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

[Mulder]

What limitation? As I have explained multiple times, there are only two mainstream players that consume Tidal content with MQA and one is Tidal which doesn't have DSP, and the other is Roon that does. If you choose to use the Tidal app, then my sympathies are in order. I only use it in my car. For the rest, you best use Roon and there, you have your total solution. If you don't want to use either, then you are not a Tidal customer, so would not get MQA content anyway so the objection is moot.

OK! Let’s turn it around then. If you subscribe to Tidal, or if you but MQA downloads, because you also have this option at some High-Res internet-stores, you are not completly tied to Tidal, and happens to have MQA DAC, and if you want to utilise both DSP and your DACs MQA capabillities, then your only choice is ROON. That is a fact. Not as a consecuence of MQA, but it is the practical situation rigth now. This is a fact, not an argument or a opinion or somerhing else about values. I would not neccecarily call it an objection either. But it is a limitation in my book.

 

[amirm]

I'm not a fan of any closed format, but especially the unnecessary use of one when an open format alternative exists.

Somewhat "open" version of iOS exists in the form of Android. Don't see Apple users dumping it in favor of Android. They want and need what Apple provides to them, and close said eyes on the fact that it is the most closed, regressive computer operating system in the history of operating systems! Same with MQA. Folks who want and like it, will use it even though it is "closed."

In my case, I use it because it came for free to me one day. I am not going to NOT use it "just because." Once in a while a file I play is MQA and that is that.

Folks say, well I am going to quit Tidal on principal. The Principal is over zero value when the rest of the day you consume nothing but closed audio formats. Did you also quit your cable and satellite and stop consuming Netflix that has DRM built-in and has NO open format? You didn't right? You just joined the anti-MQA crowd because it appeared to be the "hip thing to do." Do it but don't waste my time with the silly arguments. Stick to the technical information and if you can't do that, move along.

 

[amirm]

Dr Sean Olive essentially said the same thing a few days ago. Did you miss it?
Is Dr Sean Olive not technical enough? Is he involved in that mysterious anti-MQA crusade as well?

I read it. This is is not this field of expertise so no, it has no impact on me. Seems like the anti-MQA PR campaign is travelling far. Misinformation as usual has louder voice than real data....

 

[lucretius]

Circling back, the baseline layer in MQA is 24-bit 44.1/48 kHz. This is *massive* bandwidth that it is allowed to generate even in worst case scenario and can do a better job of containing high-res/high-dynamic range data than 16/44.1 can.

The baseline layer is 17-bit 44.1/48 kHZ for 24 bit MQA and less for 16-bit MQA (the latter varies depending on the encoder used).

 

[tmtomh]

Advertising on his site. He has made this his cause célèbre and benefits hugely from all the hits as that is his main source of income and livelihood. Outside of MQA, Chris is a huge subjectivist with no regard or care whatsoever about proper audio science and measurements. Indeed for a while he completely banned objectivity talk from his forum and banned a bunch of members which is the reason we have people like Mansr here, rather than there. There, the rolled out a red carpet for him to complain about MQA. But outside of that, Chris realized it was not good for sponsorship and advertising business so he and many others were shown the door.

OP is in the same situation by the way with his youtube revenues and lack of any objectivity in audio prior to this experiment.

I find it very dishonorable to take position against other companies on such basis when in the rest of their audio lives, they could care less about measurements, objectivity, etc.. In the morning they are vegetarian but at dinner they eat steak while telling people eating meat is bad.....

Chris is indeed a subjectivist, and I certainly agree with you about the objectivist purge from his site (though for the sake of complete accuracy, he consigned it to an single subforum and banned it everywhere else - trying to have his cake and eat it too).

But I have to agree with others RE your talk about Chris' motives RE MQA. I don't find your claim persuasive, for two main reasons:

• His advertisers aren't buying space because they want to support an anti-MQA stance. In fact, his front page includes ad/affiliate links to companies that sell MQA-capable devices.
• His notoriety blew up because of MQA, but that was based on his infamous Rocky Mountain Audio Fest presentation that was pitched as a neutral, balanced take on MQA. It was a poorly put-together presentation, horribly delivered - but it was not an anti-MQA rant. What made Chris notorious was the reaction from several MQA reps and MQA supporters, which completely disrupted the presentation and made the whole thing go viral (well, as close to viral as niche audiophile content can go). To the extent his anti-MQA views have hardened since then, it's because (a) many at-the-time-unresolved questions about MQA's claims have since been resolved, in ways not favorable to MQA, and (b) he's a human being like the rest of us, and he got treated appallingly by MQA and its sycophants.

Let me be clear: I am far, far more favorably inclined to ASR and Amir's methods than to Audiophile Style and Chris' methods. And while I did not leave AS like @mansr did, I have not participated there since the objectivist purge because IMHO with that move Chris turned his entire site into a bad joke.

So I am not defending Chris in the least. But as others have noted, the narrative that he's using anti-MQA to drum up revenue is at best an overstatement and at worst simply inaccurate.

 

[amirm]

OK! Let’s turn it around then. If you subscribe to Tidal, or if you but MQA downloads, because you also have this option at some High-Res internet-stores, you are not completly tied to Tidal, and happens to have MQA DAC, and if you want to utilise both DSP and your DACs MQA capabillities, then your only choice is ROON. That is a fact. Not as a consecuence of MQA, but it is the practical situation rigth now. This is a fact, not an argument or a opinion or somerhing else about values. I would not neccecarily call it an objection either. But it is a limitation in my book.

I can't follow your writing. If you have an MQA DAC, you can play normal non-MQA content on it so there is no limitation there. And you can use any player you want.

The amount of MQA, non-Tidal content is so small that it doesn't matter. There are only 600 CDs published in Japan. You can rip those and play them on any DAC or any player. Or you you can use Roon to decode MQA layer in them.

So there is nothing "practical" here. You are making a case out of exception out of exception to argue something.

 

[UliBru]

Stick to the technical information and if you can't do that, move along.

Amir,

MQA is not important for me as I do not use an MQA DAC.
But I'm technically interested.

So maybe you have missed my contribution (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-music-on-tidal-to-test-mqa.22549/post-802328). What is your opinion about this obvious contradiction between two pictures published by BS?

 

[DimitryZ]

@Raindog123: Please be aware that talking about the "triangle" accompanied by pictures MUST show up the frequency axis in linear setting and not logarithmic!

Otherwise known as log-semilog

 

[DimitryZ]

I think he mean "scurrilous" ... second language problems, I guess. He can't punctuate, either, but hey.

"Hey" seems like an odd way to end a sentence.

 

[amirm]

His advertisers aren't buying space because they want to support an anti-MQA stance. In fact, his front page includes ad/affiliate links to companies that sell MQA-capable devices.

??? You sell advertising based on the number of views you have on your site. The more food fights, the more views you get and the higher you can charge the advertiser. And the higher your ranking against other competing audio sites.

I suggest you watch his video he did with Jason on his outlook on life there. When you make a living from a site and it is what pays your bills, this is what you do. You think every minute about how you are going to improve your ranking/traffic.

I ran another forum with someone else who all of a sudden wanted to make money. I told him the price: that you have to allow food fights and whether he was OK with it. He said yes. Food fights came and then he changed his mind and said let's stop the food fight and get rid of all the objectivist talk. I told him that I had warned him about this and that he couldn't have his cake and eat it too.

Really, none of this matters in the larger context. Chris has no business taking up religion around objectivity in MQA. If he cares about MQA one way or the other, he should do his subjectivist listening tests and publish that. Same with OP. OP says Schiit Magnius headphone amp lowers dynamic range by increasing the level of low level sounds. If he is so good at determining this by ear, then he should have performed a bunch of listening tests with MQA with real music and educate his audience that way. Don't go running test tones though a music codec and pretend with straight face you care. He doesn't and neither does Chris.

 

[Raindog123]

Please be aware that talking about the "triangle" accompanied by pictures MUST show up the frequency axis in linear setting and not logarithmic!

Yes, many forget that what looks like a miniscule 'two ticks' (20-40Hz) on the right-side of a logarithmic spectral plot, in reality is as large area as the 0-20kHz baseband! So, even at a reduced dynamic range, quite some bits of information are needed to reconstruct the 20-40kHz area (and the information must come from somewhere!)

And - and this is important (!) - the spectral plots are even more confusing while talking about "unfolding some of the baseband bits to the higher frequencies ... where the 'statistical music envelope' thus the dynamic range is lower" By looking at the unfolding-origami illustrations with those "some bits hidden deep under noise here now go there" arrows, people tend to imagine defined frequency 'bins', where some (“LSB”) bits being moved around following the arrows.

Yet in reality, we are talking about a PCM modulation - where the data samples are equidistant (a) in the time domain, and (b) each individual sample carries an instantaneous sum of all currently present [ie non-zero energy] frequencies, plus (c) some time-history spread (caused by encoder filtering). So, each incoming (24/48) sample cannot be simply associated with, eg, the "1kHz, with -10db level" or with "30kHz, with -35dB"! Each individual sample represents an instantaneous multitude of signals at all frequencies - low and high - with their corresponding dynamic ranges! Which makes this "unfolding" business rather challenging.

(And it still does not allow one incoming bit of music information to be used to represent both one bit at 1kHz and one [independent, uncorrelated] bit at 30kHz - as doing so would lead to a 1=2 miracle.)

 

[dmac6419]

How would someone even make money this way? I have to be honest, you use the expression "conspirary theory" with disdain, but you yourself allude to an organized anti-MQA camp with possibly paid shills within it, please provide a modicum of proof.

All he needs is a couple of audiophools and then you keep multiplying that and it becomes hundreds.

 

[levimax]

If you don't want to use either, then you are not a Tidal customer, so would not get MQA content anyway so the objection is moot.

1. I was a happy Tidal customer and then suddenly much of the Warner catalog (which I listen to a lot) became MQA and the previous non MQA versions were dropped. I have spent considerable time setting up room EQ in foobar2000 (thank you very much ASR!) and my DAC does not support MQA. I could have spent money on a new DAC and money and time on Roon in order to do what I previously did before MQA showed up. I chose to move to Qobuz but I would have preferred to stay a Tidal customer and "moving" services is not without costs of time and aggravation.

2. Just out of technical interest is there any way to tell if lets say Qobuz started to stream raw MQA in place of CD quality if you don't have a MQA DAC or Roon?

 

[PierreV]

Really, none of this matters in the larger context. Chris has no business taking up religion around objectivity in MQA. If he cares about MQA one way or the other, he should do his subjectivist listening tests and publish that.

From Bob Stuart himself.

Q2. Are you willing to produce more technical documents describing the technology? The more details the better.
A2. Yes we intend to provide more information. We are a small team and, from necessity, our focus has been on completing the tools and on thousands of hours of detailed listening tests.

Were those objective? Where are the protocol and the data?

 

[symphara]

What limitation? As I have explained multiple times, there are only two mainstream players that consume Tidal content with MQA and one is Tidal which doesn't have DSP, and the other is Roon that does. If you choose to use the Tidal app, then my sympathies are in order. I only use it in my car. For the rest, you best use Roon and there, you have your total solution. If you don't want to use either, then you are not a Tidal customer, so would not get MQA content anyway so the objection is moot.

Generally I’m in full agreement with you and have defended most of your points (until bailing out due to thread SNR dropping through the floor), but I have a very small quibble here.

When I was a Tidal customer, I used my DAC’s streaming app (my DAC is MQA enabled and its streaming app can be given your login details, and then you can instruct it to pull an audio stream directly from Tidal or Qobuz) and I got the ”total solution”, as you call it, for MQA decoding without Roon or the Tidal app.

I’m flabbergasted that MQA is called “broken” (or worse) in this thread. MQA sounds just fine. Anyone thinking that MQA sounds bad should listen to Blue Maqams by Anouar Brahem/Dave Holland/DeJohnette/Django Bates in MQA, on Tidal, and explain exactly how it’s “broken”. It’s not. It sounds stunning.

 

[KSTR]

Amir,

MQA is not important for me as I do not use an MQA DAC.
But I'm technically interested.

So maybe you have missed my contribution (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-music-on-tidal-to-test-mqa.22549/post-802328). What is your opinion about this obvious contradiction between two pictures published by BS?

At first, there is moderate agreement between the orange line in the first plot and the "peak level over corpus" data in the second (thus, not the orange -1dB/Khz line). Above 24kHz it starts getting worse, underrepresenting the measured data. That's how I would interpret this.

 

[DimitryZ]

Yes, many forget that what looks as a miniscule 'two ticks' (20-40Hz) on the right of a logarithmic spectral plot, in reality is as large area as the 0-20kHz baseband! So, even at the reduced dynamic range at 20-40kHz, quite some bits of information are needed to reconstruct it (and they must come from somewhere!)

And - and this is important (!) - the frequency plots are even more confusing while talking about "unfolding some baseband bits to the higher frequencies"... "where the 'statistical music envelope' thus the dynamic range is lower".... By looking at those unfolding origami illustrations with those "some bits hidden deep under noise here go there" arrows, people tend to imagine frequency 'bins', where some (LSB) bits being moved around, following the arrows.

Yet in reality, we are talking about a PCM modulation - where the data samples are [equidistant] (a) in the time domain and (b) each individual sample carries an instantaneous sum of all currently present [ie non-zero energy] frequencies, plus it carries (c) some time-history spread (caused by encoder filtering). So, each individual incoming (24/48) sample cannot be simply associated with the "1kHz, with -10db level" or with "30kHz, with -35db"! Each sample represents a instantaneous multitude of signals at all (in-band) frequencies, with the corresponding dynamic ranges (again, at all frequencies - low and high)! Which makes this "unfolding" business rather challenging, if not impossible.

And it definitely still does not allow one incoming bit of music information to be used to represent one bit at 1khz plus one [independent, uncorrelated] bit at 35kHz -- as doing so would lead to 1=2. As simple as that.

I think bandsplitting is a very common technique in signal processing.

The only complication in MQA is they use relatively low slope filters to accomplish this which generates aliases in both directions around the fold frequency. Jim Lesurf's early essay on this explains this well. They do it, ostensibly to preserve good time domain performance.

MQA claims that the actual levels of this distortion is extremely small and entirely inaudible. Since Archimago has showed many years ago that MQA nulls really well to LPCM, this appears to be the case.

 

[dmac6419]

I can't follow your writing. If you have an MQA DAC, you can play normal non-MQA content on it so there is no limitation there. And you can use any player you want.

The amount of MQA, non-Tidal content is so small that it doesn't matter. There are only 600 CDs published in Japan. You can rip those and play them on any DAC or any player. Or you you can use Roon to decode MQA layer in them.

So there is nothing "practical" here. You are making a case out of exception out of exception to argue something.

And most of those hybrid CDs are published by Universal and not Warner in Japan.

 

[levimax]

When I was a Tidal customer, I used my DAC’s streaming app (my DAC is MQA enabled and its streaming app can be given your login details, and then you can instruct it to pull an audio stream directly from Tidal or Qobuz) and I got the ”total solution”, as you call it, for MQA decoding without Roon or the Tidal app.

Could you use room EQ with this set up?

 

[voodooless]

The only complication in MQA is they use relatively low slope filters to accomplish this which generates aliases in both directions around the fold frequency. Jim Lesurf's early essay on this explains this well. They do it, ostensibly to preserve good time domain performance.

the claim is that the bandsplitting/joining is lossless. If true, there should not be such issues, at least not after joining. Still haven’t read the patent to find out more..