You can find everything I have written about MQA at
https://www.stereophile.com/category/mqa .
Thanks in advance for the page views.
John Atkinson
Technical Editor, Stereophile
Thank you for the link. I'd like to better understand some of the statements, admittedly, I may be unqualified from professional perspective.
"Earlier, I wrote that the lossiness/losslessness question is beside the point. Here's what I was getting at. There certainly are differences in the MQA version of this recording, and the changes due to the MQA encoding/decoding seem to indicate some loss of resolution, even if it isn't audible. And yet, whatever the cause of the differences between the DXD and MQA versions—whether the results of origami or of some other change wrought during encoding—well, we already knew that. We already knew that MQA changes the music. MQA's goal is to make music sound better, and you can't make music sound better without changing how it sounds. Lossiness is beside the point."
How is MQA different from any other company. Benchmark's goal is to make money by demonstrably improving fidelity to the source.
Degrading fidelity is not a selling point nor does it prove efficacy.
MQA's goal is to make money but it seems not in the pursuit of measurable fidelity but in the minds of audiophiles. I think we have seen this show before.
Every multi-thousand dollar cable company makes the same claims without measurable improvements. Some measurements show degraded peformance.
Are we to trust them?
Here is your measurement from MQA Tested Part2:
This measurement shows the most dramatic departure I've seen of an MQA file from the file it was made from. The noise added by MQA begins to rise at about 10kHz—well down into the audioband—and reaches +10dB or a little more by 20kHz. The noise continues to rise above the audioband, to more than 20dB by 30kHz.
The difference between these files was so large that I thought I might be able to hear it, especially in the recording's unusually long run-in section of about four seconds. So I did what I could to minimize extraneous environmental noise, waited (and waited) for my building's boiler fan to turn off, and turned the volume up loud. I played the run-in and the first few seconds of music over and over. My RadioShack SPL meter indicated peak levels in excess of 110dB (C-rated, slow)."
It seems you have successfully proved 2 things:
1) MQA introduces distortion above 10kHz.
2) You cannot hear hear these defects.
This is hardly a ringing endorsement (excuse the pun).
From MQA Contextualized Page 2:
Does MQA give them reason to worry? I think it does. MQA is not in principle incompatible with DSP-based room correction—Bob Stuart told me that in an interview—but current implementations of it that I'm familiar with are incompatible with other DSP systems. In many other respects, MQA files are locked up pretty tight. The fact that you can't mess with the code is a selling point aimed at both music suppliers and consumers—it's not a bug but a feature. That little blue or green authentication light on your MQA-ready DAC implies that you're getting what the artist intended—although who actually signed off is, for older recordings, open to question. And Spencer Chrislu's remarks surely imply that if MQA succeeds, the "crown jewels"—open, high-rate PCM files—will be withdrawn from the market. Buy those 24/192 downloads while you can.
I think many clearly understand this point, that is well made, MQA threatens to remove the best fidelity recordings available.
Why would anyone trust a company attempting to remove access for the highest quality source.
Has MQA proved that their alterations improve fidelity to back to the record studios.
As you have pointed out, some recordings are sources from digital produced sounds. How could MQA improve that?
We should be skeptical when measurements are ignored and leu of the claim made by associates with financial interests.
MQA is an audio companies knowingly damaging files and calling it truer to the source.
How do we know this, because they are preserving the "crown jewels".
MQA knows they are degrading the records and makes that pitch.
Ignoring this is willful blindness.
However wonderful MQA may be, it is, in some ways, monolithic, and hence old-school. I miss the pre-Internet world. If I could go back, I would. But I can't. We can't. So what's the way forward? What does it look like—and sound like? Does it involve MQA?
You quote from Bob Stuart:
"We are trying to reverse the damage [wrought by the Internet] so that a whole new generation can enjoy music through better sound," Bob Stuart wrote in an e-mail to me several weeks ago. He made it clear that he was speaking of all music listeners, not audiophiles in particular. I trust his idealism. I'm sure it's genuine. He is not, as the most irresponsible online critics have maintained, a charlatan. But that doesn't make him right.
I absolutely do not trust his idealism as anything other than huckstering.
Why would anyone trust when they have began with lies and then backs for those claims when called out. Hardly the behavior of a truthful organization.
MQA tried to block PEQ/REQ and conceded when it became unsustainable, from a business point of view. So much for idealism.
I am not sure how to take the impulse testing done. There are others here far more qualified to address the timing.
Finally, DRM.
The acronym stands for Digital Rights Management and this is addressed but incompletely, IMO.
From MQA, DRM, and Other Four-Letter Words
Lately, another word—actually, an initialism—is being used in much the same way: DRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management. Like lossy codecs, DRM has a long, checkered history in and around audio. The "Red Book" set of specifications, which defines the Compact Disc, includes no DRM. At the beginning of the 1980s, when Sony and Philips came up with the CD, the Internet wasn't yet a gleam in Vint Cerf's eye, and home CD burners were still a decade or so away. Record companies have made several attempts at adding DRM to CD (footnote 1) and to other forms of digital audio, with consistently bad results: Think audible watermarks, Sony root-kits, and that iTunes DRM that, early on, made downloaded music unplayable on any device not made by Apple.
Many are confused by DRM and think it does not apply the MQA because they forget its goal is to preserve the revenue stream.
Sony's root kit was the most diabolical set on destroying a computer.
Apple is Apple, but they were upfront about it.
Both companies operated DRM to preserve revenue, one is copy protection (that ultimately always fails) and the other is locking product to hardware to preserve products. MQA is most certainly locking up hardware from decoding to preserve revenue.
Now that we understand, that DRM is used to protect the source and the hardware universe, a minor tweak is all that is needed.
DRM -
Digital Revenue Management, though
DRP Digital Revenue Protection is the proper term.
MQA realized that they copy protection was untenable so constructed an elaborate mechanism to extract revenue from publishers and manufacturers which is not so easily bypassed. Companies do this all the time. Dolby ATMOS is one such example, but ATMOS does not damage the quality on 7.1 systems.
This is a profound difference.
It is fine to make money when adding value, but there is sufficient evidence, some from you/Stereophile to debunk such claims.
However, it seems that neutrality is seen as a desirable goal.
No-one, should trust the Bob Stuarts idealism enough to give up access to the "crown jewels".
- Rich
