More MQA Controversy

[Sal1950]

Just linking some new MQA controversy for our members input.
http://www.psaudio.com/forum/directstream-all-about-it/mqa-controversy/#p55837
http://www.audiostream.com/content/ps-audios-paul-mcgowan-weighs-mqa#yeUACxFCKAdrUfMf.97

 

[Ken Newton]

I have doubts about MQA's commercial success, primarily for the same reason I've doubted the success of DVD-A and SACD. Mass consumer markets are pretty much always moved by one or both of the following two factors. Whether a new product lowers cost, or is more convenient to use. I can't think of too many examples of where consumer mass markets were moved primarily by superior product performance. Performance may be considered a bonus by consumers, but usually is not the primary market driver. MQA files will be no more convenient than a number of existing digital formats, and will likely be more costly due to licensing issues.

One of the examples of when improved performance may have been the primary factor driving the mass consumer audio market was stereophonic playback technology and the rise of the L.P. record. I say, may have been, because greater listening convienence was also a primary benefit of the L.P., giving it it's market name. It seems difficult to conclude which of the two was the primary factor driving the rise of the L.P. Perhaps, someone who is an authority on history of vinyl (which I'm not) knows. However, my general business experience leads me to suspect it was more the long playing aspect of the L.P., especially because a stereo setup effectively entailed twice the cost of a mono setup, and at a time when consumer electronics was considered expensive for most households to boot. That said, there's no denying the cool factor and social status that was associated with having a home stereo rig (often, simply a console unit) through the 60's and 70's.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Just linking some new MQA controversy for our members input.
http://www.psaudio.com/forum/directstream-all-about-it/mqa-controversy/#p55837
http://www.audiostream.com/content/ps-audios-paul-mcgowan-weighs-mqa#yeUACxFCKAdrUfMf.97

McGowan might be right, but it might also just be sour grapes about ceding part of his "technology advantage", if of course that exists, to MQA technology, filters, etc. for which he would have to pay licensing fees. Without a clear mandate from a huge market swell in favor of MQA, which is quite far from being there yet, he would rather roll his own while he waits and sees. Of course, if it were to go viral, he would be forced to change his tune quickly, and his tune would, of course, do a 180. I believe more in my interpretation of his statements and underlying motives, and others too, than I believe in his literal statements. I believe in "follow the money".

I wonder about the extent to which a manufacturer can differentiate his products sonically in the marketplace if, hypothetically, all or most manufacturers were using MQA technology. That more standardized technology in the DAC might tend to further reduce the possibilities for "product differentiation", which is crucial to product marketing.

I could be wrong, but I happen to think there is indeed something potentially quite positive to MQA technology, taken on its own in pure sonic terms. But, given current rampant misunderstandings of it and the tug of war with manufacturers over it and licensing fees/issues at this early stage, not much anybody says means very much. The rollout of MQA has also been terrible and it has taken much too much time.

But, as always, time will tell. The answer will not be based purely on whether it has better sonics or not, however.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Don't really see any controversy. It's aimed squarely at believers, they'll suck it right up. They're always starving for a new scam and a reason to spend $$ on yet another version ("de-smeared") of 70s rock music.
The rest of the world will have moved on ala DVDA and SACD.

 

[Ken Newton]

I wonder about the extent to which a manufacturer can differentiate his products sonically in the marketplace if, hypothetically, all or most manufacturers were using MQA technology. That more standardized technology in the DAC might tend to further reduce the possibilities for "product differentiation", which is crucial to product marketing.

Yes, I think that is McGowan's main business concern. Being a standard, MQA would act to drive product commoditization. It's interesting to note that such commoditization was true with CD, however, the compelling increase in convenience of CD compelled the market to adopt that as the new music standard, driving mass sales of the necessary new hardware and yet amother round of reselling of the industry software catalog. Even in the face of strong standardization specialty audio vendors have found ways to differentiate their CD based products. They survive by their own 'secret sauce' technologies. It may turn out that MQA still allows such differentiation, but until such questions are fully answered it will be seen as an existential threat by many digital equipment vendors.

 

[Sal1950]

Don't really see any controversy. It's aimed squarely at believers, they'll suck it right up. They're always starving for a new scam and a reason to spend $$ on yet another version ("de-smeared") of 70s rock music.
The rest of the world will have moved on ala DVDA and SACD.

Problem I see there AJ is that the "believers" have been some of the main voices pushing back. Whether it is upsetting the apple cart of their DSD altar (McGowan?), upsets their feelings on DRM like issues (I agree) or if the many negative reports on SQ both for decoded and undecoded files are correct? A significant number of main believer audience is not happy.
Even after the rave articles by the believer super gurus at Stereophile, TAS,
CA, they're not buying in, in the manner expected or hoped for. LOL
It's ramping up to be a very interesting internal audiophool fight the likes I don't remember seeing before. wOOt
Lets Get Ready To Rumble

 

[Sal1950]

They survive by their own 'secret sauce' technologies. It may turn out that MQA still allows such differentiation, but until such questions are fully answered it will be seen as an existential threat by many digital equipment vendors.

There'll always be a claim of some magic dust, and believers to believe, that will never change. Snake Oil sales was perfected centuries ago.

 

[amirm]

Hmmm. This was interesting post by McGowan:
"It’s true. They even demonstrated it at RMAF then got it nixed by the MQA folks because they decided to change course and require it in hardware.

MQA is a 100% software based solution on the receiving end – the requirement to have it inside the DAC is a choice they’ve apparently made and I believe it is because MQA has to be tuned to a DAC – so if it were in software, you’d never know what DAC was playing it. At least that’s what i understand from reading press reports. I haven’t any inside info."

He has no inside info? Then what is all based on?

On his concern regarding MQA forcing a certain filtering, it is no different than HDCD was. For MQA they would have to build the complementary filter. For everything else they can use their proprietary filter. They lose nothing but gain compatibility with MQA.

 

[RayDunzl]

...given current rampant misunderstandings of it...

I suppose I could be accused of rampantly misunderstanding anything for which I have only seen arm-waving explanations of what they fix and how they fix it.

Forgive me.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Yes, Ray. There has certainly been a lot of arm waving, both pro and con. That is part of the overly lengthy and poorly handled rollout issue I alluded to earlier. And, the technology, as I understand it, is multi layered, complex, very sophisticated and based on a lot of psychoacoustic research, the latter of which might be hard to track down independently.

I might recommend this for starters:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Quality_Authenticated

That references this Harley article, which is clearer, containing some good stuff and plenty of hand waving, but which made a lot of sense to me:

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/master-quality-authenticated-mqa-the-view-from-30000-feet/

Also, check this out, wherein Stuart directly answers a host of questions, some from allegedly sophisticated audiophiles, but also containing many questions based on simple ignorance:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/694-comprehensive-q-mqa-s-bob-stuart/

I have not heard MQA yet, and I can live on happily without having done so. But, I am curious about it. I think it is pretty cool, and that Stuart is onto something that might be really good. But, that does not guarantee its success.

 

[RayDunzl]

Also, check this out, wherein Stuart directly answers a host of questions, some from allegedly sophisticated audiophiles, but also containing many questions based on simple ignorance:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/694-comprehensive-q-mqa-s-bob-stuart/

That has less random and more calculated arm-waving... Thank you for the link.

---

Oh boy, I always like to find something that, as I read/skew it, agrees with my natural selections:

"Footnote 9: By the way, we don’t recommend listening at such high acoustic gains. Sustained high level will cause hearing damage. The best mastering engineers do their work at very low listening levels. Our ears are most sensitive, including to temporal microstructure, at levels in the region 60–70 dB SPL."

I posted some graphs in another thread and was informed/disparaged/dismissed for listening at "low levels". Perhaps my listening habits are not considered manly enough to be taken seriously by my supposed peers.

It's the temporal (and not the higher frequencies per se) corrections in MQA that interest me. I wonder if (being deaf), I will hear them.

 

[FrantzM]

MQA is a solution in needs of a problem. It will fizzle on the marketplace. Same way DSD will/already is. with 1 TB HDD costing less than $50, the Cloud getting more ubiquitous by the day, the majority of music lovers being very happy with mp3/128k and most people audiophiles included not reliably able to distinguish mp3/320 (or even lower) from CD... What are the perspectives for it? We'll see but I am prognosticating nil.

 

[Thomas savage]

Yes size is less and less of a issue within digital audio.

MQA is a solution that get less nessersary every day! That's not a good business model.

 

[RayDunzl]

MQA is a solution in needs of a problem.

My mind wanders to the introduction and eventual (slow) total adoption Radial Tires. Nobody was lacking tires. I had tires. Every car I saw on the road had tires. They were round and carried the car along.

Actually, I miss the fun and excitement a good bias ply tire could provide on a rain-slicked road.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

MQA is a solution in needs of a problem.

It's an audiophile elixir, the cure for digititis.
It will go back in time and "fix" the ills of the morbid converters used in the recording process, then decode this newfound purity in the present. The missing 90% of the soundfield in these 2ch stereo constructs will be left up to Sherlock Hemlock to find.
Of course, to vinyl and R>R lovers, it's still chop chop digital, along with all associated maladies for those afflicted.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

MQA is a solution in needs of a problem. It will fizzle on the marketplace. Same way DSD will/already is. with 1 TB HDD costing less than $50, the Cloud getting more ubiquitous by the day, the majority of music lovers being very happy with mp3/128k and most people audiophiles included not reliably able to distinguish mp3/320 (or even lower) from CD... What are the perspectives for it? We'll see but I am prognosticating nil.

Maybe so. But, I think the clever hi rez encoding/compression part of it is the least interesting to me as an audiophile. I am more impressed with the sonic potential of the mainly time-domain filter corrections it does, going back to the ADC in the studio all the way to the DAC at playback.

As to the compression, though, it is a clever and potentially useful way for Tidal, say, to offer RBCD and hi rez resolutions from a single set of files on their server: single inventory. It is not so much about the storage space or communications bandwidth consumed, though it is nice and really useful to have that minimized for distribution. That can add up to a huge number for equipment and maintenance for Tidal and others in their huge data centers. We may not care about that directly, but indirectly it could lead to a greater selection, better service and better prices for us, the users.

Perhaps more importantly, it is about the prospect of avoiding mega large, parallel libraries of the same album, largely redundantly, at various, multiple increasing sampling rates. MQA can do that in one library with each album being a single, compact entity for all the available resolutions. I think there are further really tremendous savings in administering that as a result.

Users, of course, have to cooperate by installing MQA capability at their end, if they want its full benefits and access to hi rez. If they do not, they will still have RBCD resolution, as now. Supposedly, even that is improved via MQA by applying its filtering to the recording, though not on the playback side without an MQA DAC.

Time will tell.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Yes, the benefits of MQA are so glaringly obvious from the first note, that every public demo has been a non-comparison against Redbook.
I think there was a vs mp3 once. Yaay.

 

[iridium]

My mind wanders to the introduction and eventual (slow) total adoption Radial Tires. Nobody was lacking tires. I had tires. Every car I saw on the road had tires. They were round and carried the car along.

Actually, I miss the fun and excitement a good bias ply tire could provide on a rain-slicked road.

Yes, a high quality stiff sidewall bias ply tire was always better for a long, beautiful, 4 wheel drift, not the bullshit drifting on tv nowadays.
I remember 3 or more formula 1 cars in a tight pack drifting through corners; no more formula 1 s__cks.

iridium.

 

[Cosmik]

"Footnote 9: By the way, we don’t recommend listening at such high acoustic gains. Sustained high level will cause hearing damage. The best mastering engineers do their work at very low listening levels. Our ears are most sensitive, including to temporal microstructure, at levels in the region 60–70 dB SPL."

I posted some graphs in another thread and was informed/disparaged/dismissed for listening at "low levels". Perhaps my listening habits are not considered manly enough to be taken seriously by my supposed peers.

More "philosophical" differences
My "philosophy" is that it is usually best to listen at a "realistic" volume - which could, presumably be the level you suggest for a string quartet at a distance, but quite a bit louder for a symphony, and even louder for rock music. Presumably real, live music has always "blurred" the "temporal microstructure", but I don't care.

 

[TBone]

Perhaps my listening habits are not considered manly enough to be taken seriously by my supposed peers.

Ray, piers can only take a man out so far, before believing water is wet ...