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

[crenca]

@Archimago,

 

Not sure if you meant to cite

 

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/master-quality-authenticated-mqa-the-view-from-30000-feet/

 

when you tilted your final section "The view from 30,000 feet and a birth of a new paradigm?"

 

Excellent summation and audiophile consumer advocacy!!

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8 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

Ya got it, Crenca . It was an amalgam of that article title and the "paradigm" one by TAS... I was flabbergasted each of the times I read those articles! I was thinking to myself, "How in the world can anyone write this?" in a completely serious fashion without feeling a significant discomfort as to how it would be viewed by the readership!

 

 

It is indicative of just how insulated they are from their readership.  They have their heads and hearts so far up "the industries" perspective that they truly can not even begin to take a consumers perspective.  Truth be told, as you and I have discussed they have never really had to understand their readerships needs and concerns because they are so used to leading and forming those very concerns (i.e. they have the confidence of audiophiles).

 

This is why I think it is an error to call them "journalists" or the audiophile "press".  They are at best mere trade journals written for the industry and including only the industries views and concerns...

 

edit:  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...

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2 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

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

....

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

36 minutes ago, skatbelt said:

....From this perspective I want to add my experience with MQA. I don't own a MQA-enabeled DAC ....but I did compare Tidal MQA 'masters' with their CD-quality counterparts via Roon and Audirvana and in all cases the SQ of the 'masters' were better to my ears....So my point is that - separate from all claims, promises and objective counter proof - I really enjoy and welcome the introduction of MQA in streaming services and hope that Tidal will expand their range, especially in the genres of my taste....

 

Unbelievable.

 

I think after all that we now know about MQA -  @Archimagohas written about, about apples to oranges masters, etc., the best that can be said about such subjective, "sounds like - this is what I hear" is that they are unbelievable.  Such honesty is irrelevant.  Ask any investigator what happens when you have a dozen or so witness to a crime what they saw.  In a "scientific" age where we know about the limits of perception, psychology, bias, and subjective self reporting it simply is not honest to continually beat the drum of radical subjectivised audiophiledom.  Honesty and the truth are two different things, as there are still men who honestly believe the world is flat, down is up, right is left, etc.  

 

I wonder what it would look like for Stereophile to honestly discuss their biases, methods of doing "sounds like" reviews, their place and relationship to "the industry" and the highly subjectivised audiophile culture of the last 35 years or so?  

 

Now THAT would be an "honest" report worth reading...

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2 minutes ago, mansr said:

I like to think that my reverse engineering efforts contributed in some small way.

 

I noticed a change from our host when someone documented that link to Utimaco, MQA's crypto partner.   

 

As @Archimagosays:

 

 

What do we have?

A software technique that keeps about 16-bits of audio data and hides some lossy sparsely sampled data from one octave above down to 24-bits + cryptographic signature + a way to play this using a certain type of upsampling filter.

 

Ok, meh, another audiophile product among thousands's of otherwise "meh" audiophile products.  Now throw in crypto, DRM and "end to end" ambition...

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3 hours ago, Doug Schneider said:

 

Hi,

 

Sometimes my comments can be off-the-wall, too! But in the case of MQA, the problem was that they stepped on some familiar turf to me -- just like they probably did with you. I worked in various aspects of IT from 1985 to 1998, before SoundStage! became full-time. Your must work  in a technical capacity, too.

 

As you know, you can't just put out blanket b.s. to technical people without something to back it up. If you claim something does something, then it better do it or your claim means nothing.  The folks at MQA haven't done a damn thing to prove any of their claims -- except put on ridiculous listening sessions that bamboozles certain type of people. They were also trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with their own definition of "lossless," for example, which a number in the press bought into. I believe the word lossless is exclusively an IT term and we all know what it means. Them trying to hijack the word and tack on their own definition was simply b.s. and cost them credibility -- among other things they claims.

 

Insofar as this whole thing goes, however, you and Mansr have done the best technical work on it. Your findings, coupled with what Bruno Putzeys wrote on Facebook in November, not only had everyone suddenly stand up and take notice -- it's left their supporters on shaky ground and right now doubting themselves. Charles Hansen must also be credited for being so damn persistent on this and taking people to task, even if it cost some friendships. He, too, knew what was right. So keep up the good work and keep even more stuff coming!

 

Doug

SoundStage!

 

This is something we have discussed here at CA.  Even in a highly subjectivised Audiophiledom, MQA was a bridge too far.  It is a hobby/industry after all that is just about consumer electronics, and as such based on known engineering principles, "physics", etc.  MQA is even something else, in that at the end of the day it (as well as PCM, DSD, etc.) is mere software, which is just math.

 

Audiophiledom, at least as promoted by much of "the industry" and certainly the majority of the trade publications (Stereophile and TAS being the big two, at least here in America) is a subjectivised confidence game.  They don't exist to sell the consumer their technical competence (they don't have any of that - JA measurements and the like being the exception that proves the rule) but rather their authority.  This confidence game, as any other, relies on a healthy measure of truth being mixed in with the con.  MQA simply does not have the substance to sustain this even in Audiophiledom.

 

I have a friend who just retired from the military, who was an officer and I will just say he worked in IT/communications.  I have discussed things audiophile with him for the last few years, but he has no interest and never paid that much attention.  Last night I mentioned Nyquist–Shannon and his ears perked up.  "What do you know about that?" he asked.  I summarized MQA's claims and the debate around it for him.  He chuckled (literally "out loud" as the kids say) at the notion that Stuart had discovered something essential about it.  I said "yea, would that not be worth millions in to the military industrial complex alone?"  He replied "billions", that billions had already been spent and that this area, it is nothing less than critical and that any real development would be classified, etc.

 

 

[crenca]

5 hours ago, Oystein said:

After reading this great article and much in dept technical details I found a similar conclusion on 6moons which also describes a way how to do without the MQA encoding and avoid their filter

 

It is published in the Keep it Honest chapter in cooperation with John Darko.

 

It is interesting is it not that 6moons, which has 1 and 3/4 feet firmly in subjectivised Audiophiledom (has anyone ever accused them of being "objectivist"?) even found their way to ask what is the substance, technically, of MQA?  It turns out that and "end to end" payment scheme is not good for the small "boutique" manufactures that 6moons almost exclusively promotes deals with.  Nothing like a bit of old fashioned self interest...

[crenca]

1 minute ago, Pete-FIN said:

 

If there is at least a single device that can do this, then we know for sure that it is not forbidden by Meridian (like I pondered earlier).

 

 

I would not go that far.  Indeed, if there is such a device my first guess that it is an accident - an implementation mistake...

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59 minutes ago, botrytis said:

"One thing that concerns me greatly, both as an editor and as someone who has always posted to the Internet under my actual name, is the anonymity of the author. Yes, CA's Chris Connacker explains why he felt it okay not to reveal Archimago's identity, but I strongly feel that writers should not hide behind anonymity. Readers are entitled to transparency, particularly when the subject is as controversial as MQA."

 

 

 

No doubt.  However, this transparency, this look and review of MQA from a consumer or a pro vs. con perspective is exactly what Stereophile and the other trade publications have not done.  Unfortunately, @John_Atkinson, your just a wee bit hypocritical with this criticism.  Besides, @Archimagohas his reasons and as long as his technical evaluation is sound it is irrelevant.  The objective truth is the objective truth, no matter who is speaking it.

 

Folks, @John_Atkinsonis just speaking from his background, his culture, which in Audiophiledom is based on the subject - it is not what a person says but who is saying it that then determines the truth of the matter...

 

Edit:  Also, note that @John_Atkinsonis "concerned greatly".  I believe him, but note how he and his writers have never shown much concern for the objective truth of MQA - it's actual technical workings, who $benefits$ and who does not, and whether it delivers on any of its promises.  His publication's "concern" from the beginning was rather to promote MQA, not actually weigh the pros and cons.  Just more evidence of the wide chasm between your concerns and his...

[crenca]

16 minutes ago, ednaz said:

All that scientific fact about moving images (I was talking about stills) ignores what I see about MQA. People with great ears (I was a union card holding musician until I was 30) talk about how MQA has more reality in the sense of environment. Which, given the de-blurring techniques, and noise feedback... makes a lot of sense.

 

Detecting distortions... all those image print techniques are based on taking advantage of our perceptions. I think MQA takes advantage of our perceptions. Not reality. Brains hear. They function at a pretty damn low sample rate.

 

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.

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. Brains are lazy. Like humans.

 

And I suppose I'm assuming an ability to grasp analogies. I could well be wrong. Most of my work is based on cross domain analogies, but not everyone can do that.

 

Unfortunately your allowing your imagination to get a bit carried away.  We have no problem with analogies, yours just does not work with MQA given what we actually know about waveforms (sound and digital) and how MQA works internally.  Also, it is simply not true that "people with great ears" report what you say.  Some do, but some don't.  The closer one gets to "insider status" in Audiophiledom, the more such creative defense of MQA becomes the norm.  The further you move away from it "people with great ears" report a worsening of the very things MQA defenders report.

 

Also, you appear to rely on the confidence game and who is saying what as opposed to what is said as Audiophiledom does.  

 

In other words, your "cross domain analogy" is a fail - it's bunk...

 

[crenca]

9 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

 

Once you threw MQA into the equation, I have to say, "Game over" for any DAC that can't keep up.

 

THE HOLY GRAIL of consumer-audio formats has been to deliver to the listener the same sound quality that the artists and engineers heard in the studio. In the past all formats have fallen far short of that lofty goal - until now.

 

My goodness. How can anyone say these things with a straight face? Are these the words of "true believers"?

 

4 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

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

 

Respectfully @John_Atkinson, is this not part of the problem?  Look how you describe these subjects, these mere men and researchers doing the plodding, incremental, boring task of basic research.  It's like you and your staff (and the whole culture at these trade publications) have been reading too many utopian science fiction novels and are infatuated with some glorious future.  It's just audio, consumer electronics, and in the case of MQA software and math.  "progress", such as it is, is actually slow, incremental, and boring.  Perhaps you should assign yourself and your writers some Philip K. Dick so you can gain a bit of perspective, balance, and healthy skepticism.

 

I get it to an extant - you sit down to write your one thousand five hundred and eighty seventh review of yet-another-amplifier, and you have to somehow come up with something interesting to say, something worth reading.  That said, right now you are far far too gullible, too doe eyed about "the future", and too willing to accept other people's tales and stories that are simply not true...

[crenca]

1 minute ago, beetlemania said:

Or the words of one with an all expenses paid vacation professional trip to Europe? Maybe not unlike the "news" readers on teevee that get paid $$$$ to repeat corporate and government propaganda.

 

Here is the deal:  I would have more respect for TAS if they were being directly compensated for such uncompromising "true believer" copy.  The thing is they probably are not (and will defend their "integrity" like a mother bear). This means they are unaware that they are the targets of a confidence game, and that they are playing their role perfectly.  

[crenca]

1 minute ago, kissov said:

Here is a link to an adult talking about MQA who uses his real name.

 

 

Too bad much of what he says is false.  I bet he wishes he had used a pseudonym...

[crenca]

Just now, Dr Tone said:

 

The best part is when he says: "In my opinion, MQA has less loss than PCM and DSD".

 

He must be a victim of the public schools.  Never got past long division...

[crenca]

39 minutes ago, HalSF said:

Tidal, the only hope for a modicum of mass-market success for MQA, is on thin ice. The tech world is dominated by audio skeptics who embrace 256 kbps AAC as a very high-quality standard (which it is) and who could care less about even 16/44 Red Book, much less high-resolution audiophile snake oil (as they see it). Ars Technica and Pitchfork looked at MQA and pronounced it meh. Any Google searcher exploring MQA quickly runs into Linn’s “Why MQA is bad for music” link and this forum’s “MQA is Vaporware” thread. 

 

The idea that record labels are going to give MQA a sustained and committed push seems highly doubtful to me. So far Apple and Spotify are giving it a hard pass. Four years of not gaining momentum and traction is an eternity in tech.

 

When you put it like that, what chance does MQA have?  The labels could decide to "switch on" MQA and only release new product in this format.   They would figure that the vast majority of their customers (i.e. the "audio skeptics") are just going to keep doing what they have been doing for the last almost 20 years and rip it to 256 (or less)...

[crenca]

11 hours ago, astromo said:

 

From my own technical background, I know that modelling can only take you so far (George Box's advice is often quoted, "all models are wrong, some are useful" or something along those lines). Without empirical testing and validation, theory and models can quickly lead you down the garden path to leave you dancing around the magic mushrooms with the pixies and the fairies. To take Box's point, if you don't test your models empirically, it's not possible to understand the strengths and weaknesses and ultimately their reliability.

 

If MQA had been subjected to the rigour that Moran and Meyer applied (here's the testing detail from their paper that the abstract above alludes to):

We would already have an answer that would put all this angst and debate from the last couple of years beyond doubt to even the greatest proponents of the format.

 

 

Well stated.

[crenca]

15 minutes ago, Archimago said:

I presume Jim Austin still has more to say as does John Atkinson, even though I can appreciate his openness to have this AWSI published.

 

 

Avionics Weapons System Integration?

 

[crenca]

1 minute ago, beetlemania said:

 

Now we know that no less than Faulkner and Hansen were PMing Atkinson for some time re: MQA. I get that JA thinks his personally recorded files sound better via MQA but it mystifies me why he dismissed the many criticisms out of hand (I'm too lazy to find the relevant posts on AA). Regardless, kudos to John Atkinson for allowing Iverson to dissent from his view.

 

Any idea when the McGill study will be finished and published?

 

Yet, JA admits that it was a coin toss when choosing which was which unsighted.   I think it comes down to not knowing how to save face after digging themselves in initially...

[crenca]

1 minute ago, Archimago said:

 

Yes. (As We See It)

 

As Homer would say "doh"!  

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1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

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.

 

 

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

[crenca]

2 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

I have not yet read anything that would convince me to change my mind...

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

Oh boy...

 

I don't envy your position - how do you back away from such a statement?  Fact is, most don't have it in them...

[crenca]

delete

[crenca]

7 hours ago, adamdea said:

I agree with all of this, but in the hope that this sad affair has opened a chink of rationality into commercially oriented personality disorder that is audiophilia:-

once one has grasped that MQA is not based on any solid new science, idoes not have solutions to concrete problems,  then  one really ought to ask why it is that one can basically say what one likes about the sound of these files- they sound great, it's a whole new world, -they sound terrible, my ears are bleeding, they have silky highs but at the expense of thematic solidity.... whatever.

The uncomfortable truth is that the industry needs new products more than the ear needs higher resolution. 

 

a chink of rationality into commercially oriented personality disorder that is audiophilia:-

 

Nicely stated.

[crenca]

46 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

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

 

 

I wonder if the thing that it really comes down to is that a pseudonym is so counterintuitive in the confidence game you are a part of.  You can't wrap your head around that, and no matter what you will leverage it in your efforts to recover credibility.  If I were you, I would be explicitly asking/implying that whoever Archimago is, he is the one who is gaming your pyramid...

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5 minutes ago, Archimago said:

This is not the late 1960s nor a research lab. Almost 4 billion people are online these days - that is the "sandbox" in which we're having this discussion...

 

Yes. That is in fact the point. Just like the previous comments about the "cult of personalities" and why I think Bob Stuart should not have become such an entrenched spokesperson for MQA. Whether MQA as a technology is any good does not lie in the personhood of Bob Stuart (which is why I said I don't care whether he is "nefarious" or not).

 

It's certainly not lost on anyone that likely one of the reasons why much of the audiophile press has been so blind to the deficits of MQA is precisely because of their relationship to Bob Stuart, "the man".

 

Can the press as a whole now gracefully "play ball" and keep their eyes on the objective as independent journalists and evaluate the technology called MQA?

 

No, because they don't have it in them.  "playing the ball" is not in any way what they do, they always (always always always) play the man.  It is how "audiophiledom" was built - "We built this city on rock and roll sub-ject-ivi-sm"  (the subject, the man)

 

The sandbox is just a world they dabble in from the perspective of maintaining confidence, they have no idea what else to do with it.  

 

Do they matter?  For me, and the ever increasing numbers of "The Audiophile Consumer and Technical Union" no.  However, they still sell a significant amount of transducers and electronics and copper and silver strands at 5 figure prices so they have a market to protect. It does not matter if this market is shrinking, as prices are keeping up so it is stable for now.  They even tell themselves that they are making significant inroads with the Union members who mostly pack the Headphone tent....

 

So, like Arsene Wenger they are a dead man walking - but like Arsene Wenger they are surrounded by a club culture that reinforces them...

[crenca]

@Archimago, remember also the business side:

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30381-mqa-is-vaporware/?page=317&tab=comments#comment-794264

 

Readers (i.e. "audiophiles") are the product sold to advertisers and that is how JA makes his living.  If you see a real response from JA and these trade publications, it will not be because of "the forums" or consumer pushback, at least not directly.  It will be beacause JA's customers (i.e. the advertising manufacturers) demand that the subjectivist ship be righted.  They will have to realize that they allowed Bob S to come into the confidence game and reveal a little too much - he overplayed and the product (i.e. the readers) caught on.  That is bad for business.