MQA The Truth lies Somewhere in the Middle

[FredericV]

Please upload to youtube or some other persistent place like a public FB post.
I have a trade show this sunday, so can't watch live.

[FredericV]

11 hours ago, Jud said:

A question I hope someone with technical expertise can answer: MQA uses very short filters, presumably to limit the length of ringing.  But does a short filter have to be “reapplied” more often?  In other words, would a 7-tap filter have to be applied a thousand times as often as a 7000-tap filter?  If so, how can tap length limit ringing?

 

Thanks.

It's all backwards.

 

MQA causes blur instead of solving it. Here's what happens if you repeat those MQA alike filters several times:
 

 

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/02/musingsmeasurements-on-blurring-and-why.html

[FredericV]

4 hours ago, Archimago said:

Wow, had to do a double take this AM. Looks like subjective folks including Hans Beekhuyzen is now claiming that "often the linear phase version sounds the best - at least to my ears" (7:47):

 

 

Hmmm, minimum phase Meridian / MQA / Ayre / Pono filters on the way out? Is he about to jump on the Chord linear phase 1M tap filter bandwagon?

 

As the world turns ?.

 

OMG did he had a bad day? He repeats the same sentence "and since ...." at around 05:00 in the video

And what about 88.4 (it should be 88.2) and 176.8 (it's 176.4) ... sorry Hans but do your research better ...



Common  PCM sample rates are all multiples of either 44.1 or 48 Khz.

Now back on topic:

The best filter to my ears is your intermediate phase filter:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/01/musings-more-fun-with-digital-filters.html

I actually put it in our own product and gave it away as a free software update

http://432evo.be/sqi

I also put in the MQA alike filter with one cycle of post-ringing which you can find in my signature here at CA, but it can't beat the intermediate phase filter. The MQA alike filter just kills the decay of instruments. No thanks. Nice with EDM as it makes the kick very tight, but it ruins voices. The decay and post-echo in voices is reduced by MQA alike filters. It does not sound organic.

We tested this on equipment that won best of show several times, including the Amphion's Krypton 3, the Conquistar speaker with their big RAAL ribbon open dipole and the Aries Cerat system that won best of show last year in Munich. On all these systems, you can very easily hear the differences between these filters. But even on a more modest budget you can hear it.

The intermediate phase filter sounds so good I actually tweaked it Very organic, open, transparant without fatigue - all an audiophile can dream about. We use the intermediate phase filter on all our shows and our X-FI set just made it to the cover picture of the show report

http://www.the-ear.net/show-reports/xfi-2018-pt1

Still waiting for part 2 but Trevor was impressed.

Hans BH likes raspberry pi a lot, so maybe you can convince him to make a video about your goldilocks filter
 

[FredericV]

29 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

How very strange. I know people who don't even have digital front ends, only vinyl, and are well versed in common sample rates.

 

And first he says he likes linear phase the most on dacs with selectable filters, and then he contradicts himself he likes MQA a lot, which does not implement linear phase but a modified minimum phase filter which messes up the frequency domain:

 

and he continues to claim it's beneficial to buy an MQA dac ....



Is this guy a complete joke?

[FredericV]

25 minutes ago, Archimago said:

Can't wait for his part 2 video on jitter...

Do we need a full video for that? Maybe one pictures is enough.
 

Don't know if Hans knows the gimp, but gimp's ripple effect with a large enough period size is a nice simulation:

 

 

and how better explain it in layman terms

If the jitter is severe enough, the signal can no longer be decoded:

 

but that does not happen often in digital audio

[FredericV]

2 hours ago, Shadders said:

Another question - is that it seems that Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Cirrus Electronics et al, all have got it wrong with regards to ADC's. Has MQA notified these companies that their products have serious design flaws, and if not, why not ? Involving these professional companies in the discussion will ensure that MQA is assessed, and this may be of a benefit in exposing MQA as a false solution.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

 

Furthermore there are not many MQA ADC's - only one beta - while we have a lot of DAC's with MQA decoders!

It's like implementing end-to-end encryption where the focus is on selling decrypters, where you have a lot of different implementations all claiming to be authentic to the source (the master) and after decryption leading back the the plaintext before encryption, while you only have one encrypter ... (which is impossible when your codec is lossy).

The end-to-end claim was only invented not to loose the audiophile community because MQA is not lossless but lossy.

[FredericV]

20 hours ago, Sonicularity said:

Here is the link to the video.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing. It's very clear MQA is on it's last legs. Last year they cancelled the RMAF panel, this year they send their little army. They went all the way trying to interrupt the presentation. You can easily see how desperate they are. They ignore all the facts, and try to debunk people like Archimago. They only play the ad-hominem route. Just like talking to the MQA key opinion makers, they get very angry when you debunk them.

In the past I did the PA for a 300+ audience. It was even televised on Belgian TV and the VRT camera crew would even put a little transmitter onto my mixing desk to capture the PA sound. So I would never allow anyone to take a mike and accept what happened in this video.

They clearly were prepared in trying to disrupt the presentation. The technical person who did such a bad PA job should be fired.

It's clear the MQA shills were prepared, and I recognize the tone while speaking with some very unpleasant MQA types, which have:

- threatened to expose me as the 432 Hz pope

(even though our involvement into the 432 Hz movement is very small, 432 Hz is much bigger than MQA)


- disrupt the X-FI show
- threaten to contact my reseller network
- calling me a fraud

Nothing new, and the video is well known territory.

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, Indydan said:

Wow! Those MQA shills acted like thugs! What a disgrace!

 

Is that good ole Lee Scoggins at around the 33 minute mark? Either way, freeze the video at 33:34. That guy just made the cover of

"Just swallowed a turd face" magazine.    

 

 

 

Indeed:

 

was this guy demonstrating MQA's time domain combined with non-periodic sounds?

[FredericV]

MQA time domain for dummies: the non-periodic sound test

[FredericV]

4 minutes ago, Hugo9000 said:

I prefer the term aperiodic, personally.  Or is non-periodic one of those moving MQA terms, like blur, which only means what you think it means if you agree with them on MQA "solving" it?

 

The guy on the right is causing so much motion blur the guy on the left is willing to walk away, just look at the body language.
No MQA deblur is going to save the day

[FredericV]

9 minutes ago, mansr said:

They also ignored all the work done by me and other named individuals.

Including truncation of 24 bit MQA files to 16 bit, and the blue light still shines ....
 

 

and then we have MQA CD based on the same principles

[FredericV]

10 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

The focus should not be on Derek Hughes..it should be on the two MQA execs, Forsythe and Jbara. They were appalling and disgraceful.

Maybe they had nothing to lose.
 

 

 

[FredericV]

34 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

Lee isn't here to win friends and influence people.

 

He's only posting here to earn brownie points with his industry buddies.

 

There's an interesting remark from LeeS . He basically debunks the need for MQA's first unfold:

 

Starting from 41:38, when LeeS get's the mike, he mentions this:

You are removing stuff that's not audible .... if it's inaudible do we care?

 

So what's the point of the first unfold, recovering one octave of ultrasonics above the baseband signal - which are inaudible unless you are a cat / dog / bat / .... ? Do we care? Why go through all the hassle of encryption/folding/drm if the secret part in MQA's 24 bit distribution files (which do not contain 24 bit audio ) is inaudible after unfolding?

And who decides how much we can throw away before it starts to become audible?

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Look, at the end of the day, this forum wields little power over MQA..

 

So why waste so much time defending MQA, on a forum that wields little power over MQA?

[FredericV]

13 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Because there are still a handful of people here with an open mind who might appreciate an opposing view to "MQA is evil".

 

CA readers should for sure keep an open mind while MQA is doing a hard job recovering inaudible stuff, using crypto & DRM

Does he really believe CA members are low hanging fruit?

[FredericV]

19 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

MQA has built time filters

More money please:
 

 

[FredericV]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

It is trivially done with just about any MQA track. Here's a graph I posted on this site about a year ago:

 

 

Some shills got so mad because of this graph ...

[FredericV]

51 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Here, I just did it.

 

 

 

 

 

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More gaps, skip to 05:14
 

As you now know the workflow, the beyonce track could be peer reviewed as well!

 

[FredericV]

 

3 hours ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Thank you sir for posting this. EVERYBODY here should watch this carefully. This is the Zapruder film of MQA RMAF.

 

You will see at the end, AS IF YOU DID NOT KNOW the true character of Scoggins when he claims there is "no meaningful debate" on CA about MQA. Then Derek Huges fully admits there is tremendous "technical expertise" on CA that is over his head. I loved the part when they were whining about Bob Stuart being called out as liar and con man.

 

MUST WATCH TV!!!

 

At the end of the video they all laughed at CA. They also made comments that Chris ran away. LeeS tries to convince the audience that a CA member tried to have another member fired for having an honest debate. WTF ? I can point you to the complete log of this honest debate, where the now banned member is calling another company a fraud and making tens of page long posts while supposed being on a dayjob.

This former CA member then changes the discussion into an ad-hominem discussion until the line was crossed so extremely that this member was banned. He came back under another fake user, IP was matched, banned again ... he setup fake accounts at Archimago's site, and was so stupid to disclose his tactic in the secret group.

The MQA gang did exactly the same at RMAF, and they should face the consequences of their actions. They sabotaged your presentation by questioning your motives and playing ad-hominem. LeeS is also taking the lead in the anti CA discussion.

It was a coordinated attack against CA.

Do we accept that such members can remain here on the site?

[FredericV]

1 minute ago, ddetaey said:

Yes, we should accept these members on CA, mainly for 2 reasons :

1) we do not want to behave as they do.

2) the more they (try to) plant ideas and react on CA, the easier for us to counter them.  We need them on CA (oops, I hope none of the MQA throlls are reading this)

Dirk

The duality of this is that thanks to the 2 RMAF video reports, I can finally see some of the MQA execs in action and it just confirms what I suspected.

[FredericV]

23 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Just read a comment from possibly the biggest MQA fan in the world @PeterV on YouTube. Here's a screenshot:

 

 

 

I'd rather keep the discussion here, so I'll respond here. Yes, I've heard MQA sound fantastic. However, the fantastic sound had zero to do with MQA and everything to do with going back to the original recording with white gloves to create something special.

The last sentence of PV's reply is just pathetic:

 

 

Quote

So Chris...what is your problem with all this? If you want less awesome sound, stick to Flac and other formats I would say.. ?

 

 

 

Quote

In addition, the number of albums processed via white glove is miniscule. Add to that all the other cons about MQA and it isn't worth it. Not even close. 

 

I'm a die hard audiophile and will support any new format that increases my enjoyment of music.

 

The white glove story is just something that they did for a few albums so that reviewers like Hans Beekhuizen & co can write about it.

Probably +99.9% of all MQA is just batch encoded. How can they remaster a million of tracks in the < 5 years that MQA exists? How many mastering effort would that take if an engineer would manually listen and tweak the MQA encoding parameters for every track?

They probably need an army of mastering engineers. Not economical.

I'll stick to the real 24 bit masters which I helped realize, files directly from the band
http://432evo.be/index.php/432-hz-en/tick-tock-by-jazzprofilactika
 

No MQA is going to mess with that. We played Samboppa on the X-FI show and we saw many shazam it
Last year when we did the MQA open source sox trick as disclosed in my signature with some 2L.no recordings, nobody could hear the difference. And it was a set that won "the star of the show" from the-ear.net.

[FredericV]

4 minutes ago, Brinkman Ship said:

Ummm..

 

 

Poppy for MQA CEO
 

 

[FredericV]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

What they did was enlist the label staff.  The new innovation was they put the encoder in the cloud so the labels can encode the tracks themselves.

 

Source?

[FredericV]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

We listened to orchestral works, choral works, and string ensembles.  Peter's recordings are really excellent without the MQA encoding but the MQA encoding made a pretty noticeable difference.  With the MQA encoding, the sound of the room became much more clear.  There was more fullness in the mids and bass and transients seemed more lifelike.  It seemed like the soundstage got both wider and deeper.  It wasn't subtle.  The MQA files sounded much better and more natural like live music in a real space.

 

Peter's view on MQA was not going to save a bad recording but that it made his good recordings great.

Coming from an MQA spokesperson, this has zero value and it's off topic. Has the material been peer reviewed by third parties? Why can't research show the same conclusion?

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=19396

 

"Data shows that listeners were not able to significantly discriminate between MQA encoded files and the unprocessed original "

[FredericV]

LeeS: "You are removing stuff that's not audible .... if it's inaudible do we care?"

My questions still have not been answered by LeeS:
 

Quote

So what's the point of the first unfold, recovering one octave of ultrasonics above the baseband signal - which are inaudible unless you are a cat / dog / bat / .... ? Do we care? Why go through all the hassle of encryption/folding/drm if the secret part in MQA's 24 bit distribution files (which do not contain 24 bit audio ) is inaudible after unfolding?

And who decides how much we can throw away before it starts to become audible?