MQA is Vaporware

[The Computer Audiophile]

27 minutes ago, FredericV said:

This would suggest that the McGill U MQA study also applies to MQA CD on a lot of audio systems.

I'm not saying it's impossible to hear the differences, but does the average MQA user has a system which makes these differences obvious?

Fresh from the fanboy group:

 

He won't be around long in that group. 

[KeenObserver]

The people that stream MP3's and other lossy music might not care about the quality of the music, but they may care about the added cost for every aspect of the music.

 

That huge payday that MQA is expecting is going to cost someone.  The music consumer will pay.

[KeenObserver]

MQA wants to become to music what Dolby is to video.  MQA wants to control the distribution of music.

Will we see the need for protected interconnects like HDMI to play music? With all the problems that these special interconnects cause?

Will we be able to play non MQA music if MQA becomes the norm and all new equipment is MQA certified?

 

MQA is a scheme that might have made sense twenty years ago, but its time has passed.  The genie has been let out of the bottle and MQA is trying to put it back in.

The people that have experienced high quality music are not going to accept MQA.  The problem with that is that they are a smaller part of the market.

[The Computer Audiophile]

21 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

The people that stream MP3's and other lossy music might not care about the quality of the music, but they may care about the added cost for every aspect of the music.

 

That huge payday that MQA is expecting is going to cost someone.  The music consumer will pay.

There's no free lunch MQA

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, KeenObserver said:

MQA wants to become to music what Dolby is to video.  MQA wants to control the distribution of music.

Will we see the need for protected interconnects like HDMI to play music? With all the problems that these special interconnects cause?

Will we be able to play non MQA music if MQA becomes the norm and all new equipment is MQA certified?

 

MQA is a scheme that might have made sense twenty years ago, but its time has passed.  The genie has been let out of the bottle and MQA is trying to put it back in.

The people that have experienced high quality music are not going to accept MQA.  The problem with that is that they are a smaller part of the market.

The cool thing about Dolby ATMOS is it offers something I can't get any other way.

[KeenObserver]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

The cool thing about Dolby ATMOS is it offers something I can't get any other way.

The cool thing about MQA is... well... NOTHING!

[KeenObserver]

Actually, some people are fascinated with that blue light thing.

[Thuaveta]

39 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

Actually, some people are fascinated with that blue light thing.

 

Fish. Those things are called fish.

[FredericV]

48 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The cool thing about Dolby ATMOS is it offers something I can't get any other way.

There's DTS:X and personally I really like the format from a SQ perspective (I own an 11.2 home cinema in a dedicated room), but not many movies are released in this format.

One which has a great wall of sound, is Nerve:

https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/38094/nerve.html

Then from Belgium we have Auro-3D
 

As an MQA replacement, the compression benefit can be achieved with one line of sox command line, and no dependency on crypto or any DRM and still full backwards compatible with normal flac.

Why didn't Tidal just dither the hi-res files to 17/96 to save bandwidth 😁

[lucretius]

16 hours ago, Thuaveta said:

 

Fish. Those things are called fish.

https://fluvalaquatics.com/ca/lighting/the-benefits-of-blue-light/

[lucretius]

16 hours ago, FredericV said:

Why didn't Tidal just dither the hi-res files to 17/96 to save bandwidth

 

Why didn't Tidal just stick with standard Redbook?

[UkPhil]

On 1/8/2021 at 5:17 PM, Rt66indierock said:

Time for an update since the 2019 financial statements of MQA Limited are now posted. MQA lost 4,176,743 in Pounds. Revenue was 492,291. Xiama Music will shut down on February 5, 2021 leaving only Tidal and nugs.net as the only music streaming services with MQA content. Neither has significant subscribers. Download services are sparse with only 2L, e-onkyo music, HiResAudio and nugs.net.

 

I don’t see enough MQA encoded music to drive demand for hardware and software able to decode MQA files especially in the United States.

It looks like they have secured 10 million in two 5 million trenches to take then into 2022 its a big gamble because these companies will want a return of their investment, plus the MD took 400k out which won’t help the cause 

[KeenObserver]

Since its inception MQA Ltd has lost somewhere in the order of thirty million pounds. While this may seem like small "seed" money to a multi billion investment firm, it is still big money to put out unless they expect substantial returns.

What leads them to expect the huge returns?

For them to expect substantial returns they would have to expect that MQA was going to become THE music distribution method.

For them to expect that MQA was going to become THE music distribution method, what promises have they extracted from the backing studios?

Have the studios promised MQA that they are going to force MQA on the music consumer?

[The Computer Audiophile]

15 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

Since its inception MQA Ltd has lost somewhere in the order of thirty million pounds. While this may seem like small "seed" money to a multi billion investment firm, it is still big money to put out unless they expect substantial returns.

What leads them to expect the huge returns?

For them to expect substantial returns they would have to expect that MQA was going to become THE music distribution method.

For them to expect that MQA was going to become THE music distribution method, what promises have they extracted from the backing studios?

Have the studios promised MQA that they are going to force MQA on the music consumer?

Reminds me of the people saying, “I get MQA through Tidal so it’s free.” Think about that. A company is blowing tens of millions of dollars and some consumers still like to use the “it’s free” argument as if the chickens aren’t going to come home to roost some day soon. 

[UkPhil]

58 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

Since its inception MQA Ltd has lost somewhere in the order of thirty million pounds. While this may seem like small "seed" money to a multi billion investment firm, it is still big money to put out unless they expect substantial returns.

What leads them to expect the huge returns?

For them to expect substantial returns they would have to expect that MQA was going to become THE music distribution method.

For them to expect that MQA was going to become THE music distribution method, what promises have they extracted from the backing studios?

Have the studios promised MQA that they are going to force MQA on the music consumer?

This is their only viable route if they can pull it off 

[MikeyFresh]

I see a new tact taken by iFi, or at least by reviewer Greg Weaver aka The Audio Analyst in a YouTube piece he did on the iDSD Pro from January 3rd.

 

In a 20+ minute review (for the life of me I have no idea why this is a video review), he makes exactly zero mentions of MQA anything. None, zilch, unless I somehow became momentarily distracted right at some critical moment where the MQA mention occurs.

 

What's interesting and different is that the focus is on iFi's Gibbs Transient Optimized (GTO) filter, which was not only shown on this very forum to be a total piece of crap in March 2019, but it was also described, at least at that time, as "minimum phase-like", and "was developed by iFi according to our specifications in conjunction with the MQA team."

 

So this would appear to be a new angle someone was trying to take, either the reviewer didn't want the typical negative avalanche that would likely ensue with yet another obligatory MQA love fest review, or perhaps he was asked to take that tact by iFi, and they are growing weary of the negative connotation that MQA carries and attaches itself to their products.

 

I guess it could also just be another stealth slip-in of something MQA, they wait for others to chime in favoring this lousy GTO filter, and then they say "HA! that's MQA you are listening to there" or something to that effect.

 

Lastly, in the comments section it is mentioned that legendary design engineer John Curl has been working on all AMR and iFi designs since August 2019. While I doubt that has an ounce of anything to do with MQA, I wonder what that means about Thorsten Loesch? Is he no longer with AMR/iFi?

 

[mevdinc]

15 hours ago, UkPhil said:

This is their only viable route if they can pull it off 

My guess would be that music labels did more than make a promise, probably invested quite a bit of their money too. I would very much doubt that Mr. Stuart and co. lost all their own money.
Obviously, they have strong support from major labels, (and probably from Tidal too), to keep it going all this time. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, mevdinc said:

My guess would be that music labels did more than make a promise, probably invested quite a bit of their money too. I would very much doubt that Mr. Stuart and co. lost all their own money.
Obviously, they have strong support from major labels, (and probably from Tidal too), to keep it going all this time. 

The labels are shareholders in Tidal and also MQA. They gave MQA money in return for stock. They don't actually care if either makes money as long as Tidal and MQA  stay afloat-as that results in large revenue streams to the labels. Either they or another investor will have to pump some money into MQA at some point. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

This is truly amazing. As of December 4, 2020, MQA is still using the lossless term and at the same time suggesting its better than lossless. Wow, can we get just a tiny bit of honesty from this company. 

 

https://mqa.jp/article/is-mqa-lossless/

 

[kumakuma]

31 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is truly amazing. As of December 4, 2020, MQA is still using the lossless term and at the same time suggesting its better than lossless. Wow, can we get just a tiny bit of honesty from this company. 

 

https://mqa.jp/article/is-mqa-lossless/

 

 

 

If you repeat a lie often enough, some folks will begin to believe it...

[UkPhil]

12 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is truly amazing. As of December 4, 2020, MQA is still using the lossless term and at the same time suggesting its better than lossless. Wow, can we get just a tiny bit of honesty from this company. 

 

https://mqa.jp/article/is-mqa-lossless/

 

PCM 30 year old technology and ready to be put out to pasture, but strangely enough still used in most studios hmmmmm !!!!

[KeenObserver]

15 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is truly amazing. As of December 4, 2020, MQA is still using the lossless term and at the same time suggesting its better than lossless. Wow, can we get just a tiny bit of honesty from this company. 

 

https://mqa.jp/article/is-mqa-lossless/

 

 

Yes. They are saying that because it is contained in the lossless FLAC container it is lossless.  Of course the damaged MQA recording inside the FLAC container is not lossless.

Using that same logic you could say that a low level MP3 recording was lossless if it was contained in a FLAC container.

 

Looking at MQA's history of promotion since its inception, we should not be surprised by anything MQA says.  MQA has been smoke and mirrors since day one.  You would, indeed, have to be part of the cult to believe anything coming out of MQA.

[Abtr]

Although sometimes the MAQ version of an album sounds better than the currently available redbook release, this seems to be because MQA uses e.g. an earlier redbook version (possibly the original release) as the basis for the MQA conversion. And sometimes there's no readily discernable audible difference between redbook and MQA, probably because the master is the same.

 

Now here's an MQA album that sounds notably worse than the redbook version: Steely Dan, Gaucho. Both redbook and MQA versions are available on Tidal. The difference is night and day in my system. After playing the redbook version, the MQA version is almost unlistenable. It appears MQA used the 24/96 version which has about half the dynamic range of the 16/44.1 version. 

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, Abtr said:

Although sometimes the MAQ version of an album sounds better than the currently available redbook release, this seems to be because MQA uses e.g. an earlier redbook version (possibly the original release) as the basis for the MQA conversion. And sometimes there's no readily discernable audible difference between redbook and MQA, probably because the master is the same.

 

Now here's an MQA album that sounds notably worse than the redbook version: Steely Dan, Gaucho. Both redbook and MQA versions are available on Tidal. The difference is night and day in my system. After playing the redbook version, the MQA version is almost unlistenable. It appears MQA used the 24/96 version which has about half the dynamic range of the 16/44.1 version. 

 

I have a Japanese SACD version which sounds worse than the original CD version I have, basically it is the same way.

 

It really depends on the master used.

 

Although most of the music I have heard in MQA format has been worse than the original I have heard (more compressed, etc.).

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Posted by Twitless Machines-

 

https://twitteringmachines.com/mqa-that-sounds-good-to-me/

 

"t’s OK to enjoy MQA. You can even say, “MQA sounds good!” without adding “to me” because when we say things like “sounds good” or “tastes good”, we are necessarily voicing an opinion. And we all know no one owns the right opinion."