MQA is Vaporware

[bogi]

4 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

So those are NOT MQA-CD tracks but 24bit MQAs

yes

 

8 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

That is what made me doing further investigation...

I understand.

 

6 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

They want to fool us.

yes and not only in this case

[UkPhil]

41 minutes ago, bogi said:

yes

 

I understand.

 

yes and not only in this case

More confusion for the punter to wade through, most people haven’t got a chance in this, that’s why the MQA strap line for selling this technology is “just listen” , I always smell a rat when that is said to be honest 

[IT Freak]

Gaëlle Solal : Tuhu : "MQA-CD" so it should be 16bit :

Buy the flacs and decompress them to WAV.

Play it bitperfectly to the mqa dac showing "MQA", sample rate 352.8kHz AND studio dot.
So you know it's a bitperfect copy. When playing notice this :

(this is the WAV so 44.1kHz is shown; this 'unfolds' to 352.8kHz)
 

Look at Bits per Sample : 24
Bitrate is 2117kbps (a cd is only 1,411 Kbps)...

Half-way the WAV file : (PCM stream) just to be 100% certain this IS a 24bit PCM



NO zeroes so this is a GENUINE 24bit PCM so this IS a 24bit MQA and NOT a 16bit MQA-CD
(well maybe one zero here and there lol)

In short :

1. They promote MQA-CD which is by definition a 16bit format.
2. They promote it by using an album from Eudora records that is 24bit.

So they lie !

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

So they lie !

It's just what they do. Bob Stuart, Mike Jbara, and Ken Forsythe have been at it for years. 

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, IT Freak said:

No 16bit MQA IS encoded like I said.

I decompressed several 16bit MQA's that were packed in 24bit FLACS to 24bit WAVs and every single one decoded like this :
xx xx 00 xx xx 00 xx xx 00 (*)

Every 24bit MQA in 24bit FLACS decoded to 24bit WAVs like thise  
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

These "MQA-CDs" from Eudora should be 16 bit as they call them MQA-CDs and they should also decode like that (*). Well they DON'T. They decode as
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx which proves those are not MQA-CDs but 24bit ones. 

P.S. The 24bit WAV plays fully decoded to my MQA-DAC (MQA symbol etc)
The 16bit WAV (where every 3rd byte is chopped off) as well (same)
(but it sounds worse according to me; if it had no effect at all then why all the origami stuff in the first place ? Then one could make ALL MQA's 16bit and make them half the size)

I threw both MQA's 24bit and 16bit one into the MQATagRenamer app and both were marked "completed" and put in a folder named "MQA" just below it with the extension changed from flac to mqa.flac.
So my job was bitperfect !

Your turn.

 

It's difficult to parse what you say.  For example, 16 bit MQA files are 16 bit files -- whose packing them into 24 bit FLAC files? OTH, are you trying to say that the 24 bit MQA files contained in a 24 bit FLAC file are really padded 16 bit files?

[The Computer Audiophile]

16 minutes ago, UkPhil said:

More confusion for the punter to wade through, most people haven’t got a chance in this

True, but also remember this, Ken Forsythe told me that audiophiles and the general public don't really matter to MQA when it comes to its success or failure. Sure it helps to get off the ground, but the big labels are what really matters. 

[DuckToller]

11 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

In short :

1. They promote MQA-CD which is by definition a 16bit format.
2. They promote it by using an album from Eudora records that is 24bit.

So they lie !

I understand that you seem to be correct in your findings, but I am struggling a bit with a senseful interpretation of these results.
You have MQA-CD files that you've decoded with the shown result!
Did you rip & decode them personally from an physical existing MQA-CD or did you dl MQA CD files from a source that sells them as MQA-CD online? Which source (they?)?
Just asking to avoid misinterpretation and exclude external factors responsible for your findings ...

 

[IT Freak]

13 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

I understand that you seem to be correct in your findings, but I am struggling a bit with a senseful interpretation of these results.
You have MQA-CD files that you've decoded with the shown result!
Did you rip & decode them personally from an physical existing MQA-CD or did you dl MQA CD files from a source that sells them as MQA-CD online? Which source (they?)?
Just asking to avoid misinterpretation and exclude external factors responsible for your findings ...

 

Here is the source ... from MQA themselves... all bla bla bla about MQA-CD but you cannot find a single 16bit MQA of that album. All MQA's you find online (purchase/streaming) are 24bit so not MQA-CD at all. Just plain 24bit MQA. They want to make us believe the 16bit ones would sound the same. I made a REAL 16bit MQA-CD from the 24bit MQAs by stripping of the lower byte and it sounds WORSE (yet all lights remained on on the MQA-DAC). 
So I would suggest no one to buy it on a CD medium. It's just upsampling from 44.1k to 352.8k and not unfolding from 44.1k to 88.2k etc...

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records

[lucretius]

37 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

Gaëlle Solal : Tuhu : "MQA-CD" so it should be 16bit :

 

I downloaded the MQA album from hiresaudio.com.  The files are 24 bit / 44.1k and unpack to "24 / 352.8".  They are NOT "MQA-CD" files, despite what it may say elsewhere.

[IT Freak]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

 

I downloaded the MQA album from hiresaudio.com.  The files are 24 bit / 44.1k and unpack to "24 / 352.8".  They are NOT "MQA-CD" files, despite what it may say elsewhere.

Exactly. If MQA wants to promote MQA-CD like they do here :
https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records
They should at least provide links to 16bit MQAs to hear how the actual MQA-CD sounds like and not those 24bit MQAs

[lucretius]

1 minute ago, IT Freak said:

Exactly. If MQA wants to promote MQA-CD like they do here :
https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records
They should at least provide links to 16bit MQAs to hear how the actual MQA-CD sounds like and not those 24bit MQAs

 

So far, it seems one can only obtain MQA-CD on an actual CD or on Tidal (by streaming).

[IT Freak]

12 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

I downloaded the MQA album from hiresaudio.com.  The files are 24 bit / 44.1k and unpack to "24 / 352.8".  They are NOT "MQA-CD" files, despite what it may say elsewhere.

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records 
is telling nothing else but mqa-cd mqa-cd mqa-cd 
and when you search for it you'll only find the 24bit version that sounds much better.

[mevdinc]

I've just subscribed to Qobuz and what a difference, it sounds wonderful via Audirvana 3.5.
I am well happy. :) 

[IT Freak]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

So far, it seems one can only obtain MQA-CD on an actual CD or on Tidal (by streaming).

No by streaming on Tidal you also get the 24bit version !
(I checked !)

[lucretius]

1 minute ago, IT Freak said:

No by streaming on Tidal you also get the 24bit version !
(I checked !)

 

For this particular album.  But are there not other albums that are 16 bit MQA on Tidal?  I thought there were but I cannot check it without an account. 

[bogi]

24 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

For this particular album.  But are there not other albums that are 16 bit MQA on Tidal?  I thought there were but I cannot check it without an account. 

This thread is so long, that one easily looses context ... It's about mass conversion of Warner catalog to 44.1/16 MQA, replacing the lossless FLAC if it appeared on Tidal previously.

Find the formulation 16/44.1 MQA albums

 

 

And for example what Chis posted:

 

[lucretius]

2 minutes ago, bogi said:

 

 

 

 

Thanks.  So, there is at least one 16 bit MQA album on Tidal.

[IT Freak]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

 

For this particular album.  But are there not other albums that are 16 bit MQA on Tidal?  I thought there were but I cannot check it without an account. 

Yes most of the Warner conversions are 16bit.
Mind that those 16b MQAs are ALL 44.1k so no folding is needed there.
All MQAs on Tidal with sample rates higher than 48kHz are 24bit ones because the extra byte is needed for folding, 
even if the original PCM was 16bit - the MQA PCM will be 24bit.
B.S. describes this in one of his latest BobTalks. 

The Eudora album is 352.8kHz so if you want to fold it and keep the HF data you need the extra byte of the 24bit PCM.
A CD unfortunately can hold only 16bit PCMs so you'll loose that byte holding the HF data.
The DAC will still 'unfold' the stripped PCM , but this time not by decompressing the folded data - that's gone - but by other means (= upsampling)

MQA-CD should be avoided when sample rates are > 48k.
That's why they are no 16b MQAs with sample rates > 48k on Tidal.
And why we don't get to hear the MQA-CD version of that promoted album but the 24b version.

[bogi]

1 minute ago, lucretius said:

 

 

Thanks.  So, there is at least one 16 bit MQA album on Tidal.

Not one ... It's about mass upload of Warner catalog to Tidal in the 16/44.1 MQA format, replacing the previous FLAC content, if it appeared on Tidal previously.

[IT Freak]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

 

Thanks.  So, there is at least one 16 bit MQA album on Tidal.

yes, but none has a samplerate >48kHz (ALL 16b MQAs on Tidal are 44.1kHz in fact)

The Gaelle Solal album they promote is 352.8kHz and supposed to be 16b.

[bogi]

Yes, how they promote MQA CDs is much worse case than those 44.1k 16bit Warner MQAs.
https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records
They downconverted SACD to max 15bit PCM and added a control stream, resulting to 16bit PCM. That means strong lost of resolution. And they added the following text to it:

Quote

MQA-CD

The performances were recorded in September 2019 at the Auditorio San Francisco in Ávila, Spain and captured in DSD256. The original master was then encoded in MQA and converted directly into CD format (44.1kHz/16bit). MQA-CD brings these benefits:

- MQA preserves delicate time resolution in the sound, capturing the spatial acoustics of the venue. MQA avoids ‘smearing’ distortions which are inevitable when making a normal CD;
- MQA-CD is fully compatible, no special equipment is needed to play it and many of the sound benefits are available to everyone;
- If the CD is played back using an MQA-enabled device, the file can ‘unfold’ to as high as 352.8 kHz, delivering the best possible sound approved by the label.

Purchase the MQA-CD of Gaëlle Solal's 'Tuhu' from the Eudora Records website.

That's the issue, what for words they are using to promote selling max. 15bit 44.1k PCM content.

[IT Freak]

5 minutes ago, bogi said:

Yes, how they promote MQA CDs is much worse case than those 44.1k 16bit Warner MQAs.
https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records
They downconverted SACD to max 15bit PCM and added a control stream, resulting to 16bit PCM. That means strong lost of resolution. And they added the following text to it:

That's the issue, what for words they are using to promote selling max. 15bit 44.1k PCM content.

Not exactly they made a 24bit MQA from the SACD.
And they put that online and promoted it as MQA-CD without chopping of the lower byte first. lol

[IT Freak]

On

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records

Read the last sentence  :

Quote

 

MQA-CD

The performances were recorded in September 2019 at the Auditorio San Francisco in Ávila, Spain and captured in DSD256. The original master was then encoded in MQA and converted directly into CD format (44.1kHz/16bit). MQA-CD brings these benefits:

- MQA preserves delicate time resolution in the sound, capturing the spatial acoustics of the venue. MQA avoids ‘smearing’ distortions which are inevitable when making a normal CD;
- MQA-CD is fully compatible, no special equipment is needed to play it and many of the sound benefits are available to everyone;
- If the CD is played back using an MQA-enabled device, the file can ‘unfold’ to as high as 352.8 kHz, delivering the best possible sound approved by the label.
 

Purchase the MQA-CD of Gaëlle Solal's 'Tuhu' from the Eudora Records website.

 

The sentence should actually read :

Purchase the 24bit MQAs (of which we cut off the folding byte to make it a worse sounding MQA-CD) of Gaëlle Solal's 'Tuhu' from the Eudora Records website.

That's the truth.

[lucretius]

3 minutes ago, IT Freak said:

MQA-CD should be avoided when sample rates are > 48k.
That's why they are no 16b MQAs with sample rates > 48k on Tidal.
And why we don't get to hear the MQA-CD version of that promoted album but the 24b version.

 

Strictly speaking, MQA-CD is 16 bit / 44.1k.  If the DAC displays something higher than 44.1k, then that's because the MQA-CD was derived by truncating 24 bit MQA (and the sample rate already hard coded in the file is incorrectly reported) and not something created from scratch.  Presumably, the recent mass upload of the Warner catalog to Tidal in 16/44.1 MQA was created from scratch.

[DuckToller]

1 hour ago, IT Freak said:

Here is the source ... from MQA themselves... all bla bla bla about MQA-CD but you cannot find a single 16bit MQA of that album. All MQA's you find online (purchase/streaming) are 24bit so not MQA-CD at all. Just plain 24bit MQA. They want to make us believe the 16bit ones would sound the same. I made a REAL 16bit MQA-CD from the 24bit MQAs by stripping of the lower byte and it sounds WORSE (yet all lights remained on on the MQA-DAC). 
So I would suggest no one to buy it on a CD medium. It's just upsampling from 44.1k to 352.8k and not unfolding from 44.1k to 88.2k etc...

https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/news/eudora-records

Still wondering about the buzz ... and where the source file you've encoded is arriving from if you haven't got the MQA-CD of that album? Download from Tidal, Eudora, HDtracks, other ???
It appears that you have neither the original MQA-CD nor the files from a rip of an original MQA-CD and you assume that from your methodology you can prove they are scam? Did I summarize your intention correctly ?

I understand that you may have proved something to be incorrect and you are unhappy with MQA's woeful & untrue marketing efforts: If I am not mistaken, this doesn't look like the hottest news from the MQA kitchen, ymmv.

Would you please explain to me why you think that this is utterly important because I didn't get that point from your postings??

And no,  I am not an MQA troll, I am just trying to emphasize what people starting reading this threat may understand and what not.
Cheers, Tom