MQA The Truth lies Somewhere in the Middle

[wgscott]

42 minutes ago, rn701 said:

this kind of stalking and aggression

 

There is something about that kind of behavior that seems prevalent in this hobby.  People get as polarized and bent out of shape for this as much as a controversial Supreme Court nomination.

 

The bald Brithole with the complexion of an avid indoorsman who was banging his fist on the desk was indeed a highlight.  I kept waiting for him to escalate to using his shoe.  Who was he?

[wgscott]

17 hours ago, Derek Hughes said:

Several of you have made comments about me from watching the video, that's OK.

 

No, your behavior was "not ok".  Also, trying to take the moral high ground because someone here (not me) unknowingly made an alleged inappropriate comment about someone seated nearby does not in any way absolve your behavior.  It is a crude and obvious distraction, just like banging your hand repeatedly on the desk, as if you are trying to beat your "correct" opinion into someone who has the temerity to call the industry lies and propaganda into question.

 

Why not own up to the DRM claims?  You could pitch this differently:  MQA is an inaudible substitute for the audible digital watermarks the industry currently uses on streamed digital music.

 

 

[wgscott]

5 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

His pounding on the table was just for emphasis. It's not something I see a lot in the U.S. but I see it all the time in the UK so I think that's just a cultural thing.  

 

I don't have the expertise to address your other points, but this one is absolute undiluted load of codswallop.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Really?  I have seen this many times in London.  Perhaps I am visiting the wrong bars. 

 

I was giving the MQA folks in attendance at Chris' presentation the benefit of the doubt in that I had implicitly assumed they were sober.  However, MQA lager louts does have a degree of enhanced explanatory power.

[wgscott]

9 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

So, leave off with the gangster comments.

 

The analogy (from my completely neutral point of view) seems rather apt.

 

The audio industry is small.  But that makes it fun as we all know each other for the most part.  Seems like everyone is connected in some form or fashion.  I have also found this to be true with the watch industry.

[wgscott]

 

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, Shadders said:

Hi Jud,

So scams are legal in the US. Live and learn i suppose.

 

Only if you are installed as President.

 

I think Jud was saying that the case that MQA rises to the legal definition of scam (consumer fraud) is a difficult one to make, and there is no legal finding to justify that claim.

 

Compared to all of the overt consumer fraud in this hobby, I have to agree, while noting "we have not yet been convicted" is not a great marketing slogan.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, Shadders said:

then surely these are a basis for formulating a legal challenge to MQA ?

 

Which, legally speaking, is not the same thing as saying something is unlawful.

 

The first hurdle would be to prove the reverse-engineering (which itself might not be legal) accurately reveals the MQA contents. It is a high bar.

 

 

 

 

[wgscott]

2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

There was never "important information" sent to me. I was all debunked. If I had included this "important information" it would have looked like I was attacking MQA and trying to take them down. Honestly, I would have had to include both sides of that story. Bob's claims and the rest of the world's engineers debunking it. Imagine how biased they would have thought the presentation was after that. 

 

You were being set up. If you had "revealed" anything from the correspondence, they would have been screaming that you had breached confidentiality and disclosed private email correspondence.  If they had new information to present, they could very simply have presented it using a format accessible to everyone (I think it starts with https ...).

[wgscott]

20 minutes ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

Why does Marjorie need to give Chris an apology? Yes, she gave him the space and time for his presentation but having watched the video, he failed to control the narrative.

 

He "failed to control the narrative."  WTF kind of linguistic gobbledegook is that?  It's like Randonneurspeak for "let's blame the victim."

 

Quote

 

People will always try to interrupt, but the presenter has to deal with it. All he needed to say was that there would be plenty of time for a Q&A after his slide show. That's what I did in my presentation Friday afternoon, which included some discussion of MQA - ask RT66indierock, he was there - and things didn't spin out of control like they did in the Chris in the Middle event.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

 

You mean you didn't have to deal with a bunch of hired industry shill thugs?  Oh, imagine that.  

 

The snowflakes that whinge about their sense of civility being violated by "vile objectivists" and love to play the victim are, in actuality, the real bullies who seek to control the narrative.

 

[wgscott]

4 minutes ago, crenca said:

I notice that you have once again chosen not to condemn the poor behavior of MQA and other industry insiders who were there.  

 

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.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, John_Atkinson said:

 

I do a lot of public speaking -  there are ways of dealing with interruptions (though I'm glad RT66indierock didn'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. That wasn't Marjorie's fault or even the MQA guys' fault. That is down to Chris.

 

John Atkinson

Editor, Stereophile

 

 

I do, too, in front of a lot of extremely opinionated, argumentative and vocal scientists with limited social skills.  But what we witnessed in that video was rather different.  If you cannot see that, it is because you don't want to.

 

The reality is that what he was presenting was in the spirit of compromise, which was reflected in his title.  What is clear is that the pro MQA folks simply cannot tolerate any dissent.   Even the middle of the road is considered too radical  a departure, and to be an unacceptable lack of allegiance to the cause, as defined by the commissars.  

 

When you also consider the prior record of people from Stereophile (eg: Lavorgna) targeting Chris and his readership simply for having the temerity to even consider points of view and opinions that differ from those in the industry commissars who "control the narrative", you can see why many of us see you guys as being in bed with the industry and incapable of objective assessment.

 

Chris appeared "out of his depth"?  That is a remarkably arrogant, snotty and dismissive assessment. Chris appears to be far more interested in presenting the facts than engaging in persuasion and crowd control, which I believe is a consequence of his integrity, not a sign of incompetence. The reality is that Chris isn't being an uncritical shill, and that puts a huge weed up the collective arse of the industry, which I sincerely hope chokes on its own hypocritical vomit and dies.  They deserve it.

 

Perhaps the greatest measure of his integrity is that he still lets you post here, rather than "controlling the narrative" by banning your account, which is what I would have done.

[wgscott]

The Grateful Dead encouraged tapers and set up a special section for them in the audience.  Kind of the exact opposite approach of the DRM idea.

[wgscott]

8 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Actually Chris is responsible as he opened the floor up to discussion.  That is when Ken started making some points.  Chris did not have to open the floor to discussion.

 

I suppose it is a rather foreign concept to you, but some people actually value an open discussion.  Too bad those who don't value honest inquiry need to shut such a thing down, Taliban style.

 

Chris is probably too close to see it right now, but really you clowns have inadvertently done him and CA a tremendous service by providing the perfect caricature of the evil corporate villains and a compelling counter-example of how to behave.  You create your own demise, not his.

 

The fact is very few people would have given MQA a second thought, one way or the other, were it not for your completely over-the-top intolerance and hysterics. No one would have been talking about Chris's presentation had he succeeded in charting the middle ground, resulting in a local love-fest.  

[wgscott]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Perhaps it’s time to take the gloves off, get real and write some brutally honest articles and contact my friends at the NY Times (who’ve interviewed me in the past). People are always looking for a good story. 

 

I thought of that about 2 seconds before I read this.  An interview or op-ed in the NYT or WSJ would be fantastic.

 

 

[wgscott]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I guess I can email Eddie Cue as well. It pays to have friends and to be a normal human being once in a while ?

 

I'll just have to take your word on that one.

[wgscott]

5 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Yes.  I think Mike and Ken have realized that this community here never will give credit to MQA for anything, no matter what they achieve.  The view here is that MQA is evil.  So at that point, it becomes pointless to have a discussion.  It has become a waste of bandwidth.

 

You've succeeded in uniting a bunch of people here against you, who are typically arguing endlessly amongst themselves about USB cables and stuff like that. Congratulations.

[wgscott]

Just now, Lee Scoggins said:

 

The monolithic thinking about MQA being evil has united this place against anyone pointing out the positive aspects of MQA.

 

I'm still not convinced that MQA is evil.  (I just started another thread here about MQA and DRM and ask if it might be an improvement over audible digital watermarks, for example.)

 

I don't have the same optimistic opinion about its advocates, however.

 

Most people here had an either indifferent or positive opinion about MQA here when it was first announced.  One very popular software player author added MQA decoding as a feature, and people were lining up to purchase the new version.  It really took some seriously incompetent shilling to turn people against it.   Nice going.

[wgscott]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

If the labels were worried about theft of masters, why would they allow downloads by HDTracks and others?

 

Perhaps this explains why they sometimes down-sample the files before handing them over to HDtracks.  I've always thought there was more to the story.  Maybe this is the explanation?

[wgscott]

8 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I can no longer remain neutral after the research I conducted and the MQA team proving there must be something to what I said or else they wouldn't have acted that way. 

 

 

[wgscott]

To paraphrase (badly) Howard Zinn and Eddie Vedder, you can't be neutral on a moving train-wreck.

[wgscott]

5 minutes ago, sls said:

As I see it, the fundamental problem with MQA is that there ABSOLUTELY NOTHING obvious to the average potential consumer why they should buy it. It just serves no purpose. They go on about "education" of the consumer, but completely miss the point that if they have to explain why the consumer should buy it the product has failed already. 

 

Scroggins is right about one thing:  the consumer of this product is not the end-listener.  They are selling it to the music industry.  If the end-listener takes no notice or does not care, that is an ideal outcome. Then it can be used for DRM (or whatever they want to inject into the files) without the end-user complaining or even noticing, until it is too late and they have to pay a ransom to play their files.  (One of my kids wanted to hear an audiobook we bought a few years ago, and I couldn't get it to work because the subscription and the password are no longer in existence.)

 

[wgscott]

2 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

So if Chris wrote an article about MQA for your publication you'd consider publishing it?

 

That sounds like an outstanding idea.  I especially like the idea of Mans as a co-author.  I just want the objective facts about what MQA does and does not do.

[wgscott]

3 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Both ridiculous and unfair! Do you expect her to monitor and be responsible for the attendees of every seminar, let alone every exhibit?

 

More importantly, do you want a situation where conference organizer staff police the content of the presentations and discussions?

 

 

 

[wgscott]

6 minutes ago, crenca said:

I missed this, where was she "attacked" or otherwise disrespected?

 

I don't think she was attacked, but even naming her muddies the waters.  The people responsible for the behavior of the MQA advocates are themselves.  

 

If the tables were turned, would you want the conference organizers cutting off the microphones of MQA critics, Richard J Daily style (Chicago, 1968)?