MQA is Vaporware

[kumakuma]

9 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

(sorry, shouldn't be so opinionated, but Harry's life seems to have gotten a lot worse in the longer term with his 'partner'.   Sadly, probably too inexperienced to realize the fantastic life that he could have had -- just had some rules and some discretion that needed to be followed.)

 

I personally couldn't imagine anything duller than being a member of the British royal family.

[John Dyson]

3 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

I personally couldn't imagine anything duller than being a member of the British royal family.

It all depends on what you do with yourself.   If I had the personal (quiet) freedom that someone so wealthy & aspects of privacy, even if officially quitting the 'firm', I would have resources to do all kinds of research projects.  If it isn't about 'research projects', it could be many other activities about personal growth and learning -- geesh, be the 100,000'th person to climb Everest... :-).

Again, it is all about how one takes advantage of the freedoms that they have.

 

[JoeWhip]

Hey, I am not living their lives in their skins. I have no basis or reason to criticize them. If they are happy, who cares. 

[Allan F]

23 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

I thought that it was spelled: Witch.

(sorry, shouldn't be so opinionated, but Harry's life seems to have gotten a lot worse in the longer term with his 'partner'.   Sadly, probably too inexperienced to realize the fantastic life that he could have had -- just had some rules and some discretion that needed to be followed.)

 

IMO, rather than being sorry, you should be ashamed of such a sexist misogynistic opinion, worthy only of the most vicious English tabloids.

[kumakuma]

17 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

It all depends on what you do with yourself.   If I had the personal (quiet) freedom that someone so wealthy & aspects of privacy, even if officially quitting the 'firm', I would have resources to do all kinds of research projects.  If it isn't about 'research projects', it could be many other activities about personal growth and learning -- geesh, be the 100,000'th person to climb Everest... :-).

Again, it is all about how one takes advantage of the freedoms that they have.

 

 

I know from experience that I'm too boring to spend that much time with myself...

[AudioDoctor]

This might just be the Queen Mother of off topics...

 

ha

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

So in this review of the $10,500 (without storage) Grimm streamer, Atkinson insists, yet again, on interjecting MQA

where it has no place.  This paragraph-

 

"The MU1's specifications say that it supports "all sample rates and formats." I asked Eelco about how the MU1 handles MQA, as the instructions say to set the MU1 to "No MQA Support" in Roon. "By telling Roon that the MU1 does not offer MQA support, Roon will do the first unfold," he replied. "If you tell Roon that the MU1 supports MQA, it will just forward the stream unaltered to the MU1. If you then turn off volume control and upsampling in the MU1, the MQA stream will transfer transparently to its AES output. If you have a DAC connected that recognizes MQA on its AES stream, it will be able to do the full MQA unfold and filter stuff. The disadvantage is that you lose the volume control and the upsampling on non-MQA streams."

 

.......could have been easily summed up with one sentance.."The MU1 offers no MQA support, and never will"....

 

Either Atkinson has no integrity, or he is obsessed with giving MQA as many mentions as he possibly can before he rides off into the sunset.  Pathetic, and sad. I would not buy a box of paperclips based on his recommendation.

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/grimm-audio-mu1-music-streamer

 

[John Dyson]

41 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

IMO, rather than being sorry, you should be ashamed of such a sexist misogynistic opinion, worthy only of the most vicious English tabloids.

 

I haven't seen the English tabloids -- I am not vicious, but a proper observation shows the SERIOUSLY DAMAGING AND DESTRUCTIVE INFLUENCE to be true.

 

Sorry for the distraction.

 

 

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Let's stick to MQA guys. 

[Allan F]

4 hours ago, John Dyson said:

I haven't seen the English tabloids...

 

Using bold and caps serves only to emphasize your prejudice. EOM

[FredericV]

7 hours ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

So in this review of the $10,500 (without storage) Grimm streamer, Atkinson insists, yet again, on interjecting MQA

where it has no place.  This paragraph-

 

.......could have been easily summed up with one sentance.."The MU1 offers no MQA support, and never will"....

 

Either Atkinson has no integrity, or he is obsessed with giving MQA as many mentions as he possibly can before he rides off into the sunset.  Pathetic, and sad. I would not buy a box of paperclips based on his recommendation.

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/grimm-audio-mu1-music-streamer

 

This is not correct.

Music servers can contain software and/or hardware which can do DSP outside of Roon. In the MU1 this is an FPGA based upsampling PCIe soundcard with digital outputs, in our case it's our custom upsampling code running on a separate core, which uses Archimago's intermediate phase as one of the recipes.

So how do you support MQA when your own product also does upsampling outside of Roon?

If you want the Roon based music server to decode MQA, then just leave the core MQA decoder enabled in Roon for this zone, and the upsampling process can still be applied in another part of your server which Roon does not control. This process replaces the second unfold, so any attached MQA dac will no longer see the instructions for the second unfold. In essence, it no longer matters if you use an external MQA dac or not, MQA metadata will never be passed to the DAC.

If you want the Roon based music server to pass the MQA bitperfect to an external device which will fully decode MQA, disable the MQA core decoder in Roon and disable any further DSP in the music server product so that the metadata is being passed so that the MQA product recognizes it. Per design, you can truncate 24 bit to 16 bit or corrupt the bottom 8 bits and the blue light will still shine, but that's the only allowable transformation. You must leave at least 16 bits of an MQA file intact ;)
 

Then variations of both exist, where you would allow Roon to do the first unfold, and still disable any further processing in your product, and then any MQA DAC including the usually cheaper render-only MQA DAC's would do the upsampling step.

So Roon gives you a lot of choices

[Rt66indierock]

A little off topic.

[Fast and Bulbous]

Good news. I had my first one a few weeks ago. Got some serious COVID symptoms after it but it seems that if you have had COVID the side effects are much worse after the vaccination. Was not nice to have them back again, but they passed.

[JoeWhip]

Congrats rt66inderock. Due for shot 2 in three weeks, wife in 2 and my 91 year old mon had both with the only side effect being a little tired for a day or two, now back to MQA.

[John_Atkinson]

On 3/8/2021 at 8:42 PM, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Either Atkinson has no integrity, or he is obsessed with giving MQA as many mentions as he possibly can before he rides off into the sunset.  Pathetic, and sad. I would not buy a box of paperclips based on his recommendation.

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/grimm-audio-mu1-music-streamer

 

Thank you for reading my review so thoroughly, Mr, Slapowitz. However, I am afraid I don't know enough about different kinds of  paperclips to be able to make a recommendation.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

[KeenObserver]

44 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

Thank you for reading my review so thoroughly, Mr, Slapowitz. However, I am afraid I don't know enough about different kinds of  paperclips to be able to make a recommendation.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

Years ago, when I still read Stereophile, I valued your testing of equipment specs. With your support of MQA, that is the only opinion of yours that I would put any credence in.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

Thank you for reading my review so thoroughly, Mr, Slapowitz. However, I am afraid I don't know enough about different kinds of  paperclips to be able to make a recommendation.

 

John Atkinson

Technical Editor, Stereophile

since you decided to waste your readers time with numerous gratuitous mentions of Master Quack Audio in a review of a $10,500 streamer, it is clear you don't know enough about modern digital audio either, Or you are knowingly ignorant.

 

Just admit you were wrong, and laid an egg with your endorsement of Master Quack. There is a small possibility it will save your legacy. Or not.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

Not sure if it was posted here before, but that Mytek Brooklyn ADC....with "MQA Mastering" died a royal death. It is now a "legacy" product. Oh well. I am sure you can find one for pennies on the dollar now, or in a scrap heap. 😅

[JoeWhip]

Just saw that. Imagine that.

[Kal Rubinson]

24 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

Just saw that. Imagine that.

It seems like a side-effect of Mytek separating themselves from their former manufacturing partner in Poland and the subsequent discontinuation of the entire product line produced by them.   It is only significant if Mytek has also deleted MQA from their new and current line of products.  I doubt it.

[yahooboy]

On 3/9/2021 at 2:42 AM, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Either Atkinson has no integrity, or he is obsessed with giving MQA as many mentions as he possibly can before he rides off into the sunset.  Pathetic, and sad. I would not buy a box of paperclips based on his recommendation.

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/grimm-audio-mu1-music-streamer

 

It's called working on commission 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

4 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

It seems like a side-effect of Mytek separating themselves from their former manufacturing partner in Poland and the subsequent discontinuation of the entire product line produced by them.   It is only significant if Mytek has also deleted MQA from their new and current line of products.  I doubt it.

Wrong take. It is significant because of the lies told by the Master Quack society...that magical MQA mastering tools were around the corner, and that shiny new MQA encoding ADCs would be in every studio. The fact this product sunk like the titanic with no replacement means the market rejected it soundly.

 

Any recording, mixing, or mastering engineer who touts MQA would be laughed out of the room.

[John Dyson]

9 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Wrong take. It is significant because of the lies told by the Master Quack society...that magical MQA mastering tools were around the corner, and that shiny new MQA encoding ADCs would be in every studio. The fact this product sunk like the titanic with no replacement means the market rejected it soundly.

 

Any recording, mixing, or mastering engineer who touts MQA would be laughed out of the room.

There is ONLY ONE way that I could accept MQA -- if  they get totally rid of FA.   I wouldn't mind 14 bits of clean audio with slightly lower SNR vs the 16bits of hash that most/many recordings are today.

 

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

7 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

There is ONLY ONE way that I could accept MQA -- if  they get totally rid of FA.   I wouldn't mind 14 bits of clean audio with slightly lower SNR vs the 16bits of hash that most/many recordings are today.

 

 

That is still a major step backwards..MQA not only truncates bits, but adds aliasing and actually worsens "time domain" performance. There is zero benefit, and zero reason to ever accept it.

[Kal Rubinson]

22 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Wrong take. It is significant because of the lies told by the Master Quack society...that magical MQA mastering tools were around the corner, and that shiny new MQA encoding ADCs would be in every studio. The fact this product sunk like the titanic with no replacement means the market rejected it soundly.

 

Any recording, mixing, or mastering engineer who touts MQA would be laughed out of the room.

Skew it as you wish.