Popular Post Ishmael Slapowitz Posted May 21, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2021 2 hours ago, Currawong said: I'm reminded of the saying "Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt". I'm guessing BS' reply is for the hardcore fans who want reassurance, given you can drive a truck through the holes in his arguments, and he is just asking to be immolated further by posting it. I have not laughed that hard for a long time...the BS "response" confirmed he is a sociopath, with no connection to reality. Comedy Gold indeed. lucretius, bunno77 and botrytis 3 Link to comment
Popular Post GoldenOne Posted May 21, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2021 I will be posting a response to the MQA blog post in the next couple days. Normally I wouldn't as I really have no interest whatsoever in stirring the pot. But given the size and nature of the company in product in question, as well as the response itself, I feel it's important to do so. I find it odd that they mention my description of their response as 'marketing', and yet they have careful marketing-speak responses in this blog post such as: "MQA has never made false claims about ‘losslessness’." This is a very careful choice of words. MQA are saying they did not make 'false' claims of losslessness. Not that they never claimed MQA was lossless. "3: Provenance: MQA files are delivered losslessly" Again, a VERY careful choice of words. The MQA files are delivered losslessly. The information within them however is not lossless. They are appearing to answer some of the points whilst seemingly doing so in a manner that a lawyer could later argue to have meant something else. Additionally....I'm fairly certain that the screenshots in Appendix 4 are fake. They are not of 88.2khz core-decoded output. They are screenshots of 44.1khz test files. I'll discuss this in the response video, but they've left a few things in that are somewhat easy to spot for anyone familiar with looking at these sorts of files/test signals in adobe audition. Jeff_N, troubleahead, Josh Mound and 16 others 17 2 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Popular Post The Computer Audiophile Posted May 21, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2021 12 hours ago, GoldenOne said: I will be posting a response to the MQA blog post in the next couple days. Normally I wouldn't as I really have no interest whatsoever in stirring the pot. But given the size and nature of the company in product in question, as well as the response itself, I feel it's important to do so. I find it odd that they mention my description of their response as 'marketing', and yet they have careful marketing-speak responses in this blog post such as: "MQA has never made false claims about ‘losslessness’." This is a very careful choice of words. MQA are saying they did not make 'false' claims of losslessness. Not that they never claimed MQA was lossless. "3: Provenance: MQA files are delivered losslessly" Again, a VERY careful choice of words. The MQA files are delivered losslessly. The information within them however is not lossless. They are appearing to answer some of the points whilst seemingly doing so in a manner that a lawyer could later argue to have meant something else. Additionally....I'm fairly certain that the screenshots in Appendix 4 are fake. They are not of 88.2khz core-decoded output. They are screenshots of 44.1khz test files. I'll discuss this in the response video, but they've left a few things in that are somewhat easy to spot for anyone familiar with looking at these sorts of files/test signals in adobe audition. Search the US trademark database and you’ll find the lovely logo mQa used before they were called out. https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:e7y0dy.2.2 botrytis, Currawong, March Audio and 11 others 5 2 7 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
lucretius Posted May 21, 2021 Share Posted May 21, 2021 9 hours ago, MarkusBarkus said: Oh you very bad boys! Using "unsafe levels of ultrasonic signals" you are going to hurt yourselves and put an ear out! "Unsafe levels of ultrasonic signals" leads to "ultrasonic sickness". How do you get this from digital input to the mQa encoder? botrytis 1 mQa is dead! Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted May 21, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2021 10 hours ago, UkPhil said: Bob bites back, his response to goldensounds video reveal https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/?fbclid=IwAR27rjL7kzceBQWTLjD-nRHKOpEq5q3Hk3t6SRLn65E9ot7aBcSz4rd34cw Oh yeah. I'm gonna have to snapshot this post for posterity. So that's the best BS can do? This is what desperation looks like as the scheme continues to clearly lose support IMO. All the while his words are providing more reason for those who criticize it (and also the general public) to see how obvious the lies are. BS (if that's actually who wrote this article) is simply digging a deeper hole and accelerating the collapse. "Libelous manifesto", "illogical", "litany of alternative facts", "previously debunked many times" - all of which are a reflection of their own material! Yeah, item 4 is a work of comedic genius crossed with creative wordsmithing: Quote [4] FLAC is a lossless file format, a container for audio data. MQA is an advanced method for coding audio contents. MQA is normally delivered (losslessly) in a FLAC container from the music label. PCM is another type of audio that can be delivered by FLAC. Suggesting FLAC is better than MQA is like saying ‘bottles are better than wine’! "PCM is another type of audio that can be delivered by FLAC"? Considering nobody sane as far as I am aware uses FLAC for anything other than PCM, isn't it rather synonymous that lossless FLAC is lossless PCM? I guess he's trying to make a claim that mQa isn't PCM? But it's clearly a "bastardized PCM"! [Yeah, I know, we could encoded DoP DSD in a FLAC container... But seriously, who would do that? Use WavPack. :-) ] Go get 'em @GoldenOne. UkPhil, The Computer Audiophile, MikeyFresh and 8 others 10 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post FredericV Posted May 21, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2021 2 hours ago, Archimago said: "PCM is another type of audio that can be delivered by FLAC"? Considering nobody sane as far as I am aware uses FLAC for anything other than PCM, isn't it rather synonymous that lossless FLAC is lossless PCM? I guess he's trying to make a claim that mQa isn't PCM? But it's clearly a "bastardized PCM"! [Yeah, I know, we could encoded DoP DSD in a FLAC container... But seriously, who would do that? Use WavPack. :-) ] Go get 'em @GoldenOne. There are other ways for "bastardized PCM". http://jpinsoft.net/DeepSound/ Just watch Mr. Robot season one, where he demonstrates the tool "deepsound" which he uses to hide photos inside the noise floor of PCM files. You can imagine the flac encoder having a very hard time encoding non-audio data bits from a bastardized pcm source file to which this garbage (from the viewpoint of the encoder) was added, as the flac prediction algo can't do a good job on predicting the next sample. It will contain more noise, so it will need to store a bigger residual, thus larger files. This is exactly what mQa is doing with 1X rate input source files: about a third of the data in 24/44.1 and 24/48 source files will be encrypted, so a third of the data will become non-compressable by flac. The flac file will be much bigger compared to directly flac encoding the source file without the crypto DRM added which is done by the mQa encoder. Now with MQL encoding it's a different story as the crypto DRM part stores the unfold data, so stored in whatever form it would also look as garbage towards the flac encoder. When decimating the original by using dithering to 17/96 or 17/88.2 the flac files sizes are even lower than MQA as it does not contain secret data. We did those tests with sox. In appendix 3, mQa debunks the 24 bit depth often associated with hi-res by showing the distribution of the noise floor from thousands of files: So you could conclude that dithering to 17 bits will be enough, as long as you keep some of the ultrasonics. The 96 kHz decimation may work for most hi-res files, but not for all input signals, as it can't encode sound sources such as music boxes, and fore sure it can't encode the full spectrum of trumpets and harpsichords, as shown by mQa's own research: To conclude: when you have something to hide inside PCM files like deepsound users (who may use it for criminal purposes) and MQA / MQL, you'll get "bastardized PCM". Non bastardized PCM could do a much better job as what mQa is also doing with their 17/96 decimation triangle, which even gets confused when you try to encode test tones at certain levels. Pure flac and pre dithering the source with sox before flac encoding, does not have these problems mQa is experiencing with their encoder warning against overload and other issues such as refusing to encode pure test tones. It seems nobody will be able to prove the analog end-to-end, keeping the faith for the true mQa believers. yahooboy, botrytis, Currawong and 1 other 4 Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing. Link to comment
Josh Mound Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 On 5/20/2021 at 2:44 PM, UkPhil said: Bob bites back, his response to goldensounds video reveal https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/?fbclid=IwAR27rjL7kzceBQWTLjD-nRHKOpEq5q3Hk3t6SRLn65E9ot7aBcSz4rd34cw This part of Stuart’s “technical appendices” is making my head spin. 🔊 The Best Version Of... 🎧 Link to comment
Stereo Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 On 5/20/2021 at 2:44 PM, UkPhil said: Bob bites back, his response to goldensounds video reveal https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/?fbclid=IwAR27rjL7kzceBQWTLjD-nRHKOpEq5q3Hk3t6SRLn65E9ot7aBcSz4rd34cw https://imgflip.com/i/5aigz4 Link to comment
Popular Post FredericV Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 When argumentum ad verecundiam has become a religion ... Many responded the HB video did not debunk the claims of @GoldenOne / GoldenSound, instead he admitted he is guessing. He did not even question mQa's answer, or try to peer review it ... just make the BT reply sticky. lucretius and MikeyFresh 2 Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing. Link to comment
lucretius Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 1 hour ago, FredericV said: When argumentum ad verecundiam has become a religion ... Many responded the HB video did not debunk the claims of @GoldenOne / GoldenSound, instead he admitted he is guessing. He did not even question mQa's answer, or try to peer review it ... just make the BT reply sticky. "There the answers to my quests are given with great detail." The response contained so many vagueries that Hans could pretend that it was the answer to any question raised. Apparently, "great detail" = great vagueness. Maybe Bob could use his secret facilities (apparently not available to others) to help deblur some of those images from the Hubble telescope. Come on* Bob, impress me. * MikeyFresh 1 mQa is dead! Link to comment
Popular Post KeenObserver Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 The amount of BS that MQA spews just astounds me. If you put a 128 bit MP3 piece of music in a FLAC container, that would be lossless using MQA's advertising logic. And if some kid is listening to that 128 bit MP3 piece of grunge rock on his 2 dollar ear buds, that would be "perceptually lossless". Who buys into this crap? (except Peter Veth followers) lucretius, MikeyFresh, Josh Mound and 1 other 4 Boycott Warner Boycott Tidal Boycott Roon Boycott Lenbrook Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 2 minutes ago, KeenObserver said: Who buys into this crap? The same people who buy into Q. Perhaps mQa did one thing right, the company included a Q in its name. botrytis 1 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 20 hours ago, JoshM said: This part of Stuart’s “technical appendices” is making my head spin. Of course! Spinning is how "deblurring" is accomplished! More BS from BS plus a gross block diagram embedded to look more technical and "legit". Looks like he's conceding that the process does not maintain lossless data capability (ie. differences can be measured but "intended"), but insists that the process makes the sound better - "always be clearer". So again, mQa can make the music even better than the original! Whatever "deblurring" is, mQa could have just cleared this up years ago by releasing a 24/384 original hi-res file and the same piece of music having gone through the deblur algorithm. All of us could have just played these comparison files on our hi-res DACs (likely with no upsampling on the DAC), noted the increased clarity, and lauded mQa for creating a wonderful DSP that audiophiles approved of and admire! Everyone goes home happy; I save time with not writing mQa articles, @Rt66indierock doesn't start this thread, @mansr goes on vacation instead of reverse engineering files, @The Computer Audiophile didn't waste his time preparing for RMAF2018, @GoldenOne creates other videos, none of us here get frustrated, and we all subscribe to Tidal and sing Kumbaya as we wish BS a glorious retirement... We didn't get that did we? 😥 Anyhow... Now that Apple will be ALAC lossless, Amazon Music HD is FLAC and even cheaper, and Spotify lossless coming, maybe it's OK to let mQa string along: - This thread will go on even longer with lots of entertaining commentary documenting snake oil, companies that partner with such madness, those in the media/press who concur with such schemes. - mQa and maybe BS personally will continue to lose money every day, month, year, until they throw in the towel or investors pull the plug. It's mQa's and in a very serious way also Tidal's call as to what kind of "long game" they want to play here amidst the growing music streaming competition and highly negative sentiment that looks to be getting worse over time for mQa! Confused, botrytis, UkPhil and 4 others 7 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post GoldenOne Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 36 minutes ago, Archimago said: @GoldenOne creates other videos I am making a short video to respond to their recent blog post. But only because I feel it's important to address and deconstruct some of the clearly VERY carefully worded statements in that post. I'd much rather be making other stuff which is less drama-involved and much more fun :) Additionally....the screenshots in appendix 4 are either fake or intentionally mislabelled. They are not 88.2khz core decoded output. Looking at the impulse response one for example. 1) The spectrogram view is showing only up to 22khz, not 44khz, indicating it is showing a 44.1khz file, not an 88.2khz one as claimed. 2) Even if the 'unfolded' impulse did not show the wonky ringing that it did in my files, it would still have some ringing of some sort. Their own paper and other info shows this. And this means that the adobe audition waveform view would have some information below the centre line like this regardless of how zoomed-out it was: Instead, theirs has only a straight upward line. (And we can't really tell much more cause they haven't zoomed in close enough to let us see the individual samples) This implies they have literally just taken a screenshot of a 44.1khz digital 1 sample impulse file. Not the result of core decoder output or reconstruction/deblurring/unfolding. 3) Building upon the previous point, if we are to assume that the MQA encoder has indeed reconstructed a true, single sample, digital impulse, which a true digital single sample impulse represents all frequencies simultaneously, they are reconstructing an illegal signal, and doing the very thing that they claim caused my tests to "Fail" and that they themselves say MQA cannot do. This is not possible and if it were, it'd be being used to make billions in all other areas of signal processing, data transfer, econometrics etc. You've invented a 'perfect' reconstruction system for which audio would be VERY far down the list on potential use cases for. MikeyFresh, The Computer Audiophile, Josh Mound and 4 others 6 1 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Popular Post The Computer Audiophile Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 34 minutes ago, Archimago said: Of course! Spinning is how "deblurring" is accomplished! More BS from BS plus a gross block diagram embedded to look more technical and "legit". Looks like he's conceding that the process does not maintain lossless data capability (ie. differences can be measured but "intended"), but insists that the process makes the sound better - "always be clearer". So again, mQa can make the music even better than the original! Whatever "deblurring" is, mQa could have just cleared this up years ago by releasing a 24/384 original hi-res file and the same piece of music having gone through the deblur algorithm. All of us could have just played these comparison files on our hi-res DACs (likely with no upsampling on the DAC), noted the increased clarity, and lauded mQa for creating a wonderful DSP that audiophiles approved of and admire! Everyone goes home happy; I save time with not writing mQa articles, @Rt66indierock doesn't start this thread, @mansr goes on vacation instead of reverse engineering files, @The Computer Audiophile didn't waste his time preparing for RMAF2018, @GoldenOne creates other videos, none of us here get frustrated, and we all subscribe to Tidal and sing Kumbaya as we wish BS a glorious retirement... We didn't get that did we? 😥 Anyhow... Now that Apple will be ALAC lossless, Amazon Music HD is FLAC and even cheaper, and Spotify lossless coming, maybe it's OK to let mQa string along: - This thread will go on even longer with lots of entertaining commentary documenting snake oil, companies that partner with such madness, those in the media/press who concur with such schemes. - mQa and maybe BS personally will continue to lose money every day, month, year, until they throw in the towel or investors pull the plug. It's mQa's and in a very serious way also Tidal's call as to what kind of "long game" they want to play here amidst the growing music streaming competition and highly negative sentiment that looks to be getting worse over time for mQa! mQa’s only out is to sell the IP to Dolby, and have Dolby back door it into everything because Dolby can move the needle with most companies unlike mQa. I hope it never happens though. Given all the questions by civilians and issues with Apple products not even supporting lossless, can you imagine the headaches mQa would cause! happybob, botrytis and Currawong 3 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
danadam Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 29 minutes ago, GoldenOne said: The spectrogram view is showing only up to 22khz, not 44khz Er... that looks like a logarithmic axis, I'd say it goes to 44k. GoldenOne 1 Link to comment
Popular Post GoldenOne Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 13 minutes ago, danadam said: Er... that looks like a logarithmic axis, I'd say it goes to 44k. I think you may be right actually. Just playing about with the scale there now and whilst I cannot get mine to show as theirs does it does look like it could be going up to 44k. I retract that suggestion. Though the lack of any impulse ringing is still the biggest issue. The only three situations it would show as is in their screenshot: 1) It's just an 88.2khz impulse file. Not unfolded/reconstructed from anything 2) It was reconstructed using cubic/polynomial interpolation (which MQA does not use) 3) They have reconstructed a true digital 1-sample impulse which represents all frequencies upto 44.1khz at full scale. Which they themselves say the encoder cannot do. (And as previously mentioned would imply they've created a 100% 'perfect' reconstruction system for which audio would not be even a blip on the radar in terms of use cases for) To avoid any doubt MQA could literally put the entire debate to rest by just releasing that one file..... lucretius, Josh Mound and MikeyFresh 3 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted May 22, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 22, 2021 1 hour ago, GoldenOne said: I am making a short video to respond to their recent blog post. But only because I feel it's important to address and deconstruct some of the clearly VERY carefully worded statements in that post. I'd much rather be making other stuff which is less drama-involved and much more fun :) Have fun! Quote Additionally....the screenshots in appendix 4 are either fake or intentionally mislabelled. They are not 88.2khz core decoded output. Looking at the impulse response one for example. 1) The spectrogram view is showing only up to 22khz, not 44khz, indicating it is showing a 44.1khz file, not an 88.2khz one as claimed. Yup. Very odd to be showing a spectral view like that with the scale only up to 22kHz claiming this is a "88.2kHz Impulse". Unless of course they're purposely wanting to avoid showing us what >22kHz looks like (which would also be weird). Quote 2) Even if the 'unfolded' impulse did not show the wonky ringing that it did in my files, it would still have some ringing of some sort. Their own paper and other info shows this. And this means that the adobe audition waveform view would have some information below the centre line like this: Instead, theirs has only a straight upward line. (And we can't really tell much more cause they haven't zoomed in close enough to let us see the individual samples) This implies they have literally just taken a screenshot of a 44.1khz digital 1 sample impulse file. Not the result of core decoder output or reconstruction/deblurring/unfolding. Without knowing their procedure, impossible for us to check what's going on with that supposedly 88.2kHz "impulse response" (which as you noted they're only showing a 22kHz spectrogram for some reason) 🤣. Obviously trivial to create what they showed. For fun, here's one I put together while writing this post in Audition at 88.2kHz - this is what it should have looked like I think: Notice that for frequency, I am using the logarithmic scale. Regarding the actual waveform itself, yes, there is sneakiness here as well because if they zoom into the impulse response just another step or two, the software will interpolate and we'll see ringing including that dip below 0 even with a "perfect" single-sample impulse. But we could have also looked at the actual points themselves and seen if the impulse reconstruction was essentially perfect. Quote 3) Building upon the previous point, if we are to assume that the MQA encoder has indeed reconstructed a true, single sample, digital impulse, which a true digital single sample impulse represents all frequencies simultaneously, they are reconstructing an illegal signal, and doing the very thing that they claim caused my tests to "Fail" and that they themselves say MQA cannot do. This is not possible and if it were, it'd be being used to make billions in all other areas of signal processing, data transfer, econometrics etc. You've invented a 'perfect' reconstruction system for which audio would be VERY far down the list on potential use cases for. Exactly, as per point 4 on the BS rebuttal page: Quote 4. The blogger’s test failed because he submitted signals that do not resemble music to an encoder that was configured only for music works. Nonsense comes out. This is like being disappointed when a F1 car struggles on an off-road race. Yet another example of mQa needing to look in the mirror and note just how painful it is to read their claims and attempts at defense! Josh Mound, MikeyFresh, yahooboy and 1 other 4 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted May 22, 2021 Share Posted May 22, 2021 1 hour ago, GoldenOne said: I think you may be right actually. Just playing about with the scale there now and whilst I cannot get mine to show as theirs does it does look like it could be going up to 44k. I retract that suggestion. Though the lack of any impulse ringing is still the biggest issue. The only three situations it would show as is in their screenshot: 1) It's just an 88.2khz impulse file. Not unfolded/reconstructed from anything 2) It was reconstructed using cubic/polynomial interpolation (which MQA does not use) 3) They have reconstructed a true digital 1-sample impulse which represents all frequencies upto 44.1khz at full scale. Which they themselves say the encoder cannot do. (And as previously mentioned would imply they've created a 100% 'perfect' reconstruction system for which audio would not be even a blip on the radar in terms of use cases for) To avoid any doubt MQA could literally put the entire debate to rest by just releasing that one file..... Just had a look again... Yeah, I guess if he played with the scales and made it small, it actually could have looked the way it did. That's fine. Reconstruction of the 88.2kHz impulse exactly is still in question... Yes you're right. They could just release file(s) and clarify things. But they won't... By the way, the other graphs they showed on that page like the square wave and 1kHz tone also did not reflect actual music either. I didn't see anything on there that was all that surprising otherwise. Knowing what signal was being fed into the mQa encoder I'm sure allows them to tweak to some extent what the output should look like... Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post FredericV Posted May 23, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 23, 2021 88.2 MQA decoding includes an upsampling step of the baseband 1X signal from a 24/44.1 distribution file to 24/88.2 and then add the missing ultrasonics to the upsampled 24/88.2 version, recovered using lossy origami. which means that the impulse response should look like test05b in this post, which looks exactly like the plot from Craven's filter In our case we did x2 from 96K to 192K, but doing 44.1 -> 88.2 or 96 -> 192 is basically doubling the samplerate, and the impulse is no longer one sample, but spans several samples. If we just see one pole at 88.2, that can't be correct, unless he is condensing the time on the X axis in such way it appears as a pole, but in reality it's not. Josh Mound, botrytis and lucretius 3 Designer of the 432 EVO music server and Linux specialist Discoverer of the independent open source sox based mqa playback method with optional one cycle postringing. Link to comment
Popular Post GoldenOne Posted May 23, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 23, 2021 3 hours ago, FredericV said: 88.2 MQA decoding includes an upsampling step of the baseband 1X signal from a 24/44.1 distribution file to 24/88.2 and then add the missing ultrasonics to the upsampled 24/88.2 version, recovered using lossy origami. which means that the impulse response should look like test05b in this post, which looks exactly like the plot from Craven's filter In our case we did x2 from 96K to 192K, but doing 44.1 -> 88.2 or 96 -> 192 is basically doubling the samplerate, and the impulse is no longer one sample, but spans several samples. If we just see one pole at 88.2, that can't be correct, unless he is condensing the time on the X axis in such way it appears as a pole, but in reality it's not. In audition regardless of how much the time axis is condensed it still displays negative values if they are present. This is a digital 1-sample impulse: This is an impulse upsampled with XXHE ArcPredict You can see there is some negative value content even when zoomed out: Using a minphase filter which produces the ringing pattern shown in MQA's own AES paper and elsewhere, we see this: The ONLY time that the impulse would appear as it is in the MQA provided screenshot is if it were a cubic interpolation like this: Given as MQA is not using cubic interpolation, the only option left is that the screenshot is likely fake. It's just a screenshot of a digital impulse response file, not an unfolded result botrytis, yahooboy, Currawong and 2 others 5 https://youtube.com/goldensound Roon -> HQPlayer -> SMS200 Ultra/SPS500 -> Holo Audio May (Wildism Edition) -> Holo Audio Serene (Wildism Edition) -> Benchmark AHB2 -> Hifiman Susvara Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted May 23, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 23, 2021 3 hours ago, GoldenOne said: ... Using a minphase filter which produces the ringing pattern shown in MQA's own AES paper and elsewhere, we see this: The ONLY time that the impulse would appear as it is in the MQA provided screenshot is if it were a cubic interpolation like this: Given as MQA is not using cubic interpolation, the only option left is that the screenshot is likely fake. It's just a screenshot of a digital impulse response file, not an unfolded result While the assumption is likely true, @GoldenOne, I'd be careful here. What you found by posting your "music" that was subsequently encoded and the results you found is basically what happens to the vast majority of music sent out and processed by the meat grinder. That's really all that needs to be said. BS/MQA here is just posting test signals that have been given the "white glove" treatment and likely have instructed the encoder to use parameters that left square waves alone, not messed with impulse data, and encoded the 4kHz tone with a bit of noise shaping. They made the encoder, and they're now just putting the results in the best light they can... No need to get drawn into their game if they insist that their encoder can do these things. Fine. But your results are what they are and hundreds of thousands have viewed the video. When it comes to music it's still a lossy technique and they still claim that they can make the sound "more clear" than the original because of their "deblur". 🤥 Their claims are still inherently illogical and suspicious. Thuaveta, JSeymour, Josh Mound and 4 others 7 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post PeterSt Posted May 23, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 23, 2021 3 hours ago, GoldenOne said: This is an impulse upsampled with XXHE ArcPredict You can see there is some negative value content even when zoomed out: May it help you, Yes, this is correct according to my own terms. For others who possibly don't get the idea: This Dirac pulse is upsampled/filtered 2x. To view it like exactly this, it requires XXHE with Arc Prediction filtering engaged and a genuine NOS DAC to render that. For possible helpful reference, this is 2x without smoothing analogue elements because of too low rendering: (sampling rate is 5MHz here) While the above is 2x, this would be 16x: It could be good to know the real base of this: which is the one sample wide 16/44.1 pulse. Also notice that this is again "NOS" outputting this for real and in this case it is thus not touched by anything. This would go directly into your speakers (if the amp is of sufficient bandwidth) and that would not be the best thing to do. Because this is for real, I need to add that the theoretical (see below) slew rate is 2V/us (could be regarded inordinate). Please note that I am adding this to the thread because it seemed to me that @GoldenOne had problems with playing 16/44.1 natively, so I did it for him. If this is deemed not relevant at all, then just throw out this post, please. One more thing: 3 hours ago, GoldenOne said: This is an impulse upsampled with XXHE ArcPredict You can see there is some negative value content even when zoomed out: Even if there would be no filtering active, there would be a similar sling-up in the electrical domain (this is the development of the sinuses). This is again the one sample Dirac, no filtering active. It takes 90ns to get there (span 2V). Now, THIS swing down is purely electrical. So FWIW: electrically this can not exist. But, zoom in sufficiently (mainly the time domain, like I did above). botrytis, manueljenkin and Currawong 1 2 Lush^3-e Lush^2 Blaxius^2.5 Ethernet^3 HDMI^2 XLR^2 XXHighEnd (developer) Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer) Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer) Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier) Link to comment
Popular Post The Computer Audiophile Posted May 23, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted May 23, 2021 1 hour ago, Archimago said: While the assumption is likely true, @GoldenOne, I'd be careful here. What you found by posting your "music" that was subsequently encoded and the results you found is basically what happens to the vast majority of music sent out and processed by the meat grinder. That's really all that needs to be said. BS/MQA here is just posting test signals that have been given the "white glove" treatment and likely have instructed the encoder to use parameters that left square waves alone, not messed with impulse data, and encoded the 4kHz tone with a bit of noise shaping. They made the encoder, and they're now just putting the results in the best light they can... No need to get drawn into their game if they insist that their encoder can do these things. Fine. But your results are what they are and hundreds of thousands have viewed the video. When it comes to music it's still a lossy technique and they still claim that they can make the sound "more clear" than the original because of their "deblur". 🤥 Their claims are still inherently illogical and suspicious. This can’t be overstated. @GoldenOne you aren’t playing in a fair game with an opponent that follows the rules. You’re going against a company willing to lie, say, and spend whatever it takes to win. They don’t think like you. They aren’t out to show the truth. They are out to smear those who oppose them and win at all costs. MikeyFresh, Ran, lucretius and 15 others 13 3 2 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
idiot_savant Posted May 23, 2021 Share Posted May 23, 2021 @GoldenOne - From a technical point of view, just consider the MQA encoder is adaptive - MQA say this themselves, so it’s entirely possible it automatically adapts itself to test tones without any “white glove treatment”, so as @The Computer Audiophilesays, be careful! To play devils advocate, I do think your test tones broke the stated MQA acoustic models, which seem to be done on a track by track basis. transparency would be good here - so if MQA could provide you with some real data, that would be helpful for one and all? your friendly neighbourhood idiot Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now