MQA is Vaporware

[Revelation]

All this bitching about MQA....if you don't like, just don't use it. No one is forcing you to use it. It sounds better than Spotify and they have a better catalog than some of the other ones out there that sound slightly different. 

The background of MQA does not seem to be good but if I'm not playing records or CD's Tidal is currently the best option for me. If don't like the Dolby sound effect Apple puts on their music and we have the choice to choose what we want. Trying to get people to change their mind and debate is a waste of time.

Peace!

[rex4539]

I have been passively following this thread for a while now and, I fundamentally agree that MQA doesn't really bring anything spectacular to the table and, to its bare bones, it's mostly a licensing scheme.

 

Having said that, I have listened to a lot of hi-end MQA recordings from 2L. The amazing thing with this label is that they provide free samples of each and every sample rate so you, the customer, can compare.

 

So I did that and I have found that there is no audible difference whatsoever between the DXD version and the MQA version. I don't know if 2L is getting a white glove treatment from MQA but I love what I hear. I'm using an MQA-enabled DAC with 131dB dynamic range.

 

That said, would I prefer a FLAC file or the MQA file? Sonically speaking, I don't care, they sound exactly the same (and for any golden-eared person, I would challenge them to a blind AB test). But ethically speaking, I would rather get the open source FLAC file any day.

[The Computer Audiophile]

26 minutes ago, Revelation said:

All this bitching about MQA....if you don't like, just don't use it.

Tell that to our Canadian friends using Roon. Tidal is the only service they can use. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

23 minutes ago, rex4539 said:

I'm using an MQA-enabled DAC with 131dB dynamic range.

mQa doesn’t have that near much dynamic range.  
 

It’s about 17 bit, so about 102 dB. 

[rex4539]

12 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

mQa doesn’t have that near much dynamic range.  
 

It’s about 17 bit, so about 102 dB. 

You've beaten this dead horse long enough. All I'm saying is that if anybody thinks they can hear a difference between the DXD and MQA version of those 2L recordings, I challenge them to pass double blind AB tests.

[MikeyFresh]

45 minutes ago, Revelation said:

All this bitching about MQA....if you don't like, just don't use it. No one is forcing you to use it.

Who's "bitching"? I know TIDAL fan boys get their panties in a bunch whenever anyone suggests there are better choices out there, but in this case the bitchin' seems to be coming from you.

 

Don't use MQA, and no one is being forced? No shit Sherlock, however the purpose of the opposition to MQA isn't to bitch about anything, it is to ensure there is a hardy disapproval message being sent to the record labels, the equipment manufacturers, and anyone else thinking that MQA can become the de facto standard in music distribution.

 

The MQA brass have stated such as the goal, and the record labels have shown signs they could be onboard with such a "one deliverable approach". See Warner Music's removal of all standard Redbook CD versions on TIDAL, replacing it with Master Quality Adulterated. They are forcing TIDAL subscribers to listen only to MQA, and in that process also forcing 3rd parties such as Roon and Audirvana to pay inflated per stream licensing fees to MQA, because the MQA-less versions of those albums no longer even exist as a choice.

 

Toss in that the major record labels are about a 30% stakeholder in MQA, and yeah, we don't want to be force fed anymore of this bullshit, hence the vocal opposition found here and elsewhere. If you don't like it then please unsubscribe to this thread, rather than complain about so-called bitching, or make claims that no one is being forced. TIDAL subscribers are being forced, even if they downgrade their subscription, they are still being fed this MQA crap and not the real Redbook transfers that once existed on that service. Roon and Audirvana are being forced to pay ever higher per stream royalties whenever a TIDAL subscriber listens to a Warner Music label album.

 

I hate to break it to you, but TIDAL ain't all that.

[Revelation]

I agree it's not all that but I like the sound of Tidal better than Spotify or ITunes. When Spotify finally upgrades we will see how good it is.

[MikeyFresh]

18 minutes ago, rex4539 said:

You've beaten this dead horse long enough. All I'm saying is that if anybody thinks they can hear a difference between the DXD and MQA version of those 2L recordings, I challenge them to pass double blind AB tests.

But you skirted right past what Chris said, which is the spec you so boldly tossed out there is completely meaningless, you won't come close to that kind of dynamic range with your MQA DAC.

 

Further, who cares about your blind listening test challenge, aren't you just parroting others now with what you think sounds impressive? Thats actually comical in that you've driven home a major negative point about MQA, that being it provides no audible improvement/difference as demonstrated in the McGill blind listening study. So why the hell would anyone then wish to pay licensing fees, in fact fees at every stop in the music distribution chain just to prop up such a bogus scheme, if there is no sonic benefit?

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

30 minutes ago, rex4539 said:

You've beaten this dead horse long enough. All I'm saying is that if anybody thinks they can hear a difference between the DXD and MQA version of those 2L recordings, I challenge them to pass double blind AB tests.

I just thought I’d comment on the fact that your DAC’s dynamic range isn’t that important because mQa doesn’t have much. 
 

The 2L stuff was hand converted / white glove processed. Morten claim the difference is great. If others can’t hear a difference, that’s a huge loss for mQa. White glove treatment and it still doesn’t matter. Hard to justify the mQa tax then. 

[Stereo]

1 hour ago, MikeyFresh said:

Who's "bitching"? I know TIDAL fan boys get their panties in a bunch whenever anyone suggests there are better choices out there, but in this case the bitchin' seems to be coming from you.

 

Don't use MQA, and no one is being forced? No shit Sherlock, however the purpose of the opposition to MQA isn't to bitch about anything, it is to ensure there is a hardy disapproval message being sent to the record labels, the equipment manufacturers, and anyone else thinking that MQA can become the de facto standard in music distribution.

 

The MQA brass have stated such as the goal, and the record labels have shown signs they could be onboard with such a "one deliverable approach". See Warner Music's removal of all standard Redbook CD versions on TIDAL, replacing it with Master Quality Adulterated. They are forcing TIDAL subscribers to listen only to MQA, and in that process also forcing 3rd parties such as Roon and Audirvana to pay inflated per stream licensing fees to MQA, because the MQA-less versions of those albums no longer even exist as a choice.

 

Toss in that the major record labels are about a 30% stakeholder in MQA, and yeah, we don't want to be force fed anymore of this bullshit, hence the vocal opposition found here and elsewhere. If you don't like it then please unsubscribe to this thread, rather than complain about so-called bitching, or make claims that no one is being forced. TIDAL subscribers are being forced, even if they downgrade their subscription, they are still being fed this MQA crap and not the real Redbook transfers that once existed on that service. Roon and Audirvana are being forced to pay ever higher per stream royalties whenever a TIDAL subscriber listens to a Warner Music label album.

 

I hate to break it to you, but TIDAL ain't all that.

All of this plus infinity to the power of infinity…and beyond!!!! 

[botrytis]

2 hours ago, Revelation said:

All this bitching about MQA....if you don't like, just don't use it. No one is forcing you to use it. It sounds better than Spotify and they have a better catalog than some of the other ones out there that sound slightly different. 

The background of MQA does not seem to be good but if I'm not playing records or CD's Tidal is currently the best option for me. If don't like the Dolby sound effect Apple puts on their music and we have the choice to choose what we want. Trying to get people to change their mind and debate is a waste of time.

Peace!

 

 

Problem is on Tidal, you can't get rid of it. I will not buy mQa nor will I support a DAC company that has put it in. SMSL had a Dac with and without mQa, basically the same model, and the mQa version was 100 USD more - there is your tax for a tech that makes music sound like garbage.

 

[StephenJK]

4 hours ago, Revelation said:

All this bitching about MQA....if you don't like, just don't use it. No one is forcing you to use it. It sounds better than Spotify and they have a better catalog than some of the other ones out there that sound slightly different. 

The background of MQA does not seem to be good but if I'm not playing records or CD's Tidal is currently the best option for me. If don't like the Dolby sound effect Apple puts on their music and we have the choice to choose what we want. Trying to get people to change their mind and debate is a waste of time.

Peace!

I think the issue from the start has been not so much whether there's any benefit to using MQA, or whether it's a good value, but rather that their lack of transparency and technical disclosure comes across as being deceptive and manipulative.  

 

MQA started out, seemingly, as a means of compressing a "high res" file into a smaller package to save bandwith and allow for that file to be played or streamed from an online service.  In the changing world of Netflix and streaming of 4K movies, that smaller package quickly became redundant, much like what happened to phone couplers and modems.  

 

When it became obvious that nobody cared about a smaller file size, MQA seemed to morph into some sort of quasi-magical thing that would be able to improve on the sound quality of the master tapes.  All this, of course, with even less technical information than before.

 

The labels - God love their greedy little black hearts - were likely slathering at the opportunity for selling us yet another version of our music all over again.  Some of them signed up for MQA "encoding" and that pushed a lot of manufacturers to do the same - making their gear MQA ready.

 

It's not about bitching from the audiophile community.  It's about honesty in advertising.  If it doesn't have a certain percentage of peanuts in it, you can't call it peanut butter.  If it isn't a lossless format and needs to meet that technical definition, then it isn't.  

 

Someone has to represent consumers against corporate interests.  We have rules and regulations in place today that people fought to have enacted their entire working lives. 

 

This isn't bitching - it's about consumer protection.  Who could find fault with that? 

[Abtr]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

Problem is on Tidal, you can't get rid of it. I will not buy mQa nor will I support a DAC company that has put it in. SMSL had a Dac with and without mQa, basically the same model, and the mQa version was 100 USD more - there is your tax for a tech that makes music sound like garbage.

The McGill University study demonstrated that listeners cannot hear a difference between 24/96 PCM and MQA and personally I can't hear a difference between redbook and the 'first unfold' of MQA, or between Qobuz and Tidal for that matter, *unless* a different master was used. I think we should avoid statements like MQA is "a tech that makes music sound like garbage ." It's not true and it doesn't help anyone.

 

Now the Tidal Hifi tier is another matter. It most likely streams MQA without unfolding to 96 or 88.2 kHz. This may result in audibly degraded sound.

[botrytis]

52 minutes ago, Abtr said:

The McGill University study demonstrated that listeners cannot hear a difference between 24/96 PCM and MQA and personally I can't hear a difference between redbook and the 'first unfold' of MQA, or between Qobuz and Tidal for that matter, *unless* a different master was used. I think we should avoid statements like MQA is "a tech that makes music sound like garbage ." It's not true and it doesn't help anyone.

 

Now the Tidal Hifi tier is another matter. It most likely streams MQA without unfolding to 96 or 88.2 kHz. This may result in audibly degraded sound.

 

I have heard enough mQa files and compared with non-mQa to honestly say garbage is appropriate term for what I heard.

[dericchan1]

9 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

I have heard enough mQa files and compared with non-mQa to honestly say garbage is appropriate term for what I heard.

I would not want to waste more than 15 minutes of my time to listen to MQA just to confirm it is crap!!! If I spent 15 minutes on this crap I lose 15 minutes on listening to good quality music!!!

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, dericchan1 said:

I would not want to waste more than 15 minutes of my time to listen to MQA just to confirm it is crap!!! If I spent 15 minutes on this crap I lose 15 minutes on listening to good quality music!!!

I agree but I was listening to speakers to what I would get next.

[Abtr]

13 hours ago, botrytis said:

I have heard enough mQa files and compared with non-mQa to honestly say garbage is appropriate term for what I heard.

So are you saying the conclusion of the McGill study was wrong and there actually is a clearly audible difference between MQA and regular 24/96 (or redbook for that matter) using the same master? Did you do a blind test?

 

I think most (if not all) people will be unable to hear a difference as is shown by the McGill study and which is also my own experience. You may subjectively believe that MQA sounds worse, just like MQA proponents may subjectively believe MQA sounds better. But stating that MQA sounds like 'garbage' doesn't help the objective discussion IMHO. It may even push some neutral listeners into the pro-MQA camp because what you state is obviously not what they hear.      

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, Abtr said:

So are you saying the conclusion of the McGill study was wrong and there actually is a clearly audible difference between MQA and regular 24/96 (or redbook for that matter) using the same master? Did you do a blind test?

 

I think most (if not all) people will be unable to hear a difference as is shown by the McGill study and which is also my own experience. You may subjectively believe that MQA sounds worse, just like MQA proponents may subjectively believe MQA sounds better. But stating that MQA sounds like 'garbage' doesn't help the objective discussion IMHO. It may even push some neutral listeners into the pro-MQA camp because what you state is obviously not what they hear.      

 

You can't hear with my ears and they didn't use mine for the study, so I won't talk for them, To me, as I stated before, I hear it being worse.

 

If what I say pushes them over the edge, that is THEIR problem not mine. I stated my opinion and you have tried to make a big deal about it. IT IS MY OPINION.

 

The study just backs up what I heard is all.

[Abtr]

20 minutes ago, botrytis said:

You can't hear with my ears and they didn't use mine for the study, so I won't talk for them, To me, as I stated before, I hear it being worse.

 

If what I say pushes them over the edge, that is THEIR problem not mine. I stated my opinion and you have tried to make a big deal about it. IT IS MY OPINION.

 

The study just backs up what I heard is all.

The McGill study does not back up what you state you heard and without a blind test your opinion basically has no value. As far as we are trying to stop MQA here, your opinion is doing more harm than good IMHO.   

[The Computer Audiophile]

41 minutes ago, Abtr said:

The McGill study does not back up what you state you heard and without a blind test your opinion basically has no value. As far as we are trying to stop MQA here, your opinion is doing more harm than good IMHO.   

 

That's a bridge too far in my opinion. 

 

The McGill study couldn't have used every track to which @botrytis listens, and of course couldn't use his ears and audio playback system. The study showed the participants couldn't hear a difference. Taking the conclusion farther than "the participants couldn't hear a difference" is a bit antithetical to science and your call for blind testing. 

 

It's entirely possible that some listeners, outside the McGill study, listen to tracks that mQa has screwed up and they don't like what they hear. It's also possible that people listen to what's available to them, without the pristine master and mQa'd version of the same master, and decide that mQa sounds bad. We have to go with what's available to us, not a perfect situation that doesn't exist outside the laboratory. 

[danadam]

13 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

That's a bridge too far in my opinion.

Sorry, but I'm mightily confused.

The study says that the participants didn't hear differences. Both you you and botrytis seem to agree that this is what the study says.

Then botrytis says he himself heard a difference. Ok, fine, whatever. Then he says the study confirms what he heard. How?

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 minutes ago, danadam said:

Then he says the study confirms what he heard.

That's a question for him.

[botrytis]

15 minutes ago, danadam said:

Sorry, but I'm mightily confused.

The study says that the participants didn't hear differences. Both you you and botrytis seem to agree that this is what the study says.

Then botrytis says he himself heard a difference. Ok, fine, whatever. Then he says the study confirms what he heard. How?

 

I did not listen to the same tracks as the McGill study and also on a totally different system (or three). What the study says is people couldn't hear a difference with those tracks on that system. The tracks that I listened to, on a different system (or three), sounded worse than the same tracks that were encoded with mQa. One example is the LP Melody Gardot - Live in Europe which I have the 48/24 version of and the mQa version also says 48/24. In most of the tracks, the mQa version, the guitars sounded plastic, the strings, while the regular version one can hear clearly what they are. I think that is worse. It reminded me of an experiment I did, a long time ago, with John Williams 'The Baroque Album' where I tried various levels of MP3 encoding. What I found is as the file got smaller, the Guitar sounded more and more like he was using nylon strings (less harmonics).   

 

As @The Computer Audiophilestated, I listened to different tracks and also in a different environment.

 

There may be track of mQa that sound better (white glove treated ones) but we do not know, nor do they ever play the high-res versions, when they were showing them off at AXPONA. 

 

The point being mQa taxes each and every step in the production and playing of a digital audio file. That just means more control over what we play, which is an anathema to what we have currently.

[dericchan1]

I don’t know any details about this “controlled” study you referred to and how representative it is taking a small sample of testing population to try and reach a conclusion. 

 

If you want to talk science, here you go

https://goldensound.audio/2021/11/29/tidal-hifi-is-not-lossless/

 

measurement of added noise in mqa that is indeed audible, otherwise, manufacturers like ifi or software developers like Hqplayer would not have to write specific digital filters to account for the added noise in mqa.  And I can relate this to my own ears, own experience that mqa is crap!!! And yes you heard what you heard with your own resolving system as long as you are happy with the sound!!! I know guys who insist mp3 sounds better than hires too

[Ryan Berry]

4 hours ago, Abtr said:

OK, you heard what you heard whatever that was with some systems. I don't think you are being dishonest, but a controlled scientific study indicates that there is no audible difference and so does my own experience. I think there's nothing in MQA that permits a vast audible difference from one playback system to the next as you suggest. Maybe you should do the work and try a controlled (blind) test on a system that you think makes MQA sound like garbage relative to e.g. redbook.

 

I agree with your point that it makes no sense to go to MQA from a consumer's point of view because it doesn't improve the music. But it also doesn't vastly degrade music (on any system), which is my point.

 

There's a lot of moving parts at play here that make comparative studies extraordinarily difficult compared to comparing other formats, not the least of which has been the obvious alteration of tracks to sound more impressive for reviewers when MQA was pitching their technology.  There was some uncomfortable shuffling when we let them know we have a copy of the original master files from our connections that we were going to use for A-B listening tests.  I felt this was even more to test appropriate at Ayre as we were already using a Minimum Phase filter in our products for years at that point, so there was less chance of being "wow'd" by introducing the filter into a product that may otherwise not have one when switching over to MQA mode.  

I can say that I have yet to hear a single track offered in MQA format that sounds anything like the the equivalent high-rez version from the same album.  I don't know if I've been unfortunate and just picked tracks at random that happen to have had a heavy remastering hand or had something go horribly wrong in the conversion process, but I can spot them instantly as they all suffer from sounding overly bass-inflated and lacking the same level of detail to my ears.  At best, it was "better MP3" to us.  I can also say that I've ran into accidentally listening to a MQA track enough times at this point where I only had to look at the file playing after the first 10-15 seconds to confirm it was one that snuck into a playlist on me in Tidal to feel confident that it's not a case of listener's bias at play.  Listening to the non-MQA version easily confirms this.  Similarly, artists who don't have the "Master" tag, such as Shawn Colvin, never seems to suffer from the same issue.  Why the McGill study find differently, I'm interested in looking into.  The differences were so stark, frankly, that I really haven't followed up much on what others have found since as I expected it would be obvious to any listener as tracks became more available and more companies continue to adopt a similar Minimum Phase filter as an option.