With an artificially and arbitrarily raised noise floor. They're making perfectly good lossless audio worse, in order to fit their completely pointless origami nonsense.
It even takes up more space than the equivalent FLAC encoded audio.
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MQA Sounds Really Good!
- Thread starter watchnerd
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With an artificially and arbitrarily raised noise floor. They're making perfectly good lossless audio worse, in order to fit their completely pointless origami nonsense.
It even takes up more space than the equivalent FLAC encoded audio.
Because MQA is not being pushed on technical merits, it does literally nothing new or innovative of any value. It's being pushed through scammy marketing, pure and simple.
Well, it is said that you learn from your mistakes...
How many people actually voluntarily use WMA? ;-)
You got grandfathered in. Everyone who pays for Roon after MQA was added, pays for MQA.
I have WMA,OGG.OPUS,music files in 11,22.1,24,32 KHz,alblums,cassette,cd's,reel to reel and a few 8 tracks,so what's wrong with MQA?,I like it.
digicidal
Major Contributor
These statements are just not true... it is not just another format trying to fill a niche. It is an attempt at creating an isolated, proprietary means of controlling the entire production and distribution chain of audio. I do agree with you that I think (and hope) it will ultimately fail... just like SACD (and for most of the same reasons actually). When it comes down to it I have faith that the amount of licensing requirements to truly have a fully "authenticated" MQA file will make almost everyone disregard them entirely. Of course, I would think that $20K for a DAC with no audible benefit would similarly be doomed from the start... the reality, however, is that there aren't just one or two but dozens that fit that criteria.
No real point to this roundabout anyway. Honestly I think the blog I read on Linn's site (ironically) a couple years back captures most of it in a fairly succinct fashion. Is it a biased view? Certainly, I'm guessing partially due to jealousy of a competitor figuring out an even more lucrative snake oil product than overpriced gear itself. But many of the points are still valid.
Obviously there will never be an agreement on this. You often ask what I'm losing out of this deal... well here's a simple example and it doesn't even involve music files at all. I can't purchase the previously available, and cheaper, versions of several products because they've had to increase prices in order to include MQA authenticated decoding capabilities. I don't blame companies like Matrix Audio for doing this... it's simply more expensive to continue producing "non-MQA" products identical to their MQA enabled variants just to keep a few customers like me happy.
You might see that as "nothing" - but I see it as being forced to hand over $300 extra (Sabre-X Pro) for something I won't ever use simply because Bob & Co. decided it must happen. On the other hand (since using the word "forced" is obviously incorrect) if I determine to never pay... now I've lost a large amount of selection in an already diminished field of excellent gear.
Betamax didn't takeover
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Hardly relevant to this, the urban legend is that VHS was the preferred outlet for porn. Similar to the disappearance of the Aibo after the software was cracked and folks made it lift its leg and hump.
As long as the mark is resilient to MQA processing, sure.
Note that MQA has its own watermark so by itself is of no need as such. That mark doesn't encode any content owner data though so not useful to them (at least I have not heard that it is useful that way).
Sure. Watermark algorithms are resilient against many transforms including EQ, lossy compression, etc. So likely they would survive transformation through MQA as well.
Note that MQA has its own watermark so by itself is of no need as such. That mark doesn't encode any content owner data though so not useful to them (at least I have not heard that it is useful that way).
Nope. I made a paid up license a few years ago before there was talk of MQA. The subscription is for metadata service which is expensive. You want to cry about something, cry about that! Labels, the fools that they are, did not standardize and provide reliable metadata for their library, allowing little companies pop up who built a database and charge people for it. \
There are also patents involved in such data services which adds to the cost. To wit, for the longest time. there was a patent on grid data in program guide for TV. Folks were milked for that too!
Oh, you hear that difference? Where is the evidence of that? Or this another way of making us scared?
HDCD embedded info in low order bits as well. Don't recall people saying baseline HDCD screwed things up. And there, we were taking 16 bit data, not 24 bits which MQA can play with.
Since I can get non-MQA content from likes of Amazon, HDTracks, Qobuz anyway, your point has no significance anyway. And for CD, well, I can buy the CD.
But do tell me how much lossless content you have bought to be bothered by it.
What? MQA only applies to "high-res" audio which the general consumer could care less about. You think Apple is sitting there worried about MQA with itunes service? The general music industry does not even know or care about MQA.
And as I keep repeating, there is no control of the entire chain. This is a made up fear tactic by people who hate MQA and want to build a persona online about it. The industry has shown this to be absolutely wrong over and over again. Where is a single piece of evidence that any label is looking to control the audio chain with any copy protection let alone with MQA? Did you not know that you can download, buy and stream high-res content from countless suppliers even before Amazon and Quobuz came about?
Steve jobs eliminated DRM/copy protection from audio industry. It was done 10+ years ago. I don't know how people can be so out of touch with the music industry to accept or make such claims.
These arguments were valid back in 1990s. Not now.
Putting aside the ridiculousness of thinking MQA licensing costs remotely like that (I can imaging LG paying such fees on their phones!), MQA solves a market problem. It is called differentiation.
The consumer electronics industry hates, absolutely hates, open standardization. It commodities everything. HDMI video input does that to TV. A Sony and TCL TV both can show the same video. No way to differentiate.
Everything in the world plays FLAC. No differentiation.
So MQA comes along, it has a three-letter acronym as it should. Gets marketing behind it. And creates some demand among high-end consumers. They bust their chops, encode files themselves and get Tidal to distribute them.
As a DAC vendor, you can pay a bit and get that logo. It gives you a differentiation over the next guy who doesn't have that logo. No different than how Dolby Vision works on TVs. Or Amazon or Google compatibility.
It is just the way the world works. What you think is terrible, is actually desired by some companies.
In my opinion, if you are selling > $1000 DAC, you need to put MQA in there. Tidal and MQA have become popular enough that consumers are asking for it. And nothing you all are doing is going to change that equation.
Which is completely ridiculous, the labels could easily add deep metadata to enrich their content, but they can't be bothered, because there isn't a direct profit to be made.
Instead, they try MQA and other silly things.
Oh, you hear that difference? Where is the evidence of that? Or this another way of making us scared?
HDCD embedded info in low order bits as well. Don't recall people saying baseline HDCD screwed things up. And there, we were taking 16 bit data, not 24 bits which MQA can play with.
Since I can get non-MQA content from likes of Amazon, HDTracks, Qobuz anyway, your point has no significance anyway. And for CD, well, I can buy the CD.
But do tell me how much lossless content you have bought to be bothered by it.
Your memory must be faulty, I clearly remember people expressing concern about HDCD, how it wasn't needed and would reduce the SNR if you didn't have a HDCD decoder. MQA also starts out with 16 bit audio before unfolding.
On very dynamic content, you could absolutely notice the raised noise floor.
I have around 20K tracks in my library, about half are lossless downloads bought primarily from Bandcamp. Most of the rest are ripped from CDs.
I absolutely refuse to support MQA or any kind of DRM or proprietary format.
There is no DRM in MQA. Don't keep making that up. And did you buy HDCD CDs?
Not that I know of. Yet another MS-backed utter failure.
MQA is a proprietary format with no openness, no chance to evaluate its merits in any objective fashion. You ought to hate it.
Microsoft? We bought them when their lifetime can to an end with SACD and DVD-A producing 24 bit/high-res content, obviating the need for HDCD. They were smart and had developed some speaker correction technology which we wanted and acquired them for that reason.
You sure play fast and loose with facts...
Support? I don't support MQA. I use it. What I am doing here is stopping people with who knows what agenda create falsehoods around it. Like your comment about it having DRM. Or how the labels want copy protection. Or how is so expensive when you don't even know the licensing terms.
I have said and say it again, MQA is a little gnat on the wall of audio. You all who have taken it on as your sole reason in online life are the ones that have to explain yourself. After all, none of the FUD you have tried to create about MQA has come true. Indeed, the opposite has happened with Amazon providing high-res content without MQA.
My suggestion is to stop wasting your time trying to convince me with bogus arguments. This is what I did professionally. I am not going to accept lay arguments that don't stand a chance of being reliable in the real world, meant to influence other audiophiles.
I suggest you look to yourself and think why are wasting your time on this topic. And certainly why you are doing that with me when you have no chance of bringing real arguments to the table that pass the smell test.
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