaker Cable. Video of my system on Youtube Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now