MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[levimax]

What's "the market" in this case specifically? I see ZERO market incentive for any consumer to support MQA currently (technical claims substantiation pending, and could change this if they ever grow a spine to be open for proper audit to their claims), yet the market still hasn't stopped MQA's existence even after all these years.

But lets assume the market is people/other companies (whatever). The question I am actually asking is just that at the core. When you say the market would stop them. How and why would you think this would be possible? Like you're telling me if MQA was everywhere there would be no more "going further" even by a single bit?

Also, the fact that you've now compared the practice to a move like ransomeware, wholly demonstrates why things like MQA are detested by anyone who takes a second to think about what it actually represents (not the what the claims represent, but the reality it currently finds itself in - a format making nonsensical claims that haven't been substantiated, if they were, this would be an entirely moot conversation).

So we're now both aware what sort of trajectory (or simply direction) MQA is poised toward. So I have to ask again. Why as a consumer would I let them even get this far, let alone as far as my prior hypothetical where I am able to give music companies full MQA compliance from consumers? If I protest MQA today, what relief do I get if I don't protest it and allow companies to keep fighting their silly battle with piracy? Will the companies give me something if I eliminate piracy for them or something?

I'm just not understanding what I lose battling against MQA now, versus MQA future-tense where it owns the market hypothetically and where piracy doesn't exist. What have I gained in that future precisely?

I agree with your perspective on MQA but as consumers the only battling we can really do is switch from Tidal ... Which will only help if MQA does't take over all steaming. I am also adding to my CD collection at rock bottom prices... Not sure what else to do.

 

[abdo123]

yet the market still hasn't stopped MQA's existence even after all these years.

you call Tidal's micro share on the market an existence? It's like saying Audioquest is the biggest audio manufacturer on the planet, MQA is unheard of by the general public. MQA is failing or at a stalemate honestly.

How and why would you think this would be possible? Like you're telling me if MQA was everywhere there would be no more "going further" even by a single bit?

I don't know why you immediately jumped to an extreme, MQA will never have a monopoly over music compression, not in a million years. not even Hi-Res music with big players like Amazon joining the niche. A Monopoly is never okay (unless you're the reason behind the market's exisistence in the first place like the Playstation or the iOS, on both the hardware and software level, then they deserve that market in its entirety).

All i said that i would love for us to have a standardized way to compress music and authenticate them in the production level in a less snake oily way. If MQA evolve to be such a product, or it inspires such products in the future, I will welcome them.

 

[ElNino]

There is nothing that MQA does that cannot be done better by open codecs.

Prove it

John Siau has already demonstrated that the lossy compression scheme used by MQA is inferior to lossless bit-limited FLAC. You literally get larger file sizes with MQA at lower quality. It’s nonsensical.

As for the reconstruction filters, they’ve been reverse-engineered and are uniformly terrible. There is no intelligible engineering reason for using them.

 

[abdo123]

There is nothing that MQA does that cannot be done better by open codecs.

Prove it

it can ensure that the file you received came directly from the publisher / producer without any tampering. WITHOUT copy protection.

 

[awdeeoh]

John Siau has already demonstrated that the lossy compression scheme used by MQA is inferior to lossless bit-limited FLAC. You literally get larger file sizes with MQA at lower quality. It’s nonsensical.

where is the implementation? I want to use that lossless bit-limited FLAC.

 

[tmtomh]

it can ensure that the file you received came directly from the publisher / producer without any tampering.

Except the tampering of the MQA encoding process itself.

And is there really any concern that a file downloaded from 7digital, Apple iTunes, Qobuz, HDTracks or anywhere else is not as-delivered from the publisher? A solution in search of a problem, as always with MQA.

 

[abdo123]

Except the tampering of the MQA encoding process itself.

And is there really any concern that a file downloaded from 7digital, Apple iTunes, Qobuz, HDTracks or anywhere else is not as-delivered from the publisher? A solution in search of a problem, as always with MQA.

would you rather Apple tampers with the files or the producer of the track themselves?

 

[KeenObserver]

I paid nothing for MQA. Nothing for the content, and nothing for the decoder in Roon.

I guess Mr. Rupert is paying for it now. If all goes as planned, we will all be paying for it in the future.
MQA Ltd has lost well over 20 million pounds since its inception. If they have been willing to put that much money into it, they must be expecting to reap huge profits from it in the future. Those profits are paid for by the music consumer.

 

[dmac6419]

Except the tampering of the MQA encoding process itself.

And is there really any concern that a file downloaded from 7digital, Apple iTunes, Qobuz, HDTracks or anywhere else is not as-delivered from the publisher? A solution in search of a problem, as always with MQA.

Um HDTRACKS was known for upsampling files to a higher resolution

 

[tmtomh]

would you rather Apple tampers with the files or the producer of the track themselves?

False choice. There are plenty of places to get lossless downloads with no AAC lossy conversion or MQA lossy conversion and bit-depth corruption - and you know it.

 

[ElNino]

where is the implementation? I want to use that lossless bit-limited FLAC.

Use the bps flag set to 17.

 

[Tks]

There is nothing that MQA does that cannot be done better by open codecs.

Prove it

Burden of proof here seems deceptive. The state of affairs is what currently that poster was talking about, not actually making the first positive claim in the debate, the actual burden of proof is that MQA by definition exists on the premise that it does something better technically. The person you replied to isn't making a positive claim absent of the first positive claim made by MQA (that it does offer something better, which actually hasn't been demonstrated). For the person to prove his claim in the current situation, he would first need to offer empirical evidence for the negative (which is silly) as he doesn't have audit access to MQA's technical function, and he would have to also disprove the validity of all blind tests that show MQA's premise falls short.

 

[tmtomh]

Um HDTRACKS was known for upsampling files to a higher resolution

There are indeed plenty of high-res digital files that have no frequencies in them above 22.05kHz (the Nyquist frequency for rebook 44.1kHz). That's not HDTracks - that's the labels delivering high-res files from non-high-res sources. An MQA file made from the same source will have the same issue. Completely irrelevant to this discussion - the MQA "authentication" light will still go on with such a file.

 

[Tks]

you call Tidal's micro share on the market an existence? It's like saying Audioquest is the biggest audio manufacturer on the planet, MQA is unheard of by the general public. MQA is failing or at a stalemate honestly.



I don't know why you immediately jumped to an extreme, MQA will never have a monopoly over music compression, not in a million years. not even Hi-Res music with big players like Amazon joining the niche. A Monopoly is never okay (unless you're the reason behind the market's exisistence in the first place like the Playstation or the iOS, on both the hardware and software level, then they deserve that market in its entirety).

All i said that i would love for us to have a standardized way to compress music and authenticate them in the production level in a less snake oily way. If MQA evolve to be such a product, or it inspires such products in the future, I will welcome them.

Okay, so can we then at least agree, DRM needs not have a place in this equation? Blockchain could be used for this ordeal.

 

[abdo123]

False choice. There are plenty of places to get lossless downloads with no AAC lossy conversion or MQA lossy conversion and bit-depth corruption - and you know it.

Do any of these places give any sort of insurance that these tracks are delivered to you in exactly the same shape as they were received from the producer?

 

[tmtomh]

Do any of these places give any sort of insurance that these tracks are delivered to you in exactly the same shape as they were received from the producer?

This is complete and utter nonsense. Just stop.

 

[abdo123]

This is complete and utter nonsense. Just stop.

Just admit that MQA is the only format that actually does this (in principal).

 

[maverickronin]

Do any of these places give any sort of insurance that these tracks are delivered to you in exactly the same shape as they were received from the producer label?

FTFY

 

[abdo123]

Blockchain could be used for this ordeal.

Sure, why not.

Still standardized compression would be nice

 

[tmtomh]

Just admit that MQA is the only format that actually does this (in principal).

I will not, for the following reason: any time the MQA "authentication" light lights up for any sample-rate resolution above 96kHz, it's a lie and has literally been altered from the shape it was received from the publisher: Any 176.4k or 192k or higher sample-rate source file is destructively downsampled by the MQA encoder to 88.2k or 96k before it applies any of its "folding" and lossy encoding. So MQA is in fact that only format that reliably misrepresents an adulterated file as something it is not.

MQA is indeed quite reliable, if you want to be confident that you're being lied to.