MQA The Truth lies Somewhere in the Middle

[Lee Scoggins]

30 minutes ago, Shadorne said:

 

Telarc used ATC monitors. They were Michael Bishop’s preferred way to monitor. He had a mobile set. Unfortunately I thought they closed shop.

 

They just changed to 5/4 Productions but continue to do excellent work in classical.

[Lee Scoggins]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

And you are a business consultant in your day job? 

Gross income. And how much of that depends on MQA? Possibly very little. Lots people signed up for tidal hi-fi tier before it included MQA. It isn't clear how many customers are there solely because of MQA.
I imagine most of those users are there for the CD quality stream, and not the MQA. That's the real uptick in SQ for most people (as opposed to the mp3 available from the big boys).

The number of MQA DACs in the wild is vanishingly small in the big picture. Only inside the bubble of audiophile forums and press is it even an idea/issue. 

 

MQA revenue won't be $48 million of course, they get a percentage of that.  The key for MQA is to get a revenue stream from most of the participants in the ecosystem.

[Lee Scoggins]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

Notice how Lee totally changes his pro MQA arguments over time? He used to talk a lot about the SQ superiority and the technical superiority. Now that those arguments have been shown to be bunk, he mostly talks about how MQA is "good for the industry" (my paraphrase). 

He's moving very close the the Jim Austin argument, which boils down to "whatever is good for the big record labels is good for consumers" - even if it clearly isn't good for consumers. 
 

I'm not saying that to claim either are paid shills. It's just an industry-centric outlook on life. 

 

That's not an accurate read of my views.

 

1.  There are sound quality improvements from MQA as demonstrated last weekend on my Wilson speakers.

 

2.  I work on two different AI ecosystems at work and I am applying my learning from that to what MQA is doing with a music provider ecosystem.  I believe there will be some good for the industry.

 

Point #2 above won't work as well without the benefits of Point #1.  They work hand in hand.

[semente]

1 minute ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

MQA revenue won't be $48 million of course, they get a percentage of that.  The key for MQA is to get a revenue stream from most of the participants in the ecosystem.

But first they need to convince participants that it'll be profitable and then generate a "need" amongst consumers.

Nothing new there.

[Lee Scoggins]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Keep digging lee. 

 

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

[mansr]

19 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

The key for MQA is to get a revenue stream from most of the participants in the ecosystem.

Therein lies the problem. Nobody should be allowed to leech off of everybody else like that.

[kumakuma]

28 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

 

Would it matter?

 

You ignore everything that doesn't fit into your industry-centric view of world.

[crenca]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

Notice how Lee totally changes his pro MQA arguments over time? He used to talk a lot about the SQ superiority and the technical superiority. Now that those arguments have been shown to be bunk, he mostly talks about how MQA is "good for the industry" (my paraphrase). 

He's moving very close the the Jim Austin argument, which boils down to "whatever is good for the big record labels is good for consumers" - even if it clearly isn't good for consumers. 
 

I'm not saying that to claim either are paid shills. It's just an industry-centric outlook on life. 

 

Well, yes. I and others have been pointing out the Audiophiledom culture problem for a while but to paraphrase Paul Simon,  "Cultures come and cultures go, so what are you going to do about it that is what I would like to know"

 

A proposal:

 

Chris creates a section to the forums, or even better a front page presence, titled "the Industry behaving badly" or "Audiophile writers behaving badly".  It will be composed of a quoted sentence or two from Atkinson, Harley, Austin, JVS, Scoggins - all the usual suspects followed by a short (2 paragraphs at most) explication of why it is wrong,  just how wrong it is, and why it is fundamentally anti-consumer.  MQA of course has provided much fodder, but it would be trivial to write dozens of pieces going back years...

[wgscott]

2 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Well, yes. I and others have been pointing out the Audiophiledom culture problem for a while but to paraphrase Paul Simon,  "Cultures come and cultures go, so what are you going to do about it that is what I would like to know"

 

A proposal:

 

Chris creates a section to the forums, or even better a front page presence, titled "the Industry behaving badly" or "Audiophile writers behaving badly".  It will be composed of a quoted sentence or two from Atkinson, Harley, Austin, JVS, Scoggins - all the usual suspects followed by a short (2 paragraphs at most) explication of why it is wrong,  just how wrong it is, and why it is fundamentally anti-consumer.  MQA of course has provided much fodder, but it would be trivial to write dozens of pieces going back years...

 

Good idea, but it should be called "The Wall of Shame".

[firedog]

44 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

And we notice that you are continually asked all sorts of specific questions that you never answer. For instance about how your Wilson "demonstration" that you keep referring to was meaningful.
You refuse to describe it. Why? Because it was sighted? Or because you and Wilson didn't manually change the Mytek filter settings so the Non MQA material wouldn't get played back with inappropriate MQA filters?

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

Because every time we prove you incorrect you move on to a different way to say the same thing and never address anything we say. 

 

Don’t you find it amazing that not a single third party expert has come out in support of MQA?

 

You can’t count the press as third party experts. 

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

You can’t count the press as third party experts.

Because they are neither third party nor experts.

[mcgillroy]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

Therein lies the problem. Nobody should be allowed to leech off of everybody else like that.

 

It‘s called rent seeking.

[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.

[FredericV]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

Mirror mirror on the wall ....

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

[mcgillroy]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

2.  I work on two different AI ecosystems at work and I am applying my learning from that to what MQA is doing with a music provider ecosystem.  I believe there will be some good for the industry.

 

 

 

Can you please elaborate how AI ecosystems yield relevance to MQA?

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

19 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I have been a beta tester for one MQA streaming service about to launch

You sure it’s still about to launch?

[Miska]

1 hour ago, mcgillroy said:

Can you please elaborate how AI ecosystems yield relevance to MQA?

 

It is the latest buzzword on IT sector. Sounds cool until you look under the surface, for example the buggy utter crap Google has put out under name of Tensorflow.

 

Some warning signs you should take into account:

1) Someone creates their own yet another programming language (Go, Swift, etc)

2) Someone creates their own yet another build system (Bazel)

3) Someone requires you build the stuff under some really esoteric and one of kind container environment because they cannot be bothered to write good enough code that it would build on multiple compilers and platforms (builds properly only inside xxx Docker container)

[TeflonScoundrel]

I've been following this thread for a while and decided to post my thoughts, for whatever they're worth.

 

I was initially excited about MQA when I first read about it.  Once Roon began supporting MQA I used Tidal to create a playlist of about 10 MQA songs & the matching 16/44.1 songs and a few weeks later compared them via my PS Audio DSJ using Wilson Sabrina speakers without knowing which file was which.  About half the time I couldn't hear a difference and had no preference.  With the exception of one track the rest of the time I preferred the 16.44.1 files.  The MQA files where I could hear a difference had rounded off or smoothed transients and a diffuse sound field.  

 

I then played the files for my audiophile brother without him knowing which song was which format and his results matched mine.  Based on that, all this talk of correcting issues with the original files, don't make any sense to me.  I don't think there are any problems to "correct" in normal CD quality or better files.

 

Based on my comparisons, I do think MQA is designed as a profit stream for MQA and the labels and doesn't benefit the consumer in any way.  After watching the behavior of the MQA team during the RMAF presentation, I cancelled my Tidal membership because I couldn't bring myself to support them as long as they support MQA.  I'm really looking forward to Qobuz becoming available in the United States.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Because every time we prove you incorrect you move on to a different way to say the same thing and never address anything we say. 

 

Don’t you find it amazing that not a single third party expert has come out in support of MQA?

 

You can’t count the press as third party experts. 

Don’t companies like Berkeley and Aurender count? Or are you saying they don’t because they’ve bought into MQA? What’s a third party in this context?

[mansr]

25 minutes ago, Miska said:

It is the latest buzzword on IT sector. Sounds cool until you look under the surface, for example the buggy utter crap Google has put out under name of Tensorflow.

 

Some warning signs you should take into account:

1) Someone creates their own yet another programming language (Go, Swift, etc)

2) Someone creates their own yet another build system (Bazel)

3) Someone requires you build the stuff under some really esoteric and one of kind container environment because they cannot be bothered to write good enough code that it would build on multiple compilers and platforms (builds properly only inside xxx Docker container)

More briefly put, "ecosystem" is really just a polite way of saying "doesn't play well with others."

[mansr]

1 minute ago, firedog said:

Don’t companies like Berkeley and Aurender count? Or are you saying they don’t because they’ve bought into MQA? What’s a third party in this context?

Someone without a financial stake.

[firedog]

3 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

MQA revenue won't be $48 million of course, they get a percentage of that.  The key for MQA is to get a revenue stream from most of the participants in the ecosystem.

You just forgot to add, a revenue stream funded by monopoly rents. 

[christopher3393]

5 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

 

Hi Lee! 

Well, Chris presented a pretty nifty power point, but I think I can answer all of your questions quite simply.

 

At first, MQA promised to be like this:

 

 

Remember those days? Ah, the first blush of a Next Big Thing! Pretty cool.

 

Then, as things proceeded, the message seemed to get more and more cryptic in some ways,  almost as if it came from another paradigm or an alien source:

 

 

But then began the Close Encounters:

 

 

We were getting milked!

 

And so, as a result, "Bovine Vendetta"!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zums9sk1g5o&list=PL2D1AD01DD686A3F5

 

Hope that helps.  ?

 

[MikeyFresh]

5 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

I notice that you keep making snide remarks but you don't actually present any arguments to my quotes.

 

You've just described yourself perfectly Lee, maybe your powers of observation and self reflection are greater than we believed.