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

[restorer-john]

Don’t mean to be difficult, but if circular logic and unending arguments is the reason for closing this thread, you may as well close all of ASR and any other audio enthusiast forum for that matter. Quite often these discussions, however painful they are, can lead to a better understanding of the subject at hand and perhaps even progress in the field of audio reproduction.

Artificially putting an and to this discussion will just cause a bunch of new MQA threads to pop up. Why try to dampen the enthusiasm that this community has shown in discussing this topic?

I can see that at one point it got a bit off topic when people started questioning @amirm and his views on MQA. Surely this type of arguing can be rained in and keep civilized, rather than just shutting down the whole thing. In conclusion, shutting down such a popular thread will just end up feeding the conspiracies about ASR not being the place that people thought it was.

I'm sure @AdamG247 was merely attempting to reign in feisty contributors and keep the entire thread civil and respectful. A noble cause.

Consider he has only been in the 'job' for a very short time and the nuances and intricacies of this site take time to become clear.

 

[voodooless]

So let me understand this correctly: by just refusing to address the bulk of the arguments, and strawmaning the rest you can have a thread closed?

 

[AdamG]

Put bluntly. If any thread begins to be turned into a Whipping Post to tear down/apart one of our Own, simply because he holds a differing opinion about MQA. He has no Dog in the fight, just happens to see the subject differently than most here. The conversation began to crucify Amir because he has his own opinion. Can we keep the conversation about what MQA does or does not do?

As a Moderator we can’t stand by and let a self destructive thread continue. Our job is to Moderate and help this community grow. Not stand by and watch us tear each other apart. We are reading every reply here, and our minds are open to the possibility that maybe,, just maybe we can stay focused on the subject and not turn inward. We the Moderation Team need our Senior and Junior Members to step up and help us remain constructive and focused?

 

[jensgk]

Put bluntly. If any thread begins to be turned into a Whipping Post to tear down/apart one of our Own, simply because he holds a differing opinion about MQA. He has no Dog in the fight, just happens to see the subject differently than most here. The conversation began to crucify Amir because he has his own opinion. Can we keep the conversation about what MQA does or does not do?

Agree, but if Amir chips in on the discussion, then I suppose it is still ok, to disagree with what he is writing?

 

[AdamG]

I have issued Amir a Thread reply Ban!

 

[Raindog123]

I'm sure @AdamG247 was merely attempting to reign in feisty contributors and keep the entire thread civil and respectful. A noble cause.

Consider he has only been in the 'job' for a very short time and the nuances and intricacies of this site take time to become clear.

@AdamG247 is on eastern time. I guess we find in 4 hours (and counting) how real his intention is.

Personally, on a bad day I absolutely want this thread to be closed (and all those useless time-wasting used-car-salesmen to be banned forever). But then a good day comes - to bring additional snippets of info, to show that there are still critically thinking people with common sense around, that we can both respect and disagree with @amirm at the same time, and that Amir after all is also just a human (and can be wrong sometimes)... Not to mention that it‘s more fun and drama than Tiger King (or so I’ve been told).

EDIT: you two above, just beat me to it...

 

[SKBubba]

https://www.ecoustics.com/news/tidal-streaming-lg-tv/

Hmmm...



JSmith

From the article: “TIDAL Masters offer the best sound available,” explains Lior Tibon, Tidal’s COO.

Sounds like MQA is the hill senior Tidal management has chosen to die on.

I was hoping the new, separate, higher price hi-fi+ tier (mqa, atmos, etc.) announced for Australia signaled that they were distancing themselves from mqa. Apparently not.

Anyway, check out the Tidal COO's CV. That might explain a lot.

 

[AdamG]

Until I see some level of commitment by Senior Membership to help keep this thread on the rails I intend to close this thread as previously announced. Noonish 1200hrs.

 

[voodooless]

The conversation began to crucify Amir because he has his own opinion. Can we keep the conversation about what MQA does or does not do?

Well, things were said about what MQA does, also by Amir, that were not backed up. It was called out, and thus far almost none of these have been addressed. Instead, the discussion was steered towards if we should have the discussion at all.. which I find rather irrelevant if you ask me.

As a Moderator we can’t stand by and let a self destructive thread continue.

In that sense, I can agree with you. I'd like to have a discussion back on track. Let's address the actual points made, and not get sidetracked into useless meta discussions. But there are other options besides closing the thread I guess...

Until I see some level of commitment by Senior Membership to help keep this thread on the rails I intend to close this thread as previously announced. Noonish 1200hrs.

What rails are those in your mind?

 

[restorer-john]

I have issued Amir a Thread reply Ban!

Is that a first?

Congratulations. It may be your last... (kidding).

 

[AdamG]

See post 1903.

 

[pjug]

What’s wrong with 24/48? It’s all de bandwidth and resolution anyone would ever need. No special licensed codecs needed. The FLAC file is probably also smaller than the MQA version.

@amirm my understanding is that you are able to tell the difference between redbook and hi-res by turning up the volume of quiet sections of the tracks you compare. Have you tried to tell the difference between 24/48 and higher sample rate files? If higher sample rates can't be shown to make a difference, then isn't "what's wrong with 24/48?" a good question that needs to be answered? If the only reason is that 24/48 isn't backwards compatible, that seems like a 20th century issue.

 

[sandymc]

I have mixed feeling about saying this facepalm, but there may be an argument for creating a separate MQA sub forum, where the various questions about MQA can be debated on separate threads. This thread has been very helpful in clarifying my own thoughts about MQA, but it's reached the point that it's sheer length make it no longer useful, certainly not to newcomers.

 

[PO3c]

@amirm my understanding is that you are able to tell the difference between redbook and hi-res by turning up the volume of quiet sections of the tracks you compare. Have you tried to tell the difference between 24/48 and higher sample rate files? If higher sample rates can't be shown to make a difference, then isn't "what's wrong with 24/48?" a good question that needs to be answered? If the only reason is that 24/48 isn't backwards compatible, that seems like a 20th century issue.

Don't think we need to talk about 24b for noise floor around -96dB where it looks like we are with MQA, this from MQA Ltd. own graphs. 16/48 are sufficient.

 

[Tokyo_John]

I have mixed feeling about saying this facepalm, but there may be an argument for creating a separate MQA sub forum, where the various questions about MQA can be debated on separate threads. This thread has been very helpful in clarifying my own thoughts about MQA, but it's reached the point that it's sheer length make it no longer useful, certainly not to newcomers.

I second this, a sub forum focused on audio file types, compression schemes, upscaling, DSP, noise-shaping, digital attenuation, software, streaming, etc., as it relates to influence on playback quality would be very useful....and very much aligned with my understanding of the purpose of ASR.

 

[usersky]

Until I see some level of commitment by Senior Membership to help keep this thread on the rails I intend to close this thread as previously announced. Noonish 1200hrs.

Even closed it can hurt feelings. Why not delete it altoghether?

 

[voodooless]

I just checked one of those L2 records that you can download: "Arnesen: MAGNIFICAT 4. Et misericordia". Checked the part where there were the most ultrasonics. Already at 15 kHz, they were down 96 dB, at 24 kHz 127 dB down. This with the 96 kHz version. So I thought, let's see the 352 kHz version.. surely there must be some left? Ah, look: We can see some noise shaping of the ADC, from about 50 kHz to the end we see a rising spectrum of noise going from -120 dB to about -72. between 28 and 52 kHz, there is simply nothing.

View attachment 127010

Well, another file then? Let's try "Finzi: Come Away, Death". They didn't even bother with the 44.1 kHz file here, so there must be something good? The quick view of the spectrum shown once again the same picture, ultrasonice way below 100 dB. So I specifically selected a part where I saw a clear line in the ultrasonics all the way up to 40 kHz. Guess what? It still showed a peak of- 90 dB and the rest below -100dB.

And this is classical music mind you, the purest of the purest recordings.

So I wonder, what does the equal loudness curve look like for ultrasonics?

Okay, so this was classical. What about something else? I pseudorandomly selected some tracks.. Old recording: "Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue - Flamenco Sketches" from 1959. Basically, everything below 90 dB is white noise, it is gently and artificially filtered off past 20 kHz, with no appreciable output past 45 kHz. Next, "Pistol Annies - Hell on Heels - Trailer For Rent" from 2011. It does actually contain some HF output all the way up to 40 kHz. But here also the spectrum is already below -90 dB past 20 kHz. "Weezer - OK Human - Playing My Piano" from (2021). Actually some output at 20 kHz (-78 dB), but the also a sharp drop-off, already at -102 dB at 30 kHz. Finally "Mozart - Requiem - Karl Böhm, Wr. Philharmoniker - Requiem in D minor, K.626- III. Sequentia- Confutatis (Chorus)" (2012). -102 dB at 20 kHz. Also here signs of noise shaping, because from 25 to 45 kHz a sharp rise in HF, then an even sharper dropoff. This is pure shaped noise. I wonder how well MQA would deal with that? Obviously, in "Trailer For Rent" I can make an even smaller selection which gives levels of -70 dB at best for the HF part around 20 kHz, much less below that.

So I'll ask these two questions one more:
- What does the equal-loudness contour look like for HF? Looking at the trendline of the data available, it doesn't bode very much goods.
- How do the mastering engineers process the HF part to perfection?

And sure, you can think these questions are ridiculous, but the fact that the proponents think there is value in the ultrasonic implies that they are clearly not. They are either important, or they are not. You can't have it both ways.

 

[RichB]

Update @RichB :

http://highfidelity.pl/@main-870&lang=en

"I asked MQA guys why they sell license for using the format and they told me they had to because they were buying licenses from record labels they were working with."

MQA pay the labels? Not the other way around?

And then recoup license costs through hardware license and software decode (Roon, Audirvana)?

More evidence labels are not the ones really creating all MQA files?

So a German tone-arm manufacturer discovers digital audio in 2021 and this is your luminary.
The of course, the time-honored "every track I listened to sounded better" is presesnt.

I'll go out a limb here and this DAC will likely be bested by several DACs costing less than $500.

- Rich

 

[mansr]

What does the equal-loudness contour look like for HF?

The threshold of hearing crosses the threshold of pain somewhere around 20 kHz. Anything above that is either inaudible or painful.

 

[SKBubba]

Coming soon to a Best Buy store near you:

MQA interconnects, MQA speaker cables, MQA network switches, and MQA power supplies. All tested, certified and licensed by MQA to deliver the best, most musically pleasing, most audibly lossless authenticated master quality sound*.

(*When used with MQA decoders/dacs and MQA encoded content.)