Another major look at MQA by another pro.

[mcgillroy]

17 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

My advice to Mr Ebaen is to stay objective. He is not that now. Not wise.

 

Explain objective dear compatriot. And don't you think that Ebaen might have seen more than one vendor having mailed him on MQA, the technical merits, the licensing issues and the general lack of dissenting voices?

 

If somebody like him comes out and goes against well funded and entrenched players he sure has some more backing.

 

It might be wise to hear this people out and force Bob and the lot to address the issues raised.

[mcgillroy]

34 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Even less work than rewriting a manufacturer's press release...

 

Indeed - but have you read the mail?!

[mcgillroy]

7 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Isn't it the same as what was posted here?

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/33766-upsampling-mqa-files-to-original-resolution-with-sox-will-sound-like-the-original-resolution/

 

 

Yep - same observations about the possible filter-behavior of MQA.

 

Difference is a.) it's a vendor, who b.) put his proper name behind it, c.) agreed to have it published in a publication, d.) found an editor having the balls to do so.

 

The CA Forum has emerged as an epicenter of MQA-research but this debate needs more participants and especially needs to move beyond fora. With the technical details that Soxr, Mansr, Archimago and others have uncovered in the past weeks the debate is entering a new phase.

 

Firstly the audiophile website publishers will have to make up their mind how to deal with the presence of this information. Will they simply keep rewriting MQA press releases and lip-sync the big press, will they steer clear of the whole thing, or dare to engage in the debate?!

 

Secondly vendors now can speak more openly without feared being hit with a lawsuit for breaking NDAs. Yes Soxr was first with this but notice that two weeks later a vendor comes out and tells us that not only he has come to a similar insight, he also tells us that Aureliac obviously did too. Without having seen the MQA NDAs I am pretty certain this wouldn't have happened if Soxrs and Mansrs/Archimagos material on the filter-topologies wasn't public already.

 

So this post by Ebaen might indeed been less work than rewriting a press release. But its a sign of something shifting. It gives the increasingly solid research into the questionable merits of MQA more exposure and the more people talk and ask questions the better.

 

It will be interesting to see if, when & how MQA reacts.

[mcgillroy]

Thx soxr for setting the record straight! It's good to know where credit is due and have timeline of events. I follow MQA off and on and sometimes miss parts of the discussion.

 

Because of possible NDA repercussions I deliberately didn't infer in my post that you are the same person quoted in the Ebaen part

 

It's indeed time to deblur MQA. It would be great to have a similar report from you as Xivero published. Doesn't need to be 40+ pages but a more formal PDF putting together above's timeline and the main findings so far certainly would be helpful.

[mcgillroy]

Oh PeteV got deployed again. Seems like someone at MQA feels the impacts coming closer.

 

There's nothing like boots on the ground spreading FUD, especially if your grunt is a jolly fellow happily absorbing the incoming and keeping everybody busy.

 

 

 

 

[mcgillroy]

Hey Pete, nice attempt on surpressive fire, lots of ammo in your discursive machine gun.

 

Unfortunately all duds.

 

Come back if you have a real bullet. And learned to aim.

 

 

[mcgillroy]

MQA = Instagram for Audio.

 

It‘s pretty but it’s not „the source“ rather a post-filter. You can claim that your post-filter „corrects“ some aspect of the image-sensor, lens, RAW-process & whatever-array in a given device. But you are:

 

a.) dealing with 100s if not 1000s of variants of those even within the same productline

 

b.) second guessing the engineers who decided about the trade offs they made in their design 

 

Which leads to c.) where It’s your IP versus their IP. You will in most cases never learn the intricacies of a given design cause they won’t tell you unless you $$$. Your filter then will have to be based on measurements and be an after the fact „fix“ which can be defeated tomorrow by a new variant, a new software etc.

 

MQA is just a container that allows Instagram-like post-processing at the consumer end. MQA is not present where artist make aesthetic decisions: in music and mastering studios.

 

MQA is applied at a different place, a different time by different people. Perhaps not people at all. Cause given how fast Warner had parts of their catalog transcoded this place happens to be the cloud where large libraries get batch processed. Artist, producers and mastering engineers are probably the last ones hearing the results. If ever.

 

For the process of transcoding files to MQA there is no evidence of device/recording-chain specific filtering. We have evidence for per-track filtering - which precisely is what Instagram does. Filter to please.

 

To get into studios MQA would need to persuade manufacturers of DACs, outboard effects, effect plugins and not least DAW-suites. Pro-Tools, Logic and to a lesser extend Steinberg and Abelton own that market. 

 

They will have a very hard time to persuade Apple to include it in Logic or Avid to make it part of Pro-Tools. Just wait until either of those comes with their own minimal phase filter set to fight off another rent-seeker trying to leech on their transaction volume.

 

To them MQA is like Kodak knocking at their door after the boat sailed in photography telling them they have invented a format that “de-blurs” all those blurry digital pictures. For just a small fee per device...

 

 

[mcgillroy]

Peter seriously I tried to comprehend your argument over the last two pages of this thread and I still don't get it. In the interest of this discussion plz reiterate what you are trying to say.

 

Thx!

[mcgillroy]

On 8/6/2017 at 3:56 AM, Charles Hansen said:

 

True, I hadn't even thought of that. We like to think that an Apple would be around "forever". But what about a Tidal or a Spotify - that to the best of my knowledge has never made a profit? I guess if one service goes out of business, there will presumably be another one to take its place. But it's a hassle changing services that may not offer you the things your old provider offered. (Like with Apple streaming, anything you upload to their "cloud", regardless of resolution can be replaced - at their discretion - with 256kb/s AAC files.)

 

 

My working hypothesis on MQA is that the major-labels view it as a hedge against Apple, Amazon and other tech-giants. They missed the boat with Napster in 2001 and for the following decade Apple made huge profits with a music only device: the iPod.

 

During this decade the majors were at Apples mercy and they were not happy with the iTunes pricing model nor with the fact that Apple grew while the music market shrunk.

 

These days both Apple and Amazon have streaming services and sell music hardware.

 

With Alexa/Echo Amazon became the biggest speaker company of the world.

 

Apple has the iPhone + the gigantic ecosystem of headphones, speakers and streamers attached. Last not least they payed 3 billion (!) to acquire Beats which certainly turned some heads in the music industry. They didn't only acquire a headphone company, they acquired Dr. Dre, a major Hip-Hop artist and producer as well as Jimmy Iovine, former chairman of the Interscope major label. They now have Apple Music and are approaching 30 million subscribers.

 

Apple thus combines capacity for music production, distribution and consumption under one roof. Amazon has done similar for the TV-series market and could easily copy this recipe to their music-division.

 

But unlike TV-Series which are watched once or maybe twice music gets consumed over and over again. And herein lies the big asset the majors have: they own the important catalogs with the all-time favorite artists and without them Apples & Amazons services are worthless. 
 

These catalogs + MQAs DRM could prove potent to get additional revenue from the tech-industry into the majors accounts.

 

MQA offers at least two potential instruments to tap into the revenue streams of Apple, Amazon or any other tech-company. Firstly they would need to obtain a MQA license for any hard- or software instance that plays MQA, secondly they could require royalties for any piece of MQA music played. They could also price discriminate against level of audio quality.

 

Audiophiles are just the beta-testers for the stealth-DRM of MQA. It's a small market, easily influenced by marketing and served by a variety of small and fragmented hardware-makers. None of the audiophile-hardware companies is big enough to be a threat for the majors - rather the opposite. If the majors go behind this they will have no choice.

 

In the Audiophile market MQA can implement their format and see how it scales,  learn lessons about marketing and get a handle on consumption metrics. In the big pictures audiophiles are small change - the real money is in tech versus majors.

 

My prediction though is that Apple and Amazon will never let MQA into their ecosystems. They will buy out big artists and their catalogs if they must and they might even start high-rez-tiers in their streaming services - with their own DRMed formats...

[mcgillroy]

41 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I have a different take on this.

 

Remember when Steve Jobs wrote that open letter to record labels to get rid of DRM and allow Apple to sell DRM-free downloads?

 

It was because Apple is only an outlet that sells these "goods." It can't dictate when products are offered it for sale, especially with download sales dwindling.

 

The record labels have all the power. If they say it's MQA or the highway, Apple, Spotify, Pandora, etc... will all have to bow down or close up shop. It's not like Apple can invent its way out of this predicament. It can't create Sort of Blue to compete with Kind of Blue. 

 

I hope it doesn't come to this, but I believe it could if the record labels want it to. 

 

 

 

No disagreement here on the importance of the catalogs and their control being in the hands of the majors. But Apple has $250 billion in the bank, not sure about Amazon but if they need money the capital market throws it at them.

 

You don't need to buy a whole catalog, just some select artists to gain leverage.

 

Spotify is the other hedge of the majors btw. Ever wondered how they can stay afloat without making money?! Check their backers, majors own 20% of Spotify and would prevent any takeover by Facebook or any other platform company.

 

MQA on any of those platforms is not going to happen. But MQA as a lever to force these platforms to develop other DRM-formats that meet majors approval is a likely outcome.

[mcgillroy]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

It's tough to see a label selling its catalog of money making artists to amazon or Apple so it could make money. Music is the gift that keeps giving to the rights holders. Sure anything can be bought though. 

 

Yep.

 

But you could talk to the estate of Jimi Hendrix, Prince or rights-holder of any other major recordings artist of the past 50 years and make an offer they can't refuse on the next license renewal date.

 

You don't need a whole catalogue, you just need  to threaten a big enough chunk of a majors revenue stream.

 

Or just buy the whole shebang. The music industry is relatively small by tech-metrics. $17 billion annually in the US including live concerts, merch etc. All labels combined, majors and independent produce $7 billion in music shipments in the US, ca $15 billion worldwide.

 

Amazon just bought Whole Foods for $13.5 billion.

 

Apple last year was in talks acquiring Time-Warner. A company with ca. $28 billion annual revenue.

 

If you are a major you want to build moats. Your shiny DRM-solution "authenticating" your artist would be a nice element in this.

[mcgillroy]

Have you spend any time in a recording and/or mastering studio PeterV?

 

Please respond in honesty. From what I gather from you posts you have no or little exposure of how recorded music is produced.

[mcgillroy]

55 minutes ago, PeterV said:

 

Hi Mcgillroy, no, not yet, but it is on my bucket list. I did have a conversation though with a recording engineer who release High-End recordings both Analogue as well DSD recorded and DXD mastered. He was very clear and convincing to me when I asked him what his personal experience with MQA currently is and his answer was: it is the best digital recording technology after High Speed Analogue.. we took a license immediately after hearing it. So..this triggers me and yes..I would like to witness a recording and mastering live off course

 

Well go ahead. It's very enlightening and you will see the claims made by MQA in a different light. First of all there is no 'live" in a studio. Not even in classical recordings

 

 

 

[mcgillroy]

Thx Charles - looks like the German audio press is going all in on the pretense of giving space for controversy.

 

I especially like Stuarts "MQA goes beyond the loss-free concepts to deliver the highest quality."

 

The coming days are going to be a shit-show par excellence

 

[mcgillroy]

4 hours ago, Charles Hansen said:

To be frank, I am baffled at how the "MQA" paper passed the JAES review board. It is truly an embarrassment that should never habe been allowed to see the light of day in the form it was published.  http://www.aes.org/e-lib/download.cfm/17501.pdf?ID=17501

 

 

Yes. But the quality of AES-papers is not too high anyways. It's just a lot of industry-posturing going on. More telling though there have been no follow-up papers, neither from BS or any third party.

 

Given the momentum the topic has and the material now available it shouldn't be to hard to put together a critique of their paper and have it published with AES. Now that would be fun

 

Also thx for the info on Meridians/MQA business ties. Very enlightening. Makes me wonder in how far the audiophile press is tied into this whole mess.

[mcgillroy]

On 8/31/2017 at 0:35 AM, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Well, I have tried.  But, I have found that disappointing.  I appreciate your efforts, difficult and time consuming as that may have been.  And, I respect you from numerous posts here and elsewhere.  But, though you may think you have delivered a knockout punch,  I remain neutral with too many unanswered questions.

 

I undestand your reserve and it would be helpful if you'd list up the questions you see unanswered or only partially answered. Thx!

[mcgillroy]

Chris, is your opinion an informed guess based on the interpolation of the MQA debate so far or based on something else?

 

My intuition guess in the same direction as your take and if that is indeed is the case we will have a bleak situation to deal with.

[mcgillroy]

The irony of the whole MQA-marketing debacle is that if they just would have sold the whole thing as "DRM you can live with while it gives you high-rez-streaming" they'd probably saved themselves a lot of trouble.

 

But getting on the stand, claiming "Shannon-Nyquist is wrong" and "btw. we are fixing temporal-blur (in the air)" and "no this DRM is not DRM" really was asking for having half the internet breathing down their neck.

 

That won't go away anymore and even though MQA might just be forced through by the major-labels this episode will have interesting mid- and long-term effects for the audio-industry and audio-press. The latter lost a lot of reputation, the former will have to come to terms with rent-seeking licensing schemes and probably begin to compete on that. MQA may only be the beginning and I am just waiting for somebody to merge this idea with the block chain.

 

 

[mcgillroy]

Chris & Charles,

 

there is a funny & interesting gap between front-page and back-page news on MQA: all the informed discussion and statements by industry-insiders take place in forums and the like.

 

Front-page its either Hooray-MQA or silence.

 

Where do I have to go to find a list of the dozen or so manufactures having expressed concern about MQA?Where do I find the opinions by reputable studio and mastering engineers on the format? Where do I get any idea about the licensing-regiment in question? Where do I learn about the filter-palette evidently implemented in MQA?

 

The real accomplishment of MQA marketing so far is to keep that information below a certain threshold. A threshold editors control.

 

The print-press seems to be a lost cause anyways but none of the online audiophile-sites had the balls to publish a mere synopsis of the debate so far.* Or an interview with one of the many reputable & vocal critics of the format. Or god beware ask a lawyer or IP-scholar able to provide a view-point on the DRM and licensing-regime inherent to MQA? Perhaps hear a smaller music-labels opinion what they think about MQA strengthening majors control over distribution?! Or just call Apple/Amazon/Google and ask them about the likelihood of MQA support. After all the three sell 10x more speakers and headphones than all audio-companies combined - and not least control sizeable parts of the streaming market.

 

There is so much to be done the audiophile press fails to do. Given that MQA is the best click-bait in audiophile-town I seriously don't understand why that traffic get's pissed away.

 

But more importantly this failure by editors contributes to the careful reputation management MQA-marketing has achieved: frame MQA-critque as suspect and untrustworthy cause its all happening in the murky parts of the internet.

 

You Chris are one of those in power to change that. Your websites forum has done the MQA-debate a great service so far. It's time to elevate that discussion from the back-page to the front-page. Perhaps coordinate with other editors, but it's 2017 and there is a good 18 month of information worth of journalistic treatment available.

 

--

*The only two exceptions are Positive Feedback Online's Andreas Koch interview and the KIHs posted up on Darko's site. The latter again is not the sites editor speaking but a third-party.

 

 

 

 

[mcgillroy]

17 hours ago, Jud said:

 

You’re calling MQA marketing’s failure to attain any reasonable level of publicity for its product its “real accomplishment”?

 

What have Tidal’s sales done since MQA?  That would be the “real accomplishment” in the eyes of the industry.

 

Define reasonable.

 

And please keep my statement in context. I wrote that the success of MQAs marketing lies in keeping the sceptical voices confined to forums and out of regular press, online and offline: MQA critique back-page, MQA-Hooray front page.

 

MQA marketing  managed to own the front pages and editors complied and continue to comply since their calculus about MQAs reach contains to many unknows.

 

It would be very easy and traffic-wise worthwhile for editors to pull some of the MQA-critique above the threshold and it's fascinating that it didn't happen. Not a single audiophile site of name has published a mere list of the hifi-compaines critical of MQA. Which would be:

Auralic (DACs)
AK Designs (DACs & software)
Ayre (Hifi)
Benchmark (DACs)
Bryston (Hifi)

Chord (DACs)

Exogal (DACs)

Hagemann (Hifi)

Klinkt better (Hifi software)
Linn (Hifi)

MBL (Hifi)

Naim (Hifi)
PS Audio (DACs)

Shiit (Hifi)
Xivero (Studio software)

 

Call me when you see this lost posted front page on anywhere in the audiophile press.

 

Editors don't have the balls. Even in the face of some of the biggest names in the audio-industry expressing scepticism about MQA its apparent that the editors of audiophile sites think they can't afford to go front-page with this. Same is true for statements by the numerous competent studio & mastering engineers and programmers who have been picking apart MQA.

 

It is this context in which I say MQAs marketing is both a remarkable success and a train wreck. They thought by getting the big audiophile mags on board (key influencers) they'd be able to gain traction and eventually establish the format as the one & only solution for high-rez streaming.

 

But MQA marketing underestimated the competence of their audience. As I have written before this is not cables and tweaks, this is computer audio and you are dealing with a whole different level of competency and education. Claims like Shannon-Nyquist is incomplete, temporal blur is a problem and DRM is not DRM are not sitting well with digital natives.

 

That blew up in their face pretty badly. But with the compliance of audiophile editors MQA-marketing managed to keep that critique out of the press. To this day.

 

Long term the damage is done and Bob Stuarts reputation as an engineer will never recover from this. But if MQA indeed becomes a new standard for high-rez streaming he can afford that. And will be introduced into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame.

 

 

 

 

 

[mcgillroy]

Except it’s the audiophile niche where MQA got launched and heavily promoted. MQA is marketed as being about sound quality to an audience that cares about sound quality.

 

It is promoted by Stereophile & TAS as well as on audiophile websites. It’s non existent on tech pages or elsewhere.

 

This is a deliberate choice by MQA. The audiophile niche is well know by Bob Stuart and evidently manageable with a small team of well connected marketing people.

 

Unlike in tech there is no journalism in audio. If anything it’s MQAs merit to have exposed that fact like nothing else before.

 

Let’s see what happens when MQA becomes big enough in streaming that the tech press takes notice.

[mcgillroy]

54 minutes ago, ctsooner said:

I asked both my kids along with many of their friends if they have ever heard of MQA.  Not one kid has.  

 

Which is actually to the advantage of MQA. They don't care in what format music streams as long as it streams.

 

Audiophila just served as a beachhead cause Stuart knew the territory and look how easy its conquered! The battle will be won elsewhere, where people are oblivious about sound-quality but where the real money is.

 

As you remarked as long as they are still on the beachhead they are extremely vulnerable. Technically that is, practically the audiophile press is brining them food and warm clothes: they remind their readers every month about how money manufacturers and services already support MQA. They never mention the equally long list of manufactures sceptical about MQA. It's a really comfortable beachhead except for those pesky Soxr, Mansr, Archimago, Lucey mosquitos.

 

But boy war is is not supposed to be all sunshine & rainbows.  

[mcgillroy]

Or maybe it's already in the NDAs as a future option. SDMI had a phase one, phase two rollout. Phase one = watermarks only, Phase two = checking for copyright infringement & preventing files deemed unauthorised from being played.