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

[botrytis]

3 minutes ago, HalSF said:

I just cant get with the paranoid view that MQA is somehow going to prevail and wreak all kinds of havoc on audiophile options and impose a degraded level of sound quality on listeners, especially if its most important potential customers continue to balk and demand a fair, open test of MQA’s claims. And if there continues to be a widespread perception that MQA is dodging such a fair, open test, or if MQA fails to make a convincing case in the court of audiophile and AES opinion, I just don’t see the brand thriving.

 

The blowback to date has been brutal, and if things don’t somehow turn around in terms of convincing skeptics, MQA is doomed.

 

I think we need to put a nail in it's coffin. I don't want them trying to resurrect MQA at a later date when we forget about it. Archimago did a fine job of using  reason, proof of experiments, and concise arguments to de-bunk MQA. Now we just need to make sure it doesn't have 9 lives.

[botrytis]

4 minutes ago, kissov said:

Your response to the Beekhuyzen video is exactly why you should keep your idenity a secret. 

 

The problem is we have ALREADY DISCUSSED, in another thread that video with the author of that video. We debunked him there also. I feel his video was disingenuous at best and blatant lies on the other hand. 

 

I guess you are one of the MQA groupies. I wonder which one you really are.

 

I want to ask, How can a file that is TRUNCATED to 16-17 bit depth at the most, sound BETTER than the original file which is 24 bit depth? During the processing, there is added noise and decreased dynamic range (among other issues). It can't.

[botrytis]

5 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Actually an excellent point. With a Titleist Pro V1 they sound great to me. What should sound better my Titleist 660 blades (Endo forgings) and Callaway X forged wedges both forged out of 1025 carbon steel sound a bit soft.

 

But can they decode DSD?  What about MQA? (DUCKS)

[botrytis]

3 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Doesn't matter Spotify is the choice for music on a golf course. Q: do you mind if I play music? A: yes if you don't turn it up.

 

I was a caddy for a while in high school (at Cog Hill Golf Course in Lemont, IL) and it turned me off on golf. 

 

What about Tidal? Then you can get that WONDERFUL first unfold

[botrytis]

2 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Caddying would have turned me off too. A poorly paid pack animal.

 

Out in the world nobody has heard of Tidal much less use it. I've asked all I get is quizzical looks. 

 

Like this?

 

[botrytis]

We have NEVER seen ANY data pertaining to MQA from the company itself.  When I mean data, I mean data like Archimago has shown or the testing of speakers in Stereophile. What MQA  shows are these stock presentations where the slides mean absolutely nothing because they were put together by marketing people. Listening to an MQA spiel, is like watching the Monty Python sketch where Graham Chapman stands in front of a poster that has numbers on pie chart but nothing about what it identifies.

 

 

[botrytis]

Mr. Aktinson,

 

    You seem to be under the delusion that people don't lie when using their own name, when that is not true. I mean all you need do is look at the Cold Fusion paper fiasco, etc. and those gentlemen used their names and still lied. You have to look at the data and can it be reproduced. 

      From my personal background as a scientist, I had one advisor that rested on his laurels for 20 years, while producing nonsense science. People threw money at him and nothing he produced, when I was with him, was quality or good data. In fact, I myself, debunked several of his papers. He didn't like being shown wrong, This seems to be the norm, rather than the rule, now a days and that is sad.

     It seems to me that MQA, is doing the same. None of the presentations, I have seen, show ANY data that shows what they say is a problem and how they are fixing it. The presentations are full of platitudes and fluff but nothing else. Also, the listening presentations, as you well know, can be rigged. The classic part is playing the same music piece twice, as that is a psychoacoustic affect, because the 2nd time you listen, your brain fills in the details missing. It seems, MQA is using that Psychoacoustic data and nothing else. 

     So, Mr. Atkinson, look at the data, not the name.

[botrytis]

2 minutes ago, realhifi said:

 

Please tell me you’re not equating a run up to a war to an advertising campaign for a music format. A war in which millions of lives were affected, countries were torn apart and our own military forces lost not only members but squandered billions of dollars in the pursuit of those “weapons” which were never found. 

 

Shame on you. 

It might have been an unfortunate example but it is an example, none the less.

[botrytis]

Just now, realhifi said:

I believe I was directing that comment to Doug. 

 

I know, just saying is all.

[botrytis]

@Archimago- does that mean you are going to be the TACTU president or technical advisor? Chris could do TACTU thru CA......

 

Thank you for a great technical article - @Archimago

[botrytis]

8 minutes ago, Archimago said:

 

I think audiophilia could get kinda boring once this brouhaha dies down. 

 

Imagine how little discussion there would be and how slow it would take back in the day if we had to simply rely on print media and snail mail!

 

For those not already thoroughly saturated and looking for more MQA-related reading material in this drama, Jon Iverson's As We See It is up now... Make your thoughts heard before the 1st 100 comments are in and it spills into the next page. 

 

We can ALWAYS discuss cable *DUCKS*

[botrytis]

Could also be Medical Quality Assurance, also.

[botrytis]

1 minute ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

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.

 

 

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

 

 

Sorry, Mr. Atkinson. I disagree with you about the 'digital origami'. It is not difficult to to understand but we need to pull apart all the steps and then put them together. The origami part is just anther type of compression, nothing more nothing less. What it does is make the file unfolding a DRM, kind of like having a password on a zip file. 

 

The rest of the process has been explained by Archimago.

[botrytis]

So, continuing on with my thoughts that Origami = compression, the first fold is probably the most efficient. The 2nd fold is less efficient, so the file will not shrink as much. Ever do a *.zip in a *.zip file? Same basic idea. Then when you use another type of compression ,say flag you really can't compress it any more.

 

Sorry, just thinking out loud here. Been a researcher for so long (biochemistry/mycology, hence the moniker   ), that logic problems fascinate me. Maybe that is all the folding is, a glorified compression system that has to be unlocked with 1. Software; 2. Hardware. The rest is as Archimago and Mansr suggest.

[botrytis]

4 minutes ago, mansr said:

There is only one "fold."

I stand corrected 

 

What do you think about the idea that it is just a compression with a key?

[botrytis]

Thanks, I kept thinking this folding nonsense just sounds like compression, nothing more, it couldn't be THAT simple? Maybe it is....

[botrytis]

1 minute ago, Archimago said:

 

 

Okay, I think we get it. You disagree with other editors' decisions about allowing "secret identity" writers whether it's in the pages of The Economist or Chris Connaker's website.

 

I trust we can move on now to other material discussions?

 

He already said he won't discuss other things BECAUSE of that fact, which is nonsense to me. As I said, being a scientist, the data is the data. I don't think we will get anything more from Mr. Atkinson.

[botrytis]

I agree with Archimago. Until we know what 'deblurring' means to MQA (aka Stuart), we can guess until the cows come home. 

[botrytis]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I can just see the war on pseudonyms beginning now :~) 

 

I have used this moniker since 1996  

 

I find nothing wrong with it. Some of the most read authors use them.

[botrytis]

54 minutes ago, realhifi said:

Fiction writers do. 

 

So do non- fiction writers.

[botrytis]

2 minutes ago, MarkusBarkus said:

My take is what gets "authenticated" is the pre-defined process described to the labels/artists, expected to yield a result with certain characteristics.
 

While I have not personally witnessed the authentication process, I feel reasonably certain that they would run a batch process for this; how could they do anything else, given the volume of files? And the time it would take to get sign-off.

 

There was a parallel model with digital imagery. Sites did not anticipate how much consumers would embrace digital photography. They uploaded zillions of files into free storage.
 

Companies had to consider how to manage the storage load, and some were making copies of the original files, slightly down-rezed.
 

In some of these meetings (don't ask where) there were proponents of the down-rez batch process, since the images looked identical. We're talking about petabytes of data. Sorry to drift OT a bit there...

 

 

 

 

The point is, if an engineer or ARTIST has not OK'ed the MQA conversion, then there is no AUTHENTICATION. This is the problem here.

 

They are scamming it.

[botrytis]

There is NO AUTHENTICATION besides just mass encoding.

[botrytis]

UHH - Sorry No @HelpfulDad. MQA is lossy in the same way that MP3 is lossy. Meaning that material that is encoded in the master IS REMOVED. In the case of MP3 it is to make the files smaller and to remove minor harmonics to do so. MQA removes actual bit depth of the file, meaning a 44.1/16 bit master is made into a 44.1/13 bit depth file. In this case, we do not know what is removed, then the file is put trough a DSP system to actually make the file louder and god knows what else. Then there are the leaky filters which actually CAUSE ringing, not remove it. Then the compress it with FLAC system but FLAC cannot compress something that has been put through a meat grinder like that, so he file is only a little bit smaller than the original FLAC.

 

MQA is nothing more than a means to control the whole process of digital audio. Sorry no. And besides, every MQA file I have heard sounds like ass.

[botrytis]

25 minutes ago, HelpfulDad said:

No it isn’t.  Your imperfect understanding of how MP3 works vs. MQA leads you to think that. And, let me guess, you’ve never heard it fully decoded

 

I have heard MQA fully decoded. It sounds like shit to me. Actually, I know for certain, it is you that doesn't know how MQA works. You have only read the nonsense that they and their lackeys have put out. This is the MQA patent in a nutshell So a 96.24 file going in comes out as a 96/17 with more noise. Also any file that is greater than 96K is down sampled to 96K. NO THANK YOU.

 

I don't want MQA, I don't need MQA, and if they force MQA on us, I will never again buy any music at all. PERIOD.

[botrytis]

7 minutes ago, HelpfulDad said:

And BTW. Chris Squire died after the music was encoded so there’s that bit of disinformation on your part.

 

Proof? Did he sign off on it? I want to see the proof or it didn't happen.

 

Sorry. Just more nonsense.