MQA Deep Dive - I published music on tidal to test MQA

[Raindog123]

Has @mansr really been banned from replying to this thread ? If so, that’s extremely disappointing, given his long history of work to demystify MQA. Not sure how he gets banned and other people who just continually regurgitate what they’ve read, are tolerated.

A single @mansr is infinitely more dangerous to this ‘Amir’s new MQA course’ that a whole army of openly trolling others.

@amirm, we all have seen you losing cool here - just like any of us who is passionate and cares, in the heat of the moment. And yet you avoided bans just fine. Yes you are the one with the ban power so wield it as you please. But please do not insult our intelligence, whatever left of it anyway thanks to all this MQA pseudo-science crap so openly cultivated here. IMHO.

 

[GoldenOne]

Has @mansr really been banned from replying to this thread ? If so, that’s extremely disappointing, given his long history of work to demystify MQA. Not sure how he gets banned and other people who just continually regurgitate what they’ve read, are tolerated.

If he has been banned from replying to this thread that's a damn shame.

Mansr has done probably more than anyone else towards REALLY looking at what's going on. If you've not seen the tools he produced to add mqa tagging to files and the filter coefficients he extracted it's worth checking out.

Seriously if anyone can provide constructive insight to the MQA debate it's @mansr . Him being banned from the thread is a detriment to everyone.

 

[Zensō]

A single @mansr is infinitely more dangerous to this ‘Amir’s new MQA course’ that a whole army of openly trolling others.

@amirm, we all have seen you losing cool here - just like any of is who cares, in the heat of the moment. And yet you avoided bans just fine. Yes you are are with the ban power so wield it as you please. But please do not insult our intelligence, whatever left of it anyway thanks to all this MQA pseudo-science crap so openly cultivated here. IMHO.

I have to agree that banning @mansr when site management has been equally hostile is a disappointment and a bad look. I suppose I’m opening myself up to a ban as well, but if thats the case, so be it. If we’ve come to that, maybe my involvement here is past due anyway.

 

[Grooved]

...
But since Jack D acquired Tidal, things get interesting because he has the funds to actually move the needle in a big way if he wants to.

Right, even if I will correct it a bit : he acquired a majority stake, Square is not owning 100% of Tidal. Jay-Z and the others are still there, Jay-Z got $300M, and the other $8M each but they are still there.

 

[dmac6419]

You not sure? Really? Let me help you with his last two posts:




Don't see any demystifying of MQA in that. I don't care who you are. If you can't control your emotions and be objective and professional, you don't belong here. He was even warned and still post that last insult so clearly he must be OK with the sanction.

His Reply ban is for a week. If he comes back with this kind of tone, he will sent on a long term vacation from the forum.

P.S. Just looked up his post on PFM and he says this: "Amir has banned me from the MQA thread. Still think he's not in Bob's pocket? "

You want to give me a reason to not ban him permanently?

Breaking up the cliques before they even get started

Also in regards to my real name. Just to be clear I'm not keeping it 'secret'. MQA knows my real name, when I speak to industry contacts or manufacturers I give them my real name and will often call via video too. I just don't want my name/face/identity broadcast over the internet publicly.

If @amirm , @John Atkinson etc have genuine concerns about me or anything as a result of content being posted under GoldenSound instead of my real name I'm happy to disclose my name to them in private and answer any questions about who I do/do not have connections with just as I have already done so with others.

Privacy =/= secrecy

You posted music to tidal/s why would you not want anyone to know,you wants to know what's in MQA,you can be secret but they can't.

 

[Raindog123]

The only other player with MQA support is Tidal's own app which doesn't have any DSP functionality so doesn't matter there.

Should other software players adopt MQA playback, they too can choose to implement it the same was as Roon and provide both functionality

Lightning DS player of Auralic supports MQA core unfold for a number of years. I’ve pointed at this a half-dozen times, but it does not stick…

As for the “get the ‘as the artist intended’ stream, DSP/EQ the heck out of it, and re-authenticate it back to ‘fixed it for you, NOW it’s what artist intended’” - that’s surely the way to go! (And yes, we can discuss what constitutes ‘the intent’ vs ‘equipment correction’, but all we’ll come to is the fallacy of the ‘as artist intended’ term, for the tenth time.)

 

[GoldenOne]

Breaking up the cliques before they even get started

You posted music to tidal/s why would you not want anyone to know,you wants to know what's in MQA,you can be secret but they can't.

As I said, I'm not keeping it secret.....


More to the point, I'm not charging consumers money for something based on unsubstantiated claims....
This is not an equivalent situation

 

[dmac6419]

If he has been banned from replying to this thread that's a damn shame.

Mansr has done probably more than anyone else towards REALLY looking at what's going on. If you've not seen the tools he produced to add mqa tagging to files and the filter coefficients he extracted it's worth checking out.

Seriously if anyone can provide constructive insight to the MQA debate it's @mansr . Him being banned from the thread is a detriment to everyone.

He just like every other member on this site,he's not on a pedestal if he or any other person wants to be on a pedestal I suggest they start their own forum

 

[GoldenOne]

He just like every other member on this site,he's not on a pedestal if he or any other person wants to be on a pedestal I suggest they start their own forum

Putting people on pedestals isn't good for anyone. Doesn't matter who it is.

 

[bennetng]

Speaking of "perceptually lossless" and @mansr , everyone can save the following text as a .cmd file and put it into the same folder as SoX, then drag some audio files to the .cmd file, and the files will be converted to 24-bit 88.2kHz flac, but pre-quantized and dithered to 20-bit to save space.

@echo off
pushd %~dp0
for %%1 in (%*) do (
sox -V %%1 -b 24 "%~dp1%%~n1 sox.flac" rate -v 88200 dither -p 20
)
pause

For example, here are some file size comparison in 2L's test files, converted from DXD to 20-bit 88.2k flac, compared to "MQA stereo original resolution". Downsampling to 20-bit 88.2k not only guarantee perceptual transparency, but also removes useless (and potentially harmful) ultrasonic noise in the DXD files.

 

[Mulder]

I have to agree that banning @mansr when site management has been equally hostile is a disappointment and a bad look. I suppose I’m opening myself up to a ban as well, but if thats the case, so be it. If we’ve come to that, maybe my involvement here is past due anyway.

The reasons for the ban were reported only a few pages back in this thread. I do not intend to defend it but not to criticize it either, but just to point out that to me it was obvious that it was because it turned into a personal attack instead of factual arguments. Personal attacks are a safe way to poison a forum on the internet.

 

[mtristand]

I mean, so many of the MQA-defenders in this thread ignore most of the harder-hitting critiques and give an implicit pass to blatantly misleading advertising and then wonder why people are critical of Bob Stuart, MQA's claims, etc.

If you don't think the criticism is warranted, then you need to explain how you can defend their advertising/business practices.

And if you can't defend it, you need to concede that it's misleading and MQA needs to be more honest and transparent.

And if you can't or won't do either, then I think you lose the right to act incredulous as to why people are critical.

 

[dmac6419]

As I said, I'm not keeping it secret.....


More to the point, I'm not charging consumers money for something based on unsubstantiated claims....
This is not an equivalent situation

But you're putting out unsubstantiated information to harm a business,now I could see if you were in the room and had a whistleblower eye view,but you're not in that room.

 

[Hai-Fri. Audio]

If the option to go to an MQA-inabled mastering lab and encode your own content (including test tones) was always available for reasonable money, how come it hasn't been done?

I don't think anyone expected people to have such strong feelings about MQA since it would affect so few anyways. Doesn't make sense to put so much effort into something that you don't expect so many to use.

On the hardware side, I think the arithmetic was simple for manufacturers. They decided slapping on this particular feature and paying the licensing fee would be better for their bottom line than not doing it. Some simple assumptions from manufacturer pov:
- MQA is backed by industry leaders (Merridian and Tidal are accomplished in their own rights)
- will only affect small number of consumers (a lot of whom buy into stuff like power conditioners and cables)
- cannot afford to gamble on being seen as not keeping up with the latest tech vs. competitors

From producer's pov, there's no financial incentive to test MQA. They can just let the market decide if its good or bad by themselves, and whether if people would be willing to pay more for the feature. They want: MQA on their boxes, they're willing to pay the cost of: licensing, implementing into their products. There's no risk of consumer backlash since basically everyone has slapped MQA onto something.

At one point I thought I "needed" a definitive good/bad assessment of MQA but have sobered to the realization I can just go back to doing what I've done for most of MQA's existence: ignoring it exists (from end user pov).

Having said that, I really think this is interesting - and great to see many wanting to contribute to getting to the facts. @amirm I'll chip in $100 for the cause.

 

[Raindog123]

what do you mean? please elaborate

In simplest terms, if you want to use MQA with EQ (and/or any DSP, eg room correction) then today you MUST upgrade to ROON (and pay it’s hefty fee ).

 

[Mulder]

I mean, so many of the MQA-defenders in this thread ignore most of the harder-hitting critiques and give an implicit pass to blatantly misleading advertising and then wonder why people are critical of Bob Stuart, MQA's claims, etc.

If you don't think the criticism is warranted, then you need to explain how you can defend their advertising/business practices.

And if you can't defend it, you need to concede that it's misleading and MQA needs to be more honest and transparent.

And if you can't or won't do either, then I think you lose the right to act incredulous as to why people are critical.

I do not intend to argue against you, but in that case your criticism should probably also apply to Qobuz, Amazon HD etc because they market High-Res with very dubious arguments.

 

[GoldenOne]

But you're putting out unsubstantiated information to harm a business,now I could see if you were in the room and had a whistleblower eye view,but you're not in that room.

The content of my video was not unsubstantiated in the slightest.

If MQA doesn't want to be called out for not being lossless. They shouldn't claim to be lossless.

 

[Zensō]

The reasons for the ban were reported only a few pages back in this thread. I do not intend to defend it but not to criticize it either, but just to point out that to me it was obvious that it was because it turned into a personal attack instead of factual arguments. Personal attacks are a safe way to poison a forum on the internet.

Sure, but like I said, in my opinion site management has crossed that line too. When any site owner gets aggressive (here or elsewhere) they should expect the same in return. Banning valuable participants who cross the line in heated discussion is far different than banning obvious trolls.

 

[dmac6419]

The content of my video was not unsubstantiated in the slightest.

If MQA doesn't want to be called out for not being lossless. They shouldn't claim to be lossless.

Then put your qualifications on your sleeve,Amir has done that a lot of these other so called experts have not.
also they have a closed codec you want it to be open,they don't have to do that for you.

 

[Music1969]

Right, even if I will correct it a bit : he acquired a majority stake, Square is not owning 100% of Tidal. Jay-Z and the others are still there, Jay-Z got $300M, and the other $8M each but they are still there.

Yes noted. Regardless of % stakes, key point though is Tidal now has the backing of significantly deeper pockets than before (Jack D), enough to significantly move the needle for Tidal, if he wants to.

Let's see what 'unfolds' over the next 12 months lol