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It's as if a dozen of the most respected wine critics were to sample the same wine from the same magnum. Ten critics declare the wine mediocre at best whereas two rave about it, awarding it a 100 point score. This would be unprecedented.Either JA and RH were way ahead of the curve on this latest and greatest technology or they got it wrong. They weren't describing a nuanced difference they were describing a night and day difference.
So you have two reviewers who have never designed and built an audio product (as far as I know) butting heads with designers and sound engineers about what the reviewers perceive as a striking qualitative sonic improvement regarding MQA. Some prominent people have their credibility on the line here (and I don't mean ethically, there's no crime in simply getting it wrong).
The sort of qualitative difference JA and RH described should be in-your-face-obvious; readily apparent to experienced listeners and novices alike. Would-be purchasers will expect to be impressed right out of the gate. But from what I've read on here that's just not the case.
Whatever the case, it would appear some prominent people in the industry have misheard or were "duped," as the late CH speculated. Time will tell. What if you threw a party to celebrate "the birth of a new world" and no one came?
Edits: 12/12/17Follow Ups:
> The sort of qualitative difference JA and RH described should be in-your-face-obvious; readily apparent to experienced listeners and novices alike.>
Sez who?
"It's interesting that, as I recall the experience, my sonic impressions were so striking that they are still vivid nearly a year later, yet I can't remember any other demo I heard at the show." RH
"The difference between them was so stark, and so different from that of any listening comparisons I've heard previously, that it requires a new vocabulary to describe." RH
"The most significant audio technology of my lifetime." RH
"In almost 40 years of attending audio press events, only rarely have I come away feeling that I was present at the birth of a new world." JA
A fair reading of the above would lead one to believe most music lovers will detect a drastic improvement. That said, there's no crime in overhyping either...but your credibility may take a hit. ~:)
> "In almost 40 years of attending audio press events, only rarely have I
> come away feeling that I was present at the birth of a new world." JA
>
> A fair reading of [RH's and JA's statements] would lead one to believe most
> music lovers will detect a drastic improvement.
With respect, you are quoting my comment out of its context. The "new world"
didn't just refer to sound quality, which was indeed excellent in the December
2014 demonstration I wrote about in the linked article. (Note that this was
3 years ago, not the 4 years that others keep saying.) First, as the title of the
article says the first part of the "new world" involved the benefit MQA
encoding offered streaming. Second, the more general point was that MQA's
approach to digital audio data encoding, reducing all the stages between
the input of the A/D converter to the output of the D/A converter to a
transparent "pipe," was a back-to-first-principles approach that I found
elegant in the extreme. If this works as claimed, this would indeed be a
new world and Jim Austin's series of articles in Stereophile will examine
each part of the approach.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
"With respect, you are quoting my comment out of its context. The 'new world' didn't just refer to sound quality, which was indeed excellent in the December 2014 demonstration I wrote about in the linked article."Well, perhaps you would agree one can achieve "excellent" sound via myriad formats. Would you describe what you heard that fateful day as being a subtle improvement or a dramatic improvement? If the latter, would you consider it the sort of pronounced improvement a typical music lover would notice, or must one be an experienced audiophile to appreciate the difference?
I take your point about MQA simplifying matters via its minimalist approach and how that results in an "elegant" engineering solution. But I'm more concerned about the degree of qualitative audio improvement you feel MQA delivers. You appear to have left many readers with the impression you think MQA takes a quantum leap forward in sonic improvement compared to competing formats. So again, is it a little or a lot?
Frankly, aside from you, I don't see much enthusiasm for MQA's purported benefits at this venue. Thus the reason for my curiosity insofar as your opinion regarding MQA.
Edits: 12/13/17
"Not only that, but there was palpability to the sound, a transparency to the original event, that I have almost never heard before...."
If MQA doesn't provide an easily heard jump in sound quality what would be the reason for its adoption by record labels/streaming services? Are you now claiming that your published statements about MQA are not *mainly* related to an improvement in sound quality via MQA?
> Are you now claiming that your published statements about MQA are not
> *mainly* related to an improvement in sound quality via MQA?
No. In the post to which you are responding, I was pointing out to "Regmac"
that his attributing the quote of mine _only_ to sound quality was both incorrect
and misleading.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
> > > > > Are you now claiming that your published statements about MQA are not *mainly* related to an improvement in sound quality via MQA?Atkinson said, "No. In the post to which you are responding, I was pointing out to "Regmac" that his attributing the quote of mine _only_ to sound quality was both incorrect and misleading. John Atkinson Editor, Stereophile"
C'mon, John. After 3 full years you and your minion Jim Austin are only now attempting to qualify your outta' this world performance endorsement for MQA? Where were you for the past 3 years while MQA has been gaining some type of foothold (with your help) in the music industry? And now amidst much controversy over the performance value of MQA and your endorsement, here you are suddenly attempting to downplay your outlandish kid-in-a-candy-store endorsements.
I recall in a previous MQA thread about a month ago, you attempted to blame others (including Charles Hansen) for potential wrongdoing that some of us thought you yourself may already be guilty of and yet in other threads attempted to label me a troll.
Frankly, I think you've got a lot of nerve trying to blame others for misinterpreting or holding you to your endorsements. After all, this is supposed to be a "high-end" audio industry, where "high-end" implies performance even to a 10-year old and performance pertains to audio or more specifically, playback audio. Hence, everybody reading your nonsensical endorsements has a right to assume that when you don't qualify your endorsements, you are speaking first and foremost of audio performance.
Next thing you're gonna' tell us is that we misinterpreted your nonsensical kid-in-a-candy-store CES 2014 "musically perfect...-, across the board" endorsement of the Vandersteen 7A speakers.
From my perspective, your outlandish nonsensical product endorsements are just that, outlandish and nonsensical. Even so, they are far more telling about you and Stereophile than you apparently realize. But I think what really troubles some of us is the apparent blind arrogance associated with such nonsensical endorsements as these. Almost like you don't even think twice about anybody anywhere having enough savvy to call you on the carpet for your nonsense.
Aside from WWIII erupting, I don't see how you or Stereophile can possibly mitigate damages on your apparent miscalculations but it's already been interesting watching you try.
Edits: 12/17/17
And if a smaller file is required for streaming, why not just use something like 96/18 PCM?
As many others have written, MQA is a solution in search of a problem.
LOL!
I have no dog in this fight and I haven't read TAS in years.
Have you compared MQA to anything?
"I have no dog in this fight"
I dunno, sport. From what I've read you appear to be firmly ensconced in JA's kennel. ~:)
C'mon. Who doesn't to any degreee have a dog in this fight?Whether one has listened to MQA or not at this point really doesn't matter. Are you implying that we ought not trust Harley and Atkinson or their publications regarding the audible performance of new product and technology endorsements? If we can't trust in their credibility and savvy ears, what other purpose might they serve the high-end audio community - other than these two characteristics I mean?
BTW, weren't you a reviewer about 8-10 years ago?
Edits: 12/12/17
...personally, I am not interested in whether MQA is the next big thing or not.
I don't listen to streamed music so it doesn't affect me.
I would have to say that I do trust JA and what he hears since he is the most experienced and credible audio reviewer I know.
But even HP made a mistake now and then.
If MQA achieves its goal, it will affect you as "all digital music will someday be MQA encoded".
As I stated before in a previous thread:
As a reminder of what the stakes are regarding the MQA audio format, let me remind you what the company's ambitions for MQA are as stated by MQA's Spencer Chrislu (SC) to Jim Austin (JCA) on Stereophile.com. (Link below)
And I quote:
"JCA: What are the company's ambitions for MQA? Do you hope/expect that all digital music will someday be MQA encoded?
SC: Well, that's the goal!"
HOPE/EXPECT THAT ALL DIGITAL MUSIC WILL SOMEDAY BE MQA ENCODED.(Yes, ALL!)
It's all about that Authentication. Are you and your equipment authorized to play that? Digital Rights Management.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. ~ Bernard Bailey
"JCA: What are the company's ambitions for MQA? Do you hope/expect that all digital music will someday be MQA encoded?
SC: "Well, that's the goal!"
If memory serves, that was one of Charles Hansen's chief concerns, i.e., that MQA is a licensing ploy.
Well, for sure MQA ain't about audio performance.
Even though MQA stands for Master Quality Authentication. Even though when you see the little green MQA light you can rest assured that what you are hearing is the same thing the engineers heard in the recording studio.
Makes about as much sense as Atkinson claiming the Vandersteen 7A's to be "musically perfect..., across the board" back in 2014.
It's hard to imagine both a new high-rez format and a speaker coincidentally possessing the same technology that corrects, compensates for, and/or cures an entire playback system's many distortions and shortcomings that exist in every other part of the playback vineyard. But according to some, such technology exists.
Surely man is capable of achieving anything in the 21st century.
Exactly.
Following is Charles Hansen's response after he read the Stereophile article that was linked in my post on the "Dear Jim Austin," thread that I alluded to.
"Thanks for the link. That is truly scary. Talk about an organization obsessed with power, control, and money. Where does music fit in to their equation? Or the artist? Or the end user?
Equally scary to me was the way that the interviewee would repeatedly (and presumably knowingly) lie to promote his money-making scheme. Those are simply not the kind of people with whom I enjoy doing business."
> > > I would have to say that I do trust JA and what he hears since he is the most experienced and credible audio reviewer I know.
I rank JA among the most credible reviewers but the available evidence suggests that he probably hasn't heard an apples to apples comparison. Why did he send his raw files plus impulse response to MQA? Seems like MQA might not have returned an MQA'ed version of his master. Certainly, they had everything needed to cheat!
"I used 3 pairs of microphones and 2 types of A/D converter to produce the mixdown—see the photos—as well as the mixdown I sent Bob Stuart each of the 3 mike-pair recordings, including an impulse response recording for each, and full details of the mix.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-mqa#hIt1iZoUKIwH34BQ.99"
Meanwhile, I have no problem with those who subjectively prefer the sound of MQA but can they at least acknowledge that MQA is not the master version or authenticated?
"I gave it an open minded listen. Not bad, not great was my impression. It's definitely a lossy codec, that was clear. And like Mastered for iTunes or any reduction scheme the losses are in critically important areas. Where as mastered for iTunes is harmonically cold and loses some low volume/low end information, actually altering the groove to make everything sound like a nerdy white wedding band, MQA brightens the high-mids in the Mid section while thinning the low-mids on the Sides. There's also some harmonic distortion which some people could find pleasing, If I want that distortion in the master I would've put it there in the first place. The results of MQA I would call fatal to the source material even as they are very subtle." - Brian Lucey
> Meanwhile, I have no problem with those who subjectively prefer the sound of MQA but can they at least acknowledge that MQA is not the master version or authenticated?>
...when I buy a remastered CD, I don't care what master was used or anything about the process.
I only care that it sounds better - that's all that matters to me.
you don't think, in the context of determining MQA's value compared to PCM, that using an identical master is critical?
In the case of JA's listening experience, perhaps the lesson learned is that Bob Stuart is the better mastering/mixing engineer!
...or you can listen for yourself and decide.
If it sounds better, why do you care what master was used?
For the reviewers writing about it in the press, that's a different situation.
At this point it appears to have a lot of promise just like all the other next greatest things that we have seen over the past 40 years.
but perhaps I can properly demo MQA at the next RMAF - if MQA is still a thing.
> > > If it sounds better, why do you care what master was used?
Um, because it matters if it sounds better because it's MQA versus sounds better because it's a different master? Call me "crazy" but that seems like an important distinction!
> It's as if a dozen of the most respected wine critics were to sample the
> same wine from the same magnum. Ten critics declare the wine mediocre at
> best whereas two rave about it, awarding it a 100 point score. This would
> be unprecedented.Your math needs work. There are many reviewers who have commented favorably
on MQA, not just 2. And please note that some of the most vociferous critics
of MQA have, by their own admission, not auditioned MQA files or done any
comparisons.> So you have two reviewers who have never designed and built an audio
> product (as far as I know) ...Back in the day I designed a microphone preamp, a mike mixer, a digital
sound-level meter, and before I could afford to buy test equipment, a pulse
generator and various interface modules that connected to a BBC Model B
computer. (Told you it was back in the day.) Oh, and I also designed the
preamp/buffer for the accelerometer I use in Stereophile's speaker reviews.
I wrote my own FFT program in 1984 and back at the end of the 1980s I also
wrote and compiled all the utility programs I needed for our reviews in
QuickBasic. I still use these, though they now run in a DOS window on my
MacBook Pro.So this is not my first rodeo, though the one thing I have never designed
is a loudspeaker. :-)
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 12/12/17
> Your math needs work. There are many reviewers who have commented favorably
> on MQA, not just 2. And please note that some of the most vociferous critics
> of MQA have, by their own admission, not auditioned MQA files or done any
> comparisons.
Atkinson - your skills in comparison need work: how many reviewers have compared MQA vs original using the same master in controlled tests?
Secondly the fact that many critics haven't auditioned MQA-files is precisely for that reason: legit comparisons are made impossible by MQA. As many critics point out it's hence pretty much worthless to listen to MQA files for assessing the "quality" of MQA.
It's not that enough people have asked to set up such tests.
How about you report about that?!
I don't have a dog in the fight. However, what many audiophiles prefer in sound quality (older vinyl recordings) are probably furthest from the original master that the engineers heard in the studio. Then out the other side of their mouth complain MQA changes how the original master sounds (much based on Brian Lucey, etc).Case in point, the Beatles 2009 remasters. Outside the regular compression arguments that always pops up, many dissed the remasters not sounding faithful to the original vinyl pressings. I would argue that the difference between 24/44 usb Beatles 2009 tracks vs actual Abbey Road original masters would not be audible to 99% if a/b'd in the studio. We have the "vinyl" memory in our heads that was engraved many moons ago. I think this is similar to AM talk radio. I actually prefer the AM talk show version of radio talk shows vs the "more pure" sound of the podcast version (or FM version). It's the memory of listening to AM talk radio for many years that feels for "like home" to me. There's nothing wrong with that.
What's actually nuts from a logical point of view, mastering engineers Re-Mastering to a past medium (vinyl) instead of re mastering to the best possible sound using the latest and best equipment. See the video of Vic Anesini in the link below my signature
I don't think one can have it both ways as far as sound is concerned. I get arguing the hardware end or practicality of things. Or just saying they prefer the "flavor" of a particular medium or file format. I just think many audiophiles need to be consistent in their arguments.
Dale Clark
www.arcpictures.com
Edits: 12/16/17
Reminded me of this post by Charles Hansen (link below). Michael LaVorgna didn't really address Hansen's main point. Doug Schneider might be the most prominent writer who has flagged this obvious problem.
"There are many reviewers who have commented favorably
on MQA, not just 2."
I'm not your strawman, buttercup. ~:)
I have Tidal HiFi and have compared MQA vs mere HIFI.
Yep. They often use different masters though. :)
" They often use different masters though. :)
I thought that was the whole point of the " Master" proposition of MQA. That is that the producer gets to decide what is the definitive version of the recording and MQA gives it an "assay" mark to fix it as THE master which is then displayed on the user's DAC or other decoding device. Of course other versions of the album or tracks which are also listed on Tidal are therefore likely to be different and, presumably, less close to the producer's ideal.
So far of all of the stuff that I have read on this board and elsewhere about MQA, nobody seems to have understood this.
Those who originally master CDs are incompetent fools.
I disagree... Barry Diament's CD masters in the original CD era sound fantastic. Much better than many of the remasters that came out later. I do agree, however, most were not good. Many were just flat transfers. Bob Seger's CD catalog back then were pretty much what one heard in the studio without any mastering
Dale Clark
www.arcpictures.com
My point is that regardless of recording or remix, there are some who argue that the only reason high resolution recordings sound better is they use a better master than the CD equivalent.
Hence the comment about those who master CDs. Why couldn't they do as good a job as the one who mastered the high rez version?
(nt)
" Those who originally master CDs are incompetent fools. "
That may or may not be the case but in what way are they incompetent fools?
Why would the people who master CDs be the same as those who select the master for MQA encoding? They may not even work for the same company as the first will probably work at the pressing plant and the second at the record company.
So I am puzzled.
The *standard* explanation by some as to why high resolution recordings sound better than the Redbook flavor is they were mastered better.
Hence, only fools master CDs. I most certainly don't buy that rationalization. :)
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