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

[snowsurfer]

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.

I personally don't think that is the important question. For me, the important question is "what exactly does MQA bring to the table in regards to sound quality to warrant moving to a proprietary, licensed, opaque format, from a perfectly functional open source one (FLAC)"?

 

[mansr]

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

A finite impulse response _is_ the filter coefficients, necessarily. Of course, if measuring an impulse response, you can never be quite sure that you've waited long enough to see it all. You also can't tell anything about how the filter is actually constructed. A single, long filter will look the same as multiple cascaded short ones with suitable coefficients. Similarly, a finite impulse response may be implemented using feedback from the output (IIR).

Realistically, any DAC reconstruction filter, even an IIR design, will at worst have an amplitude asymptotically approaching zero. Anything else would be insane. Since digital samples have limited precision, this means the system response will eventually decay to zero regardless of what the filter actually looks like. Hence, observing the impulse response until there have been a few consecutive zeros is sufficient to obtain a FIR equivalent of whatever is happening behind the scenes.

 

[11Parsecs]

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.

"Waiter. Why is my pineapple shaped like origami?"

 

[RichB]

Not really. You asked a bunch of questions which had nothing to do with my net conclusion which is I don't care one way or the other. MQA is there for me to use for free. If a music I search for is MQA, I play and enjoy. If not, I still play and enjoy. If you were in my shoes, would you slash your wrist when you saw an MQA clip come up in Tidal? If so, then you are violently against it. And I am not. I am not going to tell anyone to adopt MQA. Or not. I just don't think this is at all an important topic. This is neutrality in the most pure sense.

It is possible that by paying subscription fees you are subsidizing the replacement of CD quality of with MQA.
The less well heeled with a non-MQA DAC are experience a reduction in quality.

As a proponent of the CD and HD Audio and obtaining the best master, I am compelled to oppose MQA.
I don't like the falsehoods, snake oil, FUD, and clear avarice.

I fully support paying for things that add value, like my lifetime Roon subscription.
I do not support directly, or indirectly, funding technology that degrades performance and the efforts to shove it down my throat.

No one should tell you to take a stand that you do not support.
Make no mistake when you send Tidal $, you fund their practices and reduce the availability of lossless audio.

- Rich

 

[RichB]

5. I consider Bob Stuart a professional colleague with major contributions to audio research (AES Fellow, highly reference journal papers, etc.). I would need really good reasons to throw arrows at him.

My old boss and mentor was a great man and passed recently.
He once told me that (in engineering), technically discussion all should be treated equally.
Analysis should be about the facts and not be tainted by familiarity to the source.

The fact that you take this personally is fine, but removes objectivity.
Objectivity is a major component of this site and many are passionate about this goal. I suppose that is why folks are trying to drag you into this and baffled by your position.

In the end, we all must be comfortable with the positions taken. I am comfortable with mine.

- Rich

 

[symphara]

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.

Yes but they could switch the format and simply change the website to reflect this. Your mobile service provider cannot do that.

The “you can hear every instrument and every note” blurb is meaningless, you can do that with 64kbps MP3. ”What the artist intended” is also meaningless, nobody’s a mind reader.

Again, nothing in their terms of service guarantees you a specific track or a specific format. It’s a take it or leave it approach.

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

The fervor seems religious to me. Worthy of a better cause. At the end of the day, this is a storm in a glass of water. The no-MQA logos in signatures are downright bizarre, in my opinion.

You have to remember that MQA in itself is basically a transparent codec. If you were to do a large scale study comparing it to CD or 320kbps AAC I very much doubt that anything but a tiny group would be able to significantly tell the difference.

 

[RichB]

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/why-do-manufacturers-support-mqa/155965/21?

That link did not work for me.
This link works:

Why do manufacturers support MQA? - Audio Products / MQA - Roon Labs Community

It is important the community examine the facts surrounding MQA and its business practices.
It the a good portion "audiophile" community assess MQA as a reduction in quality, the damage will be limited.

- Rich

 

[sandymc]

A finite impulse response _is_ the filter coefficients, necessarily. Of course, if measuring an impulse response, you can never be quite sure that you've waited long enough to see it all. You also can't tell anything about how the filter is actually constructed. A single, long filter will look the same as multiple cascaded short ones with suitable coefficients. Similarly, a finite impulse response may be implemented using feedback from the output (IIR).

Realistically, any DAC reconstruction filter, even an IIR design, will at worst have an amplitude asymptotically approaching zero. Anything else would be insane. Since digital samples have limited precision, this means the system response will eventually decay to zero regardless of what the filter actually looks like. Hence, observing the impulse response until there have been a few consecutive zeros is sufficient to obtain a FIR equivalent of whatever is happening behind the scenes.

Mans, are you agreeing with me???? No, can't be.

 

[mansr]

Mans, are you agreeing with me????

Only if you are right.

 

[dmac6419]

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.

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.

Qobuz was more than Tidal so what point are you making? still is

 

[JSmith]

Not sure if posted previously, however Dr. Waldrep has an interesting take on the matter;

https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7218

Looks like the OP's video has been noticed too;

https://www.realhd-audio.com/?cat=1

https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6448



JSmith

 

[RichB]

I visitedTidal.com and could not find the plans and pricing.
For cripes sake.

QOBUZ.com has a plan link and even lets my reject cookies (god love them ).
$12.50/month of "Studio quality streaming (FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz)".
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner

- Rich

 

[dmac6419]

I visitedTidal.com and could not find the plans and pricing.
For cripes sake.
https://tidal.com/
https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/music/streaming/offers
QOBUZ.com has a plan link and even lets my reject cookies (god love them ).
$12.50/month of "Studio quality streaming (FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz)".
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner

- Rich

* For a 12-month non-refundable subscription, with a single payment of $149.99. Monthly subscription available at $14.99/month.

Studio Sublime
Annual
$20.83/Month*
*total of $249.99 billed annually
Studio quality streaming (FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz
Original editorial content
Exclusive Studio Sublime discount on Hi-Res purchases
Like someone else said what's going on at Qobuz that they keep dropping prices,are they about to go out of business?

 

[snowsurfer]

Qobuz was more than Tidal so what point are you making? still is

That was a reply and I quoted the message I was replying to.

 

[RichB]

* For a 12-month non-refundable subscription, with a single payment of $149.99. Monthly subscription available at $14.99/month.

Studio Sublime
Annual
$20.83/Month*
*total of $249.99 billed annually
Studio quality streaming (FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz
Original editorial content
Exclusive Studio Sublime discount on Hi-Res purchases
Like someone else said what's going on at Qobuz that they keep dropping prices,are they about to go out of business?

This seems intentionally misleading. Their top tier plan add discounts on purchasing HD downloads.
That may be worthwhile but I have not compared it with HDTracks pricing.
Since subscribing to QOBUZ, I stopped purchasing HD-Audio but would look into it if that was of interest.

Here are the actual plans. For me it made sense to pay $149.99 for the year and save 30$ because I also do not carry balances on my credit cards.

I have no idea what the Tidal plans cost because they want be to sign up for free trial to find out.
Why in gods name would I create an account to find the price for HD Audio. They already suck.

- Rich

 

[nimar]

I personally don't think that is the important question. For me, the important question is "what exactly does MQA bring to the table in regards to sound quality to warrant moving to a proprietary, licensed, opaque format, from a perfectly functional open source one (FLAC)"?

I don't disagree. But I am not a position to seriously influence Tidal's decision to move to format X or stick with Y. We can argue ad infinitum as to the business reason that motivated Tidal to go this route, and how an open source format is better (which I agree with) but it doesn't change the reality.

For many of us, really only what it sounds like Is going to make a difference as we can make one of two choices.

Either we stick with Tidal, with the knowledge that numbers aside from an audible perspective MQA CD is backwards compatible with redbook, ie. What comes out of the speakers is going to be the same (from an audible perspective).

Or it is going to sound inferior, and we have to dump Tidal for ______ as currently there are no alternative redbook streaming services in Canada, especially ones that integrate with Roon.

Granted, for those of you lucky enough to have more competition you can ditch Tidal purely on ethical grounds of not wanting to support a new proprietary format. And I happily encourage you to do so.

 

[dmac6419]

This seems intentionally misleading. Their top tier plan add discounts on purchasing HD downloads.
That may be worthwhile but I have not compared it with HDTracks pricing.
Since subscribing to QOBUZ, I stopped purchasing HD-Audio but would look into it if that was of interest.

View attachment 125450


Here are the actual plans. For me it made sense to $149.99 and save 30$ because I also do not carry balances on my credit cards.

I have no idea what the Tidal plans cost because they want be to sign up for free trial to find out.
Why in gods name would I create an account to find the price for HD Audio. They already suck.

- Rich

I left you links above,they both have trials

 

[RichB]

I don't disagree. But I am not a position to seriously influence Tidal's decision to move to format X or stick with Y. We can argue ad infinitum as to the business reason that motivated Tidal to go this route, and how an open source format is better (which I agree with) but it doesn't change the reality.

For many of us, really only what it sounds like Is going to make a difference as we can make one of two choices.

Either we stick with Tidal, with the knowledge that numbers aside from an audible perspective MQA CD is backwards compatible with redbook, ie. What comes out of the speakers is going to be the same (from an audible perspective).

Or it is going to sound inferior, and we have to dump Tidal for ______ as currently there are no alternative redbook streaming services in Canada, especially ones that integrate with Roon.

Granted, for those of you lucky enough to have more competition you can ditch Tidal purely on ethical grounds of not wanting to support a new proprietary format. And I happily encourage you to do so.

It's odd in that QOBUZ is French but perhaps it is because you are still affiliated with the Kingdom

- Rich

 

[amirm]

That is a borderline whataboutism. If we were only concerned with the issues our peers declared we should be concerned with there would be no progress in any field. Tidal and MQA seem to be in engaged in, at best, cloudy marketing. The intent clearly seems to be to delude people. That should surely be something a forum such as this is considered about. No?

No. The forum exists and is allowing you all to have this conversation. So that is not an issue. The argument is to rope me in as a crusader and when you go there, then you need to answer my challenges.

To the extent the argument is that MQA is going to take over the world and will get rich from it, you have to explain why you are perfectly OK with companies who have already done that times 1000. If you are an Apple customer as I noted, you have already lost any argument as to why what MQA is doing is a bad thing. Clearly far more bad things are Ok with you so opposition to MQA must have other reasons.

And no, the intent is not to delude people. For good or bad, some segment of audiophile market has decided high-res audio has value. MQA has created a system to allow one content to act both standard and high-res. It is unique in that regard and getting some market adoption. It exists as a solution for a tiny portion of audio market and that is that.

The open source community has not cared to create an alternative to MQA. If it had, then folks could adopt that. But since it doesn't exist, then the proprietary version is gaining traction.

 

[amirm]

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.

What percentage of time this is happening to you? For me, MQA pops up one in 100 things I search for and play on Tidal. Out of those, I have yet to notice them being only 16/44.1.

And in the cases that has happened to you, have you compared them to lossless and see what perceptual impact it has?