MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[Tks]

They make a lot of crazy claims including knowing what dead people heard in the recording studio 50 years ago. The problem is many non technical audio enthusiasts have a strong desire to believe in magic and latch onto anything that they hope will add magic to their system and will overlook details like lies and DRM like schemes and of course spending more money.

I'm here sometimes killing myself trying to figure out who was responsible for a certain track in some obscure albums (don't get my started with trying to find perhaps manuals, or booklets, or decent condition cover art)...

MQA comes through talking about knowing what exact ADC module SKU was used in some studio setup.

 

[bobbooo]

It's quite obvious by this point that MQA is just digital snake oil, and the fact that any ostensibly intelligent and experienced person still can't see this (or are just in denial due to it being used in their favorite products) is baffling, and frankly embarrassing to see on a science based audio forum which prides itself on calling out nonsense products that offer nothing of value to the world of audio such as this. It shouldn't even be up for debate, just vote with your wallets and avoid it and any products or services that use it like the plague of physical snake oil that has come before it, and hopefully it will eventually just die out among audio consumers as other formats such as WMA, ATRAC, DSD etc. have done and are.

 

[Emlin]

I'm here sometimes killing myself trying to figure out who was responsible for a certain track in some obscure albums (don't get my started with trying to find perhaps manuals, or booklets, or decent condition cover art)...

MQA comes through talking about knowing what exact ADC module SKU was used in some studio setup.

And then correcting for it, despite it having been chosen. They claim the same for microphones!

 

[JustAnandaDourEyedDude]

The rather heated argument earlier over whether there is a DRM component to MQA is an argument over semantics. It appears that there is a narrower definition of Digital Rights Managements originating in the copyright owners and copyright protection software communities, which would not categorize MQA as having a DRM capability, and a broader definition that evolved among consumers of copyrighted digital content which would categorize MQA as having a DRM aspect. This is a common situation in natural human languages of ambivalent words or phrases. Dictionaries, encyclopedias and Widipedia list multiple meanings, and Widipedia includes disambiguation pages for such situations. There are human languages with even more ambiguities than English has. The modern viewpoint of scholars of language and editors of dictionaries is that "language is as language does", and neither definition is illegitimate per se. We just need to negotiate which meaning of DRM we will use in this particular case, or agree to disagree if negotiation is unsuccessful.

Here is an interesting take on DRM:
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=libpubs
Sony, it appears, has a "marquee" role in the movie.
If you reside in the USA as I do, the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA in particular is an attention-grabber.

As to whether MQA is going to take over the world or that someday one would be unable to buy CDs or PCM files without MQA, these statements are neither true nor false at the current time. They are speculations or projections about the future, and if included in a report to stockholders they would be required to be called out as "forward looking statements". Without an "expiry date", their truth or falsity would be unverifiable in finite time. Even if assigned some future "degree of completion by" date, at the current time they can only be assigned a likelihood or T/F probabilities, and also an agreement has to be reached as to what degree of fulfilment would constitute True. I question the wisdom of spending time to scour the internet for statistics supporting either extreme position in projection.

 

[Emlin]

The heated argument earlier over whether there is a DRM component to MQA is an argument over semantics. It appears that there is a narrower definition of Digital Rights Managements originating in the copyright owners and copyright protection software communities, which would not categorize MQA as having a DRM capability, and a broader definition that evolved among consumers of copyrighted digital content which would categorize MQA as having a DRM aspect. This is a common situation in natural human languages of ambiguous words or phrases. Dictionaries, encyclopedias and Widipedia list multiple meanings, and Widipedia includes disambiguation pages for such situations. There are human languages with even more ambiguities than English has. The modern viewpoint of scholars of language and editors of dictionaries is that "language is as language does", and niether definition is illegitimate per se. We just need to negotiate which meaning of DRM we will use in this particular case, or agree to disagree if negotiation is unsuccessful.

Here is an interesting take on DRM:
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=libpubs
Sony, it appears, has a "marquee" role in the movie.
If you reside in the USA as I do, the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA in particular is an attention-grabber.

As to whether MQA is going to take over the world or that someday one would be unable to buy CDs or PCM files without MQA, these statements are neither true nor false. They are speculations or projections about the future, and if included in a report to stockholders they would be required to be called out as "forward looking statements". Without an "expiry date", their truth or falsity would be unverifiable in finite time. Even if assigned some future degree of "completion by" date, at the current time they can only be assigned a likelihood or T/F probabilities, and also an agreement has to be reached as to what degree of fulfilment would constitute True. I question the wisdom of spending time to scour the internet for statistics supporting either extreme position in projection.

Yeah, but MQA do lie, whatever dictionary you turn to.

 

[firedog]

Almost nothing in audio/video business is without these motivations. You think folks just feel sorry for consumers when they develop new video codecs? Or new CPUs? Or new phones? You make it like it is a dirty thing to make money from new formats. Do you work for free or get paid to do what you do? If you get paid, then are you extracting money from your ecosystem?

As to someone needing it, record labels have better than CD "masters" in their inventory. They can distribute them as is and charge extra for them. Or use MQA to release them. Either way, there is demand to access those bits and it is not your place as a non-consumer of either to complain. Objectively people can get more. Subjectively they may not but that may be true of a DAC you bought as well.

I go to hotel rooms and there is always a $5 small bottle of Fiji water in there. I assume many people drink the stuff and pay the $5 whether it tastes better than filtered city water or not.

Really, the attitude needs to go out the window. If you are not a customer for anything here then it is not up to you complain about the offer. The danger with "no one wants high-res" is the slippery slope to "no one needs better than lossy encodings either." If you care about mass appeal, then the CD needs to go away too and with it, any services at that fidelity. It is not like you can make a strong case for the quality gap between lossy formats and CDs.

And it is not like MQA is costing anything. I get it totally for free. Don't pay extra to consume it on the service side and my Roon player decodes it for the same free price. So nothing was extracted from me or most of MQA users.

Your post is nonsense. MQA isn't free - not to SW and HW makers and not to consumers. Try elementary economics - those costs get passed on to you, whether you see them or not. There's also a reason Amazon and Qobuz have lower prices for hi-res streaming than Tidal. You are paying an invisible "MQA tax". If you don't understand basics, it's not my problem.

And again, non-MQA versions of albums are starting to disappear. You say it's not going to widen as a phenomenon, I think you are wrong.
One of us will be proven right. Your past experience doesn't make you any more knowledgeable than anyone else here. There are also industry insiders who say this is exactly what is happening.

MQA is a solution without a problem. You claim to want audio science. What science backs up MQA claims that it improves
SQ? What actual benefit does it provide?

Answer: none. It's another audio industry snake oil scam. The audio press trumpeted it as the best thing since sliced bread, so people believe it sounds better. In addition the MQA principles have LIED to the public since the beginning of it's rollout, and haven't allowed proper scruitiny and testing of their product. That isn't the behavior of someone who knows he is providing something actually useful.

Hotel water bottles? Really? Does you hotel room not have potable water in the sink? Ridiculous analogy.

 

[Emlin]

I think that if MQA hadn't lied and obfuscated from the outset that it would be dead in the water by now. Given that the technical performance is crap, why does @amirm not condemn it on both fronts? He likes MQA, so it seems. Has he shares or is he actually a subjectivist?

 

[win]

MQA is dead anyway. Similar to the betamax hoarders who swore it would eventually beat VHS. Nope. It's dead.

 

[Wombat]

MQA, the indiscriminate new normal for new issue CDs?

Evo Kids Sing and Learn.

 

[Emlin]

MQA, the indiscriminate new normal for new issue CDs?

Evo Kids Sing and Learn.

MQA kids' songs. I think they've found their level!

 

[Tks]

I think that if MQA hadn't lied and obfuscated from the outset that it would be dead in the water by now. Given that the technical performance is crap, why does @amirm not condemn it on both fronts? He likes MQA, so it seems. Has he shares or is he actually a subjectivist?

Not sure what's going on with him atm. I'm on board with his comments concerning hi-res music (personally all I really care for at best is lossless, and 24-bit depth just to put a close to this issue of "headroom" once and for all, anything more than that, is just a waste if you're not going to be using DSP for some crazy post processing in real-time possibly by some future emulation tech being teased here and there these days concerning 3D audio).

Reason I am somewhat confused currently with respect to him, is I've seen him blow to pieces in the past, multiple people in other places on the web concerning MQA specifically on a technical level, and on a historical level concerning claims made about MQA.

I think he's just biting a bullet on perhaps some other worldview he holds irrespective of MQA (a worldview that most corporate folks possibly hold concerning copy protection/DRM/piracy, or the idea of something of merit arising without a direct and calculable direct monetary gain and how weird it would be for someone to not fully exploit their abilities or advantages, or libertarian folks concerning rights to earn money, and that nothing should ever be written off as "the cost of doing business" if consumers or anyone else could be forced to foot the bill potentially). So I can understand if he holds such worldview, that he would then be forced to excuse MQA's existence (though it still remains to be seen if he feels their existence and right to earn money is justified under the current state of affairs concerning the false advertising that is occurring for all we know). I would feel he'd have to be quite the libertarian to believe in the "free market" to that degree, and ought be excused. I don't think he's that far along (at least not publicly enough to state as such, even if he's from that culture essentially growing up in careers involving mega corps), and it would be a perplexing case of a serious bipolar mindset - to where you blast MQA for quite a while, while having a site dedicated to integrity which is mostly in service to consumers by way of transparency, but to then believe MQA should be left alone to proceed as it has been for half a decade now.

So yeah, seems to be a conflict of interest a bit at worst (internal struggle of preferences at best).

As far as him being subjectivist? Obviously he's not. But he's not critically listening 24/7, and like most of us, would listen to something, if he enjoys it, he would continue to use it. If he hears a version of an MQA album that sounds different and better than another he may have had heard prior that's non-MQA, I don't think he's going to break out the scope/AP and try to verify if any ultrasonics are tainting the sound, or what's accounting for his subjective preference one way or the other. Which speaks well for MQA, that they at the very least MIGHT have access to some material no one else is being granted for consumer offerings. But I highly doubt that means because he subjectively enjoys an MQA album, that means he now is going to defend the technicalities and the lack of transparency from MQA Ltd. for their aversion to provide proper details on the technical aspect of their encoder service and general service stack itself.

There is of course the one thing that makes absolutely no sense though, and that was the claim about people not having a right to complain if they're not in the market for something like this. I won't tire people with more writing, I talked about it a few posts back when I replied to him, why such a statement doesn't really hold up.

 

[ElNino]

I finally got around to reading the second MQA patent filing (https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015189533A1/).

It turns out that the 192->96kHz downsample actually produces a ~2.5dB droop at 20kHz, which is then compensated by an MQA-enabled DAC in the upsampling filter. (This seems to match with the real-world behavior of the dumped/reverse engineered MQA filters available online.)

Basically, if you're listening to the first unfold in Tidal but don't have an MQA-capable DAC, you're listening to recordings that have an artificially and intentionally attenuated high end.

It'll be a shame if normal 88.2/96kHz recordings start to dry up and get replaced by MQA versions... even if the first unfold is licensed for free, it'll be a Hobson's choice between putting up with reduced audio quality or paying the piper for MQA licensed DACs.

 

[sergeauckland]

I finally got around to reading the second MQA patent filing (https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015189533A1/).

It turns out that the 192->96kHz downsample actually produces a ~2.5dB droop at 20kHz, which is then compensated by an MQA-enabled DAC in the upsampling filter. (This seems to match with the real-world behavior of the dumped/reverse engineered MQA filters available online.)

Basically, if you're listening to the first unfold in Tidal but don't have an MQA-capable DAC, you're listening to recordings that have an artificially and intentionally attenuated high end.

It'll be a shame if normal 88.2/96kHz recordings start to dry up and get replaced by MQA versions... even if the first unfold is licensed for free, it'll be a Hobson's choice between putting up with reduced audio quality or paying the piper for MQA licensed DACs.

Or ignore the whole MQA business altogether and stick to CDs. After 113 pages, over 2200 replies, I still can't understand what MQA offers that's audibly better than CD. If the record companies would only master properly, and not just for the earbuds generation, then none of this would be necessary.

We don't need MQA, we don't need 2496, let alone anything higher for home listening, so why is this being pushed?

But then I don't understand a lot about the modern world........

S.

 

[BDWoody]

I think this has been now well covered. If new info regarding MQA comes out, we can reopen the thread, but 2254 posts will do it for now.