MQA Users & Discussion Thread

[Satanica]

5 minutes ago, sir sanders zingmore said:

WTF does “resemble music” even mean?

 

It means that Avant Garde is not currently supported.

[Steffen]

2 hours ago, Satanica said:

 

"The blogger’s test failed because he submitted signals that do not resemble music to an encoder that was configured only for music works."

 

 

Yes, as a budding musician I too find this statement very hurtful.

 

Edited May 21, 2021 by Steffen

[zippi]

39 minutes ago, Steffen said:

 

Yes, as a budding musician I too find this statement very hurtful.

 

there there, mate @Steffen

[Bunno77]

lol

 

Edited May 21, 2021 by Bunno77
,

[Stereophilus]

2 hours ago, Bunno77 said:

lol

 

You may want to give due credit to Chris Connaker for posting that on AS.  It is good to see that forum (and Chris himself) actively calling out the weasel words from Bob Stuart.

 

Interesting that Bob Stuart’s initials are BS…  

Edited May 21, 2021 by Stereophilus
Grammar

[Bunno77]

29 minutes ago, Stereophilus said:

You may want to give due credit to Chris Connaker for posting that on AS.  It is good to see that forum (and Chris himself) actively calling out the weasel words from Bob Stuart.

 

Interesting that Bob Stuart’s initials are BS…  

It's brilliant. And yep copied from him. My poor pc skills and laziness are to blame for lack of credit but really we should all already know how much of a champion he is especially on this subject. 

[LHC]

14 hours ago, Stereophilus said:

You may want to give due credit to Chris Connaker for posting that on AS.  It is good to see that forum (and Chris himself) actively calling out the weasel words from Bob Stuart.

 

 

Yes, but Chris also made the mistake at RMAF 2018 thinking that the lossless logo was still in use and represents MQA's position at that time. He was corrected live in the RMAF video and accepted his error. 

 

Of course this doesn't change the need for MQA to also be completely transparent and acknowledge early on that they did used that logo. 

Edited May 22, 2021 by LHC

[Guest]

I like the picture from this post! 

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/mqa-review-technical-analysis.10886/page-15#post-348914

 

[Volunteer]

23 minutes ago, Snoopy8 said:

I like the picture from this post! 

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/mqa-review-technical-analysis.10886/page-15#post-348914

 

 

Hmmmm. Now, how tempted am I to cross-post that to the Roon forum about now?

 

I guarantee that if someone does cross-post it, there will be an absolute conflagration from all the mqa acolytes.

[GregWormald]

I wish you all would be more careful about what you post!

Now I have to clean the wine off my keyboard and drips off my nose.

[Guest]

 

[BugPowderDust]

 

Sorta tells you which side of the fence they have elected to sit on.

[Stereophilus]

15 minutes ago, BugPowderDust said:

 

Sorta tells you which side of the fence they have elected to sit on.

That’s a big opportunity missed for Stereophile… They’ve just repeated the Bob Stuart spiel without actually addressing the legitimate issues found.  Very disappointing.

[zippi]

8 minutes ago, Stereophilus said:

That’s a big opportunity missed for Stereophile… They’ve just repeated the Bob Stuart spiel without actually addressing the legitimate issues found.  Very disappointing.

Fully agree - a somewhat to totally autistic take on things. Dismisses all GoldenSound highlighted findings without actually addressing anything head on. Very post truth and evasive.

[BugPowderDust]

Worst of all, they didn’t even press for MQA to come out of the cupboard and let them objectively test MQA properly as an impartial body, which is what they have done with all equipment reviews for decades.

 

The fact that they didn’t ask or offer to test is galling.

[frednork]

Guys, very sorry if this question has been answered previously but what problem does MQA solve that qobuz at 192kHz  doesnt? 

 

Edit: from an end user perspective that is. anyway.

Edited June 6, 2021 by frednork

[tripitaka]

5 minutes ago, frednork said:

Guys, very sorry if this question has been answered previously but what problem does MQA solve that qobuz at 192kHz  doesnt? 

I'm not sure it solves any problem that 44.1kHz doesnt solve, any higher frequencies are pure bonus   

[BugPowderDust]

8 minutes ago, frednork said:

Guys, very sorry if this question has been answered previously but what problem does MQA solve that qobuz at 192kHz  doesnt? 

 

Edit: from an end user perspective that is. anyway.

Well compared to 24x192, MQA apparently solves issues:

- With low bandwidth links it uses less data than full bitrate 24/192 (not a problem of note for most people these days)

- Something called “de-blurring” which is apparently aimed at fixing temporal smearing of audio due to multiple stages of adc in the production process (but it really just sounds more like Bob Stuart smearing bullshit on gullible people)

 

It also seems likely that the real end goal is to stop labels streaming (and losing control of) their high bitrate masters, the “Crown Jewels” as MQA have apparently called them in various quotations around the internet. People get MQA instead and the masters never get released to the great unwashed.

[frednork]

1 minute ago, BugPowderDust said:

Well compared to 24x192, MQA apparently solves issues:

- With low bandwidth links it uses less data than full bitrate 24/192 (not a problem of note for most people these days)

- Something called “de-blurring” which is apparently aimed at fixing temporal smearing of audio due to multiple stages of adc in the production process (but it really just sounds more like Bob Stuart smearing bullshit on gullible people)

 

It also seems likely that the real end goal is to stop labels streaming (and losing control of) their high bitrate masters, the “Crown Jewels” as MQA have apparently called them in various quotations around the internet. People get MQA instead and the masters never get released to the great unwashed.

 

Yeah, thats what I thought. Not to mention, modified from the original in an non transparent way.

 

Its easy to see why Bob Stuart thinks its great. So the really interesting question is why are all these industry types are backing it. Whats in it for them?

[BugPowderDust]

1 minute ago, frednork said:

 

Yeah, thats what I thought. Not to mention, modified from the original in an non transparent way.

 

Its easy to see why Bob Stuart thinks its great. So the really interesting question is why are all these industry types are backing it. Whats in it for them?

Well, I’d argue that the modification to a lossy codec from lossless pcm isn’t a problem that MQA solves, just one it creates.

 

it’s funny watching all the industry insiders crawling over themselves to protect MQA. From stereophile to Amir at ASR, it’s really only Chris and the guys at Audiophilestyle that seem to be dissenting. 
 

bob stuart must have some great pics of these guys aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s plane or something.

[frednork]

Considering Amir's audience is the measurement centric cohort, his support for it makes no sense at all.

Is there a payroll? And how do i get on it cos it must be bloody lucrative for these guys to reject the industry standard for this new black box proprietary standard.

[GregWormald]

3 hours ago, BugPowderDust said:

<snip> From stereophile to Amir at ASR, it’s really only Chris and the guys at Audiophilestyle that seem to be dissenting. 

Actually there are lots of professionals who are dissenting: Linn, PSAudio, and Neil Young to name three.

[MLXXX]

10 hours ago, frednork said:

Considering Amir's audience is the measurement centric cohort, his support for it makes no sense at all.

Is there a payroll? And how do i get on it cos it must be bloody lucrative for these guys to reject the industry standard for this new black box proprietary standard.

 

On the on hand, we have the evidence of GoldenSound's  reports of testing  the MQA processed files that came up on Tidal after GoldenSound uploaded music interspersed/combined with test signals, and finding artefacts.  On the other hand we have the evidence that technical presentations of the  MQA process have admitted from the start that certain artefacts are created.

 

The question for someone interested in very good sound quality is whether the so-called deblurring claimed to be achieved by MQA outweighs the artefacts admittedly created.

 

To my mind there is probably a small kernel of truth that MQA processing could benefit certain old mastered recordings involving earlier ADC technology, or particular ways of resampling down to 44.1kHz for CDs.  I suspect the differences in sound would be at the barely audible level. And to fully reap a benefit it would probably be necessary to measure the apparent blurring in a non-automated way.

 

Automatically creating MQA versions of recently mastered digital recordings strikes me as unlikely to provide a useful deblurring benefit, and only to lead to artefacts, albeit that the artefacts might practically never be audible for conventional music.

 

So no, I don't think amir needs to be on any payroll to concede that there  could be MQA benefits in some circumstances.

Edited June 6, 2021 by MLXXX

[davewantsmoore]

16 hours ago, BugPowderDust said:

Sorta tells you which side of the fence they have elected to sit on.

 

The whole theme of what they are saying is fair enough.

 

If you send things to an encoder that it wasn't designed to perform well on.... and/or you ignore errors from the encoder .... then you will get a poor result.

 

The whole idea that such behaviour from a codec, that while it will "mangle" some signals .... will "sound good" ...... isn't as far fetched as it may sound.

 

 

As many famous people have said (in varios ways) "what they eye can see the ears don't mind" (or words to that effect) ..... ie. you can measure things which look ugly, which don't sound so bad.

 

All that being said, I'm not super convinced myself.... and definitely not if MQA becomes the "underlying standard" for everything.

 

 

... but if this is people "primary rejection" of the whole thing, then I think they are barking up the wrong tree .... and are probably going to lose the fight.

 

 

[Volunteer]

Pro-mqa crowd have an unshakeable argument: it sounds better to them. You can't argue with someone else's subjectivity.

 

Anti-mqa crowd ought ignore any component that can be undone by marketing BS and mealy-mouthed words. You cannot argue against it when obfuscation and moving the goalposts is the standard modus operandi. Instead, the anti crowd should focus on the undeniable fact that this is a solution looking for a problem that just happens to be grasping at owning the entire playback chain and locking us all into a proprietary format. That fact is the killer for the anti argument.

 

I don't give a flying-**** how good it might sound, I am not signing-up to it. I'd rather stop streaming altogether than have no choice but to use it.