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In Reply to: RE: MQA Curtains Opening? posted by Isaak J. Garvey on June 26, 2017 at 07:32:44
Found a link at another hi-fi site. Me? Won't touch the stuff.Some may like the sound of decompressed lossy digital with extra questionable artefacts thrown in for free, but that's not my cup of tea.
Doesn't seem very, well, hi-fi.
"No. I personally do not want this. So far, I have seen no evidence that what this is doing actually improves quality. "Time domain" improvements, if any, appears to be contingent on the idea that one believes these short filters can achieve the goal and are thus desirable. I do not see where the company has so far provided evidence for their claims. If there are improvements that can be made by some kind of proprietary time-alignment DSP, then just offer it as such instead of wrapping it into this unnecessarily complex encoding scheme. As for the data compression being beneficial... Well, since the announcement of MQA in late 2014, my Internet download speed has already gone up from 25Mbps to 150Mbps for around the same price. 4K HDR video streaming with multichannel sound is a reality. And Qobuz is now offering Sublime+ lossless FLAC audio streaming up to 24/192. So why bother streaming partially lossy 24/48 when you know technically full resolution, unmolested 24/96 or 24/192 can actually already be done and will only get easier and cheaper in the years ahead?
As I end off, I want to bring up again the obvious dichotomy between what MQA is doing here with their weak filters and what Chord is doing with their DACs like the DAVE. They're like polar opposites! Chord is using a proprietary FPGA-based, very steep, "brick wall" filter with literally uncompromised antialiasing using a reported 164,000 tap linear phase filter, and on the other side we have Meridian/MQA with their insistence on these minimum phase, "porous", weak filters desiring that DAC manufacturers should go this route (for a licensing fee of course)."
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
Edits: 06/26/17Follow Ups:
LOL!
So, at the end of the day, after all of the huff and puff (on both sides of the argument) it turns out that MQA is little more than an attempt to license a digital filter?
And, if they wrote the Non-disclosure Agreements creatively, none of the DAC manufacturers who compete with Meridian but seriously considered it and signed to an NDA to have a look can say a thing negative about it!
> > it turns out that MQA is little more than an attempt to license a digital filter? < <
I don't think that is a complete picture. Originally it was promoted as a way to reduce the file size of high-res files. It clearly does so for sampling rates of 2x or greater, through the use of lossy encoding techniques. This is a clear benefit for streaming service providers, but less so for their subscribers - they are charged by data transfer volumes, whereas most consumers pay extra only for higher speeds, regardless of overall transfer volume. (If one considers single-rate (eg, 44.1kHz and 48kHz) files with 24 bits of resolution as "high-res", MQA would seem to be less successful at reducing file size.)
Later it seemed MQA's goals expanded to "improving" the sound quality over the original high-res digital file. This is the aspect to which your comment appears to be aimed.
Finally MQA also appears to provide a means for the record labels to re-deploy DRM, at least for resolutions above 4x/16.
As always, solely my personal opinions, prone to error and not necessarily those of my employer or legal counsel.
what's not to like? ;)
Remember...according to the anointed ones, the FOB, Friends Of Bob, it sounds *BETTER*, despite being lossy, leaky, and one generation removed from the master file!
.
the sad faces above. ;-)
As usual, you explained it so even I can understand it.
And yes, you are right on every count.
My comment, 'at the end of the day' was to the point that increased bandwidth and lower costs to transfer large files may be less of an issue as time goes by. Somehow, QOBUZ has found a way to stream 'Hi Rez' at little ($10 mo.?) more cost to the consumer. Plus don't forget that MQA DENIES that it's a form of DRM!
We know that it COULD be a form of DRM. We know because one of the ways they are trying sell it to record labels is based on 'as only licensed products can decode and play your master files, you can safely release them for sale with little risk they will see a wider, unauthorized distribution'.
As the spinning silver disk is on it's way out, albeit slowly, that doesn't look like a likely use case for MQA.
'Hi End' DAC manufactures (or low end Chinese DAC manufacturers) don't seem to be jumping on the band wagon either. That means that even if the DAC I own today has MQA the 'DAC-Of-My-Dreams' that I hope to buy tomorrow might NOT!
And without a lot of hardware in the market to play it, the download sites who could have something to gain by blocking unlimited re-distribution of the files they sell or getting MQA encoded files from the labels at a discount because of 'DRM', don't seem to be rushing to join either.
Would I buy a 'hi rez' download I could only truly enjoy (maybe) with a 'special' DAC or proprietary software?
Nope. Not even if MQA was a 100% perfect lossless CODEC, I wouldn't! Not even at half price for the download, if it required proprietary software to decode and play it or worse, a 'special' DAC.
So it looks like 'MQA will go away', eventually, even without the 'nay sayers' continuously beating on it.
Sad faces indeed!
MQA Ltd may deny that MQA contains DRM but Utimaco disagrees. Utimaco created the encryption for MQA. You can tell from the case study they posted in May 2016 they are proud of what they accomplished. Funny the audio press never reported it. In any case encoding a file and decoding a file is DRM and MQA doesn't deny it does that.
In the MQA Ltd financial statements they state 150 companies have signed NDAs. In the 2015 statements they state 10 companies had signed licensing agreements. As of the date 2016 financial statements they had about 20 licenses. That means 130 companies are limited in what they can say about MQA that aren't licensees.
The naysayers of MQA aren't going to stop until the key opinion makers of audio stop supporting it.
I'm guessing MQA's lawyers must be smarter than I am.
ALL of the NDAs I ever had anything to do with were heavy on the 'Non-Disparagement' part, to the extent that if no deal was done the other party was pretty legally prevented from saying ANYTHING about our technology even if we ended up competitors at some future point.
"The naysayers of MQA aren't going to stop until the key opinion makers of audio stop supporting it."In fact in MQA filings, they put forth as part of their business plan the ability to get journalists on board and use them as a de facto PR firm.
Not one aside from Doug @ Soundstage has done ANY critical "reporting" what so ever. In fact, their focus on how much "better" it sounds is becoming a farce.
Edits: 06/28/17
Well I didn't want to get into things like Innovation S Curves and Diffusion. It was pretty obvious the S Curve was stretched in an odd shape. Around the time of T.H.E. Show in Irvine last year it became obvious audio journalists didn't have a handle on the Master part. And in general journalists have no clue about Authenticated part, as the artist intended is just marketing hype. If it wasn't for others in chain from recording to release a lot of artists wouldn't have a sound that is viable in the market. Recording music is a team effort. That leaves Quality. Turns out there was no popular music (the stuff 90% of Americans buy) to purchase. It is pretty hard to evaluate quality when you can't listen for yourself. Going to the show in Irvine confirmed all of this and the audio press was going all out for MQA. RMAF 2016 was just more of the same so what to do?
Create a system where MQA can be discussed away from audio journalists. It's been more successful than I expected at getting actual information about MQA discussed. I can't thank the people who provided the technical information across many sites enough. Or Roon who made counting albums so much easier showing the limited supply of MQA albums. Not to mention Companies House who made all of their information about UK companies public. Today a way to bypass MQA decoding was posted. The will be more to come.
And they only have themselves to blame.
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
In reference to that, these are golden quotes from Archimago's article:
"To all the "evangelists" out there... Beware of worshipping at the alter of the god of "time-domain" with salvation offered in the form of MQA and its weak filters. You'll likely find your faith challenged and ultimately recognize that it was misplaced despite a genuine desire for higher fidelity."
They would do well to heed his words.
Well, and absolute masterpiece of a post.The only thing I can possibly add, is what I have repeated
many times before, but you can't get enough of a good thing.Marketing Lies:
-"Master Quality Authenticated"-
There is absolutely NOTHING authenticated, not by the artist,
the producer, or the mastering engineer. Marketing LIE.-"Must be applied at Mastering". NOTHING is being mastered with MQA. It is post processing. Marketing LIE.
-Lossless. We know the "curtains have been pulled back", now don't we. Marketing LIE.
Then we can go into the "bandwidth" issue,
I have spoken to numerous manufacturers and they all have theories why the press has been shoveling this shit. A few have easy to guess theories, and 3 or 4 have some specific, harder to guess ones.
It is beyond shameless.
I would love for John Atkinson to post samples of his master files pre and post MQA for all of us to hear. But that won't happen will it.
Edits: 06/28/17 06/28/17
Because the press has NEVER MET SHIT THEY DID NOT WANT TO SHOVEL.
"To Learn Who Rules Over You, Simply Find Out Who You Are Not Allowed to Criticize."
-Voltaire
There is literally nothing you can add to that quote. Bullseye.
Did you notice the Youtube video at the end?
View YouTube Video
Måns Rullgård, in the comments notes:
"Note that the frequencies above the gap are a mirror image of those below it with a slight downward slant. This is because the weak upsampling filter used by MQA lets these images through rather than suppress them as it ought to. Nothing above that gap actually existed in the recording. It is all fake. The 2L recording originally has a high sample rate, and MQA preserves it reasonably well up to 44.1 kHz. If you did a playback and (analogue) capture through a certified MQA DAC at 176.4 kHz (or higher), you'd see similar mirroring in the 44.1-88.2 kHz range."
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
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