CA takes aim at MQA

KeithR

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From page 5 on the thread:

Miguelito thinks that Keith Jarrett's Koeln Concert sounds a bit fuller on MQA vs. the 24/96 version from HDTracks, but he doesn't know if that's on the original recording or an artifact. He thinks that the MQA version of Morrissey's "Viva Hate" doesn't sound any different, and the MQA version of INXS "Kick" sounds worse than the Redbook.

I have the original Kicks vinyl- it sounds like utter crap to begin with.
 

rbbert

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So the bottom line seems to be, don't worry about it? The tech guys will battle it out with the RIAA or IEEE or AES or whomever, while the rest of us play music? Or is this a call to audiophiles everywhere to get some activism going and protest this MQA thing? The reason I ask isn't because of the facts - we have more facts than the average audiophile wants to try to digest. The reason I ask is because the angst and anger seems to be drowning out the thoughtful debate, at least in some places.

Well, one problem is that for the last 3 years about 99% of the audiophile "press" has been consistently singing the praises of MQA, parroting Bob Stuart's words and press releases as if they were gospel truth. In fact most of what has come out of MQA has been technical assertions, many of which are demonstrably false, as Archimago points out in his article. It is worth noting that in every instance of which I am aware, when called out for one of their "untruths", MQA either admits they fudged the truth, or else responds by discussing something else about MQA, a classic avoidance technique used when there is something to hide. So this is certainly a reason for some of the anger, because silly us, the audiophile consumers, the people who buy or read the audiophile press, apparently don't count.
As far as the angst, Al M. mentioned the reason for that earlier in the thread, and it is something many others in the hardware industry (most notably and frequently the late Charles Hansen of Ayre) have expressed concern about. And it is a reason for concern; overtly lossy and proprietary digital files becoming the only way to buy or listen to better-than-CD quality digital music.
 

dalethorn

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Well, one problem is that for the last 3 years about 99% of the audiophile "press" has been consistently singing the praises of MQA, parroting Bob Stuart's words and press releases as if they were gospel truth. In fact most of what has come out of MQA has been technical assertions, many of which are demonstrably false, as Archimago points out in his article. It is worth noting that in every instance of which I am aware, when called out for one of their "untruths", MQA either admits they fudged the truth, or else responds by discussing something else about MQA, a classic avoidance technique used when there is something to hide. So this is certainly a reason for some of the anger, because silly us, the audiophile consumers, the people who buy or read the audiophile press, apparently don't count.
As far as the angst, Al M. mentioned the reason for that earlier in the thread, and it is something many others in the hardware industry (most notably and frequently the late Charles Hansen of Ayre) have expressed concern about. And it is a reason for concern; overtly lossy and proprietary digital files becoming the only way to buy or listen to better-than-CD quality digital music.

I wasn't involved in this until about 10 days ago, and part of the reason was because of people going bat***t crazy on one particular forum that sees itself as THE experts in this. I understand that people fear that DRM is trying to make a comeback, and ruin their democratic freedom vis-a-vis music files. The fear is palpable even. I think those people need to get a life, and see that there are many, many far worse things threatening them than DRM.

For me, exploring MQA is a good diversion from religion and politics, so I have no angst about it. But it is interesting to see the level of foaming-at-the-mouth hate some people are expressing toward who they see as supporters of MQA. What I've found so far to worry about isn't so much the files, but the DACs. As long as we have the ability to buy a non-MQA DAC, I think we'll be OK.
 

KeithR

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Well, one problem is that for the last 3 years about 99% of the audiophile "press" has been consistently singing the praises of MQA, parroting Bob Stuart's words and press releases as if they were gospel truth. In fact most of what has come out of MQA has been technical assertions, many of which are demonstrably false, as Archimago points out in his article. It is worth noting that in every instance of which I am aware, when called out for one of their "untruths", MQA either admits they fudged the truth, or else responds by discussing something else about MQA, a classic avoidance technique used when there is something to hide. So this is certainly a reason for some of the anger, because silly us, the audiophile consumers, the people who buy or read the audiophile press, apparently don't count.
As far as the angst, Al M. mentioned the reason for that earlier in the thread, and it is something many others in the hardware industry (most notably and frequently the late Charles Hansen of Ayre) have expressed concern about. And it is a reason for concern; overtly lossy and proprietary digital files becoming the only way to buy or listen to better-than-CD quality digital music.

This isn’t entirely true - Stereophile has been doing articles for months now.

And Hansen’s Pono player with Neal was an utter failure. There are many reasons why which at least MQA is trying to avoid. I know it sounds all peachy to just have studios let us download 24/192 masters in the name of freedom but that isn’t happening. Don’t people realize this by now?
 

rbbert

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This isn’t entirely true - Stereophile has been doing articles for months now.

And Hansen’s Pono player with Neal was an utter failure. There are many reasons why which at least MQA is trying to avoid. I know it sounds all peachy to just have studios let us download 24/192 masters in the name of freedom but that isn’t happening. Don’t people realize this by now?
Stereophile has only become skeptical in the last 2 issues, and the skepticism is still so interwoven with positive comments about MQA it could almost be missed :p

Pono may have been a failure, but I think HDTracks, highresaudio, Qobuz, 7digital, Prostudiomasters, etc are doing better financially than any of the streaming ventures.
 

KeithR

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Stereophile has only become skeptical in the last 2 issues, and the skepticism is still so interwoven with positive comments about MQA it could almost be missed :p

Pono may have been a failure, but I think HDTracks, highresaudio, Qobuz, 7digital, Prostudiomasters, etc are doing better financially than any of the streaming ventures.

Rob, these other sites are *tiny* and cater to audiophiles. that's like saying since Elusive Disc is profitable, its a better model than amazon

look at the big 3 24/192 files on hdtracks. its absurdly low. Pono tried to change that and failed. MQA has over 10,000 titles, most from the bigs.
 

rbbert

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Rob, these other sites are *tiny* and cater to audiophiles. that's like saying since Elusive Disc is profitable, its a better model than amazon

look at the big 3 24/192 files on hdtracks. its absurdly low. Pono tried to change that and failed. MQA has over 10,000 titles, most from the bigs.

But so what? MQA is at best a stopgap, like MP3/MP4, and should be relegated to the same dustbin as far as audiophiles are concerned. It's a solution in search of a problem as far as the consumer is concerned. For the record companies, it's a not so subtle attempt at DRM.
 

awsmone

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I was interested to read an article on hifi advice where he had the meridian system with MQA and did the 2l test he preferred 44.1 and mqa on the meridian

My own experience with 2l was similar the mqa tracks were different but I wouldn't claim startling better and some I didn't like

I think it will just become another standard like dts on video

I think with the big 3 is the question will the hi res tracks be removed and MQA be all you can get

To be fair even my experience with hi res is variable some are wonderful and others ordinary

And I have some 44.1 which are magical

Eventually I think most new DACs will support it due to streaming

What is a concern is the long term financial viability of these services

I have read that despite Tidal's turnover it may not be making money no expert here though
 

rbbert

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None of the streaming services are profitable, it’s only a question of how big the yearly losses are for each. But...amazon.com took well over a decade (maybe 2, I can’t remember) before it showed any profit, and look at it now.
 

KeithR

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None of the streaming services are profitable, it’s only a question of how big the yearly losses are for each. But...amazon.com took well over a decade (maybe 2, I can’t remember) before it showed any profit, and look at it now.

Well, there is no, real lossless download market at all 11 years later. its an audiophile niche. and how many posts have we seen over the years complaining about upsampled albums and not knowing what they are really downloading even with what those sites do sell.

if we want broad acceptance of higher resolution audio, we at least know which way doesn't work - and to be honest, i simply think people don't want to rebuy their entire library in hi res. this has always been the studios mistake. Ultra HD video will make the same one.
 

rbbert

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Well, there is no, real lossless download market at all 11 years later. its an audiophile niche. and how many posts have we seen over the years complaining about upsampled albums and not knowing what they are really downloading even with what those sites do sell.

if we want broad acceptance of higher resolution audio, we at least know which way doesn't work - and to be honest, i simply think people don't want to rebuy their entire library in hi res. this has always been the studios mistake. Ultra HD video will make the same one.

I was referring to streaming in general. At this point in time, it would be hard to rank Tidal as one of the services likely to continue, given its losses and market share so far. What will happen to MQA and hi-res then is the question. I suspect if Spotify follows through on its plan to offer lossless, that will be the death knell for Tidal (unless the record companies themselves decide to support it financially, a small but real possibility), and then we may all find out
 

KeithR

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I was referring to streaming in general. At this point in time, it would be hard to rank Tidal as one of the services likely to continue, given its losses and market share so far. What will happen to MQA and hi-res then is the question. I suspect if Spotify follows through on its plan to offer lossless, that will be the death knell for Tidal (unless the record companies themselves decide to support it financially, a small but real possibility), and then we may all find out

I agree, and said this a long time ago - the biggest threat is Tidal folding, not MQA etc.

That said, I do think Tidal has value to other media companies and would be scooped up cheaply - its really not losing tons of money for a big company. Spotify's IPO may spur the process.
 

rbbert

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Unless Tidal folds and MQA becomes the only (potentially) better-than-CD-quality offered by the Big 3. That would not be a good situation for audiophiles, IMO, yet it appears to have a high probability of becoming true
 

dalethorn

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I wouldn't want to add to any confusion on this, but I do have at least one MQA'd CD and download that weren't marked as such anywhere on the package, the disc itself, or liner notes. I wouldn't have even known that if a music reviewer hadn't pointed it out. It's interesting that while people are concerned about labeling all sorts of things like food, or the certification labels we see on electronics hardware, there's no broad awareness of whether MQA will make its way into the discs and the files with no notice.
 

Dr Tone

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Unless Tidal folds and MQA becomes the only (potentially) better-than-CD-quality offered by the Big 3. That would not be a good situation for audiophiles, IMO, yet it appears to have a high probability of becoming true

I still believe Apple holds the power, but they may never move to lossless streaming.
 

Priaptor

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One person here suggested going through a contentious "comment section" on another site to try to find examples of what users suggest are inferior MQA masterings. I'd much prefer to have suggestions here, starting with the worst examples. I can't afford to buy 100 albums in two versions each, but if someone who is really against MQA has an example or two, that would be a good start.

Go to the 2L site and buy any of their superb recordings in DXD and MQA and listen for yourself.
 

dalethorn

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Go to the 2L site and buy any of their superb recordings in DXD and MQA and listen for yourself.

Well, so much for that idea. The very site where the infamous anti-MQA article is hosted is the same site that told me I could buy DSD/DSF files and "conversion would be easy". A week of work later, and JRiverMC unable to make a FLAC playable on Foobar2000**, and the whole effort was wasted. I had constant advice from a Stereophile editor, experts from CA, and experts from JRMC advising on the settings to make those conversions, and at the end of that failed process, persons at CA admitted that they also failed to get conversions playable on Foobar, and someone admitted to withholding key information.

**I have several hundred 24/88 through 24/192 FLACs from several high-res sites, and every one plays perfectly on Foobar2000, regardless of DAC. But the JRMC conversions not only didn't play, they fatally corrupted my Foobar install, so I had to start over several times, chewing up lots of time.
 

awsmone

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It seems to me the issues are

1. Will MQA hegemony mean that other high resolution formats on download sites disappear ( ok for those who already have this content, but not newbies)
2. MQA will become defacto the only way to play back high resolution content as you need a compatible dac and it has DRM code
3. MQA SQ is subjective and track dependent( like most formats actually), from a technical stand point it is not a superior format, but an engineering compromise with some remastering effort, the amount of which is done is unclear. The compromise appears to be that they cut areas where there is little actual substantive musical content, and allow artefacts to be present in return for a small package size, and remastering and filtering SQ improvement, some of a measurable and others subjective manner.
 

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