Article: MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[John_Atkinson]

3 hours ago, crenca said:

  I should note the one exception I know of which is JA's "More" opinion piece where he notes (after getting DRM factually wrong) that an end to end closed format could have the same impact on musical consumers as Net Neutrality could have on the larger consumer world...

 

Thanks for adding this comment Crenca. The essay can be found at https://www.stereophile.com/content/more-mqa

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, randyhat said:

Are all reviewers who have expressed a preference for MQA versions just lying to their readers?  Or, are ALL the tests contrived in a manner to favor MQA?  Or have they "just swallowed the MQA information hook, line and sinker?"  

 

You omitted a fourth possibility: that the magazines' writers honesty report what they hear.

 

1 hour ago, randyhat said:

  I have a modest MQA capable streamer and have listened to MQA files over Tidal.  Some sound great, some sound pretty good and others not so much.

 

That is pretty much what I have reported in Stereophile, adding that I have not heard the MQA version sound worse than the PCM original.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

1. Is it not even a little amazing that MQA is described with all kinds of superlatives; at least ones I have never seen before presented by the media? Comments like... "I come away feeling that I was present at the birth of a new world" (Atkinson).

 

The 2014 article in which I used that phrase can be found at https://www.stereophile.com/content/ive-heard-future-streaming-meridians-mqa

 

I request that CA posters read the full text of what I wrote, in order to comprehend the context.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

3 minutes ago, rickca said:

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

I have not heard the MQA version sound worse than the PCM original

Yeah, not exactly a WTF moment.

 

With respect, you are taking what I said out of context. The article in which I expressed that thought and performed several comparisons can be found at https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-mqa.

 

In that article I wrote: "My conclusion from these uncontrolled listening sessions was that MQA certainly doesn't damage the sound. Quite the opposite—the Prime sounded consistently sweeter than it had in the comparisons with the Ayre and Simaudio headphone amplifiers with regular PCM files."

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

4 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

I do see that you were going to test MQA process with your own recordings. How did that come out? Was the result ever published?

 

Yes, In an article I linked to earlier.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

7 hours ago, botrytis said:

All John Atkinson said is he was close to being banned because he was trolling?

 Forgive me but I didn't say anything like that. If you go to my comment as moderator at

https://www.stereophile.com/comment/573060#comment-573060

you will see that T.S. Gnu wrote: "A rational viewer might question your opinion on who is trolling and who is being trolled." to which I responded: "Please refrain from posting argumentative statements like this. I have deleted the messages that followed this posting of yours as being an exchange of insults."

 

Which they were. No mention of banning.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

14 hours ago, ednaz said:

Incidentally, I'm not talking about JPEG. Not even 100% JPG (although if you're willing to put up a big bunch of money I'll let you try to prove to me that you can ID JPG distortions.)  I'm talking about raw images, or 16 bit TIFFS, in color spaces way beyond Adobe RGB. Really, assumptions make... you finish it. I'm also not talking about Joe from the Street looking at images, I'm talking about high name recognition photographers.

 

Interesting posts on imaging. I will admit that I don't know much at all about digital photography, but from my reading of sampling and filtering, it appears that sinc-function filters - which are almost ubiquitous in digital audio - are sub-optimal for image processing. Is that correct?

 

Quote

BTW, I've spent my last few years building real time environments for visualizing brain activity in multiple types of visualization (fPET, fMRI, ERP) technologies overlaid... We may sample sound frequently but we don't use it. Your brain's activity sets early in a listening (or viewing) session and rolls it forward.

 

There was a very interesting article in IEEE Spectrum last year and how to design computationally efficient camera sensors that echo how the human brain works. (Apologies for not providing a link - will do when I enter the right keywords in Spectrum's search engine to retrieve it.)

 

I also wrote about this aspect of perception in my 2011 Richard Heyser Memorial Lecture to the AES: 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/2011-richard-c-heyser-memorial-lecture-where-did-negative-frequencies-go-nothing-real

Money quote: "The auditory system . .. attempts to build an internal model of the external world with partial input. The perceptual system is designed to work with grossly insufficient data." - Barry Blesser,

The Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, October 2001 issue.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

14 hours ago, HalSF said:

I know we’re all supposed to be fighting to the death in the muddy trenches here, but I want to say that your Heyser Lecture from 2011 is a fascinating survey of ideas and studies surrounding the field of psychoacoustics and listening.

 

Thank you. It's not often that a writer has an opportunity to present his current thinking on such a  broad range of topics. I am in the Audio Engineering Society's debt for the invitation to present that lecture. It was an honor to be included in a group of forward thinkers like Ray Dolby, Phil Ramone, Ray Kurzweil, Manfred Schroeder, Stanley Lipshitz, Walter Murch, Andy Moorer, Roger Lagadec, Kees Schouhamer Imminck, Karlheinz Brandenburg, and Leo Beranek. As I said in the introduction to the lecture, those gentlemen invented the future. By contrast, I am just a storyteller; worse, I am a teller of other people's tales :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

JA admits that it was a coin toss when choosing which was which unsighted. 

 

Not correct, as you can see from reading my article on Listening to MQA:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-mqa

"I scored four out of seven correct; though this is insufficient to prove formal identification, I feel that it is relevant information," adding in the comments that "it was the Steely Dan track that I got wrong—twice. Without it I would have scored 4 out of 5."

 

The reason I misidentified the Steely Dan track was that under blind conditions I preferred the sound of the 24/96 PCM version  and assumed it must have been MQA, based on my experience with the other blind comparisons.

 

I have no problem with you guys criticizing what I write but I am becoming weary of people putting words in my mouth, as in this case.

 

And on the subject of Jon Iverson's "As We See It in the April Stereophile," which was also mentioned in this thread, please note that I never tell my writers what to say. I hire them because of what they think and believe, not what I think and believe.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

54 minutes ago, eclectic said:

do you still stand by this?

 

I have not yet read anything that would convince me to change my mind. Much of the most virulent criticism comes from non-technical people and where it comes from technically astute commentators, I have serious issues with much of what is written. But something that I might have to rethink is the sound of undecoded MQA datastreams, which is what Tony Faulkner was discussing in his Strreophile letter. I admit that I have done very little auditioning of undecoded MQA data and need to do more.

 

And @Doug Schneider Yes, some of the files of mine from which Bob Stuart produced MQA versions for me were made with the Ayre QA-9 ADC, others with a dCS 904 ADC and a Metric Halo MIO2882 ADC. There is something unique about that Ayre ADC, BTW, which increases my respect for the late Charley Hansen even further. But people will need to wait for the August issue of Stereophile to discover what.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

Ok, I stand corrected. 

 

Thank you.

 

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Interesting how your bias and preconception played out - of course the subject of preference testing is a large one.

 

Indeed it is. And again I refer CA posters to my 2011 Richard Heyser Memorial Lecture for a discussion on this subject.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

10 hours ago, mansr said:

12 hours ago, Doug Schneider said:

I'm just going to go out on a limb and guess -- it shows none of the filter artifacts typical of ADCs. That's just a guess. But if so, it's not a surprise because Hansen has stated for a long time that it has no filter.

It's a sigma-delta ADC. Of course it has a filter.

For once agreeing with mansr,  the QA-9 does have a digital-domain filter, offering two different characteristics. You can see those in my review: https://www.stereophile.com/content/ayre-acoustics-qa-9-usb-ad-converter-measurements

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

1 hour ago, Archimago said:

When personalities become so important, we naturally also see the converse. This is demonstrated by the argument Stereophile (Atkinson) raises about this article being written by someone using a pseudonym.

 

With respect, yes, this is a core belief of mine, and has been since I worked in a research lab at the end of the 1960s. You have something relevant o say, hang it on the peg of your actual name. Just as I have done all my life - and even Doug Schneider has done! Until then, while I have read your article, and certainly have opinions on what you have written, I shall keep my thoughts to myself.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

11 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

YES, like Sam Tellig did

 

You are correct in that Stereophile writer Tom Gillett wrote for the magazine using a pseudonym. This was agreed to in 1984 and was grandfathered in when I took over from J. Gordon Holt 2 years later. While I honored the agreement with Tom, it never sat well with me.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

9 hours ago, Doug Schneider said:

It might not have sat well with you, but as editor, you're basically the boss. Since the 1990s, Stereophile has been sold a number of times. Each new publishing company instills a new set of rules. There were many opportunities to change that.

 

Thank you for the advice, Doug. As I said, I honored the agreement that had been made 2 years before I joined Stereophile. End of the story as far as I am concerned. YMMV.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

7 hours ago, wdw said:

I am concerned that we may just run John A. outta town if we continually post strong negatives about him and his magazine.

 

Don't worry about it. I have a professional thick skin.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

6 minutes ago, Doug Schneider said:

Oh, convenient that's over for you. But come on, this double-standard is getting precariously close to jumping the shark...

 

Thank you for your comment, Doug.

 

6 minutes ago, Doug Schneider said:

BTW, without too much work, I contacted Archiamago, which wasn't all that hard...

 

I believe the correct pseudonym is Archimago.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

5 hours ago, astromo said:

11 hours ago, Thuaveta said:

 

With respect, I generally trust the quality of the reporting in The Economist more than I trust Stereophile, as do I have more faith in The Economists' integrity and independence. Yet...

Thanks for that link.

 

I've always wondered why the Economist didn't run bylines. Now I know and the rationale and the approach has its place.

 

My thanks also. I have been an Economist subscriber for 4 decades and while I respect their policy, as an editor I don't agree with it. On the other hand, I got an email a while back from the Economist's Letters page editor in which he offered positive comments about my editing of Stereophile, so I can't be doing too much wrong :-)

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

5 hours ago, rickca said:

I don't even think Iverson's point about being unable to evaluate deblurring and compression independently is a strong argument. 

 

The latter is a benefit to the record industry, as I mentioned in my 2014 "birth of a new world" essay and the subsequent discussion; the former is a purported benefit to the consumer, the sugar to make the medicine go down, as Jon Iverson describes it.

 

5 hours ago, rickca said:

 

You first need to ask exactly what deblurring means in the first place and whether MQA actually does what it claims to do.

 

The audio origami is impossible to examine on its own. But an examination of the "deblurring" is something I am working on for an article to be published in the July or August issue of Stereophile.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

8 hours ago, mav52 said:

I'm just disappointed that Stereophile has decided to attack the man, rather than attack the data in Archimago's report. 

 

One small correction. I have not "attacked" Archimago. I have explained that I disagree with Chris Connacker's decision to keep his identity a secret.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

2 hours ago, astromo said:

There's been limited coverage here:

https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/feel-the-noise

by one of their journos.

 

Thank you for the link. Note that the articles in The Economist's "1843" magazine are published with bylines, in this case a Jennifer Brown.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

[John_Atkinson]

3 hours ago, Pete-FIN said:

Mr. Atkinson, can you please answer this: Is it going to be an article about MQA deblurring, or an article that talks about many things including MQA deblurring?

 

 

I was intending to examine the deblurring. Recreating the audio origami on its own without access to MQA's own encoder, to determine the audibility of any artefacts, would mean reinventing the technology and I have neither the talent nor the time for that.

 

Quote

The way I see it, here is the moment when Stereophile can show that they can do proper and unbiased investigative journalism.

 

Thank you for your comment. But I fail to comprehend what the problem has been so far with our coverage of MQA, other than the fact that some people disagree with our conclusions. Consider the leaky nature of the MQA reconstruction filter, which has been raised as a criticism by Bruno Putzeys and others. We have examined the poor image rejection of this filter at length in the magazine. See, for example,  take a look at figs.10-22 at https://www.stereophile.com/content/aurender-a10-network-music-playerserver-measurements

Jim Austin, who has written the first 3 articles on MQA  for Stereophile, examines the DRM issue with MQA in our May issue and returns to the behavior of the MQA reconstruction filter in our June issue.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

6 minutes ago, Fokus said:

Jim Austin's articles contain factual errors that suggest that he does not quite understand MQA. Or signal theory, when you come to it.

 

In your opinion, not in mine. Otherwise I wouldn't have published Jim's articles.

 

6 minutes ago, Fokus said:

I pointed out some of these in the comment sections. I don't think I ever got a decent reply.

 

Under what name did you post to Stereophile.com? A quick search of the user database didn't find a "Fokus."

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

[John_Atkinson]

5 minutes ago, Pete-FIN said:

'll tell you what the problem in your coverage has been. You have not investigated MQA's claim of 'recording studio sound'.

 

 

In my interviews with Bob Stuart, he has told me that the intention is that the analog signal output by the consumer's D/A converter is identical to that output by the mike preamps (in a purist recording) or the mixing console (in a conventional recording).  That the A/D conversion, transmission, storage and D/A conversion be transparent, other than there being an ultrasonic rolloff equivalent to a signal path of a few feet in air. This has been written about in the magazine.

 

5 minutes ago, Pete-FIN said:

Now is a good time for Stereophile to prove that they can do investigative journalism.

 

 

It is MQA's time-domain behavior, the claimed 'temporal deblurring," that is fundamental to Stuart's explanation. And as I have said before,  that is what I will be investigating in a future article. Up to now, what we have investigated and written about is MQA's  frequency-domain behavior and MQA's societal and commercial aspects. I don't comprehend why you and other posters to CA don't regard that as journalism, investigative or otherwise. Unless you are confusing Stereophile with another magazine?

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile