There are codecs that achieve this for a fraction of the filesize and aren't trying to squeeze money out of every step of audio production and consumption chain while using underhanded tactics to do so.if it sounds good to you than it's good for you.
Reminds me of the Bobby Knight "relax and enjoy it".You can make that determination on your own,,me personally I don't need Amir or John Yang to make that for me, people get caught up in the codecs trying to over analyse without listening to the music,if it sounds good to you than it's good for you.
And because we have no leader we have threads like this.Nonsense. @amirm is no leader (well, possibly to the mods, but not otherwise). He's just the gracious host of this forum. Why would you expect him to take a position because of that? What would he taking a position bring to the table that other users can't? Amir can have any position he likes, even an ambivalent one, just as anyone else.
MQA encoding purposefully reduces the fidelity of the digital music data you put into it, and it does so for two reasons. One of those reasons - to preserve ultrasonics - you know is pointless since we don't hear those frequencies. The other reason - to "deblur" the music by applying slow, apodizing filters - you know is pointless at best and damaging at worst, since you have noted in countless reviews the problems with slow/leaky filters.
So the best-case scenario is that MQA files sound the same as PCM files. But even in that best-case scenario, MQA files use lossy encoding in order to achieve signal-processing goals that you yourself have repeatedly said are pointless and/or undesirable
Could you please clarify the apparent disparity between the above and your prior post on lossy vs. lossless?Not at all. There is for example "perceptually lossless." This is when you tell a lossy encoder to produce the highest quality it knows, and have the bit rate vary. This is as special VBR mode that is available for some lossy codecs. We had this at Microsoft and in vast amount of content it was transparent and about half the size of mathematical lossless.
MQA proposes another form of lossless that says it music follows statistical distribution, they are able to fully preserve its actual informational content including what is in ultrasonic. If they are able to achieve this fully, what is your beef with it? That it doesn't spit out a bunch of bits for a rectangular channel is not used in music?
When we want to say the same bits come out that go in, we clarify with the term "mathematically lossless."
Remember, there is no lossless codec that works for all content. Here is the wiki on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_compression
"By operation of the pigeonhole principle, no lossless compression algorithm can efficiently compress all possible data. For this reason, many different algorithms exist that are designed either with a specific type of input data in mind or with specific assumptions about what kinds of redundancy the uncompressed data are likely to contain."
The code books in lossless codecs for example are trained on a specific dataset which in this case would be music, not random test signals. Lossless codecs can actually make the output larger than input! When this happens, they cheat and just pass the input to output. MQA can't do that because it explodes the output so it complains with error messages.
Of course. The definition of a lossless codec is that it can mathematically be converted back to the source with not a single bit out of place. MQA does not at all qualify for this. I remember going to first audio show where the MQA team had just rolled out the format and them asking me, "do you know what MQA is?" I said, "yes, it is a lossy format to encode high-res music." They were horrified at me saying this but this is what it is. With flac encoding, the baseband is already very near where information theory predicts. You can't pile on the full ultrasonic spectrum on top of that.
There is no disparity... it's just you may not understand the content and concept of the replies by Amir. I can't see how it could be explained clearer.Could you please clarify the apparent disparity between the above and your prior post on lossy vs. lossless?
Good point.Then one day, Tidal re-jigged their tiers- lossy (as it is now), redbook (so proper "lossless") and Hi-res (everything above 16/44 or 16/48) BUT- to access Hi Res you had to buy a "Tidal Hi res" certified DAC.
If you don't subscribe,how can they squeeze,last I checked we/you have choices, am I missing something?There are codecs that achieve this for a fraction of the filesize and aren't trying to squeeze money out of every step of audio production and consumption chain while using underhanded tactics to do so.
Try finding a commercial multichannel recording that doesn't somehow have to pay licensing fees to Dolby. Or deal with the hardware compability issues today without running into licensing again.If you don't subscribe,how can they squeeze,last I checked we/you have choices, am I missing something?
Some really aren't. But even if you don't think MQA's behavior qualifies as deceptive or snakeoil, it's utterly bizarre that they defend their work in the way they do. MQA's responses to GoldenOne say in effect that their codec only works for certain kinds of "natural" music. HUH? Will they specify that in quantitative terms please?Not saying MQA aren't a bit shifty, what company that is trying to sell something isn't.
Possibly- but his continued engagement with the threads like this rebutting some of the challenges to MQA might give some cause to think he does care, just not in the direction they would like. Personally, his or anyone elses views on it doesnt bother me either way. I've seen enough to make my mind up about it - my hope is that is becomes more of an irrelevance rather than gains any further traction.
MQA proposes another form of lossless that says it music follows statistical distribution, they are able to fully preserve its actual informational content including what is in ultrasonic. If they are able to achieve this fully, what is your beef with it? That it doesn't spit out a bunch of bits for a rectangular channel is not used in music?
For now it appears we have choices but it has been documented that some MQA encoded files are being provided to the streaming services and served up without notifying the consumer. It has been suggested by @Amir that these limited cases may just be an "accident" but it is not hard to imagine that this is exactly what MQA is planning to do and it makes a lot of sense for the record labels to do so. Much of the opposition to MQA is that if they are successful with their business plan that choice will indeed be eliminated and we will all be forced into a inferior closed system. Good for MQA and the record companies but not for the consumer. @Amir does not believe this will happen but if you read @JohnYang1997 comments it is already happening.If you don't subscribe,how can they squeeze,last I checked we/you have choices, am I missing something?