MQA Off-Topic Spinoff

[Rt66indierock]

52 minutes ago, Brian Lucey said:

 

Your taste is stuck in time

 

We are "old" when we are stuck.

 

That's sad.

 

I like all eras of music.

 

There are times on this thread when I need to cleanse my soul and this one of them. I'm going put the top down, turn up the volume on Live at a Flamingo Hotel and drive home in a  beautiful Phoenix evening. That ought to do it.

[Rt66indierock]

15 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Funny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity is an English page and those who wrote that felt something but didn't work it out. It fluently talks about "high-end" in there, though.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity_(techniek) is the dutch page. The last sentence discerns explicitly and tells that high-end can only be bought in special stores and not at Best Buy, so to speak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-end_audio says that Harry Pearson agrees with me (see my sig). Haha.

 

From the dutch page it is somewhat more clear that "Hi-Fidelity" was a means to describe a norm for, say, low noise (or acceptable noise levels) etc. later caught in the DIN 45500 norm (I did not read/check it). DIN is also old 70's stuff, literally, including its connectors.

 

Anyway, if I see you guys referring to "HiFi", I always think, Okayyyy ...

Again : seriously, if I over here tell someone "this sounds quite HiFi-ish", we both know that I refer to poor sound.

 

Wasn't that Muziek Staffhorst who had HiFi in the bottom floors and High-End in the top floor ? (I am talking 80's I think).

OK ... I don't know how I do THAT, but I just see that at very today (Nov 19) this Staffhorst store re-opens (went broke earlier on).

 

 

 

To quote the best definition of hi-fi  I’ve heard of . “She meant that it didn’t sound “hi-fi,” as in edgy, bright, toppy, glaring, irritating, and relentlessly, fatiguingly over-detailed.” From Danielle (Paul Seydor’s wife of The Absolute Sound) in Paul’s Martin Logan Montis Reserve Series review posted June 19, 2014.

[Rt66indierock]

12 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Hi Brian,

Yeah, glad we're in agreement that DR5 is hot as a general rule of thumb...

 

Yup,  Nightfly is certainly sounding dated (like all of Steely Dan IMO) and I have no doubts that a modern recording/mix/mastering could sound superior if done well...

 

But I think that recording is worth thinking about because within the audiophile crowd, it is held in esteem over the years. It's a fine recording and I certainly do not want to take away from Fagen's artistry... However, I'm not sure it would have maintained this status if not for that "icing on top" average DR16 with concomitant RMS level of around -20dB; a nice example of an album where we can pump up the volume, hear the fine details and feel the kick from those transients. Presumably this came about to some extent due to the early digital process and the engineers felt they maximized the potential of the 3M 16/50 technology of the day.

 

Obviously I'm not suggesting all albums should be like this. There are many subjective preferences to be made in the process and my preference could change depending on whether I listen in the car or at home in the sound room. But as a "rule of thumb", I do like the ability to use the volume knob more and hear/feel the dynamic impact and emotional expression that comes with it especially when my equipment can render this well.

 

A lot of the status of The Nightfly is it was used to tune sound systems for live concerts. And it was helpful getting the sound right  on radio stations in my case as well. 

[Rt66indierock]

58 minutes ago, synn said:

 

Assuming that’s 1 album per client, thats 1.65 albums per day at an average.

 

I see why you do not understand or care about the quality argument. I wouldn’t start a discussion about gourmet cooking in the McDonalds kitchen either.

Actually most artists do an album about every three years. The current economics don't support more so more like 200 a year.

 

In my personal case I count clients I only see once every five years or so. I have some international clients who only have US type questions I'm engaged to consult on irregularly.

[Rt66indierock]

11 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

A valuable recording. What one hears are two clear sound elements, the rattle of voices and activity in the lobby, and mixed within, the live performance. One can "hear" that the music is live, because there are no distinguishing markers from, say, a PA system with its typically overcooked sound - the fact that the music is fighting the noise in the area is neither here nor there - what counts is that the sense of realness of the instrument playing is not undermined  by anything - at least to my ears.

On the other hand I walked by a man playing a grand piano leaving the gates at Portland Intrrnational Airport yesterday and the sound was lost in that big space. 

 

Put it the same piano in a small room and it can easily overwhelm the room.

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, arcman said:

Lucey's opinion is just one in a million ( although I generally agree with what he says). I think the attraction to Lucey's comments were that he does work on the artist side of the industry. Most comment's we have heard from industry professionals were more on the equipment side or reviewer side. You could ask 100 mastering engineer's opinions (Lazar, Masterdisc, Sterling, Ludwig, etc) and get 100 different answers. Many opinions are probably influenced by the role$ the studio or engineer plays with MQA. Does their studio do MQA conversion for labels, etc. 

 

If a production professional tells you "I can hear a negative difference with the final sound I produced with MQA" why not believe them? 

 

Actually there is general agreement MQA changes the sound. Even the supporters agree with this. This why at the last AES convention Bob Stuart addressed the matter and talked about having a preview box so mastering engineers can hear the changes MQA processing makes. Leaving unanswered why the changes MQA makes to the sound are necessary.

 

Right now it unclear if anyone but MQA is doing the encoding to create an MQA file. I've written that  Warner has people trained to encode MQA files but whether they are doing it is something I don't know.

[Rt66indierock]

38 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Ask that to Bob Stuart. He will take breath for 10 minutes, swallow a couple of times and then will drop dead on the floor because of not having an answer to such a question.

Before you think it is Bob who can't deal with the question, shouldn't you investigate a bit more ? or is all so deeply negative with you by now that you think that MQA is about DRM and TF it changes the sound with it. What a flop. 

 

Peter my focus is the studio side. So I've been investigating what MQA does to the sound for almost 18 months. And I'm still investigating. So far I don't see a reason for the change. When I get a more complete data set I will ask him. We talked at the Los Angeles Audio Show a couple of times and I have his contact information and he has mine.

 

As for DRM I can make a better case that MQA started with DRM than you can that it started with solving playback issues. A couple weeks ago I found a reference in a college paper to deburing written in 2000 about hi-res. I hope the company who wrote the white paper will send me copy. 

 

The Warner Music Group financials make a good read on piracy. That is a better sell than quality after all people have been making good sounding albums for a long time. Pet Sounds was released in 1966.