The fact that Atkinson showed up here

[realhifi]

Where is Atkinson’s post?  Love to read it. 

[realhifi]

40 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Hmm, how did I miss that. Possibly we deal with a dose of expectation bias here ?

So for myself, let's see :

 

 

It started with that small sentence. What to do for @John_Atkinson, let it be, or give it a small response ?

He chose for the latter.

 

 

Maybe the word sounds nice to you, I don't have an opinion on that.

 

Something to get set up about ? I don't think so. Of course it is a negation of some strange accusement. 

 

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

 

This is the one of which I see only one person understanding what John says here. The others must get bewildered because of the sheer impossibility of it; instead they know that whatever is done by MQA only adds. They don't understand the principle and they don't want to understand the principle. And then they have a great back up in Brian Lucey (the one who adds most).

 

the input of the A/D converter to the output of the D/A converter to a transparent "pipe,"

 

Clearly a killing statement, which was fed to John and not understood by him, or it is a subjective judgment from John himself.

Point here is : this *is* the objective of MQA and all I can tell myself is that it is true one way or the other. With the latter I mean that it largely depends on the rendering stage and that I can only trust my own (which works completely different). From there, at least I agree with John, no matter whether he caught the whisper or it is his subjective own opinion. Or even his listening experience.

 

a back-to-first-principles approach that I found elegant in the extreme.

 

Is this the desperate dark matter then ? It is quite funny. I went for exactly the same and said so many times. It is only that (almost) nobody even wants to hear it, because it can only be wrong.

 

YMMV.

 

Even that was added. Still the man gets slandered all over.

 

So there we are with my expectation bias and with this bias - or when I would be neutral and even if I were explicitly negative about MQA, I would sit back and wait what would be the outcome of it all. Maybe I am the only one in here who respects people for their past or knowledge or relatively infinite aid for our hobby in general ?

 

Apparently it has become ultimately easy to, as a group, state that whatever someone says which is not agreed with, that this person is stupid, unknowledged, blind and deaf. Even start a thread or two about it.

 

End of rant. Happy XMas to all !

Peter

Good rant. 

Merry Christmas ? to you too!

[realhifi]

4 hours ago, crenca said:

.

So I am positive today.  I think the gift of the season is that in the coming year it will be obvious that as a market product MQA is not and will not be a success and this will be obvious to all but the zealots...

 

Love Jim Austin’s quote of Yogi Berra, “it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

 

In my personal opinion I’m guessing you are mistaken and that MQA will be on nearly every digital component and A/V receiver in the coming couple of years and it will be as ubiquitous as Dolby. 

Now I don’t have a clue what it’s success will be in the “audiophile” sector but I think it will become a standard in the MUCH larger consumer electronics segment 

 

[realhifi]

16 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

People have been trying for 17 years to get the mainstream music consumers interested in hi-res with little success. You can't convince the mainstream that CD quality streaming isof any value so no hi-res for them.

 

Are you coming from a position of you personally not being able to convince consumers? 

 

The “mainstream” music consumer have not realized they are replacing their multi disc CD players with an inferior quality source unless informed by someone. Having Tidal or Deezer or whichever streaming service deliver cd quality sound directly into an A/V receiver makes it convenient for the consumer to get back to that quality they had but then lost. It’s not difficult to convince someone to sign up once they realize they have gone backwards and then are shown the benefits of having millions of recordings at their fingertips. 

[realhifi]

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

No you haven't seen reading carefully. For audio purposes put me in the studio catagory.

 

Its actually very hard to convince the mainstream CD quality is important because they don't listen to music on A/V receivers.

 

As I told Marc Fine of the Digital Entertainment Group you are going  find hi-res audio a tough sell. Tidal is failing to convince people CD quality is worth streaming. Spotify can't convince people CD quality is something worth paying for.

 

And since this thread is about John Atkinson have you heard his latest recording on iTunes or MP3? I have and sounds really good

 

I probably haven’t followed your posts that well, that’s true. 

 

My question was more related to face to face contact with the “consumers” that are actually buying electronics for their homes. I would say the large majority of my customers listen to music on some form of A/V receiver. It’s part of their whole entertainment system which is then tied to their whole house Music system.  I’m having very good luck gently pushing them into better sounding streaming options. 

 

Have heard those hose recording by John and yes, they sound terrific. 

 

Spotify should have never had a free tier to begin with and Pandora should make their free tier loaded with commercials much like commercial fm stations are. Apple on the other hand was smart in making their singles $.99 then charging for their streaming service right from the get go. If Apple offers cd quality at $15 a month then cd quality streaming will be off and running. 

[realhifi]

32 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

I do not know what site you are referring to (or where you live) but I have more than 3000 SACDs already ripped to my server and full shopping bags more in the closets.  The website sa_cd.net lists 10,308 SACDs which does not include DSD downloads.  Sorta makes MQA not an issue for me either way.

 

 

Thatsa lotta titles!  

[realhifi]

After seeing where this thread has gone I’m actually surprised that JA came to this site. 

[realhifi]

6 hours ago, Norton said:

I would have thought the Explorer2 was the replacement MQA DAC.  From what I can see the Direct DAC is an older, though still available, model that was launched prior to MQA 

Correct.  Here is review from back in 2014.

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/meridian-direct-dac/?page=2

[realhifi]

Silly little internet forums come and go. Stereophile and Absolute Sound will keep on. 

[realhifi]

54 minutes ago, rando said:

 

Prosecution does not involve the courts.  A criminal prosecution or civil suit are two procedures involving the courts.  At this moment I'm not aware of any filings, briefs, or adjudication of a legal body resulting from this ongoing prosecution: The people of Computer Audiophile v. J.A. (Stereophile print and online magazine).  

 

 

Careful with grouping “The people of Computer Audiophile” into one anti Stereophile crowd. I’m betting if you took a poll (that’s IF ALL readers were to participate) you’d find that it’s a minority that has any axe to grind with either JA or Stereophile. Actually it’s most likely that it’s a VERY small minority. Even if the comment was offhand and a joke I’m betting Chris would NOT like seeing that either. I can’t imagine he wants to endorse a witchunt against prominent publications (Stereophile or Absolute Sound) and risk his and his sites reputation over this MQA business. 

[realhifi]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Puuuleeeese, as he has explicitly acknowledged he hosts the "largest anti-MQA site" - you don't think he does this intentionally?  Selfishly, he gets the clicks, altruistically, he furthers the "progress" of Audiophiledom.  This is often opposed to Stereophile, TAS, and the rest of the status quo gatekeepers.

 

As far as you and @wdw and all the others who are anxious over the status quo and "chasing off industry representatives", I say welcome to the future where the confidence game is actually seen for what it is (by some of us).  JA is a big boy, he can take a little (actually a lot) of critical questioning and even a hanful of internet blow hards (that would be you and me  ).  In fact he came here, said just a little, and dropped teasers for future articles.  He is laughing at your anxiety all the way to the bank...

 

Do I seem anxious?  I happen to think JA can more than handle himself here or any other little chat room that might pop up on the web.

I'm not concerned at all about chasing any industry folks off as most just wouldn't bother to begin with.  As I posted earlier, I'm surprised JA even bothered to show up here but I'm sure you're right in that he delights in some banter with such "experts".

 

As far as Chris's altruism.....really? 

[realhifi]

4 minutes ago, rando said:

 

Chris is welcome to edit my posts and discredit my jokes as he sees fit.  Gauging by your reaction I may have gone a bit close to the skin.  Please take another look at the offending statement's context before deciding it wasn't making a fair amount of the point you stated above at the same level that it spoke to you on.  

? yep, you’re right, just a wee bit jumpy I guess. No harm no foul?