MQA - A clever stealth DRM - Trojan

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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.

 

 

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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.

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1 hour ago, Don Hills said:

 

On the contrary, it's very real.

The encryption scheme used is very good (and expensive). You can bet that it was included to make MQA more attractive to the record labels. And you can also bet the labels will be tempted to use it if MQA becomes the dominant format.

 

Another problem with MQA is that it requires specific hardware. What happens when/if MQA dies in the marketplace and DAC manufacturers stop paying the license fee and drop support in their new DACs? There have already been several cases where DRM schemes have folded, leaving people with music they can no longer play.

 

And for those who say that you can still play the undecoded MQA, remember that the currently encoded MQA files don't use the optional degradation functions. The undecoded quality can be reduced to a level where you can barely recognise the music being played.

 

This definition also applies to SACDs, but I don’t recall anyone accusing Sony of trying to push DRM via SACD.

 

I bought a 2L MQA album. Nothing’s stopped me from playing it where I want how I want, upload to or give it to whoever I want. If I want to unfold the SQ benifits from MQA I need a DAC that supports MQA. Just like if I want to benifit from DSD quality I need a DSD capable DAC, and if I want to get the benifit from 352 kHz files I need a 352 kHz capable DAC. It’s just a format — the main wrinkle being that it’s a format that’s trying to secure itself against fruad (ie, hi-res tracks that were just upsampled Redbook all over HDTracks, etc). This is not DRM, as there is no rights management or enforcement mechanism. If such DRM mechanisms show up in the future, we can all call Stuart and MQA liars.

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3 hours ago, FredericV said:

 

Why do you believe this? Why does MQA needs strong crypto? To protect the crown jewels.
With MQA you don't get access to the master, but you get the right to lisen to some approximation of the master, only on MQA dacs.

This is a clear form of DRM.

 

 

Do you actually believe this, or is it just a party line you have to follow to be a part of the anti-MQA crowd?

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Oppos don't allow streaming of SACD externally, you need an after-market mod for that to work.

 

Sony doesn't allow SACD to be streamed externally from SACD players unless the stream is encrypted, which is why you only see that feature in proprietary connection schemes in certain products (dCS, McIntosh, etc).