MQA Users & Discussion Thread

[davewantsmoore]

9 minutes ago, eltech said:

So really, it does come down to is

 

*if it sounds better or not

Depend on the content.  Likely.

 

*Are they really using the best masters

You'd expect so, given the recording companies are onboard, and the decoding is secured

 

*Are they remastering? (Bad news in my view)

It would be tempting for them, but it would be reasonably trivial to catch.

 

* What does it mean for small recording labels or self released music?

Now, I would think nothing.    Later?  Assuming dominance?   Pay MQA-tax at one or more places in the chain.... or maybe nothing, assuming their are still good non-MQA encoding recording equipments.

 

* What does it mean for those without an mqa DAC?

For now, nothing, IMVHO.     The vanilla PCM part of MQA encoded audio, isn't damaged substantially.    In future?  It could possibly get very grim.     [In very quick terms - they will make MQA encoded audio sound (very) bad on non-MQA devices ... and people will think "MQA sounds great", and want to buy MQA]

 

[sir sanders zingmore]

19 minutes ago, legend said:

and because other people like Sir SZ do not understand the technology eg as in the post following yours  - and because some people do not seem willing to even try to find out whether it sounds better by actually listening to it rather just condemning for other reasons (lossiness and DRM).

The spirit of SNA is to explain things to people with less knowledge. You appear to be belittling my opinion rather than explaining what I've not understood. 

 

[davewantsmoore]

14 minutes ago, legend said:

Sony & Philips made a lot of money from licensing Redbook CD and we don't seem much poorer from it.

Sure ... but redbook didn't carry the same deep "feature set" that MQA does.     

[eltech]

3 minutes ago, legend said:

people do not seem willing to even try to find out whether it sounds better by actually listening to it

But some people think of the bigger picture, not just for themselves.

 

People make many sacrifices to make a better world.

I'm sure making the sacrifice of not using MQA isn't too much of a sacrifice to make anyway.

 

I think SACD and DSD sounds very good, and better than CD if its recorded naively in DSD, or taken straight from the analogue tape. But I didn't go down that path. Its a sacrifice.

2 minutes ago, LHC said:

I fear we are starting to get into conspiracy theory territory here.

 

You should be a bit careful using that term. It was invented by the CIA to smear people who were telling the truth about something that the CIA didn't want people to know about.

 

So when someone says "conspiracy theory" I immediately think that what is being proposed is actually a likely outcome.

 

6 minutes ago, LHC said:

and people are ok with that.

Well people use these products sometimes under duress, since there aren't many other options. Some might be OK, others might not be OK.

 

@LHC

 

Surely you have to agree that quality reduction is possible.

 

10 minutes ago, LHC said:

Nothing has changed, it is what companies do. 

Thats true, and there is a counterculture which does whatever it can to avoid these big companies.

At this critical point, it is really now where people need to voice their protest if they see a problem with the MQA system, because it will be too late if Skynet MQA takes hold.

 

[eltech]

13 minutes ago, davewantsmoore said:

 

*Are they really using the best masters

You'd expect so, given the recording companies are onboard, and the decoding is secured

But hang on! Are you saying the recording companies weren't onboard when they released all their CDs?

those same CDs from varying sources and varying quality, remasted, brickwalled?

This is those same companies were talking about right?

 

[davewantsmoore]

13 minutes ago, LHC said:

I fear we are starting to get into conspiracy theory territory here. Microsoft Windows has total market dominance, and people are ok with that. They bundled Internet Explorer to kill off Netscape, and people are ok with that. Apple create their own proprietary ecosystem, and people still buy into it. Nothing has changed, it is what companies do. 

Indeed...  but I don't think many people are really truly "OK" with any of that.   It's just the way things go.

 

... and it's the way things may go with audio recording/distribution/playing.

 

Quote

So even if MQA reduces quality in a fantastical future, not many people would care. They would have to reduce it to a much lower standard than MP3 to generate any market movement. 

You're right, they won't care - but what will happen is rather than being reduced to gramophone quality ... is they will just pay MQA licensing buried in the cost of their devices and the cost of their music.

 

... but meanwhile (and more important) the recording industry will have a grip on the source content (everything, down to the individual multitracks in a studio - is encoded MQA when it is created), and so nobody will be able to come up with any alternative.  Checkmate.

 

MQA could also be used as a system of ensuring that people pay-per-play.... otherwise, the deocder will not engage - and you will only get gramophone quality.

 

Consumers won't want to leave ... cos they don't care, and anyways "MQA sounds great" .... and the recording industry won't want change (99% of them benefit) .... artists could choose to boycot, but if MQA is market dominant, that may be hard, and there is no incentive...... and when nobody want to leave, then MQA can gradually increase their revenue share, as much as the market can bear.

 

 

[davewantsmoore]

6 minutes ago, eltech said:

But hang on! Are you saying the recording companies weren't onboard when they released all their CDs?

those same CDs from varying sources and varying quality, remasted, brickwalled?

This is those same companies were talking about right?

Yes.     One would assume that any record company getting involved with MQA would be interested in the success, and thus use the best version of the content (just as they claim they are doing).

 

You were wondering about this before.... in the past, my understanding is much of the reason for regional differences are much more mundane reasons, like only having access to X or Y tape read on machine A or B, or some other digital derivative available, or whatever.   They weren't organised or devious enough to do it "on purpose"... in fact it seemed like most of the people involved thought it wouldn't matter.

[eltech]

7 minutes ago, davewantsmoore said:

Yes.     One would assume that any record company getting involved with MQA would be interested in the success, and thus use the best version of the content (just as they claim they are doing).

I disagree with you. I don't think we can assume anything.

 

These are the same companies that deliberately make an original master of a CD go out of print to create demand, and then do a rubbish brickwall remaster, sell it to unsuspecting punters, so they have to go hunting high and low to find a secondhand good sounding version.

 

I'm sorry but the big labels have burnt me too many times, and I don't trust them one bit!

I have great admiration for the musicians and the recording engineers who do a good job, but WTF is with brickwalling?

 

How can you seriously trust this industry after desecrating so many recordings and then charging people for it?

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by eltech

[LHC]

I think a simple fix is to just insert a sunset clause into the licencing of MQA, say 7 years. 

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

1 hour ago, davewantsmoore said:

This is why I said you perhaps don't understand.   

 

It is totally about recording.... it's about getting this technology adopted deep into the recording process, like a trojan horse...... market "dominance" will be measured as all music being encoded with MQA ....   because it's all backwards compatible consumers can be as slow as they like in adoption.

 

Once they have market dominance, they can fiddle with the quality --- and make you want to adopt MQA in your playback path.   Fiddling with the quality is easier in a world where everything is streamed on demand .... not not totally impossible with downloaded or disc based content, as long as the player is internet connected.

 

Of course, we are a long way from this today, but the MQA system as described permits all of it.

How deep can they embed MQA in the recording process? I guess they can mandate a particular filter in the ADC, but I don't see how, for example, you can easily store individual tracks as MQA compressed and then edit or mix without going backwards and forwards to PCM, and even then there is scope for error. The vaunted "end to end" process seems to me in practice simply to be about knowing the ADC used at the recording stage and accounting for its errors in MQA encoding of the master. SImilarly, high bit depth is required in recording and processing and MQA reduces this.

 

[Guest Eggcup The Daft]

41 minutes ago, eltech said:

But hang on! Are you saying the recording companies weren't onboard when they released all their CDs?

those same CDs from varying sources and varying quality, remasted, brickwalled?

This is those same companies were talking about right?

 

I've argued here, and still believe, that at least popular music CDs have not really been made for audiophile purposes for many years now. At the moment, MQA is about improving sound quality. Since in some areas it may not be doing that, it becomes more necessary for those involved to ensure that the best quality starting point is used because then it will sound better in comparison.

 

Should MQA be a standard for PA/commercial radio/portable music use in a few years' time, watch the practices used to master current CDs migrate to it.

[eltech]

5 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

8 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

I've argued here, and still believe, that at least popular music CDs have not really been made for audiophile purposes for many years now.

 

I'd argue that contemporary popular music isnt fit for listening purposes at all.

 

So does this mean MP3 becomes extinct and iTunes will sell MQA?

 

It would be silly if you could still buy an MP3 but can't buy a FLAC/ wav.

[Guest rmpfyf]

1 hour ago, legend said:

I never claimed anything I said in that post was new but felt it needed repeating because people like Archimago seem to be claiming that MQA does not work technically - and because other people like Sir SZ do not understand the technology eg as in the post following yours  - and because some people do not seem willing to even try to find out whether it sounds better by actually listening to it rather just condemning for other reasons (lossiness and DRM).

 

Don't think Archimago is claiming it does not work technically - more that some of the performance claims don't offer the blanket improvements they've been mooted to do, which is correct. 

 

There's nothing unfair about condemning the format, access and revenue models for DRM. It's an extreme set and deserves critique. 

 

1 hour ago, legend said:

It only becomes a problem if a transmission system cannot handle the higher rates.  With my Internet connection I can still get drop-outs with Tidal transmitting at CD rates and so without MQA compression I could at best get the filter problems associated with these lower rates - but after MQA decoding Tidal master quality my Project S2 DAC shows 382 kHz rates which will have no filter problems as you say.  My reference to compromise was specifically related to the MQA compression and its possible negative effects - there a few free lunches.

 

CD audio is less than 200kB/sec counting packet headers. Whilst MQA allows some storage of higher-frequency content, rates in excess of 300kHz (even at 16 bit) require bandwidth in excess of this much - either you have a transient internet issue or your MQA rig is selling you a free lunch you don't quite have. Which, relative to the somewhat fallacious nature of the sales pitch offered (the original point here) is QED.

 

1 hour ago, legend said:

I do appreciate the problems having a lot of experience, both theoretical and practical, with the problems of innovation and markets:

- doing fundamental research in my DPhil in Oxford

- in R&D at Linn & Legend

- in my MBA at the AGSM

- in the policy section of IP Australia.

-

Sony & Philips made a lot of money from licensing Redbook CD and we don't seem much poorer from it.

 

I'm amused that you choose to respond here with your resume rather than an opinion.

 

Sony and Phillips did just fine indeed. Again, thank you for proving the point originally made (to you) - the Redbook revenue model was nothing like MQA's, nor were the potential market implications.

[legend]

Good to hear that I at least amused you this time and not "no pleasure to read"!

 

I was just trying to illustrate that I do understand the market issues involved in MQA, having been for a very long time in and around the generation and commercialisation of innovation.  It means I simply do not believe in an omnipresent and omnipotent future for MQA.  Others may differ.

Edited March 18, 2018 by legend
clarification

[davewantsmoore]

8 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

How deep can they embed MQA in the recording process?

They have stated their goal is that recording equipment will encode each individual stem/track in MQA at first create.   The equipment will do all the buzz-wordy things like document the quality of the recording chain (impulse response, noise, etc.) so they can "fix" this later  ..... but the real golden goose, is that there is now a full quality copy of the performance which is locked inside a reduced quality copy.   The only way to get it out is to pay MQA licensing.... when you extract the full quality, it is done in a secure way that prohibits you from keeping/copying the copy....  so you have to continue to keep paying the MQA license, to access the full quality version.    The reduced quality version (freely accessible to anyone) copy of the performance can be made very low quality (as low as the market can bear) .... and obviously the licensing fees can be made as high as the market can bear.

[davewantsmoore]

8 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

Should MQA be a standard for PA/commercial radio/portable music use in a few years' time, watch the practices used to master current CDs migrate to it.

Filtering can do all sorts of wondering things like make your PA/commercial radio/portable music sound better.    This isn't exclusive to MQA though  (even though they might like to infer otherwise).

 

Watch that we don't enter a world where, these filters are offered to us on terms which boil down to, while you are paying the MQA license you can use the filters  .... because we will arrive in a world where my portable bluetooth speaker sounds amazing when it is "made for MQA", and when I play "encoded with MQA" content on it   (and the pretty MQA light comes on adding to the certainty that it sounds good too).

 

.... because average consumers will not delve into the details of what is happening.   They will just know that MQA sounds drastically better.    If they are able to take an end-to-end presence in the recording to playback chain - that can be turned into drastically better.

 

Great power like this could be wonderful beyond our wildest dreams for everyone ... or it could be a horrible dystopia.

Edited March 18, 2018 by davewantsmoore

[davewantsmoore]

9 hours ago, legend said:

My reference to compromise was specifically related to the MQA compression and its possible negative effects - there a few free lunches.

Re: negative effects ..... I don't think anyone should be worried about not getting back the "full quality" when the best MQA decoder is used.    Artists, recording companies, audiophiles, etc. will not accept that ....   the "MQA light" needs to be agreed as a measure of quality for this to all work.

 

... but as technology develops, they can make advances on the other side of the "compression coin".   Today, we're able to get the full quality returned from a packed PCM 24/48 container.    What if in the future, squeeze the ratio of what is used for the PCM core, and what is used for the opaque MQA data? ......  or if we can some how encoder the 'full lossless quality' inside a lower resolution container  (eg. a lossy core).

 

The MQA scheme permits all of this.    The MQA scheme allows them to revoke authentication for what is considered MQA today, and replace it with tomorrows MQA, just by a simple changing encryption keys.    It even allows them to offer multiple source encodings depending on whatever parameters they can detect.

 

For example.   They could strike a deal with Apple Computer.    Apple computers have access to PCM 24/48 core quality.    Apple customers with MQA playback chains, can unlock the full quality as normal.     Other companies (and their customers) with out such an agreement, might get a stream served to them which have a lower quality core quality (eg. 8/16 .... or lossy) .... these customers can still unlock the complete full quality using an MQA decoder  (so it is of no consequence to licensed MQA playback paths).

 

Thus Apple Computer can pay to get on the "we make music sound better for you" bandwagon.

 

[or perhaps, I'm just wearing an extra big tin-foil hat this week ?!]

 

[davewantsmoore]

9 hours ago, eltech said:

I disagree with you. I don't think we can assume anything.

Given the potential power that MQA offers ..... then I think it is safe to assume the everyone wants it to succeed.

Given the content is secure, then there's another problem licked.

Given that MQA are currently positioning this, how we'd expect (quality) ... then you'd expect they demand the highest quality version.

 

Then I think it's a quite reasonable assumption.

 

They would not want any real differences in quality, source providence, etc. to be caught out .... as rmpfyf has pointed out, what is going on in various places looking at "filtering" is really a side show, and nobody with any deep understanding, is surprised/interested.

[davewantsmoore]

8 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

SImilarly, high bit depth is required in recording and processing and MQA reduces this.

MQA in the recording process could be done with 32bit PCM containers if desired.

[Rob181]

9 hours ago, LHC said:

I fear we are starting to get into conspiracy theory territory here. Microsoft Windows has total market dominance, and people are ok with that

No they"re not...they don't have a viable choice.

Microsoft is the perfect example of why MQA should be "feared"...

[eltech]

1 hour ago, davewantsmoore said:

then you'd expect they demand the highest quality version.

I think you should do a bit more reaserch on this.

Out of curiousity I've been reading a few threads on other fora to guage other peoples opinions about the source of the masters, and I think its fair to say that its hit and miss just like its always been

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38092-trying-out-mqa-for-classical-listening-questions-and-observations/?do=findComment&comment=762994

 

I understand that "the best master" is personal, but if its the same-old story of having to hunt around for one you like and reverting to your old trusty CD to get the sound you want, its not an advantage to use mqa.

 

I suppose you've seen this review of the sound of mqa here?

Then later someone who is pro MQA on another forum asks that same poster about the masters he compared here and here

Although I didnt find if that person provided an answer, it seems clear that the mqa masters are not necessarily the best going around.

 

[wolster]

10 hours ago, rmpfyf said:

 

 

I'm amused that you choose to respond here with your resume rather than an opinion.

 

 

@rmpfyf

That was an unnecessary low blow, particularly as you knew exactly the context in which Rod mentioned some of his experience.

 

I would also like to say that my positive listening experience with MQA was not the result of chasing better sound. I already owned a Bluesound Node 2 (not an expensive streamer) when Bluesound, in their wisdom, decided to include MQA capability in an update. I also didn't go spending extra money trying to buy MQA files. Tidal simply started including MQA albums in a subscription that I was already paying for. That means that I had no temptation to justify any extra expense in voicing an opinion and I am paying no extra fees.

Incidentally, the list of MQA albums available has grown significantly as more music labels come onboard 

 

[Guest Sime]

I’ve just spent the last 45mins with two versions of two songs using the Brooklyn. Coldplay “Magic” both Rebook but one a cd rip, the other MQA Tidal and R.E.M’s Drive, one 24/192 and the other Tidal MQA which converts to 24/192. 

 

Ilistened to each version back and forth quite a few times and concluded, by a bees dick, that MQA was more listenable, only because the MQA version seems more relaxed. And in no way did I hear any differences like the guys in the above linked thread noticed. If I was blind tested here, there’s no way I’d know what was what based on imaging, or holes in the sound stage. 

And overall, with my results, the MQA was a streamed 192, so by that, it wins, given both were practically as good as each other. 

Edited March 19, 2018 by Sime

[Guest rmpfyf]

3 minutes ago, wolster said:

@rmpfyf

That was an unnecessary low blow, particularly as you knew exactly the context in which Rod mentioned some of his experience.

 

No, that's your perspective, just as mine was that a statement of credentials without a point doesn't actually point to a lot. Some may find the approach offensive against a spirit of an open discussion where all treat each other as equals in an open forum, some may feel these actions belie insecurity, and some might have that that it didn't really answer or prove anything - nothing was provided to a discussion around whether MQA's revenue, licensing and access models amount to DRM, whether it's extreme, whether it's acceptable. 

 

Accordingly I had no idea the context in which Rod mentioned some of his experience. In also having some experience in these matters without needing to list as much, I'd respectfully suggest the most valuable arbiters of what's acceptable in any attempt to commercialise innovation are ultimately customers. I'd be arrogant to the point of corporate suicide for any amount of experience if I thought my opinion ranked more important than my customers'. All here are customers @wolster, none need state as much, though plenty are aggrieved with what MQA proposes - some enough to not wish to even try the format. It's a robust discussion being had around something unprecedented in audio which I hope is continued to let it happen, and that yourself, Rod and others continue to participate.

 

Rod subsequently provided context in his next message. @legend, thank you for providing this much. 

 

Rod also makes great speakers, and we expect great things accordingly. For what I've experienced of his professional work so far, I'd sooner send him my money that Bob Stuart and co.

[Snoopy8]

4 minutes ago, Sime said:

....

 buy a bees dick, ... 

How does one purchase a bee's dick?