MQA is Vaporware

[bogi]

This is nice post:

 

[UkPhil]

@The Computer Audiophile

We seem to have MQA’s marketing machine rolling again on the back catalogue release from Warner’s,  basically bit depth and sample rate is a thing of the past welcome the new era of masters 

 

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/opinions/the-original-is-the-best?fbclid=IwAR2ZwJQexdff4iLTVep-SkhO2sgmifTQdPbAP-G4d8m1f0vjT-UFIx0WyP4

[KeenObserver]

“There’s no problem in principle using lots of data, but it is unethical to advocate inefficiency born of lack of understanding.”  

 

My God!  Bob Stuart is preaching ethics?

[KeenObserver]

"With the arrival of MQA, the provenance of the master would be the better standard for the industry to promote – not sample rate or bit depth. As demonstrated by TIDAL Masters, MQA ensures that the Original is the Best."

 

Yes!  Do not waste your time seeking Hi-Rez music! MQA has spent millions of hours "authenticating" the Original!

 

Seriously.  Are there people that actually believe the MQA BS?

[FredericV]

38 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

@The Computer Audiophile

basically bit depth and sample rate is a thing of the past welcome the new era of masters

Google "why bose does not publish specs"

You do not want people to figure out MQA is at best 17/96 + upsampling or just 15/44.1 in case of MQA CD. Just hide the actual specifications of the file, to hide the truth.
 

[Mayfair]

24 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

@The Computer Audiophile

We seem to have MQA’s marketing machine rolling again on the back catalogue release from Warner’s,  basically bit depth and sample rate is a thing of the past welcome the new era of masters 

 

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/opinions/the-original-is-the-best?fbclid=IwAR2ZwJQexdff4iLTVep-SkhO2sgmifTQdPbAP-G4d8m1f0vjT-UFIx0WyP4

I wondered who else could have come up with the copy describing the technical wonders of Eudora Record's deployment of "MQA-CD".

“TUHU” FIRST MQA-CD RELEASE ON EUDORA RECORDS (positive-feedback.com)

[KeenObserver]

Does anybody think that recording studios record at less than the maximum bit rate available to them?

Does anyone think that is inefficient?

Has FLAC suddenly disappeared?

[daverich4]

On 12/8/2020 at 10:19 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

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. 

Chris, you seem to have “inside the industry” information that some of the rest of us don’t have access to. Do you actually know that none of the studios are archiving in MQA or does it just seem logical that they aren’t?

[KeenObserver]

Provenance is important! "Warner gave us a million files from their catalog.  We threw them in the hopper and voila, out came authenticated MQA files. And of course they sound better, because, well, they're MQA!

[KeenObserver]

The studios themselves have stated that MQA is not an archiving format.  Nobody is going to archive their files on a lossy format.

[KeenObserver]

"MQA was designed with the music industry in mind. "

 

As Jbara says MQA was designed with the music industry in mind.

 

It certainly was not designed with the music consumer in mind.

[FredericV]

27 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

The studios themselves have stated that MQA is not an archiving format.  Nobody is going to archive their files on a lossy format.

 

No studio will use a lossy PCM format as editing format, as further editing a lossy format would degrade the quality. The best in class will most likely use DXD and 384 Khz PCM, and then deliver the files in downsampled PCM and MQA versions, e.g. 2L.no

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/hi-res-24bit-352-8khz-2l-music.871820/

DXD and 384 rates can capture all audio data from any instrument when using microphones with enough bandwidth.

Furthermore you want non destructive audio editing. As MQA reduces entropy, it is not suited for this task. Therefore it will never be an archival format, but a last mile format. MQA cannot encode the full spectrum of certain instruments (e.g. cymbals), while DXD can contain that audio data, and MQA can't.

Instruments which go beyond MQA's analog 48 Khz max, are easy to find.

MQA cannot encode the whole spectrum, so anything at the right side of this red area cannot be encoded by MQA as they band limit everything to 17/96

[The Computer Audiophile]

28 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

Chris, you seem to have “inside the industry” information that some of the rest of us don’t have access to. Do you actually know that none of the studios are archiving in MQA or does it just seem logical that they aren’t?

Yes, I have spoken to “studios” and “labels” who say they’ll never use MQA as an archival format. 

Has anyone got a straight answer from Morten at 2L if he plans to archive in MQA and delete his original masters? That would be a true test of what he thinks. I should’ve asked him when MQA took us to dinner in Munich several years ago. 

 

 

 

 

 

19 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

"MQA was designed with the music industry in mind. "

 

As Jbara says MQA was designed with the music industry in mind.

 

It certainly was not designed with the music consumer in mind.

He said the quiet part out loud. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

49 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

"With the arrival of MQA, the provenance of the master would be the better standard for the industry to promote – not sample rate or bit depth. As demonstrated by TIDAL Masters, MQA ensures that the Original is the Best."

 

Yes!  Do not waste your time seeking Hi-Rez music! MQA has spent millions of hours "authenticating" the Original!

 

Seriously.  Are there people that actually believe the MQA BS?

Perhaps the ultra woke crowd will ask Bob to remove the name Master from MQA, given his new found respect for ethics. Or, maybe that hits too close to home given the MQA investors. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, UkPhil said:

@The Computer Audiophile

We seem to have MQA’s marketing machine rolling again on the back catalogue release from Warner’s,  basically bit depth and sample rate is a thing of the past welcome the new era of masters 

 

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/opinions/the-original-is-the-best?fbclid=IwAR2ZwJQexdff4iLTVep-SkhO2sgmifTQdPbAP-G4d8m1f0vjT-UFIx0WyP4

Wow! I need to put on my boots, the BS is just too deep. Mike Jbara is classic for the self defeating argument / arguing against a previous point with a subsequent statement. He has done it again in spectacular fashion. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I just tweeted the question to Morten. I hope he answers honestly. 
 

 

[KeenObserver]

25 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Wow! I need to put on my boots, the BS is just too deep. Mike Jbara is classic for the self defeating argument / arguing against a previous point with a subsequent statement. He has done it again in spectacular fashion. 

 

Maybe his move to MQA was like the European Royals intermarrying to cement relationships. It doesn't seem to be for his intellectual abilities. Maybe it was for his ethical standards.

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, FredericV said:

You do not want people to figure out MQA is at best 17/96 + upsampling or just 15/44.1 in case of MQA CD. Just hide the actual specifications of the file, to hide the truth.

 

I see it posted often that the best is 17/96 (for 24 bit MQA). But why not 19/96 -- 15 bits from the 16 most significant bits + 4 bits from the 8 least significant bits?  Otherwise, how could we get 15/44.1 MQA-CD from a truncated 24 bit MQA file?

[lucretius]

According to Bob Stuart, “if we know the file is only for MQA-CD, then the encoder uses different optimisations to squeeze even more from the CD”.  Is this where we get the 15 bit PCM + 1 bit control stream from?  Contrast this to the case where MQA-CD is derived by truncating 24 bit MQA – in this case, could the actual music be limited to 13 bits?

 

If MQA-CD comes in both 15 bit and 13 bit versions, how is the unsuspecting consumer to know which version he has?

[The Computer Audiophile]

All of these questions are so easily answered by BS and his team. However, they have much to hide, so there’s no interest in revealing basic details. 

[lucretius]

Since playback of MQA-CD involves no unfolding, shouldn't playback with an MQA decoder sound worse (due to leaky filters) than playback without an MQA decoder (if there is any audible difference)?

[MikeyFresh]

6 hours ago, daverich4 said:

Do you actually know that none of the studios are archiving in MQA or does it just seem logical that they aren’t?

One might also ask, do you actually know that they are, or does it seem logical that they are?

[FredericV]

8 hours ago, lucretius said:

Since playback of MQA-CD involves no unfolding, shouldn't playback with an MQA decoder sound worse (due to leaky filters) than playback without an MQA decoder (if there is any audible difference)?

I will soon grab the PCM output of an MQA decoder, and compare three 16/44.1 wave files:

1. the original redbook
2. undecoded MQA CD
3. decoded MQA CD

Thanks to mqascan I can easily check which files are now MQA.

[daverich4]

6 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

One might also ask, do you actually know that they are, or does it seem logical that they are?

I have absolutely no idea if they are or not. My question was directed at someone within the industry who I thought might have actual knowledge of the subject, not you. 

[FredericV]

I found an ideal test: Christina Pluhar's album "Los Pajaros Perdidos", which I heard on Belgian's classical radio Klara first (just plain FM on a volvo dynaudio premium sound system), then I found it on Tidal in redbook, then the redbook was replaced with MQA-CD.

So here's an old version vs the current version, with the original flac file sizes:

31298978 Caballo-Viejo-redbook.flac

31601298 Caballo-Viejo-MQA.flac

It's track 12 in the album:
 

The tracks starts with a quiet acoustic instrument, and the old redbook version has more ambiance compared to the undecoded MQA. It's more subtle. Then the repetitive percussive elements kick in, which dominate the track, and they are more harsh in MQA. Once again we hear the shortening of the high frequency elements, as if they have been sharpened.

But around 03:30 when the track becomes more complex, the undecoded version is more aggressive to my ears and less musical.

Saying the undecoded MQA-CD version is crippled may be far fetched, but I cannot leave that version in my collection of reference tracks which I would play on high-end hifi shows such as Munich. But for sure MQA CD is a downgrade compared to redbook. Claiming MQA-CD in any form is better than redbook is clearly another marketing lie.

Next up is doing the test with Caballo-Viejo-MQA.flac MQA decoded to a third file, and comparing the three versions.

Room used for the test is the system with the lustre:

https://amphion.fi/enjoy/products-home-audio/krypton-floorstanding-loudspeaker/

Current DAC used for this test is Sonnet Morpheus without the MQA module (picture shows a Mytek)
Power amp is now a Vitus SS025 , was a Vitus RI-100 in the past