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

[dmac6419]

Thanks for you concern and kind words.

Oh you're quite welcome, today is a beautiful day,is your day as beautiful as mine.

 

[guenthi_r]

Most of them don't have a Tidal account, don't listen to MQA track's,most of them are just ranting about something they don't even use and it's stupid.

Just speaking of me, i have Tidal/Qobuz & Amazon HD.
So, all is good.

 

[dmac6419]

Just speaking of me, i have Tidal/Qobuz & Amazon HD.
So, all is good.

So do I and I listen to them all

 

[Grooved]

I can pick the albums (version's) I chose to play,I don't understand why other can't.

On part of Tidal catalog, you can, and on an increasing part, you can't choose 16bit FLAC : check Humanz from Gorillaz, the FLAC version is not there anymore. The "Master" is unchanged, but the Hifi will give you 16bit MQA only, no 16bit FLAC anymore
So the potential problem is if they in the end change all the catalog, you can have paid mainly for the FLAC version, and ended up having no tracks of this kind for the same price you always paid.
In this case, it's not a problem with MQA by itself, it's a commercial problem, and I say that by admitting that I find some MQA version can sound better (when unfolded) than their 16bit FLAC version, while some don't.

 

[guenthi_r]

So do I and I listen to them all

My wife likes the Android-App from Tidal.....
Qobuz using mainly for downloading Music, Amazon HD is on my FireTV Sticks.

 

[gatucho]

You serious? I said MQA was free in Tidal. Not that Tidal was free.

But yes, you actually need to sign up for these services to understand the market. Then we would not argue over such simple facts.

The thing is that I started paying Tidal just for the lossless redbook CD quality flacs, and now these are being replaced by lossy MQAs. So in fact I didn't get anything for free, but instead lost exactly what I paid for.
I really don't care about the supposed "high-res" MQA dilema, but don't take my lossless CD quality!

 

[mansr]

Who wants to try an analogy? Suppose there's a pizza place you like. For $10, they'll serve you a tasty pizza. One day, you notice there's a lot more crust and correspondingly less topping than usual. The owner explains that this is the new Master Quality Pizza and it's really much better like this. The price is still $10. You can just skip eating the hard crust and enjoy the rest for the same price as before, so the extra crust is merely a free improvement for those who want it and no detriment to you, right? Or maybe getting less edible pizza for the same money isn't quite what you call free. Oh, and the pizza is all folded up too.

 

[JSmith]

So do I and I listen to them all

Well that's just lovely... now, back to the proprietary format that is MQA which contains the ability to switch on DRM;

https://code.videolan.org/mansr/mqa/blob/master/mqa.rst thanks @mansr.

The way it functions is already controlled, restricted, uses copyrighted code, terms of service, licensing, complying products etc.

I suppose many people don't want to see music distributed this way as it becomes something one can't truly "own".



JSmith

 

[sq225917]

I'm in that category, I own all my music, still buy paper books and magazines etc etc

 

[John Atkinson]

Then I am puzzled as to why Keith wrote "Although the input signal was only one sample wide, in the recorded version the impulse energy has been smeared over many samples due to the ringing behavior of the anti-alias filter."

A properly sampled impulse (i.e. anti-alias filtered) will NOT be 1 sample wide . . .

What Keith showed was the D/A reconstruction of a synthesized signal that did not represent real life (i.e. sampled in accordance with the requirements of the sampling theorem).

Again, I have not said otherwise. As I explained in the article to which I linked - see https://www.stereophile.com/content/zen-art-ad-conversion - a file consisting of zeroes with one sample at 0dBFS is not "legal" because, as you correctly say, it is not band-limited to frequencies below Nyquist. But as you also said and I agreed, when sent to a D/A converter, it "maps" the coefficients of the reconstruction filter. In Keith Howard's example that you quoted, this filter was a conventional linear-phase, sinc-function filter.

I use this "illegal" test signal to identify the reconstruction filters used by the DACs reviewed in Stereophile. These increasingly offer users a choice of filters. See, For example, figs.1-5 at https://www.stereophile.com/content/okto-dac8-stereo-da-processor-measurements . Together with wideband spectral analysis of the DAC's output while it decodes white noise sampled at 44.1kHz (first proposed by Jürgen Reis of MBL) - see figs.6-9 at the same link to the Okto dac8 Stereo review - the single-sample-high signal allows me to fully characterize the behavior of the filter.

Characterizing the behavior of the antialiasing filters used by A/D converters is a different matter. To do that, as I explained in an earlier posting, I created a shaped analog impulse with spectral content up to 60kHz. You can see some results in figs.6-11 at https://www.stereophile.com/content/zen-art-ad-conversion .

John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile

 

[Thalis]

Tidal is the same price as it always been,it didn't go up or down.

Yes but did you read what I wrote?

 

[mansr]

Characterizing the behavior of the antialiasing filters used by A/D converters is a different matter. To do that, as I explained in an earlier posting, to do that I created a shaped analog impulse with spectral content up to 60kHz.

I would have thought a sine sweep would be a better tool to characterise an ADC than a haphazardly cobbled-together pulse-like waveform.

 

[sandymc]

But as you also said and I agreed, when sent to a D/A converter, it "maps" the coefficients of the reconstruction filter.

Not necessarily true. Depends on filter structure. See, e.g., IIR (infinite impulse response) filters. For a FIR filter, which are typically used at least in the digital parts of audio reconstruction filters, it's a reasonable approximation.

 

[calt]

Who wants to try an analogy? Suppose there's a pizza place you like. For $10, they'll serve you a tasty pizza. One day, you notice there's a lot more crust and correspondingly less topping than usual. The owner explains that this is the new Master Quality Pizza and it's really much better like this. The price is still $10. You can just skip eating the hard crust and enjoy the rest for the same price as before, so the extra crust is merely a free improvement for those who want it and no detriment to you, right? Or maybe getting less edible pizza for the same money isn't quite what you call free. Oh, and the pizza is all folded up too.

MQA = Calzone?

Not to mention you need to have a proprietary fork and knife to fully enjoy the Pizza. You can't simply grab a slice.

 

[mansr]

Not necessarily true. Depends on filter structure. See, e.g., IIR (infinite impulse response) filters. For a FIR filter, which are typically used at least in the digital parts of audio reconstruction filters, it's a reasonable approximation.

The impulse response always fully characterises a linear system. If it is finite, it is simply the filter coefficients (exactly, not an approximation). Although infinite impulse responses may have other finite representations, the test is no less valid.

 

[sandymc]

The impulse response always fully characterises a linear system. If it is finite, it is simply the filter coefficients (exactly, not an approximation). Although infinite impulse responses may have other finite representations, the test is no less valid.

Fully characterizes, yes. But it doesn't (necessarily) yield the coefficients of the reconstruction filter, which is what was claimed. Different things.

Edited: I should add, fully characterizes if you measure for an infinite amount of time. Because, you know, infinite

 

[symphara]

The funny thing is that I just received an email from my mobile provider saying that they want to replace one of my mobile plans for one with more data but also a higher price : I have no choice to keep my plan, but I'm inform of that, and can accept the new plan and price, or stop my plan immediatly at no cost even if I still have engagement. They want to change something on my offer, they announce it. This is not what Tidal is doing, and in the lower level, what Qobuz does with a few MQA tracks showing as 24/44.1 FLAC.

You have a contract with a mobile phone provider for a very specific service. Your agreement with Tidal is not quite the same. They don’t guarantee access to particular music or particular formats. In fact your agreement with Tidal is more like “here’s our catalogue, anything may change without prior warning, you pay for access, take it or leave it”. Tidal could overnight change to low-bitrate OGG and high-bitrate OGG for their respective tiers and that’d be fine in respect to their terms of service. Half their tracks could disappear without warning and, again, they wouldn’t break their own terms of service, which you agree to, when you subscribe and continue to subscribe.

It’s more akin to paying for a newspaper subscription. They might reduce the number of pages. Or the font size. They might start publishing a lot of outrageous lies instead of well-researched, fact-based stories, but there’s just nothing you can do about it except for voting with your wallet.

This debate is more religious in nature than anything else. MQA is a proprietary file format used almost exclusively by Tidal, for streaming. If you don’t like it, don’t subscribe. That’s what I did.

 

[snowsurfer]

You have a contract with a mobile phone provider for a very specific service. Your agreement with Tidal is not quite the same. They don’t guarantee access to particular music or particular formats. In fact your agreement with Tidal is more like “here’s our catalogue, anything may change without prior warning, you pay for access, take it or leave it”. Tidal could overnight change to low-bitrate OGG and high-bitrate OGG for their respective tiers and that’d be fine in respect to their terms of service. Half their tracks could disappear without warning and, again, they wouldn’t break their own terms of service, which you agree to, when you subscribe and continue to subscribe.

It’s more akin to paying for a newspaper subscription. They might reduce the number of pages. Or the font size. They might start publishing a lot of outrageous lies instead of well-researched, fact-based stories, but there’s just nothing you can do about it except for voting with your wallet.

This debate is more religious in nature than anything else. MQA is a proprietary file format used almost exclusively by Tidal, for streaming. If you don’t like it, don’t subscribe. That’s what I did.

This is absolutely not true. When I signed up for Tidal Hi-Fi, this is what I saw under "What is Tidal Hi-FI" (link):

"HiFi for $19.99 / month
TIDAL's HiFi tier gives subscribers all the same great content and experiences as a Premium subscription, with the added benefit of music in lossless, CD and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) quality (1411 kbps vs. 320 kbps for standard streaming).

HiFi streaming delivers an uncompressed sound file, which means that you can hear every instrument and every note – as the artist intended. This tier costs $19.99 per month."

This is still up on their page.

 

[nimar]

This is absolutely not true. When I signed up for Tidal Hi-Fi, this is what I saw under "What is Tidal Hi-FI" (link):

HiFi for $19.99 / month
TIDAL's HiFi tier gives subscribers all the same great content and experiences as a Premium subscription, with the added benefit of music in lossless, CD and Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) quality (1411 kbps vs. 320 kbps for standard streaming).

HiFi streaming delivers an uncompressed sound file, which means that you can hear every instrument and every note – as the artist intended. This tier costs $19.99 per month.

This is still up on their page.

I've got no love for MQA (replaced my Topping D90 MQA with an RME ADI 2 FS), I don't see a purpose of paying any premium for it. But that goes for all "hi-res" music beyond redbook.

The important and yet unanswered question,

Does the conversion of 16/44.1 redbook -> 16/44.1 MQA cause any audible differences when played back? On a non MQA or MQA DAC?

I've heard countless times that it limits it to a 13bit file as there is a 3bit overhead for MQA but does that actually impact any music? Looking at digital diffs tells me nothing about how it sounds.

 

[jensgk]

This debate is more religious in nature than anything else.

Religious? No. An opinionated discussion of facts and values: Yes