Stereophile Series on MQA Technology

[Indydan]

8 hours ago, GUTB said:

And yet, very outspoken opponents of MQA won't post their systems...

 

MQA is worthless. MQA is a solution looking for a problem. I don't have an MQA enabled DAC. But, I have compared a few MQA albums on Tidal, to hi res versions I own of the same album. My hi res copies sound better than the Tidal MQA versions.

 

If MQA is that good, even partially unfolded, it should sound better than "ordinary" PCM hi res, should it not? I don't see the point of MQA. I see its creator trying to push it on everyone, while he has dollar signs in his eyes. 

 

Steve Jobs did something similar. But, Jobs gave people things they wanted or desired. Bob Stuart is trying to sell people a shit sandwich disguised as bacon lettuce and tomato.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/profile/26564-indydan/?tab=field_core_pfield_3

 

 

[GUTB]

1 minute ago, Indydan said:

 

MQA is worthless. MQA is a solution looking for a problem. I don't have an MQA enabled DAC. But, I have compared a few MQA albums on Tidal, to hi res versions I own of the same album. My hi res copies sound better than the Tidal MQA versions. I don't use Tidal for the MQA albums it contains.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/profile/26564-indydan/?tab=field_core_pfield_3

 

 

 

You have a very nice power delivery system. Are the Shunyatas as good as everyone says? I remember someone saying you should rob a bank if you have to get one.

 

In regards to the first unfold (no MQA DAC), I found no benefit at least with the DFR.

 

 

[Indydan]

4 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

You have a very nice power delivery system. Are the Shunyatas as good as everyone says? I remember someone saying you should rob a bank if you have to get one.

 

In regards to the first unfold (no MQA DAC), I found no benefit at least with the DFR.

 

 

Thank you. The Shunyata power cables deserve their excellent reputation. I have tried a good number of power cables from different companies (Audioquest, Nordost, Furutech, Cardas, etc). They are all better than stock cords, but Shunyata beats them all. 

 

By the way, I edited and expanded my previous comment after you quoted it. 

[Ralf11]

do you have an isolation transformer?  and is the Shunyata cable plugged into it?

[Indydan]

27 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

do you have an isolation transformer?  and is the Shunyata cable plugged into it?

 

No, there is no isolation transformer.

[Fokus]

6 hours ago, Archimago said:

No... This is not elegant. It's sadly rather ugly.

 

I always found the underlying principle elegant, or clever, as I expressed it on Day One:

 

Look at the actual signal, look at the actual noise floor. Determine how shallow an AA filter you can get away

with, so that any aliasing below 20kHz falls below the noise floor.

 

 

But anything MQA beyond that is an attrocity, and politically so totally wrong ... making the grand sum of it ugly, indeed.

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, Fokus said:

 

I always found the underlying principle elegant, or clever, as I expressed it on Day One:

 

Look at the actual signal, look at the actual noise floor. Determine how shallow an AA filter you can get away

with, so that any aliasing below 20kHz falls below the noise floor.

 

 

But anything MQA beyond that is an attrocity, and politically so totally wrong ... making the grand sum of it ugly, indeed.

 

 

Now figuring out what exactly is where something "falls below the noise floor" is not so straightforward. I say this because I've worked so many years on making passive sonar systems, listening those signals and training operators. You can hear a lot into a noise floor, especially with some amount of practice, and you can also dig out very faint tones from the noise floor using analysis methods. This is all due the spectral nature of noise vs discrete tones. And there's not really advantage in using a shallow AA-filter. In any case, that doesn't require the MQA content delivery at all, it can be done at mastering stage and delivered as completely standard FLAC.

 

But you can save a lot of bandwidth by analyzing how many bits are actually used to encode content and which are just noise, and zeroing out those unused bits. I did this for comparison purposes and the resulting standard FLAC is quite a bit smaller than the MQA version - which is attempting to do the same, but ruins it by the encrypted folding which appears as uncompressible noise for the FLAC encoder used as delivery vehicle for MQA. In addition using the standard FLAC without MQA preserves more high frequency content and thus faster transients. In fact, MQA's slow-roll off filter rolls of so early at about 30 kHz that it actually blurs transients by attenuating the high frequency components that actually make up the transient speed... So this neither needs MQA content delivery and can be done with completely standard FLAC. German software company even made a product for doing just this: https://www.xivero.com/xifeo/

 

 

[Samuel T Cogley]

14 hours ago, esldude said:

Sounds like you haven't spent time reading super best audio friends forum. (SBAF btw not SABF)  Read up about plankton in headphone listening.  Although with all due respect the SBAF moderator accused GUTB of crapping up his plankton thread. 

 

For some reason, whenever I hear "Super Best Audio Friends", I expect to read about Wonder Twins power activating.

 

 

"Super Best Audio Friends" seems like a poor translation from Japanese to English or something.

 

And regarding GUTB's "fans", I have no doubt he inspires a few to be as covetous as he is.

[Ralf11]

13 hours ago, Indydan said:

 

No, there is no isolation transformer.

 

that might be why you hear a difference with the AC cable

[Ralf11]

11 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Now figuring out what exactly is where something "falls below the noise floor" is not so straightforward. I say this because I've worked so many years on making passive sonar systems, listening those signals and training operators. You can hear a lot into a noise floor, especially with some amount of practice, and you can also dig out very faint tones from the noise floor using analysis methods. ...

 

we  might call that "active" processing - something similar happens with the visual system

 

a natural intelligence or an AI system can perform very extensive processing on sound, stills or 'video' to recover patterns

 

the problem is that sometimes patterns are recovered that are not really there

[andifor]

20 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Maybe the word sounds nice to you, I don't have an opinion on that. But MQA's approach to digital audio
data encoding, in theory reducing all the stages between the input of the A/D converter to the output of the D/A converter to a transparent "pipe," was a back-to-first-principles approach that I found elegant in the extreme. YMMV.

 

 

I like that. I can buy the cheapest MQA DAC. As they become a transparent pipe, they all sound identical :o)

 

So MQA is not a way to make money for the companies, but to save money as consumer! Thanks, great idea!!

[firedog]

On 12/18/2017 at 11:25 PM, GUTB said:

Instead of taking Austin's words at face value and see what he comes up with

Why should we take what he says at "face value"? Whatever he writes should be analyzed and evaluated critically.

That said, there is no reason for personal attacks on him or his motives.

[mansr]

2 minutes ago, firedog said:

Why should we take what he says at "face value"? Whatever he writes should be analyzed and evaluated critically.

That said, there is no reason for personal attacks on him or his motives.

Personal attacks are never called for. Questioning someone's motives is, however, reasonable, especially when their statements do not hold up to scrutiny.

[Ralf11]

all personal attacks should be done by using song lyrics

[mansr]

12 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

all personal attacks should be done by using song lyrics

Yes, that is acceptable.

[Ralf11]

"dancin' backwards"

[Rt66indierock]

Probably time to go back to the beginning. This is what I posted on Audio Asylum on November 14, 2017.

 

Dear Jim Austin,

 

On October 21, 2017 you said you don't understand the technology behind MQA and yet you are going to write a series about it?

Your series should make interesting reading because in that same October 21, 2017 response to stehno you called him an idiot "for not at least considering that they (Peter Craven and Bob Stuart) might understand things better than you do." For you to be intellectually consistent you now have to consider others may understand things better than Peter Craven and Bob Stuart do.

 

In your series on MQA Technology I would like the following addressed at a minimum.

1. I want you to look at the research supporting the technology of MQA and tell me if it supports the claims MQA Ltd is making. Next I want you to tell me if the math supports the claims MQA makes. To write objectively about the research and the math you will have to analyze both sides pro MQA and anti MQA.

2. Moving on the filters MQA uses they are not new so I want to know why MQA Ltd decided to use these filters when so many others have chosen not to use these types of filters.

3. MQA uses Peter Craven's patented method for degrading files and reconstructing them. Why is this step necessary? Following this train of thought why aren't other methods of file compression equally as valid as the method MQA uses?

4. People in studios who were shown MQA found that it changed their masters in 2014. It took until last month at the AES convention in New York City for MQA Ltd to acknowledge the problem and promise a solution so engineers could hear how the final product would sound. I want to know why MQA needs to change the master when other high resolution files don't change the master.

 

You have made a few comments defending the industry and the press for its lack of technical rigor concerning MQA. You actually indicted the industry and the press. This is why people outside the industry realized if the technology behind MQA was going to be examined that we would have to do it ourselves. And we did on the Computer Audiophile site starting January 2, 2017.

 

Sincerely,

Stephen

[esldude]

Magical mystery tour.

 

They want to take you away.

[Rt66indierock]

And this is what I posted on Audio Asylum on December 7, 2017

 

Dear John,
 

As the time for the January issue of Stereophile approaches I want to remind you and Jim MQA technology has already been analyzed and discussed. The agenda for debating MQA was set in January of this year so there was no need for me to frame the debate about MQA and its technology for Jim's series. As I said in my Dear Jim post a decision was made that MQA would have to be analyzed by people outside the audio industry.

What I put in my November 14, 2017 Dear Jim post are hurdles. The same hurdles my profession uses. Are you competent to write this series? Next hurdle will you look at both sides of the claims made by MQA Ltd for and against their technology and look at other alternatives? Third hurdle can you exercise professional judgement about the facts and the claims made? Only if you can clear these hurdles can you write an article and have the possibility of arriving at an objective conclusion. 

I gave Jim some examples of topics that need to be covered. You wrote about Charley Hansen's alternative to some of the issues MQA is claiming to solve. Peter St maker of XXHigh End wrote about his filters and mitchco wrote about Audiolense software and its filters on Computer Audiophile in the past week. It doesn't seem to be hard to find alternatives to MQA.

Take care,

Stephen

[GUTB]

Jim Austin said he’s going to be exploring and analyzing MQA claims. Do any of you guys have a reason to believe that he’s lying?

[Rt66indierock]

3 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Jim Austin said he’s going to be exploring and analyzing MQA claims. Do any of you guys have a reason to believe that he’s lying?

 

Have you been following the Audio Asylum discussion about MQA? 

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Jim Austin said he’s going to be exploring and analyzing MQA claims. Do any of you guys have a reason to believe that he’s lying?

Only as many as the number of words he writes.

[asdf1000]

6 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

the Audio Asylum discussion about MQA

 

Can someone kindly share a link

 

[Rt66indierock]

2 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

Can someone kindly share a link

 

 

Critics Corner there a lot of threads there about MQA and Stereophile.

[MikeJazz]

On 19/12/2017 at 12:17 AM, John_Atkinson said:

 

Maybe the word sounds nice to you, I don't have an opinion on that. But MQA's approach to digital audio
data encoding, in theory reducing all the stages between the input of the A/D converter to the output of the D/A converter to a transparent "pipe," was a back-to-first-principles approach that I found elegant in the extreme. YMMV.

 

See https://www.stereophile.com/content/ive-heard-future-streaming-meridians-mqa

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

"in theory reducing all the stages between the input of the A/D converter to the output of the D/A converter to a transparent "pipe,"

Well, why use proprietary solutions, not bit-perfect when open/non-proprietary and bit-perfect are available. I guess I fail to see the transparency in the "pipe" or in the mqa "solution".

Well, we may just dismiss transparency as a absolute goal after all. The choice of the microphones that are at the start of the process is the first non-transparent process as is the first device to color the sound anyway...