You'll have a warm fuzzy blurry!
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MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions
- Thread starter mitchco
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You'll have a warm fuzzy blurry!
This is too technical for me to follow ........can you put it in layman’s terms ?
My sight when I'm not wearing glasses. One set for distance and one set for close, only old folks wear those bifocal thingies.
My sight when I'm not wearing glasses. One set for distance and one set for close, only old folks wear those bifocal thingies.
if only we had a simple device for our ears to compensate for hearing loss
I just use my imagination.
But I can't imagine hearing anything I can't hear, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
Here's the latest entry in a series on MQA from Stereophile:
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-drm-and-other-four-letter-words
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-drm-and-other-four-letter-words
That is an excellently done article and finally deals with all the inaccuracies out there regarding MQA. I was also happy to see they are addressing EQ in MQA implementations. That was a critical failing and strangely so, given Meridian's commitment to DSP so far back.
svart-hvitt
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What’s «excellently» in the article and what «inaccuracies» did you have in mind?
I understand you’re a big supporter of MQA, but I need you to lay out your reasoning in order for me to understand your enthusiasm for MQA.
One example is that they properly explain what rights management is in there versus FUD that is created against it by people who don't know what DRM is.
The other one I noted which was enablement of signal processing with MQA decoding.
I am not a big supporter of MQA. Indeed calling me a supporter would be stretch.
What I rail against is incorrection information spread about it. Let's deal with it on merit, not made up stuff.
I also defend Bob Stuart as probably a handful of engineers involved in high-end audio where he actually knows what he is talking about. As such I don't appreciate the rocks people throw at him in order to discredit MQA.
Wouldn't MQA as a system look terrible in your DAC measurements? Maybe the DACs you dismiss as broken are just implementing a really clever 'proprietary' algorithm, too.
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I believe in the case of filtering, he doesn't know what he's talking about. His choice of a slow roll-off filter for 44.1 or 48KHz is clearly wrong, as it allows too much aliasing to fold back into the audio band. The FIR brick-wall filter is the correct one to use, both for aliasing and correct impulse response.
But why would we need one? The real world hasn't changed, just our interface to it. If we add a device to our stereo which compensates the loss of our hearing the stereo will no longer sound anything like real world to us any more, since we listen both to the real world and our stereo with the ears we now have.
Don Hills
Addicted to Fun and Learning
You might want to have a chat with Mans Rullgard about the capability present in the MQA products he has reverse engineered.
Capabilities? You mean projection of stuff that could happen that don't exist? I read plenty of that from antagonists of MQA. For now, what is sorely missing is them understanding what DRM is. He needs to read the article just posted.
And oh, if he has reverse engineered it, what is the concern about its proprietary nature again?
DRM was designed to protect digital music files from being copied so Joe Sixpack couldn't make 1 for 1 copies of protected digital material. Of course you could have always made a very good copy in the analog domain depending on your gear, just not a "perfect" digital copy, IE a ripped CD.
Along comes MQA, now the music you will get will be something less, a lossy facsimile. You might copy it also, but it won't be the top quality, bit perfect, mirror of the Redbook master, let alone a higher resolution master.
So the original DRM stopped you from copying in a digital domain.
This form of DRM will stop you from ever having a bit perfect copy of the original digital master, period.
And all the talk about superior sound quality (debluring) after you pay the MQA tax and buy a magic decoder ring is just BS to hype the audiophile market.
It was a solution to a problem that never existed.
But the major record labels could clearly see the DRM type implications and jumped on faster than stink on schitt.
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If MQA becomes universal, does that mean that every manufactured music playing device will have an 'MQA chip' fitted? Or at least a secure implementation of the system? And will the operation of that chip be modifiable over the internet? If so, then the current DRM capabilities of the system are moot; they could be changed in future so that the system does far more "degrading" of content if the user is not in possession of the correct licence, etc.
The significant point is not what MQA is or isn't currently, but that it results in a secure hardware digital gatekeeper being fitted universally in all streaming-capable equipment, that can be set up to perform any sort of DRM in future and cannot be hacked.
The brilliance of the scheme is that it purports to exceed the performance of an uncompressed file - such an audacious claim that it requires classic emperor's new clothes marketing. Highly technical - yet vague - claims; vagueness in the technical papers suggesting that the system is adaptive to content and that music producers will have creative options available to them, so that what appears to have been done to one recording by the system is not necessarily an indication of what will be done to another - so no one can reverse engineer the supposed system from its output. Everyone is kept guessing.
The claims result in users actually demanding that it be fitted to every device they buy, and will pay extra for MQA content. It can be promoted by streaming services as a source of improved sound quality at a premium price. It warrants the cost to hardware manufacturers of the extra chips and licensing fees.
And finally, it results in what everyone in the business wanted all along: secure digital distribution of recorded music.
The significant point is not what MQA is or isn't currently, but that it results in a secure hardware digital gatekeeper being fitted universally in all streaming-capable equipment, that can be set up to perform any sort of DRM in future and cannot be hacked.
The brilliance of the scheme is that it purports to exceed the performance of an uncompressed file - such an audacious claim that it requires classic emperor's new clothes marketing. Highly technical - yet vague - claims; vagueness in the technical papers suggesting that the system is adaptive to content and that music producers will have creative options available to them, so that what appears to have been done to one recording by the system is not necessarily an indication of what will be done to another - so no one can reverse engineer the supposed system from its output. Everyone is kept guessing.
The claims result in users actually demanding that it be fitted to every device they buy, and will pay extra for MQA content. It can be promoted by streaming services as a source of improved sound quality at a premium price. It warrants the cost to hardware manufacturers of the extra chips and licensing fees.
And finally, it results in what everyone in the business wanted all along: secure digital distribution of recorded music.
Eventually for sure.
You just know that sometime down the line the word will "leak" out that the un-decoded files really do sound like crap, some detail of the process that was missed during initial listening reviews. You know, just like early Redbook and how we missed how bad it sounded compared to analog/vinyl. Then everyone will demand magic decoding rings in their gear.
Rebuy all your music again, replace all your playback hardware again, and never again be able purchase bit perfect copies of master tapes.
Win Win Win for Meridian and the record labels.
The only losers are the consumers.
I can't inspect an MQA file in a DAW. My rights are being managed.
I can't push an MQA file through my DSP amp or my DSP speakers. My rights are being managed.
Reverse engineered does not mean hacked. Mans has insight in what happens between the various functional blocks of an MQA decoder, but as at least one of these blocks uses encryption he cannot duplicate its function. I.o.w. yes, we know what it does, but no,
we cannot build a free-for-all decoder.
Oh, did you know it has been demonstrated that one can mess up the contents of an MQA file and still have it authenticate?
The blue light proves exactly ... nothing.
I don't have any MQA, but I already have some blue LEDs in the rack.
So, I got that going for me, which is nice.
I get the lack of trust of the music biz, they have proved multiple times if they can screw the public and think they will get away with it they will, who wants a rootkit with that. But it seems to me that in this case they already have this in hand, the growth of streaming will deliver it, especially once they get to some sort of tipping point where they feel confident to reduce CD pressing runs, because 'no one wants them anymore', driving further adoption of streaming for some holdouts, similar playbook to how they got rid of vinyl in the 90s.
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