MQA - A clever stealth DRM - Trojan

[crenca]

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9113-mqa_-_a_clever_stealth_drm-trojan

 

Presenters give a shout out to this forum and its contributors.  At around the 50 minute mark the presenters go into what DRM is, and why MQA is a good example of it.  They also detail the public/private key aspects of MQA better than I have seen before.

 

All in all a good presentation, the errors being mostly of omission, but with 60 minutes this is expected.

[Ralf11]

where is the popcorn emoji??

[asdf1000]

Christoph did a great job ! Anton too.

 

[plissken]

@ 23 minutes in hammer meet nail.

[hdo]

MQA = A clever stealth DRM

[NoisyNarrowBandDevice]

Thx guys! This was fun and our main goal was to give an audience with little or no knowledge about MQA an insight on the topic. After the talk quite a few people came up and told us they never heard about MQA but found their sound-related claims and approach to DRM fascinating.

 

For time reasons we had to omit quite a bit of info especially on linear vs. minimum phase filters and didn't really get to our "open questions slide (& special "MQA missing link" slide). So please have a look at those on the slides

 

A PDF of the the slides is available here:

 

https://github.com/NoisyNarrowBandDevice/34C3-MQA-Presentation/blob/master/34C3 MQA Slides.pdf

(click download on the right side of the page)

 

We are writing two articles on the topic, one on the technical aspects of MQA and one investigating the history of digital audio and MQAs place in it.

[asdf1000]

14 minutes ago, NoisyNarrowBandDevice said:

We are writing two articles on the topic, one on the technical aspects of MQA and one investigating the history of digital audio and MQAs place in it.

 

Have you considered putting this video presentation on YouTube, for even more exposure, if people search YouTube for info MQA?

 

 

[GUTB]

The first 20 minutes of the video is setup, audiophile ridicule, and spreading misinformation about a few non-MQA topics (the human eye can't perceive past 60 Hz, the suggestion that high resolution audio is just placebo, etc).

 

Presenter makes his first argument against MQA at about 18 mins in. He counters the MQA claim that it's based on recent scientific research into hearing and ear-brain interaction; the presenter says he read the Stuart / Craven AES paper and says that only one of the studies cited was related to humans, and that the others were related to animals. The presenter does not discuss the human study, and instead suggests the animal studies aren't relevant because their hearing system isn't the same as ours. No further details or arguments are brought forward to address the applicability of the animal studies.

 

I'm not going to buy the AES paper, so I'll go by the JAS paper which is freely available. Bob Stuart and Keith Howard cite studies showing the ability of human brains to activate at ultrasonic information at certain levels, a study showing ultrasonic information from real instruments linked to their perception in humans, a study showing audibility of the time-domain effects of certain digital filters, studies showing human listeners beating Fourier limitations. Stuart claims that human time-domain perception is much more acute than frequency-domain perception, and couches this in an evolutionary theory. None of these studies are mentioned by the presenter.

 

Presenter moves on to ridicule TAS. Brings up MQA is Vapourware thread. Brings up Archimago's tests. Ridicules MQA claim of delivering studio sound.

 

Second presenter comes on. He says he doesn't like the MQA sound. He makes the claim that MQA seeks to get rid of the AD/DA chain and to gather royalties, but does not develop this claim any further. He claims that the end user does not own the MQA file, and as such altering the stream results in the loss of MQA processing reducing the file to CD quality or below.

 

MQA nor anyone else claims the end user "owns" files in a streaming service. MQA processing is lost because the meta data used by the decoding engine to process MQA is lost during the alteration process (ie, applying EQ), not because of ownership issues. This is a ridiculous claim and I'm surprised he makes it.

 

Presenter quotes AES paper stating that "we [Stuart and Craven] advocate lossless...highlight quality gains...possible if encoder and decoder are matched" and says he's going to debunk this claim. He cites "Hypothesis Paper to support a deeper Technical Analysis of MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) by MQA Limited" by Stephan Hotto who appears to be related to audio software development. This paper is available online, and a quick check shows that it's just a re-hash of the arguments put out by this forum (analysis of MQA filters and the loss of high frequency information). Hotto does admit that he doesn't have the whole picture, but this does appear to contradict the lossless part of the quote. However, we see that MQA doesn't make this claim:

 

"MQA captures 100% of the original studio performance. It then cleverly adapts to deliver the highest quality playback your product can support."

 

"Products with a full MQA Decoder unfold the file to deliver the highest possible sound quality. At this level of playback you are hearing what the artist created in the studio – with precise file and platform specific DAC compensation and management."

 

No claims regarding lossless transmission.

 

However, a claim IS made in the JAS paper:

 

The goal of MQA is to deliver the contents of the orange triangle precisely, with increased and extreme precision,
while avoiding temporal blur or noise modulation in the converters. To achieve this MQA goes ‘beyond lossless’
in the sense that it has at its core a realisation that ‘lossless’, as the term is usually used, is no guarantor of ultimate
sound quality because it does not embrace the A/D and D/A conversion, volume control etc.

 

The "orange triangle" is referring this diagram:

 

Notice where the orange triangle is? That is the area MQA is concerned with. Therefore, the claim the presenter makes that 192/24 files are not lossless is correct, but it's also irrelevant to MQA claims, and doubly irrelevant to the DRM claim which I'm sure we'll get to (eventually?)

 

Presenter moves on to attacking sound quality claims made by MQA: Study of listeners showed no preference, citing Archimago's test. I've talked about Achimago's test before, and it's baldly obvious FUD hobby horse campaign of his. This was a test in which listeners without MQA DACs were used to determine the efficacy of MQA and other elements I won't go into here.

 

Other questions re: MQA filtering strategy based on his and Hotto's (CA's) opinions. I'm not equipped to address these opinions so I'll skip those.

 

Presenter attacks the AES paper claim of time domain resolution citing a book, "Computational Auditory Scene Analysis: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications". Something about the distance of ears from one another and a 1.3Khz limit of something? Regardless, without the book I can't check any sources which may be cited to support this. So far nothing that directly refutes the research cited by Stuart and others. There is another argument about artistic purity that seems nonsensical and irrelevant so I'll skip it.

 

Presenter argues that high resolution audio is not needed because we can't hear above 20 kHz. Not only does this not address MQA's claims of time domain importance, it also ignores the fact that MQA's supporting research is newer than the research the presenter cites from 1999. MOREOVER, it's just misinformation because everyone reading this thread can probably EASILY tell the difference between high resolution and Redbook. This is embarrassing. The rest from this presenter is just his opinions, mostly CA opinions it seems.

 

First presenter comes back and asks "where's the DRM?" Yes, thank you, let's please get into this...

 

Presenter shows a diagram from the Hotto (ie, CA) paper. Hmm. Something's missing though...

Oh right, the admission that this is just a guess based on the Bluesound code. But let's talk about this DRM. Where's the DRM? Still more re-hashed CA stuff...I'm going to skip these, I'm getting tired and I want to address the DRM already...

 

Oh GOD we're doing this Utimaco thing again? This is the centerpiece of this entire "talk"?? Sigh...from the Utimaco website:

 

To ensure the integrity of the artist’s music from the original source to the end listener,
MQA needed a solution for securely signing the music file, to ensure cryptographically that
what the listener hears is what the artist approved. Authentication is critical to MQA
technology, which must work end-to-end, from the studio all the way to the music fan. An
advanced cryptographic solution was the best option to verify the musical file. MQA turned
to Utimaco, a leading manufacturer of hardware-based security solutions that provide the
root of trust to keep cryptographic keys safe, secure critical digital infrastructures and
authenticate high value data assets.

 

There isn't a word about DRM. It's exactly what MQA has always said it was about, certifying that an MQA stream, is in fact, an MQA stream. It's what that blue light is all about: "you're getting the best experience from the studio, guaranteed, because this light says so". Is there an IP protection aspect to it -- probably! Who cares? Anyway, back to the presentation...

 

There's nothing. Just a discussion on DRM. NOTHING on DRM on MQA. NOTHING. Why did I spend hours writing this post???

 

HAHAHA audience member asks a REALLY good question: "If MQA firmware has been reverse engineered, it seems it doesn't have such a sophisticated protection scheme..." WOW GOOD POINT.

 

Anyway, enough of that. Basically, this was Computer Audiophile MQA Haters Presentation 2017. The title was pretty deceptive as the DRM discussion only took up a little bit of the talk at the end, and the presentation was mostly about why MQA sucks.

 

 

[asdf1000]

1 minute ago, GUTB said:

The first 20 minutes of the video is setup, audiophile ridicule

 

I actually enjoyed the first 20 minutes. I don't mind laughing at myself every now and then!

 

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

Anyway, enough of that. Basically, this was Computer Audiophile MQA Haters Presentation 2017. The title was pretty deceptive as the DRM discussion only took up a little bit of the talk at the end, and the presentation was mostly about why MQA sucks.

 

You talk exactly like Peter Veth and the other key opionion makers. They all use the word "hater" to attack the MQA debunkers.

[Norton]

1 hour ago, FredericV said:

 

You talk exactly like Peter Veth and the other key opionion makers. They all use the word "hater" to attack the MQA debunkers.

 

"The OP and many others are not going to stop until MQA LTD is liquidated"

 

"One can only fight an enemy if one understands that enemy."

 

No haters on CA?  

[PeterSt]

2 hours ago, GUTB said:

Why did I spend hours writing this post???

 

You did it for me.

 

2 hours ago, GUTB said:

The rest from this presenter is just his opinions, mostly CA opinions it seems.

 

I saw this coming and at 29:56 I stopped. WTF must I look at this for an hour to see that it is a copy paste from here (CA).

So you know what I did ? I decided to move to your long text, GUTB, and use that for a quick cut. Glad I did. Saved me about 25 minutes of my time.

 

Really sad.

[PeterSt]

Because of this :

 

14 hours ago, crenca said:

At around the 50 minute mark the presenters go into what DRM is, and why MQA is a good example of it.  They also detail the public/private key aspects of MQA better than I have seen before.

 

I thought, "let's see then". What crenca hasn't seen, I may not have either. It starts out with a moroneous question whether people think this is DRM. No answer. So the conclusion is a Yes ??

Now THAT is scientific CRAP.

 

And this is BS :

 

 

 

and adds to it "which you have payed for of course" with a tone which is only suggestive.

 

Het should have looked into matters deeper. Or better : he just does not understand.

[PeterSt]

Master Major Questionable Auditorium.

[Miska]

3 hours ago, GUTB said:

The goal of MQA is to deliver the contents of the orange triangle precisely, with increased and extreme precision,
while avoiding temporal blur or noise modulation in the converters. To achieve this MQA goes ‘beyond lossless’
in the sense that it has at its core a realisation that ‘lossless’, as the term is usually used, is no guarantor of ultimate
sound quality because it does not embrace the A/D and D/A conversion, volume control etc.

 

The "orange triangle" is referring this diagram:

 

Notice where the orange triangle is? That is the area MQA is concerned with. Therefore, the claim the presenter makes that 192/24 files are not lossless is correct, but it's also irrelevant to MQA claims, and doubly irrelevant to the DRM claim which I'm sure we'll get to (eventually?)

 

MQA fails to do that, because their filter frequency response rolls off the 20 - 40 kHz octave. In addition that triangle is only valid for classical music and such, but not something where the frequency response looks more like a square like in close-miked rock. Or music created in digital domain by soft synths (note - no ADC involved in such case)!

 

MQA cannot do anything about noise modulation in converters because it operates purely in PCM domain, unless you consider the significantly reduced SNR as such, hiding any noise modulation in increased noise floor.

 

3 hours ago, GUTB said:

Other questions re: MQA filtering strategy based on his and Hotto's (CA's) opinions.

 

MQA's filtering strategy goes against sampling theory and produces distorted results, in addition with high-frequency roll-off that actually reduces the transient/timing performance. Completely against their claims.

 

3 hours ago, GUTB said:

Where's the DRM?

 

The MQA encoded data is encrypted and signed. DRM controls that only "approved decoders" can decode the content, trying to ensure that MQA Ltd has full control over who/how/where the decoding can happen. This DRM is trying to prevent you for example converting the MQA encoded content to a standard 96 kHz 24-bit FLAC, WAV or AIFF. DRM also controls who/how/where can encode MQA content. The DRM is protecting money flow from encoding and decoding to MQA Ltd.

[Fokus]

3 hours ago, Norton said:

 

"One can only fight an enemy if one understands that enemy."

 

No haters on CA?  

 

That is not hate. It is applied Sun Tzu.

 

It is a call to people to deeply understand MQA in all its aspects, before attacking it. As opposed to shooting in the wild, which only muddles the pool, or worse, can be made to play in favour of the fanbois.

[NoisyNarrowBandDevice]

7 hours ago, GUTB said:

The first 20 minutes of the video is setup, audiophile ridicule, and spreading misinformation about a few non-MQA topics (the human eye can't perceive past 60 Hz, the suggestion that high resolution audio is just placebo, etc).

 

Presenter makes his first argument against MQA at about 18 mins in. He counters the MQA claim that it's based on recent scientific research into hearing and ear-brain interaction; the presenter says he read the Stuart / Craven AES paper and says that only one of the studies cited was related to humans, and that the others were related to animals. The presenter does not discuss the human study, and instead suggests the animal studies aren't relevant because their hearing system isn't the same as ours. No further details or arguments are brought forward to address the applicability of the animal studies.

 

I'm not going to buy the AES paper, so I'll go by the JAS paper which is freely available. Bob Stuart and Keith Howard cite studies showing the ability of human brains to activate at ultrasonic information at certain levels, a study showing ultrasonic information from real instruments linked to their perception in humans, a study showing audibility of the time-domain effects of certain digital filters, studies showing human listeners beating Fourier limitations. Stuart claims that human time-domain perception is much more acute than frequency-domain perception, and couches this in an evolutionary theory. None of these studies are mentioned by the presenter.

 

Presenter moves on to ridicule TAS. Brings up MQA is Vapourware thread. Brings up Archimago's tests. Ridicules MQA claim of delivering studio sound.

 

Second presenter comes on. He says he doesn't like the MQA sound. He makes the claim that MQA seeks to get rid of the AD/DA chain and to gather royalties, but does not develop this claim any further. He claims that the end user does not own the MQA file, and as such altering the stream results in the loss of MQA processing reducing the file to CD quality or below.

 

MQA nor anyone else claims the end user "owns" files in a streaming service. MQA processing is lost because the meta data used by the decoding engine to process MQA is lost during the alteration process (ie, applying EQ), not because of ownership issues. This is a ridiculous claim and I'm surprised he makes it.

 

Presenter quotes AES paper stating that "we [Stuart and Craven] advocate lossless...highlight quality gains...possible if encoder and decoder are matched" and says he's going to debunk this claim. He cites "Hypothesis Paper to support a deeper Technical Analysis of MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) by MQA Limited" by Stephan Hotto who appears to be related to audio software development. This paper is available online, and a quick check shows that it's just a re-hash of the arguments put out by this forum (analysis of MQA filters and the loss of high frequency information). Hotto does admit that he doesn't have the whole picture, but this does appear to contradict the lossless part of the quote. However, we see that MQA doesn't make this claim:

 

"MQA captures 100% of the original studio performance. It then cleverly adapts to deliver the highest quality playback your product can support."

 

"Products with a full MQA Decoder unfold the file to deliver the highest possible sound quality. At this level of playback you are hearing what the artist created in the studio – with precise file and platform specific DAC compensation and management."

 

No claims regarding lossless transmission.

 

However, a claim IS made in the JAS paper:

 

The goal of MQA is to deliver the contents of the orange triangle precisely, with increased and extreme precision,
while avoiding temporal blur or noise modulation in the converters. To achieve this MQA goes ‘beyond lossless’
in the sense that it has at its core a realisation that ‘lossless’, as the term is usually used, is no guarantor of ultimate
sound quality because it does not embrace the A/D and D/A conversion, volume control etc.

 

The "orange triangle" is referring this diagram:

 

Notice where the orange triangle is? That is the area MQA is concerned with. Therefore, the claim the presenter makes that 192/24 files are not lossless is correct, but it's also irrelevant to MQA claims, and doubly irrelevant to the DRM claim which I'm sure we'll get to (eventually?)

 

Presenter moves on to attacking sound quality claims made by MQA: Study of listeners showed no preference, citing Archimago's test. I've talked about Achimago's test before, and it's baldly obvious FUD hobby horse campaign of his. This was a test in which listeners without MQA DACs were used to determine the efficacy of MQA and other elements I won't go into here.

 

Other questions re: MQA filtering strategy based on his and Hotto's (CA's) opinions. I'm not equipped to address these opinions so I'll skip those.

 

Presenter attacks the AES paper claim of time domain resolution citing a book, "Computational Auditory Scene Analysis: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications". Something about the distance of ears from one another and a 1.3Khz limit of something? Regardless, without the book I can't check any sources which may be cited to support this. So far nothing that directly refutes the research cited by Stuart and others. There is another argument about artistic purity that seems nonsensical and irrelevant so I'll skip it.

 

Presenter argues that high resolution audio is not needed because we can't hear above 20 kHz. Not only does this not address MQA's claims of time domain importance, it also ignores the fact that MQA's supporting research is newer than the research the presenter cites from 1999. MOREOVER, it's just misinformation because everyone reading this thread can probably EASILY tell the difference between high resolution and Redbook. This is embarrassing. The rest from this presenter is just his opinions, mostly CA opinions it seems.

 

First presenter comes back and asks "where's the DRM?" Yes, thank you, let's please get into this...

 

Presenter shows a diagram from the Hotto (ie, CA) paper. Hmm. Something's missing though...

Oh right, the admission that this is just a guess based on the Bluesound code. But let's talk about this DRM. Where's the DRM? Still more re-hashed CA stuff...I'm going to skip these, I'm getting tired and I want to address the DRM already...

 

Oh GOD we're doing this Utimaco thing again? This is the centerpiece of this entire "talk"?? Sigh...from the Utimaco website:

 

To ensure the integrity of the artist’s music from the original source to the end listener,
MQA needed a solution for securely signing the music file, to ensure cryptographically that
what the listener hears is what the artist approved. Authentication is critical to MQA
technology, which must work end-to-end, from the studio all the way to the music fan. An
advanced cryptographic solution was the best option to verify the musical file. MQA turned
to Utimaco, a leading manufacturer of hardware-based security solutions that provide the
root of trust to keep cryptographic keys safe, secure critical digital infrastructures and
authenticate high value data assets.

 

There isn't a word about DRM. It's exactly what MQA has always said it was about, certifying that an MQA stream, is in fact, an MQA stream. It's what that blue light is all about: "you're getting the best experience from the studio, guaranteed, because this light says so". Is there an IP protection aspect to it -- probably! Who cares? Anyway, back to the presentation...

 

There's nothing. Just a discussion on DRM. NOTHING on DRM on MQA. NOTHING. Why did I spend hours writing this post???

 

HAHAHA audience member asks a REALLY good question: "If MQA firmware has been reverse engineered, it seems it doesn't have such a sophisticated protection scheme..." WOW GOOD POINT.

 

Anyway, enough of that. Basically, this was Computer Audiophile MQA Haters Presentation 2017. The title was pretty deceptive as the DRM discussion only took up a little bit of the talk at the end, and the presentation was mostly about why MQA sucks.

 

 

 

Hi - thank you for taking your time & sorry that you feel disappointed. The goal of this talk was to facilitate a discussion and its good we are having one.

 

First of all: haters is strong word and we certainly are not MQA-Haters. MQA-Sceptics would be an apt description. Science is organized skepticism and we fail to see that despite claims to the contrary MQA adhered to scientific standards in the four years of its existence.

 

For example there are no scientifically conducted listening tests available for MQA. We looked for them, they don't exist.

 

This would be the very basis any entry for an audio-format should comply too, especially if claims about revolutionizing the state of the art are entertained. There are other aspects of MQA and the AES-paper that fail to meet the same standards leading us to the conclusion that MQA needs more organized skepticism.

 

Our upcoming papers hopefully will contribute to such.

 

Secondly on the neuroscience: referencing animal models without discussing their applicability to humans and more specifically their applicability and relevance to the MQA-format is questionable to say the least.

 

As Anton remarked the higher temporal resolutions observed in animals like gerbils and owls have their physiological basis partially in the distance and orientation of their ears. Smaller distances between ears allow for higher temporal resolution. Or in other words the temporal resolution observable in humans is in parts dictated by the larger distances our ears have from each other.

 

The only neuroscience studies on humans cited in the AES-paper where done by Kunchur and discuss the lower bounds of temporal resolution in human hearing. There are two issues with these papers with regards to MQA:

 

1. Kunchur himself notes in his discussion of the available studies on the topic that his results seem to be an outlier and further studies need to be done. Basing an audio-format on such preliminary findings skeptically discussed by their own authors without having having produced further results supporting the numbers cited is again very questionable.

 

2. Kunchur had arrived at a lower bound of ca. 5-7us, which is a temporal resolution that is exceeded by sampling at 16/44.1 already.

 

Thirdly on the audience question: "If MQA firmware has been reverse engineered, it seems it doesn't have such a sophisticated protection scheme.."

 

This was a very good question and in your quote you omitted its second part which was specifically if the HSM-modules had been hacked.

 

As I clarified in my answer it was not the crypto of MQA that has been reverse engineered. Also the consumer-endpoints (DACs/Streamers) don't contain hardware HSM-modules. This would be prohibitively expensive and necessitate provisions for online connectivity.

 

Hacking an HSM-module would have been a major feat. The HSM-modules reside in the hardware exclusive to encoding houses allowing for further layer of security as physical access to this hardware is restricted to small numbers of trusted personnel.

 

What was reverse engineered is MQA-decorder-firmware which shows how MQA-files are parsed and that certain cryptographic elements are essential to this process. Specifically the decoder looks for the presence of a digital signature in the control-stream and processes its validity via cryptographic routines embedded in the firmware. Only if the crypto-routines return a positive match the "folded" part of the file is playable.

 

These findings have been confirmed by third parties familiar with MQA integration.

 

What the firmware-analyis further showed are provisions for more restrictive forms of DRM, including copy-protection.

 

The real questions you should ask are why does MQA employ such a sophisticated and expensive cryptography and who benefits from it. You should also ask what happens to the keys if MQA goes bankrupt.

 

You concede that MQA is about IP-protection. IP-protection without DRM is though if not impossible unless you price your good or service so low that infringement becomes pointless. Streaming at $9.99 per month might be that pricepoint.

 

However the MQA-crypto-components described above and by others constitute a Digital Rights Management (DRM) whose goal is the protection of IP. Intellectual property protection is a legitimate concern and always involves trade-offs. The way MQA envisions IP-protection involves trade-offs in IP-control for audio hard- and software manufactures (DAC designs, encoding schemes etc), to some extend also for smaller labels and artists (back catalogues, selection of studios, engineers and mastering facilities).

 

These tradeoff might have negative effects on the innovativeness and/or creativity of the parties involved.

 

In your post I am missing any curiosity about possible systemic effects of such an IP-regime. MQA fails to give guidance in this regard.

 

Lastly on making fun of audiophiles: I like to make fun of myself, especially since our talk was on the last day of the conference before an audience of technical apt hackers and digital rights activists - most of which are decidedly not audiophiles or care much about music.

 

Fun helps getting across to such a crowd of a good 500 people who showed up after having four days of conferencing and partying behind them. C3 parties are legendary and last night proved it again

 

Have fun & "Guten Rutsch" into 2018 as we say in Germany!

[Norton]

2 hours ago, Fokus said:

 

It is a call to people to deeply understand MQA in all its aspects, before attacking it. .

 

But if you've already decided you want to attack something, why bother trying to understand it first.  Cut  out the middle man and get stuck straight into the hating!

 

Taking the decision to attack something or someone in the absence of understanding  is surely the most perfect definition of hatred as practised the world over?  The fact that you then pause for an immediate stage of understanding before proceeding to the actual attack itself is still hatred.  It's just better informed hatred.

 

Less like applied Sun Tzu, more like applied Adolf Eichmann.*

 

* I am not actually suggesting that anyone here is behaving like a Nazi.

[Fokus]

15 minutes ago, Norton said:

 

Taking the decision to attack something or someone in the absence of understanding  is surely the most perfect definition of hatred as practis

 

 

I understand. Have for years.

[NOMBEDES]

Human hearing, like most aspects of human capabilities can be plotted on a bell curve.

My hearing ability is on the lower left side of of bell curve.  My wife's hearing is plotted on the higher end of the scale, where the bat and human intersect. (sorry dear, I am not saying you are an old bat).... anyway.

 

So for me, high resolution is a myth.  I can not tell the difference between a CD and a high end super duper file.  So be it.

 

Now when we interpose human hearing capabilities over a graph of age progression as it applies to hearing and disposable income you will see an X plot graph,  income will increase with age as hearing ability declines.  (the point being that the people with sufficient disposable income to enjoy expensive high resolution downloads, MQA enhanced equipment and associated components and speakers have, in general, degraded hearing acuity) 

 

There are, of course exceptions, many people on this site claim to have excellent hearing well into advanced age.  I doubt if this minority can support the house of cards that MQA is building.

 

 

 

 

 

[crenca]

6 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

I thought, "let's see then". What crenca hasn't seen, I may not have either. It starts out with a moroneous question whether people think this is DRM. No answer. So the conclusion is a Yes ??

Now THAT is scientific CRAP.

 

 

Science and crowd?  That is CRAP

 

The presenter outlines very nicely what DRM is, and how MQA is a good example of it.  He thinks the "freemium" DRM scheme defines MQA for  now (i.e. MQA v 1.2) it this is right...

[crenca]

2 hours ago, NoisyNarrowBandDevice said:

 

In your post I am missing any curiosity about possible systemic effects of such an IP-regime...

 

This is a key point, one that goes to the heart of why the art & wine, radically subjectivised audiophile and "audiophile press" have been (quite literally) hoodwinked into thinking about MQA as just another sound quality tweak.  A culture of radical subjectivism of course fosters this attitude, but I wonder if that explains the whole phenomena??  Such folks can't claim ignorance, as audio has had Dolby, MP3, SACD, DVD-Audio, etc.etc. (granting the differences of each of those).  They also live in the 1st world with the rest of us, and are certainly aware of the effect DRM has had in Video.

 

The attempts at arguing that MQA is not DRM (which presupposes an erroneous "copy protection" or similar definition of DRM) are, well, delusional...

[GUTB]

55 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

This is a key point, one that goes to the heart of why the art & wine, radically subjectivised audiophile and "audiophile press" have been (quite literally) hoodwinked into thinking about MQA as just another sound quality tweak.  A culture of radical subjectivism of course fosters this attitude, but I wonder if that explains the whole phenomena??  Such folks can't claim ignorance, as audio has had Dolby, MP3, SACD, DVD-Audio, etc.etc. (granting the differences of each of those).  They also live in the 1st world with the rest of us, and are certainly aware of the effect DRM has had in Video.

 

The attempts at arguing that MQA is not DRM (which presupposes an erroneous "copy protection" or similar definition of DRM) are, well, delusional...

 

Sigh. Look, when MQA introduces DRM, then we can can all point to when they said otherwise and call Stuart a liar. Until then, it’s just an imaginary boogeyman.

[kumakuma]

10 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

Sigh. Look, when MQA introduces DRM, then we can can all point to when they said otherwise and call Stuart a liar. Until then, it’s just an imaginary boogeyman.

 

GUTB says there is no DRM.  Miska says there is DRM.

 

Who to believe?

 

Oh, who to believe? 

 

 

 

[Ralf11]

is JUST a coincidence that MQA rears its DRMladen horns at exactly the time that the so-called "asteroid" Oumuamua approaches Earth???

 

I think NOT !!