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I personally have no opinion of the MQA high-resolution conversion format (because it's targeted mainly for Tidal users, I don't use Tidal), but I stumbled across this on YouTube, it's controversial, and could trigger a firestorm in the streaming/high-resolution digital audio community.
If I learned anything from this video, it could be that some of the strange "sonic artifacts" in streamed/downloaded audio files could be from "watermarking" of the audio files (unrelated to MQA in itself).... Something I never would have suspected.......
I won't comment on the accuracy or the validity of the claims made in this video..... (It could be a smear job, for all I know.... )
Follow Ups:
As you say, it's a different issue. But here's an example where the watermarking is clearly audible and unpleasant: Zimerman playing Chopin Ballades on DG. You can hear it as a beating noise in the decay of notes. This beating noise does not occur on the CD rip.
A lot of engineers and producers don't realize how fragile the music signal is..... Any alteration to the signal is a degradation..... And listeners do notice them.
Hi, Dave,So the audio watermark is used with Qobuz's streaming service but not the digital download files, i.e., CD rips? Or are you referring to CDs that you rip and all of Qobuz's files, even the downloads, are watermarked?
Tom
Edits: 04/22/21
Someone at ASR mentioned this CD as having a watermark, and I compared the Qobuz stream with a rip of my own CD. The CD rip does not have the beating sound.
Thanks. I've been purchasing CD quality downloads from Qobuz and hadn't noticed any indications of watermarking, or at least nothing that I thought could be contributed to watermarking.
Edits: 04/23/21 04/23/21
Qobuz just uses what the labels give them.
Oh, I saw that the web link was referencing a Qobuz file and assumed it was Qobuz you were talking about.
That's the only streaming service I have, but I assume it's the same on the others.
" I can see why Qobuz would want some way of marking their streamed files so that they have some control over use. "
It isn't Qobuz that would add watermarking ( if indeed there is watermarking) but the record company. To understand why you need to appreciate the paranoia that exists in regard to piracy and ( from my now dated experience) the often limited technical knowledge that is typically possessed by the executives that make the decisions on such matters.
I was very involved in watermarking systems for audio when I was working in the UK record industry in the late 1990s to early 2000s. At the time none of the competing systems I was looking at provided watermarks continuously as seems to be the impression commonly held in the audiophile world. The incoming signal to the watermark processor was analysed to find appropriate points to insert the watermark.These would be those points where audible detection was anticipated to be the least likely so that points like the decay of notes would be the least likely place to contain any watermark. Of course things may well have changed since then but the potential for audibility would IMO still be a major criterion.
I still have a blind test CD from one of the proponents of the watermarking systems ( each musical excerpt repeated three times where each of them may or may not have been watermark encoded). I have never been able to confidently judge which was which. At least I am not guessing as to whether or not any have been encoded.
I wonder how much that is attributed by audiophiles to watermarking without objective evidence to support it is caused by other factors?
"We need less, but better" - Dieter Rams
See my reply to Daverz. I thought he was talking about Qobuz.
The only problem I've encountered with CDs containing some form of watermark or copyright protection is that my Rega Apollo CDP will not output a digital signal (SPDIF or Toslink) if the CD is copyright protected. I've had to rip those CDs to hard drive and then burn a CDR disc. Plays those discs just fine.
" The only problem I've encountered with CDs containing some form of watermark or copyright protection is that my Rega Apollo CDP will not output a digital signal (SPDIF or Toslink) if the CD is copyright protected. I've had to rip those CDs to hard drive and then burn a CDR disc. Plays those discs just fine."
How do you know that those discs had either watermarking or other DRM? Record labels do not advise of the fact on the packaging. One thing that is clear is that if a CD so treated cannot be read by a standard redbook player then the record company would go out of business pretty quickly. In any case watermarking cannot be removed by making a rip as it is contained within the music data and so will be in the rip as well. Anti-copying DRM should mean that no rip could be made at all.
I believe that you are incorrectly attributing the cause of your Rega's failure to play the disc. It is more likely to be something either optical or mechanical that prevented that particular player's mechanism from reading ToC.
"We need less, but better" - Dieter Rams
I wasn't clear enough about the differences between analog out vs digital out. The Apollo played those discs just fine when using the RCA analog output. The Apollo would not output a signal using the SPDIF connection.
Thanks for the clarification. I haven't come across DRM that does not allow an output at all, rather that either the (ripping, recording) device attached will not accept the data stream without a key to authorise it or where the stream is encrypted and a device without matching decryption cannot recognise it.
Anyway, as I mentioned, the object of this type of DRM is to prevent ripping , which in fact you were able to do. I believe that Sony released a lot of CDs like this some years back over a couple of months but had to abandon it due to the public reception when it was found that the system introduced root code to the ripping device e.g. computer, which disabled it when ripping of the disc or others similarly equipped was attempted. Incidentally you should be able to see if the CD is protected by inserting it into a computer optical drive and selecting "Properties".
"We need less, but better" - Dieter Rams
Most of the CDs that wouldn't output digital were Sony CDs. I used dBpoweramp to rip them so they must have figured out how to disable the DRM encoding.
are there non-physical CD's? metaphysical disks or quark media?
I knew what Dave meant. :-)
It is getting more complicated now that we have CDs, CD rips, CD quality downloads, and CD quality streaming. So yes, it is a bit metaphysical. I'm looking forward to extrasensory media; no more stereo systems needed.
he should have mentioned the redbook standard just to be sure
oops, gotta go let the physical dog in ... the analog version
he's a woofer that's not a speaker
"Physical CD" was short for "Rip from a CD that I have in my posession, not a download."
He right, another BS hype my the magazines to push something that one, 99% of buyers don't care about and 2, helping those in bed with them, with the consumer holding the bill thinking it the next new thing. TAS and Stereophile are useless, plus they market towards the upper 5% in income. It is not a hobby anymore.Also, the new myth of vinyl out selling CD, not true in profit, well it should be with LP's costing twice or more as much as a CD.
http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/10/09/no-vinyl-records-arent-outselling-cds-do-the-math/
PJB
Edits: 04/21/21
Anyone have an opinion on MQA-CDs ?
I found a comparison (linked below) between SACD, MQA-CD, and Redbook CD and the reviewer thought the MQA-CD sounded as good or slightly better than the SACD.
I was ready to start buying MQA-CDs but then found that there were very few releases in that format and the prices were significantly higher than buying downloads at the original resolution without the need to "unfold" them.
Tom
As I said below, there was never a market for them. The alternative is readily available without the extra processing needed, except maybe on a few Tidal exclusives. Why bother?
at the oxymoronic concept of "lossy high resolution".
In the beginning I was indifferent to MQA for streaming but was curious as to whether the technology would be used to produce MQA-encoded hi-res compact discs. HA! I must have been delusional to think CDs would make a comeback. :-)I haven't paid any attention to MQA and figured it would fade into obscurity after seeing the responses from respected industry professionals. Videos like this one are likely to become nails in the MQA coffin.
Tom
Edits: 04/20/21
99.5% of the buying public does not care, which means it goes nowhere like SACD, it will and is a nitch market for the few.
PJB
He basically created test tones and 'released' them to Tidal as content to see what MQA encoding would do to them - see the video for the results.
It seems MQA/Tidal do not want test tones encoded through MQA so they later took his files down.
Regards,
13DoW
Lighting up the Blue MQA LED is what some audiophiles want to go along with their Blue meters, right? ;-)I stream Tidal and Qobuz using Roon. I had an MQA DAC and it was fun watching that Blue LED come on. I was decoding MQA! Yippie!
Many of us knew years ago that MQA was mostly smoke and mirrors but with a possible benefit to a problem that didn't really exist.... lower bandwidth requirements for streaming so-called hi-res.
When I purchased my last DAC, the Topping D90, it was available in the standard version and MQA version. I bought the standard version for $100 less.
Thanks for the YT video link.
P.S. Chord won't support MQA. PS Audio paid for the MQA licensing because customers wanted MQA, but Paul McGowan is not a fan.
Edits: 04/19/21 04/19/21 04/19/21
It's kind of like when audiophiles demanded "upsampling" DACs, not realizing it was a compromised version of the older "oversampling" algorithms...... It used asynchronous sample-rate conversion, which I thought sounded horrible........
But then again, I know mainstream listeners who for a while thought MP3 playback was a technological advancement over CD playback (not realizing it was lower resolution)....... The "if it's newer it's better" mindset.....
I'm still surprised how audiophiles and general public let the greedy bastards sneak MQA by us on a pure moneygrab scheme without intrinsic value to consumers whatsoever.
It seems to me that the reaction to MQA on various audio forums has been dominated by people who are against it.
Obviously, there have been some supporters. I mostly blame the audio press for pushing it initially. They should have known better, and I believe they did know better, but covered it favorably anyway. They were slow to respond to technical criticisms, some of which were acknowledged and some were ignored.
If you're a typical consumer who doesn't understand digital well enough to interpret the technical arguments passed around on audio forums, who do you believe? MQA should have been DOA but the press gave it a chance it never deserved.
But they didn't really. We basically ignored it and nobody cares. Only Tidal uses it. That's one smallish service. It didn't lose in the marketplace, it never even had a market.
It doesn't really offer any new insight that didn't come out 2-3 years ago, but it's done in a style that will get a lot more views than other YT videos such as the RMAF 2018 MQA seminar.
The only think keeping MQA alive at this point is Tidal. Aside from supporting Tidal Masters, there's no incentive for hardware makers to license MQA. Tidal doesn't state how many subscribers they have, but I'll guess that the number of people paying a premium for Tidal Masters is pretty small.
So it wouldn't surprise me if MQA support on the hardware side just disappears as products are refreshed.
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