I published music on Tidal to test MQA - MQA Deep Dive

[Currawong]

On 5/13/2021 at 3:19 AM, vmartell22 said:

That said I am wary of connecting audiophoolia with MQA  - don't want to lose the anti-MQA focus. Same reason I think I made a mistake reacting to @Currawong comment re: Scientism, etc - been trying to fix that by saying let's not get into that...  hence my non-reply to all that posts related to that - apologies...

 

Now, Hans..

Not sure where his MQA support comes from... industry support? don't think so - he claims he is fully independent and I believe him... but his argument is typical of, for example, what I see in the Roon forums, which I recently learned, is a Meridian related company, even sharing some of the personnel as it was posted here in this forum. "IT SOUNDS FANTASTIC!" they say...

 

No problem. I realise some people use "Scientism" as an excuse to ignore science (i.e.: a projection of their own, simplistic thinking and ignorance) rather than how I meant it. 

 

About Roon though: While the guys used to work for Sooloos, a company bought by Meridian (IIRC) they are independent. Danny stated in their forums that their implementation of MQA came as a request from customers (obviously because TIDAL is a primary streaming source in the software). He was also critical of the idea of MQA becoming the default format for music, so I wouldn't write him off just because of how he was previously connected.

[bambadoo]

But there are others strategically placed in Roon that are nowhere near "independent". Actually that came directly from MQA. They are promoting MQA whenever they get the chance. Roon is not "independent" in spite of what Danny says. 

[vmartell22]

58 minutes ago, bambadoo said:

But there are others strategically placed in Roon that are nowhere near "independent". Actually that came directly from MQA. They are promoting MQA whenever they get the chance. Roon is not "independent" in spite of what Danny says. 

 

It doesn't feel like they are independent in the Roon forums - then again,  it's the moderators that enforce the drive to keep MQA discussions to the minimum and from bubbling up in the "trending" topics. If not closing them altogether... maybe that's the idea... "we have independent moderators...they do what they want!"

 

 

v

[Rugby]

20 hours ago, bambadoo said:

 Actually that came directly from MQA.

Who would that be?

[bambadoo]

https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/mqa-reacts-to-recent-allegations-says-youtube-video-by-goldensound-is-fundamentally-flawed.8745/

[bambadoo]

Bob has responded. 

Why should we believe them now?

https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/

[KeenObserver]

Damage control.

It is just so full of Bob Stuart.

Parse it with logic and semantics and it is just circular.

[kumakuma]

I didn't think it was possible but I now have even less respect for Bob Stuart.

[GregWormald]

It should be really simple. If the tests that goldensound performed were biased, then show us how to test MQA correctly.

[John Dyson]

8 hours ago, KeenObserver said:

Damage control.

It is just so full of Bob Stuart.

Parse it with logic and semantics and it is just circular.

My head is about ready to explode...   This thing about the artist/engineer approving the  provenance of the product...   The industry has tolerated relatively poor quality  being sold to consumers for many years now...   The industry show little credibility WRT quality...

 

The 'authenticated' part of MQA is like a currency counterfeiter using a dot-matrix printer who then certifies the provenance of their product...   There are so many ways that the 'authenticated' part of MQA is conceptually defective, even before considering the loss of accuracy in the low level math techniques.

 

[GoldenOne]

Part 2 now available: 

 

[Nikhil]

Saw this video last night.  Very well done.  

 

Why do they choose not to engage positively with your criticism?

Speaks volumes IMO of their culture and overall dispensation.  

 

I would like to request you to continue making these counterpoints to the mQa narrative.

 

Regards

 

 

.  

[OldHardwareTech]

@Goldenone Thank You for the follow up video.  I subscribe to both Tidal and Qobuz and I subscribed to both when the respective service was available in my location.  I do use Tidal a lot for creating playlists as Qobuz doesn't have a method of creating and populating a playlist based on a track or artist.  Maybe playlists are a bit "un-audiophile" but I like emulating the radio stations of my youth. I then use Soundiiz to transfer them to Qobuz. I do try to get the highest quality available in all tracks I listen to, and while it's subjective I haven't found any track in MQA preferable to the high res version I receive via Qobuz.  Call it a subjective opinion if you like but MQA claiming to be better than lossless just doesn't cut it with me.  MQA's responses to your results don't just sound like marketing, they sound like marketing that's been written or at least approved by lawyers.  The whole bit about responding without actually putting forth any facts or files that actually back up their claims kinda grates on me. They claim you're trying to discredit them but in fact it's the opposite, they're trying to discredit you and audio testing in general by using made up terminology that can't be tested.  Thank You again for all the work that went into the original and response videos. Very well done!

[Fokus]

 

Quote

Not only is it showing minimum phase, and non-linear ringing characteristics, the ringing also does not decay linearly. 

 

Above is the impulse response of GoldenOne's 44.1kHz master after MQA encoding.

 

Given that Meridian/MQA see impulse pre-ringing as the spawn of the devil one would expect them here to deploy what they call an apodising filter as used in the Meridian 808.2 CD player: minimum phase, cutting in after 20kHz, but reaching a lot of attenuation at 22.05kHz.

 

But they don't, because the frequency magnitude response of the MQA encoded version is the same as that of the master. Only the phase differs.

 

I think it is safe to conclude that this is a direct application of Meridian European Patent Application EP3029674A1 "Mastering improvements to audio signals" where an all-pass filter is proposed to take any pre-existing pre-ringing and dump it after the main response lobe.

 

 

 

[botrytis]

GoldenOne - it was an honest objective assessment with both videos. If all MQA mavens can do is call names and obfuscate on the data you have shown, well the old phrase, 'The Emperor has no clothes'. comes to mind.

 

Maybe we should remind them about that children's story - people really have forgotten the lessons that story taught.

 

[Fokus]

On 6/5/2021 at 4:21 PM, Fokus said:

I think it is safe to conclude that this is a direct application of Meridian European Patent Application EP3029674A1 "Mastering improvements to audio signals" where an all-pass filter is proposed to take any pre-existing pre-ringing and dump it after the main response lobe.

 

 

The cross-correlation between the 88.2kHz original and the unfolded MQA version shows that similar all-pass filtering is being applied to 2x rate source material:

 

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/mqa-pt-ii.255443/page-50#post-4383413

 

http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/temp/EvenMoreInteresting.png