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Why isn't this thread been promoted to the home page @amirm, this should be right up there as a sticky and kudos to @GoldenOne
He doesn't take the conclusions seemingly to be convincing? He's most likely more resonating with the pro-MQA claims about how it perceptually delivers on what it purports (irrespective of whether that's due to psychology or not). I also feel he may sympathize with the claimed goals of the format/business as I believe his work at Microsoft ages ago was trying to do something similar with respect to a proprietary codec push (though nowhere near as fantastical as the claims MQA makes on top of the proprietary codec being so restricted to outside sources, instead the work at MS seemed have been concerned with a DRM push strictly speaking).
This is true. But as I understand it, GoldenOne's intent in testing was to test MQA against its marketing claims, not as a lossy codec. As an aside, I'd be very interest to see how MQA does compared the the various other lossy codecs on the market. But until MQA codecs are easily available, it seems that would be difficult.
That's what happens when you refuse to address basic red flags. But the thing is, MQA (Meridian) is stuck in a catch-22 position due to the conjunction of claims they hold to. Reason being: If you submit to having your work open for audit, or provide the encoder for scientific testing using live subjects instead of simply machine measurements, you then run into a few problems depending on the sort of tests you run:
- Compared to lossless (if MQA wins), you now have the problem of "original artist intent" not being possible, as the encoder would now be claiming to know intent of artists it has never been exposed to, and encoding lossy, but with results that don't demonstrate lossless results (which should be bit perfect among lossless encoders once the PCM is actually decoded). Which is one of the more supremely fantastical claims MQA makes. But if it's not perceptually lossless, then it cannot definitionally be considered the intent of the artist, because the artist would have to be assumed to be submitting something they themselves don't have access to give their approval on (it's not like the artist is working with a on-the-fly MQA "sounds" when they're producing music).
- If the results end up not being statistically significant, then they would lose the main thrust of the products' claim EVEN IF it was the case that this encoder was somehow accounting for the intent of artist, you now have the situation that MQA does nothing over lossless audibly. In this scenario you're basically left with an encoder with no real purpose, and no real way to demonstrate any superiority over another. I suppose they can still try to make unsubstantiated claims about how privy they are to every ADC's profiling, and how the encoder magically accounts for them all regardless of content fed to be encoded. Regardless, the inference structure of how the can claim that we as users will be hearing what the producer is hearing and intending, still requires a formal argument even if the ADC universal knowledge claim is granted.
- Compared to lossy, you still have the original artist intent issue, but now compound the problem by having to do a different kind of comparison to what amounts to an entirely different question compared to lossless. What I mean by this is, when benching against lossy, the limits of the comparison come down to locking in bitrate, or locking down filesize (or both). It's quite uninteresting to get results that say one codec is better, if for instance one codec can only do 256kbps, while another can do one in the thousands of kbps, or if one codec has a filesize of 5x. Those comparisons aren't interesting unless you're intending to bench against lossless eventually. But lets assume per filesize and bitrate, MQA beats something like Opus and Musepack for example to some statistically relevant degree - you're still left with artist intent issue. Basically, the better MQA does, the larger the problem of artist intent grows.
- The final problem you get is, if it beats lossy in blind tests against similar bit-rate and/or filesize, you would then have more scrutiny drawn to it, to reveal the pattern of it's algorithmic operation. This was what OP wanted to potentially trend toward, but was cut short as the 3rd file he tried to send in, was basically denied (he wanted to see if there was correlation between the pollution of the entire file and if it had something to do with how much reconstruction of ultrasonic content was occurring by comparing his original file, to one that OP created which had less intense tones and such). In this scenario, you have what is classically the start of a new section of study, one that threatens the marketing-overriding intent of any engineering department (which is a big no-no for a company like Meridian especially). Meaning they would have people looking to explaining away the phenomena, and if that were to happen, that directly threatens the MQA business model if the patterns of the algorithm can be revealed to some appreciable degree, as it could then be adopted by potentially new codec creations.
One final thing, you could actually have a disaster scenario, where MQA loses in a mishmash that doesn't just 1v1 against encoders, but instead puts them all into the mix, and whichever gets a higher preference score, is the winner. In this realm, if MQA loses - MQA then loses VERY hard, especially if it's against multiple bit-rate tests, and MQA does worse against a codec that's functioning at lower system resources.
For MQA to make any sense without resorting to metaphysical or fantastical claims like a conscious encoder that telepathically knows all artists' intents, either way you cut it, they need to either drop the claim of "original artist intent" / "master quality". Either way it goes, with the claims MQA holds to. Revealing anything, or even saying anything more than they already have, potentially works against them when all factors are considered. This is why you don't see them actually daring to challenge any other codecs in any appreciable manner with controls.
I made a thread not long ago, asking if anyone can blind test against a few MQA tracks fully unfolded from a DAC, versus a DAC that has zero MQA compatibility since I wasn't able to. Didn't get much traffic tbh, but I'm still curious as you are. Then again I should seek out trained listeners, as I'm not one of them.