MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[Cosmik]

Let me turn around the question: why on earth is the community going after him instead of the countless people selling junk to audiophiles? Why don't they all get together and go after the people behind those products? After all, few if any of them have the credentials and contributions Bob has.

People really have the wrong guy here. Bob knows more about signal processing than all of these people going after him:

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If these people have something to say that is proper and devoid of emotion, then they should write a paper and submit it to AES.

I will say this direct: this dog don't hunt. They should not go after Bob as an individual. He has more than enough qualifications here.

And his contributions in the case of MQA is significant. It is not easy to build a perceptual codec that is backwards compatible with PCM.

Indeed if people want to beat up MQA, they should build their own version of it. If that solution is open and free, then the market can rally around that and MQA will die assuredly.

I didn't realise there was a campaign against him personally, but if there is I can perhaps understand it.

He is going against the principles he once stood by. The MQA blurb places LP above all previous digital audio in the quality hierarchy! (and reel-to-reel above everything else). That's pretty breathtaking cynicism.

And his stellar qualifications make it even worse. He should 'know better'. People can easily sense that the 'academic' pretensions of this scheme are not resulting in open information. It smells of shiftiness and chicanery; holding information back (if there is anything there in the first place) or being so vague and cryptic as to be useless, and this can't help but rub off onto Mr. Stuart personally. It would be quite simple for him to give a 'before and after' example and explain everything about it, but I think we know that isn't going to happen - and he is in the frame for that incredible cynicism.

 

[RayDunzl]

Where does MQA reside on that graphic?

 

[Frank Dernie]

I disagree for this reason, since we listen to recordings, in other words, if the recording has the guitar at -5db, but my hearing is down -10 db in that range, then I am not hearing the recording as it was intended. I would rather hear like I did when I was a young one, all the richness, intensity and tones.

YOU may listen to recordings, I listen to both live music and recordings. If my stereo boosted the treble to match how my hearing was when young my stereo would sound nothing like real life at all, it would be ridiculous.
My wife, a professional musician, is sadly going deaf. She was given hearing aids which compensate for the loss and she hates wearing them because they make the world sounds so screechy.

 

[Cosmik]

Where does MQA reside on that graphic?

Like everything else about the scheme, I think the reader is intended to infer that it is top of the hierarchy but it isn't claimed explicitly; everything is left to the punter's imagination.

 

[Werner]

I didn't realise there was a campaign against him personally, but if there is I can perhaps understand it.

There is. Allegations are being made about the (lack of) financial success of Meridian through the ages, the role of Mrs Stuart in keeping the company afloat, circuit principles 'stolen' from high-profile US designers and so on.

This is LOW.

The sad state is that MQA has attracted a number of enemies who are prepared to use anything they can find against it. As opposed to sticking to the facts, i.e. the flaws and issues the MQA concept has in abundance.


This said, Mr Stuart's way of presenting MQA the past years has been rather disingenious. He might make a fine politician.

 

[Cosmik]

I said my DSP amp. My DSP speakers.

You believe Stereophile? They copy MQA's doublespeak. Of course DSP and MQA can be combined.

In an MQA-controlled system.

Not in any presently existing DSP system. These would have to be updated, i.e. the manufacturer takes an MQA license
and releases in the field updates, or scrapped.

I use my own DSP crossover filtering code on the stereo digital stream. If MQA becomes universal (yet I am perfectly happy with what I currently have), does this mean that my system will no longer work? If the answer to that is 'yes it will no longer work', or 'It will work only if you pay money for the privilege of accessing the stream that you hitherto had for free' then it is perfectly understandable that I would be a little upset by that. Like a car crash in slow motion, I am watching people willingly falling for marketing BS and giving up my freedom to design and build my own audio system, for no technical benefit.

 

[Cosmik]

One angle I haven't seen anywhere else is this: Sampling theory and digital audio is mathematical i.e. universal; almost a law of nature. And practical digital audio has been contributed to by clever people over many years.

If MQA becomes universal, Bob Stuart and MQA will have 'stolen' the universal mathematics and the work put in by those clever people for their own uses, and cordoned it off, only to be accessed in its purest form by the privileged few. In fact, that's not quite true - the purest form will be accessible by no one because the MQA'ed version is, if we believe what information has dribbled out, an arbitrarily distorted, corrupted, aliased version of the original. If, eventually, all audio playing devices refuse to play back non-MQA-approved content, digital audio will be 'owned' by Bob Stuart without his having made any contribution to improving it.

 

[Werner]

Yes, it is an extremely cynical land grab.

It started with a spark of brightness:

"What if we took that old Japanese idea of folding ultrasonics beneath a baseband PCM signal, and combine that
with shallow filtering and ultrasonics resolution reduction?"

The reply should have been:

"Cool. Sort of. A bit useless, not?"

But instead we got:

"Cool. Let's Monetise. With a capital M."

 

[Sal1950]

Let me turn around the question: why on earth is the community going after him instead of the countless people selling junk to audiophiles?

If successful, he'll forever steal your access to bit perfect copies of the master files, something we all prayed for for years. OFF With His Head.

Why don't they all get together and go after the people behind those products? After all, few if any of them have the credentials and contributions Bob has.

You want examples of where your rights are being managed, look to Blu-ray

Two wrongs never make a right. And in this case Bob and all his credentials was looked at as a semi-trusted member of the high fidelity community. I see this as a big knife in the back.

It enables you through Tidal and other services like that, to bring > 16 bit audio to streaming market.

Is that why they're trying to encrypt CD's? FLAC would work just fine to make room for more data. And encroachment of the high resolution download sites is spreading rapidly. Is that what you want as a end result?

I'll tell you the same thing I told Chris at CA quite some time back. Your support of MQA and refusal to acknowledge the screwing we'll be getting if fully implemented, is anti-consumer. This is not a good thing for anyone except the folks who collect the money (Meridian, Hardware Manufacturers, and Record Labels. Personally I'm disappointed that ASR would take this position and don't believe it is in the best interests of this website. I thought we were much more Pro Consumer here?
Sal

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Where does MQA reside on that graphic?

It is off the top of the chart in both quality and convenience!!

 

[Frank Dernie]

I didn't realise there was a campaign against him personally, but if there is I can perhaps understand it.

He is going against the principles he once stood by. The MQA blurb places LP above all previous digital audio in the quality hierarchy! (and reel-to-reel above everything else). That's pretty breathtaking cynicism.

And his stellar qualifications make it even worse. He should 'know better'. People can easily sense that the 'academic' pretensions of this scheme are not resulting in open information. It smells of shiftiness and chicanery; holding information back (if there is anything there in the first place) or being so vague and cryptic as to be useless, and this can't help but rub off onto Mr. Stuart personally. It would be quite simple for him to give a 'before and after' example and explain everything about it, but I think we know that isn't going to happen - and he is in the frame for that incredible cynicism.

When I saw that graphic I realised that me and the way the hifi business was being marketed had parted company.
This is the worst sort of pseudo scientific lying.

 

[amirm]

If successful, he'll forever steal your access to bit perfect copies of the master files, something we all prayed for for years. OFF With His Head.

This is simply not in the cards. For one thing, since MQA charges for the technology, it cannot achieve ubiquity. It just can't. PCM audio works across billions of devices. There is no reality where all of that gets replaced with a) royalty bearing technology and b) to appease a tiny market who wants high-res audio.

The mindset of record labels also changed years ago when they agreed to distribute music in the clear online. It simply is not a goal for them to put genie back in the bottle.

If against all odds MQA does dominate, then it shows that it provided great value to consumers in which case, we deserve what we get. Alternatively if there is such success, competitors will come out woodwork left and right. Major companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. will no way pay royalties to MQA for their operating system to play it. It just cannot happen.

 

[amirm]

Two wrongs never make a right.

The bigger wrong by far is Blu-ray, not MQA. You want digital audio from that? Not only do you have to deal with its copy protection but you also have to put in new interface in the form of HDMI!

Really, in the world of audio today, MQA is not remotely big enough problem for people to go after. People do because it gives them a platform to shout about online and make a name for themselves.

Look at me. MQA is there. And I am here. Whatever it wants to do, doesn't impact me one bit. It is not like when Tidal supported MQA, it stopped releasing non-MQA versions of the title. It is just one more thing for people want it to consume it. For the other 99%, we can all go about our business.

Now if we went after video and liberated that, we would have something. That is something we all use today. Wouldn't it be nice to not have to have a different player to install and use for each format?

 

[amirm]

Have you studied MQA in any detail? Do you understand it in depth? If you did you would know how little there is in it.
You don't have to believe me. You (yes you of all people) can do this: pick up the phone and ask JJ.

I know the problem full well. We acquired pacific microsonics which created HDCD using similar scheme. Whatever you develop has to pass the test of record labels and a whole bunch of opinionated people regarding its sound. Just messing with low order bits randomly may not get you there. You also have patents to get around.

That said, I have said elsewhere that I think I can hire the right signal processing experts to build an open-source competitor to MQA for around $100,000. Everyone who is up in arms on this should create a funding campaign and I will then get the people to build it.

If it is not worth that kind of funding to people complaining the most, then it is not an important problem to solve.

As to JJ, have you asked him what he would charge you to build this solution including all the tools and embedded reference platform for various DSPs? I assume not.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I have a theory to offer: What is good for the corporate is always good for the individual. Corporate profits will trickle down in the form of welfare for all.

Rewritten for MQA: We need MQA for the corporates to serve the public music of high quality in the future.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Let me turn around the question: why on earth is the community going after him instead of the countless people selling junk to audiophiles? Why don't they all get together and go after the people behind those products? After all, few if any of them have the credentials and contributions Bob has.

People really have the wrong guy here. Bob knows more about signal processing than all of these people going after him:

View attachment 12350

If these people have something to say that is proper and devoid of emotion, then they should write a paper and submit it to AES.

I will say this direct: this dog don't hunt. They should not go after Bob as an individual. He has more than enough qualifications here.

And his contributions in the case of MQA is significant. It is not easy to build a perceptual codec that is backwards compatible with PCM.

Indeed if people want to beat up MQA, they should build their own version of it. If that solution is open and free, then the market can rally around that and MQA will die assuredly.

No control over the music open sourced. Music companies only have interest in that control.

 

[amirm]

No control over the music open sourced. Music companies only have interest in that control.

Steve Jobs made them give that up 10+ years ago when they offered music in the clear, ditching Fairplay. Music copy protection is no longer "a thing."

What is left of music labels today wants to license even the front door to make a few more dollars. You give them a guaranteed payment up front and they will sell you anything.

 

[Cosmik]

Steve Jobs made them give that up 10+ years ago when they offered music in the clear, ditching Fairplay. Music copy protection is no longer "a thing."

What is left of music labels today wants to license even the front door to make a few more dollars. You give them a guaranteed payment up front and they will sell you anything.

But if all the streaming services adopt MQA then, as things stand, the only digital stream that we DSP geeks will have access to will be the non-decoded MQA. Correct?

(And presumably anyone without the hardware decoder - or a software version if such a thing will be permitted to exist in future?)

 

[SIY]

Cynic hat on: The HDCD guys made a pile because of the usefulness for DRM (sound quality is a loser except for a tiny niche but gets our foot in the door). We want in on that sweet, sweet DRM money.

 

[Sal1950]

Steve Jobs made them give that up 10+ years ago when they offered music in the clear, ditching Fairplay. Music copy protection is no longer "a thing."

I have no idea what your talking about but if you believe the labels would ever dump MQA for a open source and bit perfect solution your being incredibly naive. It's the proprietary nature and users lockout from the real "authenticated" read original, unmolested data file that they love and have bought into whole heartedly.