MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[dmac6419]

What is the purpose then of testing equipment to beyond the quality level of the music. Again, if we are going to test for the most exacting musical reproduction equipment, should we not seek the best possible music to play on it?
And, their will be royalty payments to use MQA on equipment and music. The music consumer ultimately pays for this. If MQA does not provide any benefit to the music consumer, why would the music consumer want this? There is nothing that MQA does that cannot be done better by open codecs. MQA benefits MQA and the studios at a cost to the music consumer. And you wonder why the music consumer would be opposed to it.

I paid for codecs when I bought my AVR,didn't complain one bit

 

[KeenObserver]

I paid for codecs when I bought my AVR,didn't complain one bit

You , Sir, are a magnificent human being!

 

[dmac6419]

You , Sir, are a magnificent human being!

Likewise

 

[Tks]

Because I know record companies won’t rest before they find a way to completely eliminate piracy, Streaming succeeded with that to a large extent, but audiophiles were left in a gray zone.

The whole shtick of MQA is that the tracks are supposedly encoded by the record labels themselves and are ‘authentic’ (authenticated). I appreciate that concept, but i also rather have a slightly more intelligent codec that benefits the consumer. Honestly screw backwards compatibility, just ‘DSD’ it but make it good.

Thank you for the direct reply btw.

So what you're saying is, you're wanting to grant things like DRM in the presumption that if you grant them this, they won't find new frontiers to further their profit motives at whatever expense?

Now the question is - why would you assume this to even be the case? Like if I could grant companies "here you go, I'll make sure everyone only ever buys MQA", why would you assume even if they eliminated piracy in totality (which I want to comment on in a bit in one second), why would you assume they would stop there?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As far as complete elimination of piracy, I've still not seen a case to be made that piracy is something companies should be concerning themselves with to begin with. There are logical concepts here why this would strike someone as odd, as it seems like if someone pirates something, the company incurs a loss (when logically there is no loss at all, and no difference, and actually potentially an opposite effect to the ones companies assume).

If you want, we would need to get into this topic through PM's. There was a now-somewhat-famous buried EU report concerning gaming piracy that showed there was no effect on the market. But from a logic perspective, there was no need for a report like this anyway.

One thing people need to be careful of, is saying "they lost a potential sale". A potential sale is so broad, you're going to be biting serious bullets if you want to include this as definitionally an aspect of the detrimental effects of piracy. Especially in the digital age.

 

[levimax]

You should try Qobuz or one of the other streaming services, I think you would be much happier

That is what I plan to do.

 

[amirm]

Fraudulent claims of SQ improvement with mqa are okay even while being a bother to those not wishing to use mqa according Amir. Not sure what the problem with PS Audio is when they make claims that aren't true but just part of doing business.

??? Every DAC or playback device I test these days says 24 bit support. None can produce anything like that. Should we call the entire audio industry fraudulent? PS audio charges thousands of dollars and then proceeds to deliver products that are not tested and produce poor performance (in some cases I have tested). That has no analogy to MQA.

 

[amirm]

MQA benefits MQA and the studios at a cost to the music consumer.

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

 

[dmac6419]

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

Me neither

 

[R1200CL]

@mansr (this is a copy of my post over at AS)


I’m still chasing this 16 bit MQA decoding or upsampling or whatever is happening. (In Roon decoding signal path).

In this article I found this sentence:
“Well, this is an example of what happens when 44/48kHz audio is "unfolded" into 88/96kHz by the MQA Core decoder in TIDAL using their "leaky" filter of choice allowing the ultrasonic distortions to seep through. It's an example of "fake hi-res" MQA unfolding.”

@Archimago or others.
Can I have an explanation/confirmation of what actually happened here ?

I hope the explanation is a simple as an error in bad MQA SW, and of cause there is no upsampling/unfolding and bit conversation.

Edit
Now I’m confused.
@mansr You wrote this back in 2017 in comments:
”That's not necessarily a bug. The MQA core decoder has a setting controlling whether to upsample 1x (44/48k) content to 2x (88/96k). Enabling this means the caller always receives 2x rate back from the decoder, which might simplify the setup a bit. The renderer will still upsample the output to 4x or 8x with the same leaky filters, so it doesn't really matter much in the end”.

I was so sure MQA decoder didn’t do any upsampling. Only unfolding if the original MQA file was 88.2 / 96 or above.

 

[amirm]

Enjoying this just now:

 

[Tks]

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

That's like assuming no one paid anything for having Facebook, or Google accounts..

 

[abdo123]

Why would you assume they would stop there?

The market would stop them from going further. I mean Apple could just activate a ransomware on all their phones and ask for a 500$ payment for your Data but would they ever do that? Probably not.

It's just that the idea of standardizing compression and making it part of the music production and authenticating these tracks (the whole MQA shtick) can do wonders to the industry (if done properly). People would stop comparing Spotify, Youtube and Apple Music to each other for example, and these companies can focus on enhancing their catalog and feature sets instead.

For example, right now in the video streaming world after the explosion that was Netflix, alot of services emerged from big production companies that offer nothing in terms of features and ease of use and only have their catalogue to brag about. Tidal offers great quality and masters but Spotify is miles ahead in features and ease of use, if compression is standardized these differences will disappear.

MQA is not the revolution, but it might be the spark.

 

[amirm]

That's like assuming no one paid anything for having Facebook, or Google accounts..

There is no ad supported model here. Like many other format makers, software decoders are given away. And Tidal was already charging a premium for uncompressed and added on MQA at no cost. They likely see it as a market advantage without a lot of hit to their bandwidth costs.

 

[abdo123]

That's like assuming no one paid anything for having Facebook, or Google accounts..

you pay for these services with your identity lol.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Enjoying this just now:
View attachment 98814

Not 24 bit rather maybe 17, and not 192 rather 96 with lossy bits above 48 khz. Ps audio is much more honest than this.

 

[Tks]

The market would stop them from going further. I mean Apple could just activate a ransomware on all their phones and ask for a 500$ payment for your Data but would they ever do that? Probably not.

It's just that the idea of standardizing compression and making it part of the music production and authenticating these tracks (the whole MQA shtick) can do wonders to the industry (if done properly). People would stop comparing Spotify, Youtube and Apple Music to each other for example, and these companies can focus on enhancing their catalog and feature sets instead.

For example, right now in the video streaming world after the explosion that was Netflix, alot of services emerged from big production companies that offer nothing in terms of features and ease of use and only have their catalogue to brag about. Tidal offers great quality and masters but Spotify is miles ahead in features and ease of use, if compression is standardized these differences will disappear.

MQA is not the revolution, but it might be the spark.

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?

 

[Tks]

you pay for these services with your identity lol.

Worse, a few amendments. As folks like Snowden have clearly demonstrated once and for all with his move.

 

[ElNino]

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

I’m not sure I understand this. With MQA you typically pay twice for IP licenses: in software capable of doing the first unfold, and then in hardware capable of applying the custom filters. In 2018, MQA was charging $398 HKD per user for the first unfold IP (about $50 USD). Tidal may get it for free because they play the central role in the MQA ecosystem, but I’d be surprised if Roon isn’t paying for the IP. As far as I know, the pricing for MQA capable DAC licensing isn’t public, but it’s likely around the same $50 ballpark, given how optional MQA pushes Topping DACs up in price by $100 (some of that goes to a more powerful XMOS chip of course).

There are real, significant costs per user for MQA, that’s how they earn their money.

 

[Tks]

There is no ad supported model here. Like many other format makers, software decoders are given away. And Tidal was already charging a premium for uncompressed and added on MQA at no cost. They likely see it as a market advantage without a lot of hit to their bandwidth costs.

Why would there need to be an ad-supported model? I'm not seeing the entailment. The instance I was referring to here was notion that you "pay nothing". As if cost isn't differed in any sense. Tidal offering it at no cost doesn't need to be felt by you directly the moment a service goes like. It would be like saying Prime adding services that it did when it cost $60 a year added nothing but benefit to you, when later - you now see a totally different cost to Amazon Prime. Secondly, you now presented incentive to axe uncompressed for the company (which potentially isn't out of the question should they be able to one day spin the "benefits" of MQA good enough as something new, and lossless as "old bloated bandwidth heavy for no reason").

You talk of slippery slopes in one instance, and then talk about "paying for things". When your cost to something is far more obfuscated than you might imagine (and not for lack of knowledge, but for lack of being psychic as the rest of us). The cost may be reaped later, and that's a cost it seems your definition of "paying for something" doesn't include. This potentially only increases as MQA's purview does as well. See @ElNino for more obvious fiat breakdown.

 

[witchdoctor]

What is the purpose then of testing equipment to beyond the quality level of the music. Again, if we are going to test for the most exacting musical reproduction equipment, should we not seek the best possible music to play on it?
And, their will be royalty payments to use MQA on equipment and music. The music consumer ultimately pays for this. If MQA does not provide any benefit to the music consumer, why would the music consumer want this? There is nothing that MQA does that cannot be done better by open codecs. MQA benefits MQA and the studios at a cost to the music consumer. And you wonder why the music consumer would be opposed to it.

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

Prove it