MQA is Vaporware

[KeenObserver]

I think Tidal had little regard for their Client's wishes. I think their Clients should keep that in  mind when they are considering which Service they want to pay their hard earned money to.

Tidal seems to have that MQA mentality that the music consumer will get what they give them.

[MikeyFresh]

@ARQuintWith regard to your otherwise competent review of the Odeon Absolute DAC:

 

Negatives or compromises, if you will? No MQA, if you happen to be a fan.

 

Really? This is a broken effing record from the main stream audio press, the obligatory swipe at any digital piece not bowing to the throne of BS, isn't it?

 

Shameful, at this late stage, and after all the BS claims have been long ago fully debunked, and even lame-ass supposed subjective listening preference also highly questionable in the context of the McGill study, how is it possible TAS thinks any/all mention of Master Quality Approximated is in any way important or relevant to the prospective buyer of a piece like the Odeon Absolute DAC?

 

Did you think adding the "if you happen to be a fan" part actually absolved you of any complicity? Did your editor ask you to add that bit about no Master Quality Adulterated, or do you personally feel it is truly relevant and useful information to the readers of TAS, and that the review would be incomplete without it?

[firedog]

5 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

No MQA, if you happen to be a fan....Shameful...

"If you"...That's all he wrote. He's writing for the broad audience, which includes people who like MQA. A review of a component is supposed to inform the audience. That's what he did. No "swipe" at the product. There's no waxing endorsement of MQA here.

 

Your reaction is totally out of proportion.
MQA does exist, even though it upsets you.

[ARQuint]

5 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

@ARQuintWith regard to your otherwise competent review of the Odeon Absolute DAC:

 

Negatives or compromises, if you will? No MQA, if you happen to be a fan.

 

Really? This is a broken effing record from the main stream audio press, the obligatory swipe at any digital piece not bowing to the throne of BS, isn't it?

 

Shameful, at this late stage, and after all the BS claims have been long ago fully debunked, and even lame-ass supposed subjective listening preference also highly questionable in the context of the McGill study, how is it possible TAS thinks any/all mention of Master Quality Approximated is in any way important or relevant to the prospective buyer of a piece like the Odeon Absolute DAC?

 

Did you think adding the "if you happen to be a fan" part actually absolved you of any complicity? Did your editor ask you to add that bit about no Master Quality Adulterated, or do you personally feel it is truly relevant and useful information to the readers of TAS, and that the review would be incomplete without it?

 

Thanks for reading the Ideon review. It's an excellent product and the small group of guys responsible for the company is, I think, what High End audio is all about, or should be.

 

One function of an audio component review is to provide information for a potential purchaser so that the person can decide if the product is worth investigating. That of course includes an assessment of SQ but also basic data that can be presented pretty dispassionately: How big? How heavy? How expensive? How many inputs? What's the DAC chip set? And a lot of other data, even with a magazine like ours that leans "subjective".

 

I know how you, MikeyFresh, feel about MQA—and that your strongly felt conclusion is shared by pretty much everyone on the Vaporware thread, and probably most Audiophile Style participants who actually have an opinion. But there are audiophiles who feel otherwise. I have no idea what the number is—I'd guess that most MQA users either don't know they're using it, or don't understand the technology. But they do exist. I'm fairly sure that ML isn't one of your audio heroes but he did ask his constituency the question fairly recently: https://twitteringmachines.com/poll-mqa-love-it-or-leave-it/

 

The Ideon web site doesn't tell you that the company's DACs don't decode MQA. I really don't think we can expect a company's promotional site to tell you what their products do not do. So I included that information in my review, acknowledging with "if you happen to be a fan" that there's controversy regarding the technology. Most of our readers will understand that—and that I, personally, do not view Ideon's decision to omit MQA as a problem.

 

That's all.

 

Andy

 

 

[JoeWhip]

I am with my good friend Andy on this one. I have no use for MQA and would not buy a product that decodes it where it can’t be turned off completely. However, I have no issue with him commenting that this DAC does not support MQA. Come on guys......

[Confused]

Who's this guy?

 

 

[UkPhil]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

Who's this guy?

 

 

Don’t know but he’s bang on target with his claims 👍

[KeenObserver]

If a DAC does not support MQA, that is an important piece of information.  If I should ever be in a position where I need to buy a new DAC I want to know which DAC's are infected with MQA and which DAC's are safe.

I would think that audiophiles would be happy to know that there are equipment manufacturers that have integrity and have not fallen for the MQA BS.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

I believe Master Quack Audio should not be mentioned in anyway in a DAC review unless it clrearly

is a "selling point" and has that comforting blue light and maybe a logo

 

At this juncture why any DAC manufacturer would even bother is beyond me,

[MikeyFresh]

9 hours ago, firedog said:

"If you"...That's all he wrote. He's writing for the broad audience, which includes people who like MQA. A review of a component is supposed to inform the audience. That's what he did. No "swipe" at the product. There's no waxing endorsement of MQA here.

I know both exactly what he wrote and to what audience it is directed, that being the TAS readership/paid subscribers.

 

I never said he made a "waxing endorsement of MQA", however I did more than suggest and stand by the assertion that it's a swipe, and that this is a pattern that has been repeated ad nauseam in the audio press, that being any digital product lacking MQA capability gets dinged one star.

9 hours ago, firedog said:

Your reaction is totally out of proportion.

I accept that as your opinion, and perhaps that of other's too, but it ain't the gospel, it's your opinion. I have my own opinion.

 

9 hours ago, firedog said:

MQA does exist, even though it upsets you.

?

 

9 hours ago, ARQuint said:

So I included that information in my review, acknowledging with "if you happen to be a fan" that there's controversy regarding the technology.

I'm pretty sure I missed the part where you acknowledged any controversy, and I know exactly why I missed it, because it's not actually there. What's there is the obligatory mention of lack of MQA being in the category of "negatives and compromises".  That's definitely a swipe, no matter how veiled or clever you may think it was posed.

 

3 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

I would think that audiophiles would be happy to know that there are equipment manufacturers that have integrity and have not fallen for the MQA BS.

I didn't think of it in that context, but put that way, I fully agree.

 

9 hours ago, ARQuint said:

Most of our readers will understand that—and that I, personally, do not view Ideon's decision to omit MQA as a problem.

 

That's all.

Good to be on record as such, thanks for the clarification, the context of "negatives and compromises" told me otherwise, just as it had in all other audio press reviews that remove one star from a product for failure to bow at the throne of BS.

[UkPhil]

Seems Mark Waldrep has gone to town with his latest posting

http://secure.campaigner.com/csb/Public/show/566i-2cn52b--t824c-e3eqqfj3

[John Dyson]

Bottom line -- esp with MQA -- if they keep on selling the compressed cr*p that almost every POP and many classical recordings are, then MQA solves nothing.   I can pretty much prove the compression by demo and existance proof.   That does NOT mean that I have always been 100% successful at recovering the original uncompressed material, but I can come close.   By encapsulating the audio into MQA, it becomes more difficult to prove the dishonesty of the distributors.

 

The difference between 'clean' recordings and most consumer recordings can be anything from 'who cares?' to substantial improvement.

Bottom line -- MQA is further damage to already damaged material.

 

The audiophile consumer deserves better quality, not worse.

 

 

[asdf1000]

9 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

At this juncture why any DAC manufacturer would even bother is beyond me,

 

Maybe because some manufacturers have lots of customers requesting it... ?

 

Remember the Paul McGowan discussion? Where he says he doesn't like MQA and we don't need MQA but he included it in DirectStream DAC because he had loads of customers phoning in asking for it?

 

Is it possible this has happened with more manufacturers? 

 

Is it possible there are more people requesting it from manufacturers than there are voicing displeasure on this thread?

 

And this is all coming from someone (me) that would rather MQA go away.

 

 

 

 

[asdf1000]

9 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

At this juncture why any DAC manufacturer would even bother is beyond me,

 

MQA is coming to Tesla's too by the way... I guess Tesla fall under 'DAC manufacturer' too now.

 

[MikeyFresh]

2 hours ago, asdf1000 said:

Is it possible this has happened with more manufacturers? 

It is possible, though no one will ever know the real numbers involved, and the blame for that lies with the audio press for their relentless and reckless promotion of all things Master Quality Adulterated.

 

It's also possible that those very same manufacturers are not innovators, and are merely looking for the easy way out with regard to shifting boxes, so they play the game of "tick the feature list".

[R1200CL]

On 1/17/2021 at 3:33 PM, UkPhil said:

I agree all items I have tried are now 16 bit MQA which was once red book 

Did you edit streaming quality in Roon to hifi when testing this ?

[KeenObserver]

8 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Did you edit streaming quality in Roon to hifi when testing this ?

 

I think the sensible thing to do is to just drop Tidal.

[Don Blas De Lezo]

Someone posted this article on the Naim forums earlier today ...

 

https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7218 

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, Don Blas De Lezo said:

Someone posted this article on the Naim forums earlier today ...

 

https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7218 

 

See post (with link) by UKPhil above.

[R1200CL]

So is there a chance that Dr. AXI will include MQA in a future test ?

 

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conventions/?ID=938

 

 

[yahooboy]

According to this post by one of the moderators https://en.deezercommunity.com/other-devices-49/high-quality-and-mqa-293?postid=180728#post180728

 

Deezer is not implementing MQA any time soon (even though they partnered with MQA back in 2017)

It seems however that they are looking into doing something with ROON

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

On 1/19/2021 at 7:08 AM, Confused said:

Who's this guy?

 

 

 

Lorne Bregitzer is a Professor at the University of Colorado Denver. He teaches recording. He has 19 credits on Discogs.

[Rt66indierock]

7 hours ago, R1200CL said:

So is there a chance that Dr. AXI will include MQA in a future test ?

 

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conventions/?ID=938

 

 

 

He has a chapter in his book about MQA.

[MikeyFresh]

7 hours ago, R1200CL said:

So is there a chance that Dr. AXI will include MQA in a future test ?

You should contact him and ask him, but I don't see any reason why he or anyone else would bother, not when the folks at MQA have refused to discuss the findings of all previous testing both on an objective basis and subjective listening (McGill study) that fully debunked this garbage rip-off "technology".

 

What kind of test were you hoping to see and why?

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

7 hours ago, R1200CL said:

So is there a chance that Dr. AXI will include MQA in a future test ?

 

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conventions/?ID=938

 

 

Please note Waldrep reached out to BS on numerous occasions offering to have some of his recordings encoded with

Master Quack Audio and never even received acknowledgement. Next.