MQA is Vaporware

[The Computer Audiophile]

[Cebolla]

5 hours ago, FredericV said:

In a nutshell, if an MQA output stream is only 16 bits (MQA CD, 16 bit MQA, truncated 24 bit to 16 bit files), origami is NOT possible, as the crypto DRM part to do the unfold is not being stored, as it is normally the bottom 8 bits of a 24 bit MQA file.

This is what I already figured out by doing my experiments, and now Bob confirms this.

Note that 24 bit MQA does not mean actual 24 bit audio data, as it allocates several bits to do origami, and it also has a bit with a metadata stream stored, so MQA licensed products can recognize it's MQA.

 

With just the LSB being used for MQA encoding (cannot contain hi-res - just used to set the blue light, plus gets the MQA renderer to upsample as necessary up to the bogus indicated original sample rate & apply the indicated MQA filter), the implication is that MQA-CD is actually 15 bits (44.1kHz only), rather than the 13 bits sometimes mentioned.

[Rexp]

21 hours ago, dmackta said:

 

Or....https://open.qobuz.com/album/0075596077460

If Qobuz matched Tidal pricing here in Malaysia, I'd switch immediately. 

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, Cebolla said:

 

With just the LSB being used for MQA encoding (cannot contain hi-res - just used to set the blue light, plus gets the MQA renderer to upsample as necessary up to the bogus indicated original sample rate & apply the indicated MQA filter), the implication is that MQA-CD is actually 15 bits (44.1kHz only), rather than the 13 bits sometimes mentioned.

 

According to the patent diagram, the 0-24kHz is mapped to the 13 MSB bits .  The next 3 bits are then used to trigger the blue light and selection of the MQA filter, etc.*  That would make MQA-CD 13 bits -- not just 13 bits but 13 bit playback with a leaky filter.  [For 24 bit MQA, HF -- 24-48kHz -- seems to be packed into the 4 LSB bits (bit 21 to bit 24).]

 

*Further, more than 1 bit is needed to indicate authentication, filter selection and, possibly, sample rate.  Also, note that the 8 LSB bits in a 24 bit MQA file are not involved in the MQA authentication process -- the file will still authenticate when those bits are dropped.

 

 

[UkPhil]

15 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

According to the patent diagram, the 0-24kHz is mapped to the 13 MSB bits .  The next 3 bits are then used to trigger the blue light and selection of the MQA filter, etc.*  That would make MQA-CD 13 bits -- not just 13 bits but 13 bit playback with a leaky filter.  [For 24 bit MQA, HF -- 24-48kHz -- seems to be packed into the 4 LSB bits (bit 21 to bit 24).]

 

*Further, more than 1 bit is needed to indicate, authentication, filter selection and, possibly, sample rate.

 

 

Would this be the concept to hide all the upsamping they were pushing on CD, with these being just straight 16bit they don’t need any of that craziness so wouldn’t 15bit be a truer figure even so it’s still reducing the audio capability regardless 

[lucretius]

7 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

Would this be the concept to hide all the upsamping they were pushing on CD, with these being just straight 16bit they don’t need any of that craziness so wouldn’t 15bit be a truer figure even so it’s still reducing the audio capability regardless 

 

More than 1 bit is needed to indicate authentication, filter selection and, possibly, sample rate.  (The upsampling scheme for 24 bit MQA appears hidden in LSB bits 17 to 20.)

[The Computer Audiophile]

It really blows my mind that audiophiles are onboard with MQA. It has zero to do with sound quality. If MQA was truly better, the content owners would be archiving content in MQA as fast as possible. The fact that none of them will archive a single album in MQA should be all that one needs to know. 

 

Think about it. MQA is all about control and money. The labels want control of the Crown Jewels and as for profit companies they want more money (nothing wrong with either). MQA enables both of these because the MQA files released are far less than the Crown Jewels and the labels are part owners of MQA. The labels can't lose with MQA. If the labels can't lose, how can any audiophile think he can win?

 

With Meridian losing tens of millions of dollars it was time to mine the intellectual property for money. MQA was just sitting there on the shelf. Clearly a solution for content owners, not consumers. That's what Bob invents. Solutions for content owners. How do I know this? Because people can't keep secrets. People on the inside leak information like a sieve, especially when they know lies are being told and something isn't right about the situation. 

 

All the companies that jumped onboard with MQA DACs, will now be struggling to find other ways to differentiate themselves because MQA homogenizes digital playback in a mediocre way. Forced leaky filters leaves one less point of differentiation for HiFi manufacturers. 

 

P.S. If people have paid attention to the MQA employees talk over the years, they've heard MQA Ltd say the quiet parts out loud many times. It's hard to keep a lie contained when one speaks so much. 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It really blows my mind that audiophiles are onboard with MQA

 

Is there anything audiophile are not onboard with?

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

Is there anything audiophile are not onboard with?

Great question. As a group, audiophiles have famously been anti-DSP. Now, many are suddenly in favor of DSP that can't be undone (MQA). It's craziness. 

[firedog]

2 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Actually it’s unfolded to 88.2/24 bit. Tested with Tracy Chapman album on Roon.

 

Again, please go back and figure out how MQA works. You keep participating here without understanding the basics. You are welcome to participate, but it would be more useful if you didn't require the rest of us to continually correct basic lack of knowldedge.

TC was recorded in 1987 and labelled DDD, so not in hi-res. AFAIK, recorded digitally for CD and never around in a hi-res remaster: So either your setup is set to upsample without your knowledge, or MQA is using a non "authentic" hi-res master (that can only be an upsample) that they can then unfold to fake 24/88 (b/c there is no true 24.88 MQA).

[mocenigo]

40 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Great question. As a group, audiophiles have famously been anti-DSP. Now, many are suddenly in favor of DSP that can't be undone (MQA). It's craziness. 

Indeed! Your comment deserves a standing ovation!

[Confused]

43 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It really blows my mind that audiophiles are onboard with MQA. It has zero to do with sound quality. If MQA was truly better, the content owners would be archiving content in MQA as fast as possible. The fact that none of them will archive a single album in MQA should be all that one needs to know. 

 

Think about it. MQA is all about control and money. The labels want control of the Crown Jewels and as for profit companies they want more money (nothing wrong with either). MQA enables both of these because the MQA files released are far less than the Crown Jewels and the labels are part owners of MQA. The labels can't lose with MQA. If the labels can't lose, how can any audiophile think he can win?

 

With Meridian losing tens of millions of dollars it was time to mine the intellectual property for money. MQA was just sitting there on the shelf. Clearly a solution for content owners, not consumers. That's what Bob invents. Solutions for content owners. How do I know this? Because people can't keep secrets. People on the inside leak information like a sieve, especially when they know lies are being told and something isn't right about the situation. 

 

All the companies that jumped onboard with MQA DACs, will now be struggling to find other ways to differentiate themselves because MQA homogenizes digital playback in a mediocre way. Forced leaky filters leaves one less point of differentiation for HiFi manufacturers. 

 

P.S. If people have paid attention to the MQA employees talk over the years, they've heard MQA Ltd say the quiet parts out loud many times. It's hard to keep a lie contained when one speaks so much. 

The thing is, you can try doing a few internet searches re MQA, and the vast majority of results are positive.

 

OK - You can deliberately look for the bad stuff, say by doing a search on "is MQA bad", and you'll find some links for content critical of MQA, it is out there.  But do a general search on say MQA sound quality, and the vast majority of links will be to content that is incredibly positive about MQA.  Fake news, mis-selling, poor journalism just repeating press release content, call it what you will, but there is an awful lot of it out there.

 

Not everyone is fanatical enough to fully check the facts, and I think the end result is that a lot of people are being thoroughly, but perhaps understandably , mislead.

[R1200CL]

26 minutes ago, firedog said:

TC was recorded in 1987 and labelled DDD, so not in hi-res. AFAIK, recorded digitally for CD and never around in a hi-res remaster: So either your setup is set to upsample without your knowledge, or MQA is using a non "authentic" hi-res master (that can only be an upsample) that they can then unfold to fake 24/88 (b/c there is no true 24.88 MQA).

I was not expecting it to unfold as it’s original 16 bit. 
So explain this:

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, R1200CL said:

I was not expecting it to unfold as it’s original 16 bit. 
So explain this:

 

That's probably a question for the Roon team. 

[R1200CL]

44 minutes ago, firedog said:

Again, please go back and figure out how MQA works.

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/origami/ThereAndBack.html
 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/bits/Stacking.html

 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/cool/bitfreezing.html
 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/intoshape/NoiseShapingHighRez.html

 

Let me know if you find any errors or misleading information in these articles. 

 

[yahooboy]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

Again, please go back and figure out how MQA works. You keep participating here without understanding the basics. You are welcome to participate, but it would be more useful if you didn't require the rest of us to continually correct basic lack of knowldedge.

TC was recorded in 1987 and labelled DDD, so not in hi-res. AFAIK, recorded digitally for CD and never around in a hi-res remaster: So either your setup is set to upsample without your knowledge, or MQA is using a non "authentic" hi-res master (that can only be an upsample) that they can then unfold to fake 24/88 (b/c there is no true 24.88 MQA).

Well You have to remember that MQA has MAGIC they took a Madonna Album recorded in 14 bit, mixed it on an analog mixer digitized it in 24 bit. Hey presto we have a 24 bit master🤮

[KeenObserver]

35 minutes ago, Confused said:

The thing is, you can try doing a few internet searches re MQA, and the vast majority of results are positive.

 

OK - You can deliberately look for the bad stuff, say by doing a search on "is MQA bad", and you'll find some links for content critical of MQA, it is out there.  But do a general search on say MQA sound quality, and the vast majority of links will be to content that is incredibly positive about MQA.  Fake news, mis-selling, poor journalism just repeating press release content, call it what you will, but there is an awful lot of it out there.

 

Not everyone is fanatical enough to fully check the facts, and I think the end result is that a lot of people are being thoroughly, but perhaps understandably , mislead.

It is how marketing and the internet work now.

When a product is put out there marketing companies use AI computer robots to generate comments, reviews,and influential "reports".

If you understand how search engine algorithms work you can flood the search engine with specific search requests which prompt the search engine to respond in a certain way. A factor in search engine algorithms is the number of search requests.

You might also see search engines in a darker light.

[KeenObserver]

15 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/origami/ThereAndBack.html
 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/bits/Stacking.html

 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/cool/bitfreezing.html
 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/intoshape/NoiseShapingHighRez.html

 

Let me know if you find any errors or misleading information in these articles. 

 

 

Is Tidal popular in Norway?

[firedog]

43 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

I was not expecting it to unfold as it’s original 16 bit. 
So explain this:

 

My guess is there's some non audio code in the MQA file where it's mistakenly labeled 24/88. You can't take a file that's starts out as  16/44 and unfold it to high res. You can only get there if you upsample at some point in the process. 

It can't be authenticated as 44.1 (which we know it is) and also "decoded" to 88.2. Maybe there's an error in the data in the file telling Roon to "core decode" it. But that is "unfolding", so it makes no sense. I think it's just some kind of labelling error. 

[firedog]

18 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/origami/ThereAndBack.html
 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/bits/Stacking.html

 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/cool/bitfreezing.html
 

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/MQA/intoshape/NoiseShapingHighRez.html

 

Let me know if you find any errors or misleading information in these articles. 

 

Better idea: let us know when you've read the material and are sure you understand it.

[Confused]

11 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Watch out for those blue lights:

 

 

My Mutec kit has a whole row of blue lights on it.  Time for a party maybe?

[PeterSt]

Just saying (from the link):

 

Streaming 16b MQA

Recently, as we have rolled out many more MQA files sourced from 44.1 kHz 16b masters – where we expect the MQA file to be 16b – this FLAC mishandling occasionally happened while adding seek tables and some listeners have been confused about the bit-depth indication on their players.

However, in this case, whether the streamed FLAC is 16b or 24b, the audio is identical – as we know from the MQA indicator.

 

This is BS because it is not about confusion between 24b and 16b, It is about RBCD 16/44.1 vs MQA 16/44.1, the latteer replacing the former.

Bob, you are sh*tting on us.

Talking about mishandling - you deserve some spanking.

 

Bob, Bob, Bob, didn't you notice ?

 

[Racerxnet]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

It really blows my mind that audiophiles are onboard with MQA.

 

Don't bother me with the facts.

 

 

 

 

I've already made my mind up!

[bogi]

1 hour ago, R1200CL said:

I was not expecting it to unfold as it’s original 16 bit. 
So explain this:

 

 

This is 4x unfold of 44.1k/16bit to 352.8k/48bit

[R1200CL]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

 

Is Tidal popular in Norway?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_(service) ( a Norwegian subscription service )
 

As you probably know, these numbers is hard get. Even for a Norwegian😀. Qobuz isn’t officially supported. I think Swedish Spotify is quite popular. Is there any particular reason for asking me such a question?