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Stereophile Series on MQA Technology


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9 hours ago, Fokus said:

 

I disagree. In my book the latter all mean a significant curtailing of my digital rights.

 

 

Yeah Fokus. I'm being charitable to some extent... It is significant curtailing of freedoms already. At least it's not worse :(.

 

Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile.

Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism.

:nomqa: R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

 

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5 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

The quality of MQA-shills truly is lacklustre.

 

That's cuz MQA is lacklustre!

 

Even shills need something decent to work with! :/

 

Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile.

Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism.

:nomqa: R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

 

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32 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

DRM doesn't necessarily mean copy-protection. In this case it is not that, yet. DRM in this case control over the production and distribution chain and specifically the decoding part. Content is tied to a particular licensed decoder implementation they want to review. So here DRM is not protecting the content, it is protecting the technology (for example from objective evaluation) and control over who can have the technology in first place. MQA can decide who they want to sell a decoder, enforce the way things are implemented and require broad NDA that could contain all kinds of gag orders and penalties about communication regarding MQA.

 

For comparison, you can have an AAC SLS encoder and decoder, from some vendor of your choice, including payment the standard patent license to the patent holders and then you can encode and decode whatever test signals you want. You can study the codec specification throughout since it's an open standard so you know exactly how it works, inside out. If the patent holders or codec vendor goes out of business, you can still independently implement the codec and have all your valuable content fully decoded and possibly encoded with some other, newer standard.

Hi,

Possibly DRM can be used to switch off decoders that have not paid the bill as per this software issue :

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161220/12411836320/software-company-shows-how-not-to-handle-negative-review.shtml

The company purposely "bricked" the device because the customer gave a negative review.

Regards,

Shadders.

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1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

DRM doesn't necessarily mean copy-protection. In this case it is not that, yet. DRM in this case control over the production and distribution chain and specifically the decoding part. Content is tied to a particular licensed decoder implementation they want to review. So here DRM is not protecting the content, it is protecting the technology (for example from objective evaluation) and control over who can have the technology in first place. MQA can decide who they want to sell a decoder, enforce the way things are implemented and require broad NDA that could contain all kinds of gag orders and penalties about communication regarding MQA.

 

For comparison, you can have an AAC SLS encoder and decoder, from some vendor of your choice, including payment the standard patent license to the patent holders and then you can encode and decode whatever test signals you want. You can study the codec specification throughout since it's an open standard so you know exactly how it works, inside out. If the patent holders or codec vendor goes out of business, you can still independently implement the codec and have all your valuable content fully decoded and possibly encoded with some other, newer standard.

 

If you don't get access to the full-res Master files but a lossy copy instead then the former is copy-protected.

 

From that perspective MQA is a form of copy-protecting the Master files.

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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1 hour ago, semente said:

If you don't get access to the full-res Master files but a lossy copy instead then the former is copy-protected.

 

From that perspective MQA is a form of copy-protecting the Master files.

 

Yes, I think that's probably why music industry is buying into it. In addition it is yet another format they can use to sell the same material once again, especially with some claimed sonic benefits. And then maybe later MQA v2 and v3 versions...

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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On 12/18/2017 at 4:17 PM, 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

 

Thanks for the laugh. I mean really, a real belly acher...Coming from the guy who was impressed by a $24,000 Boulder CD player because it displayed metadata...and a $300 Squeezebox did the same. 

 

 

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On 12/18/2017 at 7:17 PM, John_Atkinson said:

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.

Well, there's theory and there's the reality of what has been implemented.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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51 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

Thanks for the laugh. I mean really, a real belly acher...Coming from the guy who was impressed by a $24,000 Boulder CD player because it displayed metadata...and a $300 Squeezebox did the same. 

 

 

 

You mean the review in which he determined it sounded virtually identical to a $6k Ayre?

 

You're trying too hard making @John_Atkinson into a villain.

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11 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

You mean the review in which he determined it sounded virtually identical to a $6k Ayre?

 

You're trying too hard making @John_Atkinson into a villain.

You mean the review where claimed the $24,000 CD player was "future proof"? LOL!!!! How'd that work out?

 

"The Boulder 1021 may be very expensive, but it is both superbly engineered and superb-sounding. Its measured performance is at the current state of the art for high-resolution audio performance, and its ability to retrieve, store, and display the metadata for the CDs it plays is addicting. Its future is really guaranteed, however, by its ability to play data discs carrying high-resolution audio files, whether they be ones you've burned yourself from downloads, or commercial discs from companies like Reference Recordings or Fidelio. Yes, playing such files back from your computer is possible, but computer soundcards that can get the most from files sampled at 176.4kHz and 192kHz are few and far between. Boulder's 1021 is highly recommended to those fortunate few with pockets deep enough to be able to afford it."

https://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/boulder_1021_disc_player/index.html

 

What a farce!

 

Your fanboydom on this forum is really beyond the pale.

 

It\

 

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3 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

You mean the review where claimed the $24,000 CD player was "future proof"? LOL!!!! How'd that work out?

 

"The Boulder 1021 may be very expensive, but it is both superbly engineered and superb-sounding. Its measured performance is at the current state of the art for high-resolution audio performance, and its ability to retrieve, store, and display the metadata for the CDs it plays is addicting. Its future is really guaranteed, however, by its ability to play data discs carrying high-resolution audio files, whether they be ones you've burned yourself from downloads, or commercial discs from companies like Reference Recordings or Fidelio. Yes, playing such files back from your computer is possible, but computer soundcards that can get the most from files sampled at 176.4kHz and 192kHz are few and far between. Boulder's 1021 is highly recommended to those fortunate few with pockets deep enough to be able to afford it."

https://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/boulder_1021_disc_player/index.html

 

What a farce!

 

Your fanboydom on this forum is really beyond the pale.

 

It\

 

 

The review was in 2009. What’s wrong with you? Why are you focusing your ego so intently on hating an editor for a review magazine?

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Sigh. My flight to LAAS got rained out so I missed the "fun". Couldn't go to RMAF due to work.

 

Jim Austin is going to dig into the MQA claims in detail. How devastated are you going to be when the claims are validated? How many pages of text will it take to isolate your ego from reality?

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On 12/11/2017 at 7:21 PM, arcman said:

The non MQA hi res version is 24/96 while the mqa version is 24/192. I have same Dac and noticed the MQA version sounds slightly more “spacious”. Is that due to mqa or the extra resolution (96 vs 192)? bTW the 24/96 version is on Qobuz

Then why does the mqa logo light up and the resolution displays 24/192?

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7 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

 

You know after four years and some very reputable people kicking MQAs tires coming away unimpressed Jim Austin really has to show that the chassis is titanium and the engine a flux-compensator - 'cause temporal blur!

 

Meanwhile I am taking the liberty to write some of the neuroscience authors (Brand, Kuchur, Siefke, King) cited in the MQA AES paper asking them a.) if they feel their work properly represented, b.) if they think their research supports MQAs claims?

 

Don't expect any responses but who know's. MQA nicely exposed journalists failure to do their job and made debunking a cottage industry.

 

Perhaps somebody else wants to have a look at the references in the AES paper and check with the authors cited. The sampling theory claims seem especially juicy and low hanging.

 

;)

 

Been done by several people me included. Charley Hansen thought the sources cited didn't support the paper. Hi-Fi News used the word muddled. To me the pre MQA paper read like a tax shelter opinion. The sources were cherry picked when the overall literature doesn't support the findings of the paper. 

 

This and other MQA papers were excellent sources to build my MQA marketing checklist however.

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Did anyone catch this gem?

 

Austin writes

 

One of the challenges levied against MQA by its more knowledgeable critics is that ... its sampling method—and the resulting, presumed(*) increase in aliasing—introduce randomness in precisely when those impulses occur..... I synchronized the MQA and non-MQA impulse responses: MQA in the left channel, non-MQA in the right. Over 30 seconds of impulses spaced 0.7ms apart, examined on a microsecond scale, I saw no random offsets—or offsets of any kind—in where MQA's impulses landed.

 

The stimulus file being perfect impulses generated in the 96kHz digital domain ...

 

And this guy is writing a technical investigation that should carry some authority, that is impartial?

 

Either he is lying, or he does not understand sampling. At all.

 

 

 

(* Oh, and 'presumed'??? really?? As if said critics were making it up?)

 

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9 minutes ago, Fokus said:

Did anyone catch this gem?

 

Austin writes

 

One of the challenges levied against MQA by its more knowledgeable critics is that ... its sampling method—and the resulting, presumed(*) increase in aliasing—introduce randomness in precisely when those impulses occur..... I synchronized the MQA and non-MQA impulse responses: MQA in the left channel, non-MQA in the right. Over 30 seconds of impulses spaced 0.7ms apart, examined on a microsecond scale, I saw no random offsets—or offsets of any kind—in where MQA's impulses landed.

 

The stimulus file being perfect impulses generated in the 96kHz digital domain ...

It's anything but clear what that "test" entailed or what it was supposed to show. A file cannot have MQA in one channel only. Besides, there's no reason to expect a cumulative timing error, nor any variation with a repeated input.

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