MQA The Truth lies Somewhere in the Middle

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10 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

3.  Ken has an issue with Archimago being anonymous.  I am less bothered by this but I feel he has a good point.  Hiding behind a user ID is unnecessary and cowardly when good people are trying to have an honest debate.

 

 

There is no excuse for the rudeness seen in the video. @The Computer Audiophile couldn't get through his presentation without being verbally assaulted.

 

People have good reasons for using nicknames rather than their own names including instances where people have contacted employers etc. ( @wgscott can attest ). @Archimago has a website and that is a real name on the internet. Get with 2018. He isn't anonymous. 

 

Chris stated many times, that @Archimago's online publication stands on its own, and it does.

 

The behavior of the rabid pack of MQA advocates was not a good look for the technology. I watched the presentation and that's my opinion. If all you can say is that he's a coward despite the bullying is pretty pathetic. That's my opinion. As a consumer I get to vote with my credit card and do.

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5 hours ago, Derek Hughes said:

Were you there? Chris did not state that he wanted to leave questions to the end. I worked at Intel for over 20 years, if you think that was rude you have no idea.

Are you still calling me a liar? 

 

No, he's calling you rude, and it's evident from the video to me. I'm capable of looking at the data and deciding this.

 

Perhaps you worked in IT before the internet but you haven't learned how this whole internet thing works.

 

When you are videotaped at a public presentation and that video is broadcast on the Internet, they everyone can determine that you were rude, and that has nothing to do with the private meetings at Intel 30 years ago.

 

Just like @Archimago's article published on a website. I can read it and assess what it says without knowing his name. No need to argue from authority. Again, I'm capable of looking at the data presented. Nothing personal, but his name doesn't matter to me, nor does yours actually -- unless you can point to similar published articles. At the moment, I've read far more of @Archimagos articles on his website.

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10 minutes ago, Shadders said:

My interpretation is that the manufacturers are informed that DRM is coming to audio for streaming, and that MQA will be the only format streamed, or downloadable in the future - the record labels have signed up to this too. Someone published the MQA investors - which included Sony etc.

 

Labels? What labels? 

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22 minutes ago, wgscott said:

 

Members of the club have an inherent right to say and do whatever they want, and to control all narratives.  This isn't a dialog.  They dictate.  You obey.  Shut up and buy their stuff.

 

Buying recordings was sooo 1998. My friends have had their CD revenue streams go down to pocket change. 

 

What ever happened to Telarc?

 

Nowadays its about live concerts ... t-shirts, and CDs sold at the gate.

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1 minute ago, mansr said:

On the contrary. Intercepting the decoded output from software like the Tidal app or Audirvana is trivial using off the shelf tools.

 

 

The reason that we buy SACDs is because we can rip them with a PS3 etc

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7 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

I do a lot of public speaking -  there are ways of dealing with interruptions (though I'm glad RT66indierock dind't bring his blue laser to my own presentation.) With all due respect, Chris appeared to be out of his depth as the presenter of a seminar. He wasn't able to control what was happening and let things get away from him. The fact that he shut it down at 42 minutes into the planned hour was disappointing.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

As best I can tell Chris wasn’t there with a particular agenda, but the loutish behavior that was exposed was enlightening.

 

What do you think of this new world of publishing? Google profits from clicks and Chris profits from Google. Are you still printing? Are you still getting paid for unclickable ads?

 

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50 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Fortunately, we also have the right to stop reading his magazine.

 

Magazine? Oh yes! They had those in the 20th century before @TimBL invented websites ... cool 

 

I’ve also heard that some older folks print out their emails ...

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9 minutes ago, One and a half said:

The artists make a lot more cash from concerts than physical media these days, and streaming pays for pocket money. A tour can cost millions, but the rewards, for popular artists anyway are venues are sold out. 

 

Radiohead is a case in point. 

 

No record label.

 

Full concert 4K videos on YouTube.

 

Do they sell more CDs or $45 t-shirts?

 

What do they know about the present and future of audio?

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7 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

One of the many great things about free markets is that anyone can create a new, better codec.  If that person can convince the labels and producers that there is value in the new codec then sign them up to master a back catalog and then offer it on a streaming service then people are going to make money.

 

Sony needs money; I suspect that potential return on investment is more real than some DRM fantasy espoused here.

 

The best thing about free markets are that customers with checkbooks create the markets. 

 

At some point Sony will have learned proprietary formats don’t sell. But ya gotta give them credit for trying again and again.  Groundhog Day!!

 

Apple, Amazon and Google all have customers.

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Can you imagine two Webs launched in 1993 — one is the web as we know it based on the open HTML/HTTP protocols, TCP/IP etc and the other a closed proprietary protocol which required use of a special Sony screen but guaranteed that the type would be sharper? The second would be more dystopian than Handmaid’s Tale. 

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1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

For the record, I have no connection with MQA other than reporting on it. They are not my "folks." Please put your conspiracy theories back in your pocket.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

For the record I didn’t find anything you said offensive, nor other than your opinion. 

 

Again, the effectiveness of the way Chris handled that presentation depends on his goals. I didn’t see him as taking a stand one way or the other — he was taking a middle ground, and he has given both sides the opportunity to have their view. The MQA executives showed very overbearing and rude behavior — for me this was the takeaway. Chris was effective in bringing this out. That’s real journalism. Drop the mike and walk out ?

 

This is all a classic battle between centralized control and the natural web. Increasingly the last vestiges of the “old way” are on their last gasps of clinging to the dream of centralized control. In this case a data format that is only available under NDA.

 

The new media giants could care less about audiophiles per se except that they are customers who buy lots of high end stuff (not music related). They don’t want to be seen as “anti consumer”. Only a fool of an executive should want to be seen as anti-consumer. 

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2 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

This has been discussed before on CA. The agreement with Tom Gillett that he would write under the the name "Sam Tellig" was negotiated 2 years before I became Stereophile's editor in 1986. Though it made me uncomfortable, I honored that agreement.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

Right. and Chris honored the agreement to hold @Archimagos professional name in confidence ... no excuse for the MQA thugs behavior toward @The Computer Audiophile particularly because they themselves are hiding behind an NDA. 

 

If you really want to be transparent, then refuse to publish articles about secret formats. Aw no?

 

This is all laughable ... particularly because everything that needs to be known about “deblurring” in every axis was developed decades ago... and trust me our universities & national labs & govt’s ability to deblur data in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s was vastly better than the MQA child’s play — that’s why they don’t want to open up the technology to be exposed to ... loud yawning & snoring from the audience. 

 

But please lets be really transparent

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21 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Let's not get off on that pseudonym tangent again. If 2+2=4, it doesn't matter if Dilbert or Homer Simpson says it. 

 

True. The MQA fist bangers missed an opportunity to rationally discuss the graph shown by you and produced by @Archimago

 

— probably because they don’t understand it

 

That “noise” wouldn’t be my own criticism of MQA but rather is seen in other instances of upsampling vs recording at higher bit rates — for example compare DSD64 vs DSD256 recordings in the ultrasonic region.

 

I’m saying this to be technically fair — obviously MQA wasn’t interested in sending folks to your presentation who were capable of technical responses — perhaps their intention was to disruot?

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On 10/10/2018 at 11:00 PM, Lee Scoggins said:

 

No, I have not received any compensation.  I am writing articles on the technology because I think it has merit in terms of getting more hirez out as my first article showed.

 

Dude, really? I mean if you are/were a paid shill then that’s a good reason to advocate for MQA ... but if you are really experienced “in the industry” then you have seen “Yet Another Data Format” come and go ... mostly go... 

 

We have hi-rez— one click and Amazon will distribute as many gigabytes as you need within an hour — heck, they’ll send someone by rickshaw to bring your SACDs and 4K blue rays to you. They’ll even bring you a player, and Best Buy will have the Geek Squad waiting at your door to install all that fancy new digital equipment and even teach you how to use the remote  

 

Seriously though, I don’t go to my local nursing home to watch old farts banging their fists on the table because they need more apple sauce — and certainly don’t need them to tell me what file format I want  

 

Go back to scrabble

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6 hours ago, Archimago said:

Some thoughts...

 

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/10/musings-on-rmaf-2018-mqa-talk.html

 

I don't think I have much more to say for awhile...

 

Epic.

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@barrows nailed it.

 

Sparks an idea ... will fork post

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So I’ve just forked a new thread “ADC ...” which discusses a way that folks could collaborate to provide end-to-end correction given libraries of kernels linked to recordings. 

 

Thats what MQA promises, right?

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1 hour ago, ARQuint said:

But I'm interested in the potential consequences of widespread implementation of MQA and felt as though I was cheated out of potentially useful discussion at RMAF because the level of feeling was so toxic coming into that seminar. The most aggressive members of the anti-MQA faction posting on CA have some responsibility for that. Chris seemed like a logical target for the MQA representatives' return fire.

 

Really? That displays a, well, curious view of how one is expected to behave publically.

 

Chris runs a discussion site. He is not the editor of the forum area, rather a moderator who has a general policy of gently moderating and allowing frank discussion.

 

Really not the logical target for return fire if one understands  how Internet discussion fora work, eh? The brilliance of the web is that anyone can be a publisher, and everyone gets to vote with their opinion, with their clicks and with their credit cards.

 

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I want be as clear as possible. My issue isn't MQA, my issue is behaving well in a public space (either the Amphitheater at the Marriott or a CA forum) and exhibiting some level of respect for people that have a different opinion on a matter that doesn't relate to babies or puppies. I'm not saying you have to respect their ideas, just that conducting oneself civilly may ultimately shine more light and open more minds to your position.

 

@The Computer Audiophile started out quite civilly. The MQA crowd was rude. So yeah they ought behave more civilly if they wanted folks to keep open minds about their position.

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1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I stream all music I can and only purchase what can’t be streamed. 

 

I do both. For stuff I really like, I buy, and only in a format I can rip to disc. I buy SACDs as long as my PS3 keeps working. I have bought Blu Ray but its a real pain to rip. Hi-rez DSD eg DSD256 is typically available for download. I stream for discovery and convenience but don't want to depend on a service to maintain its catalog, or be at the mercy of the format they chose.

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9 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Doesn't this prove MQA works?  Bob is saying his test proves no difference in the files.  So MQA compressed a file and Carver finds no sound quality loss?  Isn't that demonstrating the value of MQA?

 

No that makes MQA entirely irrelevant to companies like Apple and many others who have developed their own, or incorporated standard, lossy compression techniques that they have show have no sound quality loss. Indeed one could rather easily obtain a 320kbps mp3 of a particular audio file and compare to a lossless version and not be able to distinguish, this has been shown time and time again ... not saying that ALL 320 kpbs mp3 is equal to ALL lossless, but one can easily provide an example that is indistinguishable... we aren't stupid.

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4 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20181017/17501.pdf

 

a) yeah ok we know you can deconvolute a crappy recording to "sharpen" ... nothing unique

b) ... wavelets ... 

 

To summarize: yet another lossy compression scheme that approaches the SQ of hi-rez ... yaaawn

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10 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

So all MQA is doing is fixing that ADC-DAC two step that happens in ADC conversion and DAC playback.

 

The story that you are trying to tell is that there exists some sort of ADC-DAC “two step” that needs to be corrected together. When the ADC has “smear” that could be corrected if the studio/mastering desired. The corrected recording can be delivered using eg 24/192 or DSD256 (or anything really).

 

Similarly the end user’s DAC could be corrected with similar filtering ... do “audiophile” DACs need such correction?

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10 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Why would I do that for anonymous posters on an Internet Forum?

 

 

John, with all due respect, and because I like you from what I know and Stereophile : PLEASE take a little break and figure this whole Internet thing out. The Web has transformed publishing in ways that you don't seem to grok.

 

Centralized top down publishing and control went out with the old AT&T in the 1990's. You aren't the editor here, you are an individual with an opinion and a voice.

 

Anyone can say anything about anything on the Web: BY DESIGN. This painful quote will be repeated time and time again in contexts that you don't intend and you've lost control of this.

 

YOU as the publisher of Stereophile.com get to set the rules of interaction on that site. Chris as the publisher of CA gets to set the rules of interaction HERE on this site. You are here as an individual. We aren't anonymous. Don't be a dick.

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11 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

FWIW, the majority of posters are 'anonymous' by virtue of posting under pseudonyms. While you understandably might not like his reply, John's use of the term was merely stating a general fact.

 

Hardly a general fact here on the internet where identifiers are called URIs. URIs are the names on the internet. Your traditional name means nothing to me because we don't interact in person. There's actually a whole technology around this ... you need to understand how this all works to understand what I'm talking about, but trust me a URI is far more important on the web than your traditional given and surname.

 

Here, read this: http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/

 

I'll partially deanonymise myself by telling you that I've been called part of the "RDF Cabal" ???

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2 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Really? Yet Stereophile continues to thrive in the Internet Age. Obviously we didn't get the memo ?

 

 

I’m glad you’ve been able to adapt and thrive on what we’ve built. It’s pretty remarkable how we have been able to transform publishing. 

 

Information used to be locked behind paywalls. Nowadays anyone (read any of the anonymous unwashed masses) with a few bucks can register a name, and publish a website under that name. They can even get paid a few bucks for clicks.

 

That name is is called a domain name and “Archimago” is short for “archimago.blogspot.com” which is a domain name. That’s a real name. 

 

The MQA luddites don’t get this, and you’ve made comments but for me the “archimago” name and blog are a perfectly reasonable publication medium. Now there are levels that I trust and it’s not “nature.com” or “science.com” but neither is “stereophile.com” or even “aes.org” for that matter. Nonetheless it’s not anonymous.

 

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Of course. But I don't see any reason why I am obliged to send people I don't know on a site I have connection with the results of my hard work just because they demand it of me. As I wrote earlier, if posters to CA want to try the MQA files that Bob Carver was discussing, I would have thought that Chris Connaker would oblige. This is his site, after all.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

Right, you have no obligation. That’s a much better way of staying it. One of the memes of this thread is about the dorks whose only criticism of @Archimago is that he/she/they are “anonymous” and that criticism has been thrown at CA. 

 

I’m just pointing out that this is the way we designed the Web/Internet to work and indeed it works rather well