MQA is Vaporware

[KeenObserver]

Every time I see a MQA fanboy bring back a point that has been refuted over and over, I think of that scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail. The scene with the Black Knight on the ground with no arms and legs calling for Arthur to come back and fight.

 

MQA has no arms and legs.

[Thuaveta]

33 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

MQA has no arms and legs.

 

It does, however, have a substantial turgescent member, fluffed by south african money, and it lives in a world where consent don't really matter.

[StephenJK]

Maybe it's time to put this one to bed.  We all seem to be in agreement - is there anything more to be said?  

 

Now, about how power supplies could possibly make any difference.....

[KeenObserver]

38 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

Maybe it's time to put this one to bed.  We all seem to be in agreement - is there anything more to be said?  

 

Now, about how power supplies could possibly make any difference.....

 

It should indeed be time to put MQA to bed.  However, MQA keeps pushing to implement their scheme.  MQA is intent on ramming their misbegotten scheme down the throats of the music consumer.  It would be a mistake for the music consumer to lie down and let MQA have their way.

If this thread bothers some people, they should just ignore it.  Unless they have reasons to not want this thread to continue.

[KeenObserver]

45 minutes ago, StephenJK said:

Maybe it's time to put this one to bed.  We all seem to be in agreement - is there anything more to be said?  

 

Now, about how power supplies could possibly make any difference.....

 

I believe there are threads regarding your second point.  This one does not need to be misdirected.

[KeenObserver]

"Look!  There's Bigfoot!

[John Dyson]

10 minutes ago, KeenObserver said:

 

It should indeed be time to put MQA to bed.  However, MQA keeps pushing to implement their scheme.  MQA is intent on ramming their misbegotten scheme down the throats of the music consumer.  It would be a mistake for the music consumer to lie down and let MQA have their way.

If this thread bothers some people, they should just ignore it.  Unless they have reasons to not want this thread to continue.

The discussion and knowledgable complaints REALLY SHOULD be kept active -- simply to continue the honest publicity, knowledge flow and discussion about MQA.   Someone, somewhere needs to discuss and expose the truth about MQA and what it is REALLY intended to be and do.   MQA is simply not a good thing or helpful for the high fidelity oriented audiophile.

[UkPhil]

Nice to see that not everyone interviewed for the absolute sound is a fan 

 

“As for MQA compression, it has a tendency to time-shift transients to the nearest sample instead of rendering these transients with the proper timing. The effect is audible, and I do not like it. From a streaming bandwidth standpoint, MQA offers no advantages. There are lossless schemes that can achieve the same bit rate."

 

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/benchmark-media-systems-la4-line-amplifier-and-dac3-b-digital-to-analog-converter

[The Computer Audiophile]

https://us.auralic.com/pages/auralic-vs-drm

 

[FredericV]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

https://us.auralic.com/pages/auralic-vs-drm

 

The MQA upsample filters can be "simulated" with sox. The proof is in my signature links.  It gives the same impulse response as the official MQA plots.

Looking at Auralic's player, they also seem to use sox:

 

# readelf -a lightningPlayer | grep -i sox
0x00000001 (NEEDED) Shared library: [libsox.so.3]
0009470c 0000f516 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000e4ec sox_delete_effects_cha
000947c0 00011316 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000e708 sox_add_effect
000947f4 00019316 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000e7a4 sox_quit
0009485c 00012e16 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000e8dc sox_find_effect
000948fc 00007f16 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000eabc sox_close
00094918 00005a16 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000eb10 sox_open_write_stream
00094940 00003416 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000eb88 sox_create_effect
00094a1c 00004d16 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000ee1c sox_effect_options
00094b48 00016516 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000f1a0 sox_init
00094b88 00012816 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000f260 sox_open_read_stream
00094c74 00012416 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000f524 sox_create_effects_cha
00094c7c 00017516 R_ARM_JUMP_SLOT 0000f53c sox_flow_effects

 

[Confused]

Some interesting analysis comparing sound quality differences via streaming services.  (the original text is German, link uses Google Tranlate)

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https://www.bwgroup.ch/2018/10/29/streaming-gibt-es-klangunterschiede-vorsicht-bei-vergleichen-trugschluesse-lauern/

[Confused]

13 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

https://us.auralic.com/pages/auralic-vs-drm

 

I noticed that the above link was mentioned in the latest eddition of Hi-Fi News and Record Review:

(A link to the full review & measurements can be found on Auralic's website, if anyone happens to be interestd)

 

[R1200CL]

“To enable everyone here to form their own picture of the facts, the following is an excerpt from the relevant chapter. By the way, this was not written by Neil Young, but by his co-author Phil Baker, an experienced manager for the development of consumer electronic products and responsible for the PonoPlayer:”

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-to-add-millions-of-master-quality-mqa-tracks/127573/460

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

“To enable everyone here to form their own picture of the facts, the following is an excerpt from the relevant chapter. By the way, this was not written by Neil Young, but by his co-author Phil Baker, an experienced manager for the development of consumer electronic products and responsible for the PonoPlayer:”

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/tidal-to-add-millions-of-master-quality-mqa-tracks/127573/460

 

more details here:

 

 

[#Yoda#]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

more details here:

 

 

Indeed! 😉

[R1200CL]

https://hsm.utimaco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/MQA-Case-Study_vfinal_DIN-A4.pdf
 

“The motivation: improving the user experience while authenticating the artist’s work
MQA has chosen Utimaco to enable their revolutionary technology that delivers master quality audio in a file that is small enough to stream or download. MQA music guarantees the highest recording quality, as well as the provenance of the file. Utimaco’s role was to provide the hardware backend – the root of trust – in which the cryptographic keys, which are used to sign MQA audio streams, are generated and stored.“

 

“The solution: authentication to prove provenance and identify master recordings
To ensure the integrity of the artist’s music from the original source to the end listener, MQA needed a solution for securely signing the music file, to ensure cryptographically that what the listener hears is what the artist approved. Authentication is critical to MQA technology, which must work end-to-end, from the studio all the way to the music fan. An advanced cryptographic solution was the best option to verify the musical file. MQA turned to Utimaco, a leading manufacturer of hardware-based security solutions that provide the root of trust to keep cryptographic keys safe, secure critical digital infrastructures and authenticate high value data assets.”

Reading the pdf, and we have prove from both Dr. Axis and Niel Young, that they never signed anything, I would expect no artists ever signed anything.

It’s scary reading this pdf, when we know what is being stated, can’t be correct. 

“The implementation: hardware to authenticate the end-to-end process of music
recording
In the case of MQA, the Utimaco hardware module will be deployed at the encoding house, as well as at the mastering house where the mastering engineers finalize the product. Once the master recording is finalized, the artist and sound engineers sign off on the musical file and when it is downloaded to the decoder – the user’s playback device – an indicator lights up (e.g. an LED on hardware or an icon on-screen) as proof of the file’s provenance and to ensure that the sound is identical to that of the source material. Only by controlling this entire process can the optimal MQA performance be achieved; with Utimaco’s flexible solution, the integrity of the artist’s master recording can be maintained all the way from the studio to the listener.”

 

Find me a sound engineer that has signed, or artist 😀

(And who signed for the dead artist).
And a studio with the hardware module implemented. 
 

In addition there is a requirement to use the hardware module 2 places. As Chris has said, the encoding house is in the cloud. 

It’s very unclear how an artist can have an unique digital key that really only belong to him/her/the band. 
Here in Norway we have digital keys implemented in SIM cards. It’s used by banks and credit cards companies, as well as digital communications with official departments etc. 
You can read about it here. 

[UkPhil]

42 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

https://hsm.utimaco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/MQA-Case-Study_vfinal_DIN-A4.pdf
 

“The motivation: improving the user experience while authenticating the artist’s work
MQA has chosen Utimaco to enable their revolutionary technology that delivers master quality audio in a file that is small enough to stream or download. MQA music guarantees the highest recording quality, as well as the provenance of the file. Utimaco’s role was to provide the hardware backend – the root of trust – in which the cryptographic keys, which are used to sign MQA audio streams, are generated and stored.“

 

“The solution: authentication to prove provenance and identify master recordings
To ensure the integrity of the artist’s music from the original source to the end listener, MQA needed a solution for securely signing the music file, to ensure cryptographically that what the listener hears is what the artist approved. Authentication is critical to MQA technology, which must work end-to-end, from the studio all the way to the music fan. An advanced cryptographic solution was the best option to verify the musical file. MQA turned to Utimaco, a leading manufacturer of hardware-based security solutions that provide the root of trust to keep cryptographic keys safe, secure critical digital infrastructures and authenticate high value data assets.”

Reading the pdf, and we have prove from both Dr. Axis and Niel Young, that they never signed anything, I would expect no artists ever signed anything.

It’s scary reading this pdf, when we know what is being stated, can’t be correct. 

“The implementation: hardware to authenticate the end-to-end process of music
recording
In the case of MQA, the Utimaco hardware module will be deployed at the encoding house, as well as at the mastering house where the mastering engineers finalize the product. Once the master recording is finalized, the artist and sound engineers sign off on the musical file and when it is downloaded to the decoder – the user’s playback device – an indicator lights up (e.g. an LED on hardware or an icon on-screen) as proof of the file’s provenance and to ensure that the sound is identical to that of the source material. Only by controlling this entire process can the optimal MQA performance be achieved; with Utimaco’s flexible solution, the integrity of the artist’s master recording can be maintained all the way from the studio to the listener.”

 

Find me a sound engineer that has signed, or artist 😀

(And who signed for the dead artist).
And a studio with the hardware module implemented. 
 

In addition there is a requirement to use the hardware module 2 places. As Chris has said, the encoding house is in the cloud. 

It’s very unclear how an artist can have an unique digital key that really only belong to him/her/the band. 
Here in Norway we have digital keys implemented in SIM cards. It’s used by banks and credit cards companies, as well as digital communications with official departments etc. 
You can read about it here. 
 

 

 

 

The majority of files are not classed as MQA Studio (Blue) no approval just batch converted so it’s all just marketing BS, those 16bit files are just upsampled with an apodizing filter selected maybe those keys are potentially there to downgrade the sound of the file in the future so you have to buy into the hardware to get the pseudo lossless version 

Maybe MQA’s long term goal is to have just one file for everybody 

[R1200CL]

Some of you has debated DRM. 
 

• In digital broadcasting, streaming applications require continuous encryption and decryption in real time to ensure content cannot be compromised in transit. A conditional access system (CSA) protects this content by ensuring that certain criteria are fulfilled before allowing access to a film or series. Each segment of the data stream must be encrypted, using a continuously changing “control word”, which itself is encrypted. Keys must be generated and sent ahead of the content. This “unlocks” the next content section (with a permission to decrypt the control word). To provide a seamless experience, latency must be addressed and HSMs are the appropriate high-performance tool to do so. In fact, they quickly generate high-quality keys, store them and use them to secure the related data transfers.
• True random number generation (RNG) is essential for providing strong encryption keys.
• A company should set up user identification and authentication to access files and folders. As a result, users only get access to the (part of the) network – production & broadcasting and/or office – they need. The user ID can be part of a public key infrastructure (PKI). A PKI provides digital identities to each user in the network. The related cryptographic keys are stored inside an HSM for maximum security. 2-factor-authentication and strong passwords (one-time passwords, OTP) complement the secure access.

https://hsm.utimaco.com/solutions/industries/media-entertainment/
 

MQA with chosen technology obviously has the option to incorporate a horrible future scenario.

I understand why some like to own their files, and don’t trust any cloud service.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if future AV products and phones gets iOT chips added that can be used to unlock access to files/apps/services. (LG has developed iOT chips using this company solutions). 

 

MQA requires a chip in your DAC even today. 
 

From a white paper on their site:

The blockchain has also found its way into industries that one might not consider at first thought, like media, marketing, travel, and even music streaming.

[R1200CL]

In my search where Utimaco technology is used. I found this. 
https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/guns-n-roses-matt-sorum-cryptocurrency-interview/

 

 

[KeenObserver]

No matter how much lipstick you put on it, a pig is still a pig.

 

MQA is a pig. It has no true benefit for the end user.

 

Warner, in collusion with MQA and Tidal, is trying to ram MQA down the throats of the music consumer.

The music consumer should not stand idly by and let it happen.

Boycott Warner and boycott Tidal.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Looks like I can add Cambridge Audio to my Do Not By List-

 

http://hifitrends.com/2021/01/25/check-out-cambridge-audios-first-mqa-dac-headphone-amp-the-remarkable-dacmagic-200m/

 

[R1200CL]

(Album no longer MQA)

 

[UkPhil]

Nice to see Arcams Amps with bullt in ESS chipset DAC’s give you the ability to sound like MQA without having to buy into the proprietary design, looks like the bottle is emptying of their special sauce 😉

 

“Apodizing (SA20 default) – A compromise between phase, frequency response and ringing. Its main advantage is that it removes most of the ringing
that has been introduced upstream in the recording process when the original material was recorded and mastered.”

[KeenObserver]

At this point I have to wonder if MQA was a benefit or a detriment to Tidal Music.

 I have to wonder if getting in bed with the South African Financiers of MQA was a benefit or a detriment for Jay Z.

I have to wonder if drinking the contaminated brandy was a benefit or a detriment for Jay Z.

[GUTB]

So, ESS released a new chip a little while ago, the 9068AS. This part is unique as it is the first DS-style DAC chip which has MQA unfolding built into the silicon. The Gustard DAC-X16 was the first product on the market to use this chip for $500 -- so I just had to pick one up. After a day of burn-in I sat down to test it out...and found that is wasn't detecting MQA-CD from the coax input. Reading the spec sheet for the chip it says that it unfolds "decoded MQA streams"...meaning that it doesn't decode them. It needs a first decode stage first, and as usual with these Chinese DACs that's on the copy-pasted XMOS controller. Very disappointing, I was hoping this would be a good alternative for getting MQA on all the inputs except for a few products that do it right like Mytek DACs. Anyway, maybe the on-silicon unfolding performs substantially better than doing it externally off-die? I'll have to test this, stay tuned for my findings.