MQA The Truth lies Somewhere in the Middle

[Thuaveta]

For those who like nitpicking... In the post presentation discussion @Archimago posted, there's this interesting moment at 47:48-ish where Mike Jbarra, after whining about how people are mean with his idol, evangelises with "decades of leadership around lossless" as a justification for keeping the format closed, then "keep in mind, Bob and Peter were launching MLP ten years before anybody could spell FLAC".

 

I mean, this is the guy the same flock want us to believe when he howls MQA isn't a stealth DRM trojan... Maybe, before believing the DRM claims, they should start by asking him for the 1990 documents produced to promote the launch of MLP.

[Thuaveta]

20 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

I think what you are missing here is how MQA is trying to create an ecosystem of players in hirez.

 

You mean that hasn't existed for the past decade or so ? I mean, my circa 2007 car radio plays 24/192 FLAC.

 

20 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

The premium allows the systemn to work by creating financial incentives to do it.

 

If it does, show us the numbers.

 

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

But in fact, we are not seeing that.  HDTracks and SuperHirez continue to add tracks.  Qobuz is having a great launch judging from the Rocky Mountain Audio Show.  Hirez just keeps coming.

 

I'm sorry to go below the belt with this one, but I'm starting to understand why South Africa barred McKinsey.

[Thuaveta]

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

As for MQA, I have been talking to several folks to boost my understanding of it but like any journalist who isn't from an engineering academic background, I certainly have more to learn there.

 

 

Please have some respect for the profession of others and stop calling yourself a journalist.

[Thuaveta]

6 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

As for #2, from a label perspective they save money if they don't have to pay for X number of masterings.

 

Instead, you can have one, compressed-for-your-car universal master ! Yay ! Uncle BS sure came through on that one !

[Thuaveta]

6 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

Lee's specific role in this is interesting, almost as if the strategy there in inserting such a low-level operative is to essentially just run interference and try to lend the appearance the forums are insignificant or beneath the likes of Stuart or others who actually could potentially answer the tough questions in some way, where Lee very obviously cannot.

 

Please take into account the far sadder possibility that there might be no insertion, but instead an ideologue, who thinks highly enough of himself that he does not realise his own incompetence but sees himself as a true technical and intellectual match for the likes of Archimago, Barrows, Mans and Miska (to name a few).

[Thuaveta]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

I know of at least two labels where they put the MQA technology through rigorous tests.

 

8 minutes ago, mcgillroy said:

Could you please elaborate what kind of tests?

 

Could you please elaborate on who defined the tests as rigorous ?

[Thuaveta]

3 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

I don't think this is a fair characterization of Stereophile's efforts on MQA.  Stereophile has done some excellent investigative work through Jim Austin's articles and John in my view has been quite open-minded on the negative aspects of MQA to the point of publishing an As We See It detailing some concerns.

 

Defining those pieces as investigative work - let alone excellent investigative work - goes a long way to explain why people like you find it OK to call themselves journalists. Actual journalism - especially the investigative kind - looks very different, and probably much closer to what we've seen from Christoph Engemann, Mans, Archimago and others: it's the job that starts when the PR flaks stop taking your calls. That you think that Atkinson was "open-minded" in letting "negative" aspects of MQA be talked about in Stereophile alone should be enough for a reasonably honest and intelligent individual to understand that it likely disqualifies the publication as journalistic. At the end of the day, you guys are to journalism what a bunch of 4 year olds running around the yard are to cowboys, firemen, or FBI agents.

[Thuaveta]

21 minutes ago, Hifi Bob said:

Indeed, it’s far from rare: corporation/company sends blogger a cease & desist letter and given the choice of spending potentially huge amounts of time/money on lawyers, down comes the ‘offending’ blog entry—immediately.

 

 

Would you really want to risk getting into SLAPP litigation with a highly educated individual whose hobby is buying stuff ? What if discovery forced you to back your claims up, and that they were found to be spurious ?

[Thuaveta]

59 minutes ago, FredericV said:

 

If you tried to order blank media from a neighbor country which do not impose such tax, webshops like cdrwinkel were legally attacked by our Belgian government, trying to prevent the import or pay up ...
 

 

Tss, you libertarian Belgians and Swedes aren't capitalistically creative enough: "artist representatives" from Frogland tried to expand that to Ze Cloud. Yes, really. Think of all the taxes Johnny could have dodged.

 

1 hour ago, wklie said:

There are members here who do not believe there are customers who ask for MQA.  Check out the old threads in Roon forum and you'll see there were many, before Roon added MQA support in version 1.5.

 

In all fairness, part of Roon's team were, shall we say, rather supportive of MQA. Had there been a bit of consumer education...

[Thuaveta]

6 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

The hardest part may be getting an Apple or Amazon or Google or Spotify to sign on.

 

Astute, technologically competent companies aren't interested ? You don't say...

[Thuaveta]

7 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

My understanding is that several conversations are going on and they are making progress.  We will see what happens.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the MQA guys have been saying that for a while now (it was in an end-of-year shareholder report type thing in 2016 IIRC). Of course, that stuff takes time, but because it's been used as a carrot to the believers for so long, unless this is something you're specifically NOT sourcing from people on the MQA payroll...

[Thuaveta]

18 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I have been a beta tester for one MQA streaming service about to launch and I know of one major service discussing the addition of a hirez tier.  These things do take time.

 

I'm not just sourcing this from MQA team but other people in the music biz I know.

 

Interesting.

 

This said, given how the MQA peeps handled criticism at RMAF, I can't even imagine what'd happen if there were actual stakes, with attention by more than (no offense to those that did the fantastic job at hacking away at the format this far) a few fringe nerds - I'd hate to be the "big player" PR team having to defend behaviour like that from a partner or solutions provider, on top of having to defend objectively questionable (and questioned) gains to a mainstream audience that hasn't been trained to swallow woo like the audiophile world has, all the while the heat on the technology will be turned to 11 from many more pissed, computer-savvy end-users.

[Thuaveta]

14 hours ago, jabbr said:

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

 

psst, @John_Atkinson: he inn't referring to Steve Jobs there.

[Thuaveta]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

That was the thrust of a presentation I gave to Stereophile's then-owner's senior management in 2005.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

To your credit, I'm absolutely awed at the threat to the consumer a trade publication with a pithy print circulation, mostly run and staffed by a group of journalistic putterers, can be to consumers. It's quite eye-opening as to the importance both of consumer advocacy and journalism ethics boards, as well as to the relative passivity of consumers (then again, there's no profit to be made in MQA giving people cancer, and the costs look like they'll be hidden, so the stakes aren't exactly high enough for the general public to care).

[Thuaveta]

42 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Surely the files Carver was discussing are not “the results of [your] hard work.”  If you can’t provide them due to contractual obligations, just say so.  Otherwise we’re left to wonder what negative result you would expect from doing so.

 

I don't often defend @John_Atkinson, but it'd be fair for him to consider access to certain people (or to material) as the result of his hard work (in, say, schmoozing said people). Whether they were playing hard to get is a bit irrelevant (though once three rather preeminent figures within a community have access to something like that, it's fair to start weighing more towards the "playing" than the "hard to get"), but from what we saw of the types of individuals that may have access to those types of files from the recording of @The Computer Audiophile's presentation, I can totally see where a reasonably sentient person could consider having to, say, do drinks or have dinner with them to be quite a chore.

 

John, if you feel trapped between PR flaks and wannabee hangers-on, blink twice and somebody'll be right over with an extra stiff strawberry daiquiri.

[Thuaveta]

15 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

These streaming services are not likely to be influenced by a niche group of computer audiophiles.  They are more likely to look to the labels who have tested MQA and signed off on it.  And they are likely to think about the value of premium pricing.

 

If a bunch of people here don't like then that's okay too but no one is putting a gun to your head to buy it.

 

God this is starting to become circular. You must've gone through some sorts of business or economics program to do what you do, so I've got to wonder if you've suffered traumatic brain damage since then, or if you're just being dishonest when you purportedly and repeatedly ignore that the music industry isn't a free market, to a level that's bad enough that the DOJ considered anti-trust action against some of its practices.

 

So, for the nth time: you're either lying, or deluding yourself, when you're saying "it's ok if you don't like MQA no one is going to force you to use it if it succeeds". Please respect the investment made by many in your education and reconsider that course of action.

 

You've already wasted someone else's time today over your refusal to learn what the words Digital Rights Management mean, despite being reminded of that multiple times. Please respect the few people here who are actively trying to engage with you in good faith, and don't make them regret it. If your need to have things explained to you slowly, and multiple times, comes with added dizziness, loss of focus, motivation, or any other cognitive or physical impairment, including but not limited to tingling, blackouts, or erectile dysfunction, please quickly make an appointment with a medical specialist (given the belief systems you've expressed, I do feel the need to add "preferably not a homeopath").

[Thuaveta]

8 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Straw man. No one is arguing that the labels have not been bad actors.

 

By implying that, by the sole effect of adoption of the Magical Quacks Abound format, they'll all of a sudden stop behaving in a predatory fashion (and re-distribute to the artists), you are.

[Thuaveta]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Lee - Have you ever seen a downside to MQA?

 

Yes ! If it used blockchain® technology, the labels could use it to pay artists !

[Thuaveta]

3 hours ago, mansr said:

Sounds like someone's being creative with the books.