Stereophile Series on MQA Technology

[Brinkman Ship]

2 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

Andy was on a mission.

 

https://community.auralic.com/t/tidal-mqa-streams-at-16bit-88-2khz/855/10?u=drtone

thanks for the laugh..! actually i am not surprised..Audio Note enthusiasts exhibit similar behavior... 

[rickca]

10 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

Andy was on a mission.

 

https://community.auralic.com/t/tidal-mqa-streams-at-16bit-88-2khz/855/10?u=drtone

There's a great quote from Auralic in that exchange

There are more then two dozens of technologies which can make sound better then MQA and does not cost anything.

[MikeyFresh]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

Provocation? I don't see anything remotely provocative in the responses he received.

 

Neither did I, but after questioning his industry affiliation he quickly descended into accusing me of being illiterate (while misspelling several words in the process), and then suggesting far worse of you.

 

CC was charitable in offering Galileo365 a reset as opposed to a stern warning, he clearly broke the site rules, turned out to be moot when he outed himself while accusing the CA readership of being  uniformed.

 

2 hours ago, mansr said:

23 hours ago, Galileo365 said:

23 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

21 total posts, exactly all of them in this thread, what is his industry/MQA affiliation, if any?

 

Quite sincerely and honestly, none whstsoever.

 

I have rarely seen such a blatant lie.

 

Me neither, and now what little credibility he ever had has vanished.

[shtf]

11 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Whoops. I missed that one. I guess @Indydan's list can now be updated because @Galileo365 is indeed Andy Schaub and he sent me the following email.

 

 

I don't know the guy but this is too funny.  But why?   What could motivate an individual to do this and for what possible gain? 

 

I'm tellin' ya', there's a helluva lot more to MQA here than meets the eye.  And a helluva lot less too. 

 

I can't help but smell record labels.  There's just no way Bob Stuart is the mastermind behind any of this.  It's way too big and I wouldn't doubt bigger than we might imagine because if it's this bad on the surface, imagine what must be going on behind the scenes.   email servers must be overloading every time there's a new post. 

 

Just observe how motivated some of these guys are even after 3.5 years.

[MikeyFresh]

5 minutes ago, shtf said:

But why?   What could motivate an individual to do this and for what possible gain? 

 

5 minutes ago, shtf said:

Just observe how motivated some of these guys are even after 3.5 years.

 

I was thinking the same thing, compensation of some kind comes to mind, though if true certainly not money well spent.

[shtf]

1 minute ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

 

I was thinking the same thing, compensation of some kind comes to mind, though if true certainly not money well spent.

 

No doubt.  But B-actors are never compensated much anyway.

 

I've always suspected the record labels were behind MQA or at least since day 2.  Day 1 was reading my first MQA articles in TAS along with Harley's interview with Stuart.

[MetalNuts]

It seems like MQA is running out of "experts" to do the marketing job. 

 

[Indydan]

Updated!

 

MQA "enthusiast"                        Reason for no longer posting on CA

Peter Veth                                                          BANNED

WitchDoctor                                                      BANNED

Lee Scoggins                              SCARED of his BS being called out

Michael Lavorgna                      BANNED for telling someone to go fuck his mother

Peter Veth (as Peter Markus)  BANNED for acting like a dick and being an MQA shill

Jim Austin                                         Had a little bit of a meltdown on CA

Andy Schaub as Galileo365                       Threw a hissy fit

 

 

[firedog]

3 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

thanks for the laugh..! actually i am not surprised..Audio Note enthusiasts exhibit similar behavior... 

And he's still engaging in endless technical babble and bending over backwards at the auralic thread trying to say MQA isn't lossy. For some reason, he has understood that the rendering phase of MQA has some kind of technical magic that restores the original bits. Neither explanations, nor quotes from Bob Stuart admitting it is lossy make an impression on him.  

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Indydan said:

Updated!

 

MQA "enthusiast"                        Reason for no longer posting on CA

Peter Veth                                                          BANNED

WitchDoctor                                                      BANNED

Lee Scoggins                              SCARED of his BS being called out

Michael Lavorgna                      BANNED for telling someone to go fuck his mother

Peter Veth (as Peter Markus)  BANNED for acting like a dick and being an MQA shill

Jim Austin                                         Had a little bit of a meltdown on CA

Andy Schaub as Galileo365                       Threw a hissy fit

 

 

Andy's should say: "Threw a hissy fit and quit just as he was about to be banned"

[firedog]

3 hours ago, shtf said:

 

I don't know the guy but this is too funny.  But why?   What could motivate an individual to do this and for what possible gain? 

 

I'm tellin' ya', there's a helluva lot more to MQA here than meets the eye.  And a helluva lot less too. 

 

I can't help but smell record labels.  There's just no way Bob Stuart is the mastermind behind any of this.  It's way too big and I wouldn't doubt bigger than we might imagine because if it's this bad on the surface, imagine what must be going on behind the scenes.   email servers must be overloading every time there's a new post. 

 

Just observe how motivated some of these guys are even after 3.5 years.

I don't think he is an official shill. He apparently has a very high opinion of his technical chops and understands just enough to make false conclusions and be a dangerous spreader of misinformation. It's been explained to him several times that HIS understanding is incorrect, but he constantly says everyone else doesn't understand MQA. I think his behavior must be some kind of ego related thing where he can't admit he didn't understand what he read about MQA. 

[PeterSt]

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

For the most part people here love facts and data when it comes to MQA. So far 99% of this information seems to make MQA look bad. If you have any info on either side of the issue, it's very welcome here.

 

Yes, and might you put some emphasis on the pro-MQA side, then you will be called an MQA shill.

And for the rest of your life you will be one. That's how it works in here.

Just observing.

 

18 hours ago, Galileo365 said:

This is supposed to be Computer Audiophile, not We Hate MQA, or so I thought.

 

Ehmm

[PeterSt]

Hahahaha, I posted two posts - of reading further - too early. So :

 

17 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Yes, and might you put some emphasis on the pro-MQA side, then you will be called an MQA shill.

 

True !

 

Quote

And for the rest of your life you will be one.

 

Also true.

 

 

17 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

18 hours ago, Galileo365 said:

We Hate MQA

 

 

Also true. But not relevant. 

[mansr]

6 hours ago, Dr Tone said:

Andy was on a mission.

 

https://community.auralic.com/t/tidal-mqa-streams-at-16bit-88-2khz/855/10?u=drtone

Wow, it's rare to see so many errors in so little space. There is not a single accurate statement in that post.

[mansr]

3 hours ago, firedog said:

I don't think he is an official shill. He apparently has a very high opinion of his technical chops and understands just enough to make false conclusions and be a dangerous spreader of misinformation. It's been explained to him several times that HIS understanding is incorrect, but he constantly says everyone else doesn't understand MQA. I think his behavior must be some kind of ego related thing where he can't admit he didn't understand what he read about MQA. 

Not just MQA, he says everybody else has misunderstood Fourier analysis and sampling theory. His high self-regard probably stems from having studied at Stanford, as if that means anything.

[mansr]

3 hours ago, firedog said:

Andy's should say: "Threw a hissy fit and quit just as he was about to be banned"

 

 

[mansr]

6 hours ago, shtf said:

I don't know the guy but this is too funny.  But why?   What could motivate an individual to do this and for what possible gain?

Some form of compensation or hopes of future rewards. I really can't think of anything else.

[Summit]

18 hours ago, mansr said:

How does he know what we're wearing?

 

It’s a feature of the magic MQA unfolding process.

[Jud]

4 hours ago, firedog said:

And he's still engaging in endless technical babble and bending over backwards at the auralic thread trying to say MQA isn't lossy. For some reason, he has understood that the rendering phase of MQA has some kind of technical magic that restores the original bits. Neither explanations, nor quotes from Bob Stuart admitting it is lossy make an impression on him.  

 

I keep forgetting: Does MQA use lossy compression, or is it simply as lossy as any other sampling and reconstruction process?

[mansr]

35 minutes ago, Jud said:

I keep forgetting: Does MQA use lossy compression, or is it simply as lossy as any other sampling and reconstruction process?

Since the output of the encoder has half as many bits as the input, it trivially follows that some inputs cannot be losslessly recovered. A sufficiently low-entropy input might be losslessly encoded, but without access to the encoder we can never say for sure. For comparison, certain very simple signals can theoretically be encoded as mp3 without loss, but few (if any) encoders go to the trouble of trying to identify them.

[firedog]

27 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

I keep forgetting: Does MQA use lossy compression, or is it simply as lossy as any other sampling and reconstruction process?

It's lossy. If I understand correctly, the max rate of actual encoding is 17/96 and placed in a 24 bit container.  No info above 48k is encoded, apparently. Anything above that 17/96 rate reported on playback is some form of upsampling, etc  during the unfolding and rendering process. The first unfold gets you to the 96k, the rest of what you get is done in the MQA DAC. 

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Wow, it's rare to see so many errors in so little space. There is not a single accurate statement in that post.

 

Funny reading!

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Since the output of the encoder has half as many bits as the input, it trivially follows that some inputs cannot be losslessly recovered. A sufficiently low-entropy input might be losslessly encoded, but without access to the encoder we can never say for sure. For comparison, certain very simple signals can theoretically be encoded as mp3 without loss, but few (if any) encoders go to the trouble of trying to identify them.

 

Thanks for reminding me again.  So even though all digital is going to be lossy in some sense since we don't have perfect filters (but we can have very good ones), beyond the filtering these folks are actively throwing away bits to do proprietary (and unnecessary) compression.

[botrytis]

Quote

 

3 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Thanks for reminding me again.  So even though all digital is going to be lossy in some sense since we don't have perfect filters (but we can have very good ones), beyond the filtering these folks are actively throwing away bits to do proprietary (and unnecessary) compression.

Well, depending on the DAC, one does not need to use any filters. Some allow you to play music w/o filters.

[Jud]

25 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Well, depending on the DAC, one does not need to use any filters. Some allow you to play music w/o filters.

 

Without interpolation filters, but you always need a reconstruction filter.