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

[tmtomh]

So this takes us the this answer from MQA:

"MQA provided detailed feedback to the blogger before publication. [3] He ignored it and later dismissed our detailed guidance as ‘marketing’."

OP was clearly told that he could not encode test tones using the automated tools prior to publication of his first video:

“To help young artists and small labels get their music encoded in MQA and on to TIDAL, we recently enabled the service you used. However, that service is limited in flexibility and places obligations on the user. First, the encoder is fully automatic, which means it will use analysis to set parameters for each song as a whole; second it is intended strictly for music. This encoder is not configured to deal with content where, for example, the statistics change mid-song, or where the audio does not resemble natural sound. The onus is on the submitter to check the content when it arrives in TIDAL and confirm the sound. In this way, we can all be sure that the provider is happy with the Master and that, because of the light, everyone with an MQA decoder is getting the intended sound.”

This is not marketing. You were clearly told why the standard encoder (or any of their encoders) are not designed or optimized for encoding pathologically test signals. And that the encoder that was used for your content was not the optimized one they use.

This has been the same point I and others have been making.

Given this information, OP should have clearly stipulated that a different encoder was used than one for major labels and that he was warned the encoder would not work for his content.

MQA also blames GoldenOne for ignoring error messages generated by the encoder - except the content creator has no access to the encoder's logs or message output.

The MQA statement you quoted also assumes that it was only the "illegal" signals that created the issues, and GoldenOne in his video very clearly notes that the evidence seems to indicate that any digital 0.0 peaks - including "real music" - can create these problems.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

I dont have any issue with DRM like this UNTIL (and admittedly, this is unlikely) the only content available is encoded thusly. So IF the labels all decided they would withdraw PCM from streaming services and replace ONLY with MQA files (so the best one could get without an MQA decoder is this 13 bit CD lite version). This is the fear I think lurking at the back of peoples' minds, the reason MQA keeps getting bashed etc. That, and the fact that people are far from convinced that it performs as advertised of course.

I can happily ignore MQA and Tidal. But if the labels get too invested in it (protecting the crown jewels etc) then it starts to become a threat.

There are already releases only available in MQA.

 

[TK750]

Very simple, not everyone has the logic power to think this through. Not everyone even cares about it.
Most goes: I may or may not use it, but you have to support it.
Turning against MQA = turning against customers. Even PS audio is supporting it now.
It's this mentality made everything turns into MQA's favor.

If I may ask John, you are someone that I see as an industry insider and someone that very obviously has a greater understanding of the implications of MQA, probably more than any of us. Without being obviously specific, what kind of difference do you see between selling the D90 without MQA and with MQA?

So this takes us the this answer from MQA:

"MQA provided detailed feedback to the blogger before publication. [3] He ignored it and later dismissed our detailed guidance as ‘marketing’."

OP was clearly told that he could not encode test tones using the automated tools prior to publication of his first video:

“To help young artists and small labels get their music encoded in MQA and on to TIDAL, we recently enabled the service you used. However, that service is limited in flexibility and places obligations on the user. First, the encoder is fully automatic, which means it will use analysis to set parameters for each song as a whole; second it is intended strictly for music. This encoder is not configured to deal with content where, for example, the statistics change mid-song, or where the audio does not resemble natural sound. The onus is on the submitter to check the content when it arrives in TIDAL and confirm the sound. In this way, we can all be sure that the provider is happy with the Master and that, because of the light, everyone with an MQA decoder is getting the intended sound.”

This is not marketing. You were clearly told why the standard encoder (or any of their encoders) are not designed or optimized for encoding pathologically test signals. And that the encoder that was used for your content was not the optimized one they use.

This has been the same point I and others have been making.

Given this information, OP should have clearly stipulated that a different encoder was used than one for major labels and that he was warned the encoder would not work for his content.

Please define what 'music' is, please also define 'natural sound'?, Many thanks

 

[Raindog123]

“To help young artists and small labels get their music encoded in MQA and on to TIDAL, we recently enabled the service you used. However, that service is limited in flexibility and places obligations on the user. First, the encoder is fully automatic, which means it will use analysis to set parameters for each song as a whole; second it is intended strictly for music. This encoder is not configured to deal with content where, for example, the statistics change mid-song, or where the audio does not resemble natural sound. The onus is on the submitter to check the content when it arrives in TIDAL and confirm the sound. In this way, we can all be sure that the provider is happy with the Master and that, because of the light, everyone with an MQA decoder is getting the intended sound.”

Amir, IMHO, now you're continuing to push the thread in a wrong direction. Rather than giving another round of explanation of how/who went wrong, can we all - including you with your influence, if you can - orchestrate another test? This time collaboratively, and with the right tools, understanding, attitude?

At this point, it has to be a meeting of both parties/camps' minds, moderated by an independent trusted figure(s). As without this attempt - to get things (tests) right - no matter what you, Bob (or I) will say will sound and smell like smear campaign and tracks covering.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

It is also naïve to assume that Tidal would have been perfectly fine with that garbage file to be on their service without pressure from MQA.

When you don't know something, you don't know something. Don't turn that into fact.

It is not a “garbage file.” Tidal is not in the business of deciding what does or doesn’t qualify as music. I can easily link you to industrial, electronic, and other genres that many people would say are “noise.” Streaming services leave them up without issue. More to the point, the existence of these kinds of music put the lie to the claim that some of Golden’s sounds were somehow unfair to MQA as an encoder. Plenty of industrial and electronic music has extreme square waves and huge volume jumps. Guess what? Vanilla PCM can reproduce it — and test tones — perfectly. Why can’t MQA? Because MQA’s the real “garbage.”

 

[amirm]

Let's get to another point OP makes in his second video:

As you see, he claims that the paper is not peer reviewed. This is wrong. While a convention paper was also published, you were linked to the more detailed Journal of AES paper in MQA response:

If you open the paper you see the confirmation of it being from the Journal of AES which is fully peer reviewed: https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=20456

And these are the guidelines for AES Journal: https://www.aes.org/journal/authors/guidelines/

"All submissions will go through a peer review process to check their suitability for JAES. "

That paper has whopping 150 references in it! That doesn't make it necessarily right but it is the level of effort required to get something published in the Journal.

This is the danger in mounting such strong challenges without having the prerequisite knowledge of the field.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Have you read bob's latest response in his blog? I highly suggest you do as there is good bit of explanation in there that is simply stated. Don't go by what GoldenOne has said of their response. Read it for yourself. It most definitely has objective information in there.

Where’s the objective info? Please quote it and explain how it’s objective — meaning: verifiable by anyone.

 

[GoldenOne]

Let's get to another point OP makes in his second video:

View attachment 132345

As you see, he claims that the paper is not peer reviewed. This is wrong. While a convention paper was also published, you were linked to the more detailed Journal of AES paper in MQA response:

View attachment 132347

If you open the paper you see the confirmation of it being from the Journal of AES which is fully peer reviewed: https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=20456

View attachment 132346

And these are the guidelines for AES Journal: https://www.aes.org/journal/authors/guidelines/

"All submissions will go through a peer review process to check their suitability for JAES. "

That paper has whopping 150 references in it! That doesn't make it necessarily right but it is the level of effort required to get something published in the Journal.

This is the danger in mounting such strong challenges without having the prerequisite knowledge of the field.

This is indeed a mistake and I will seek to rectify this.
(For context there was a discussion thread elsewhere about the fact that at the time MQA's thread was not peer reviewed. And I did not sufficiently check upto date info on this. But still, this is a mistake, MQA's paper is indeed now peer reviewed.)

Though I will say that the issues surrounding the anonymity of AES' peer review process especially given the industry friends that BS has is a concern. As is the fact that the paper does not prove the lossless aspect.
This doesn't detract from the fact that I was incorrect about the peer review. But just a separate concern I have about the AES peer review process which applies to more than just the MQA paper.

 

[amirm]

It is not a “garbage file.” Tidal is not in the business of deciding what does or doesn’t qualify as music. I can easily link you to industrial, electronic, and other genres that many people would say are “noise.” Streaming services leave them up without issue. More to the point, the existence of these kinds of music put the lie to the claim that some of Golden’s sounds were somehow unfair to MQA as an encoder. Plenty of industrial and electronic music has extreme square waves and huge volume jumps. Guess what? Vanilla PCM can reproduce it — and test tones — perfectly. Why can’t MQA? Because MQA’s the real “garbage.”

There is no "industrial or electronic" music with that kind of spectrum. If you have some, let's see it. Ditto for OP.

MQA has clearly responded to this by giving us spectrum of large corpus of music with exponentially dropping amplitude. This fully matches my analysis of a ton of high-res content. This is what has made MQA possible. That it the ultrasonics don't need a rectangular PCM format to encode. You can't take that away and say, "oh but it doesn't encode a bunch of garbage up to 44 kHz." No it doesn't and no one has a need for it to do so.

Finally you are not Tidal. So don't speak on their behalf. They or the publisher of the content found out they were used for an experiment behind their backs and they took action. That was the lie that was told by OP. I know why he did it but those are facts. He tried to cheat the system and folks found out and stopped it.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Oh, I thought you had given him this much more useful link: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...luetooth-receiver-bt-codecs.23740/post-796835

Pure 1 kHz test tone as I used in my testing is not a pathological source as OP was with impulses, white noise, etc. My focus there is also testing the hardware, much less about testing the codecs. Hence the use of standardized 1 kHz tone (so we could compute SINAD, etc.).

Subjectivists constantly say “why test with tones, when I listen to music?” Suddenly Amir is nodding in agreement. Trying to parse formats from hardware is absurd. Why would we care how well hardware can handle a test tone if the file we are playing back on the hardware cannot reproduce that tone?!

Bottom line: If you are defending MQA’s inability to handle these tones, you might as well shut down this site, because it’s pointless to care about hardware handling somethimg that the format the hardware is fed cannot!

 

[amirm]

Where’s the objective info? Please quote it and explain how it’s objective — meaning: verifiable by anyone.

So I know you actually read anything written, how much of their response have you read?

 

[pozz]

@GoldenOne Why are you focusing on petty legalities? No one's going to come after you.

Explain instead why you posted those comments on SBAF. Until then I considered you to have good intentions.

For reference: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/mqa-review-technical-analysis.10886/page-10

What you take for inconsistency, and then start looking for dubious motives, doesn't take into account that Amir is a software engineer and was involved in developing audio compression. It makes sense that he wants the technology understood before any criticism is made.

The mess in this is that MQA marketing material is full of meaningless semimetaphorical language about quality, fidelity and so forth, and has taken advantage of nontechnical interest from the industry and public to create the impression of some kind of perfection on the cheap (in terms of data requirements; not price, obviously). You make some sort of conspiratorial leap by suggesting that Amir's technical points are a defense of the marketing material. How does that make sense? Further in that post you tack on semirelated information that's supposed to prove that he's operating with underhanded motives.

It took a long time for the technical side of MQA to be understood broadly by the community. I mean by a lot of people, not by the few who are in a position to understand through technical training. So the debate has largely been about the MQA ecosystem.

What I initially took your video to be was a kind of demonstration of its technical failures. I left with that impression because I don't have the technical background to contextualize your comments, and haven't taken any interest in MQA apart from noting how long the threads about it generally are. But I also noted that that you used that proof of technical failure, bring up a streaming platform's action to delete your content, and tie those threads together by suggesting that the one goes with the other. Someone made the decision to protect their interests. Thing is, above you somehow figured that includes Amir as well? And then went so far as to defend that notion with random, barely relevant evidence?

Amir's comments about MQA's deliberate design, honestly, at least set the corporate goals straight in my head. MQA created a somewhat "better" format which satisfies a weak definition of hires audio by increasing the ultrasonic range and decreasing the dynamic range. All that was based on research and good understanding of musical content and listener conditions. But they also had a clear market strategy and the means to execute it, especially the contract negotiations on the back end, the hardware requirements and a strong advertising campaign, including presentation, publications, interviews, all done in a very modern fashion. This strategic arc is not new or even interesting. You can read about it in successful money backed ventures all the time.

Point is: all of this has to be presented correctly. None of this junk about supposed backdoor dealings. You don't have to dig deep to rediscover what's been clear along: a profit motive and a crazy amount of work on the back end to ensure a profit. The more you "conspiracy theory" this topic, the less credibility and merit you bring to the actual criticisms, which are first and foremost technical and fact-driven about MQA's capabilities.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

So I know you actually read anything written, how much of their response have you read?

100%. But that’s irrelevant to you explaining how it’s “objective.”

 

[amirm]

Subjectivists constantly say “why test with tones, when I listen to music?” Suddenly Amir is nodding in agreement.

I do because the fields are different. If we were about efficacy of compression algorithms, we would be 100% about controlled listening tests. We would do frequency sweep and such to make sure there is no truncation of the spectrum but that would be it. Forums like hydrogenaudio that focus on compression algorithms, don't even allow discussion of measurements for this reason!

Trying to parse formats from hardware is absurd. Why would we care how well hardware can handle a test tone if the file we are playing back on the hardware cannot reproduce that tone?!

I don't know what you are talking about. But I can tell you don't understand these varying technologies and how they different in their architecture, design and hence, evaluation for efficacy. Spend more time learning about the topic and generalizing to make talking points and you might get some place.

Bottom line: If you are defending MQA’s inability to handle these tones, you might as well shut down this site, because it’s pointless to care about hardware handling somethimg that the format the hardware is fed cannot!

I am not here to defend MQA. I am here to correct misconceptions the few of you create that has lasting impressions well outside of the borders of this little thing called MQA. Don't try to get too clever here.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

I do because the fields are different. If we were about efficacy of compression algorithms, we would be 100% about controlled listening tests. We would do frequency sweep and such to make sure there is no truncation of the spectrum but that would be it. Forums like hydrogenaudio that focus on compression algorithms, don't even allow discussion of measurements for this reason!

I don't know what you are talking about. But I can tell you don't understand these varying technologies and how they different in their architecture, design and hence, evaluation for efficacy. Spend more time learning about the topic and generalizing to make talking points and you might get some place.

I am not here to defend MQA. I am here to correct misconceptions the few of you create that has lasting impressions well outside of the borders of this little thing called MQA. Don't try to get too clever here.

You are defending MQA, and you’re throwing up nonsense and ad hominem attacks to avoid the fact that it’s an inferior, lossy format with zero benefit to consumers.

 

[amirm]

MQA also blames GoldenOne for ignoring error messages generated by the encoder - except the content creator has no access to the encoder's logs or message output.

He had communicated with MQA prior to publication of his original video and told of the errors:

"We also pointed out the following:

“ …. the analysis phase of the encoder objected outright to 11 of the 14 files you submitted. The three that passed through had these warnings in the log returns which should have caused the user to check:

“Audio invalid – Excessive alias …”
“Audio invalid – Input audio is predominantly 16 bits while file container is 24 bits”
“Input audio appears to have been wrapped”,
“Input audio contains a band edge …”
“Encode may not have worked as desired and may require further QC”

So GoldenEye knew about the errors. Proper follow up would have been understanding of the Triangle encoding method for lossy MQA.

The rest of the content encoding world isn't encoding illegal content so wouldn't have much need for this feedback. Or if they did, they could go to a mastering house for more intense effort which would involve knowing the errors and limitations.

 

[amirm]

You are defending MQA, and you’re throwing up nonsense and ad hominem attacks to avoid the fact that it’s an inferior, lossy format with zero benefit to consumers.

One more information-free post like this and you will get a reply ban.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

There is no "industrial or electronic" music with that kind of spectrum. If you have some, let's see it. Ditto for OP.

MQA has clearly responded to this by giving us spectrum of large corpus of music with exponentially dropping amplitude. This fully matches my analysis of a ton of high-res content. This is what has made MQA possible. That it the ultrasonics don't need a rectangular PCM format to encode. You can't take that away and say, "oh but it doesn't encode a bunch of garbage up to 44 kHz." No it doesn't and no one has a need for it to do so.

Finally you are not Tidal. So don't speak on their behalf. They or the publisher of the content found out they were used for an experiment behind their backs and they took action. That was the lie that was told by OP. I know why he did it but those are facts. He tried to cheat the system and folks found out and stopped it.

Streaming and download sites are not screening files for their spectrum before posting. Indeed, Golden’s files being posted prove this. There’s nothing stopping anyone from submitting “illegal” audio files precisely because services do not have the manpower to screen every submitted file for its technical content or artistic merit. Undoubtedly, Golden’s files would still be up if he had not called attention to their purpose.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

One more information-free post like this and you will get a reply ban.

Your response — dodging my question — asking me how much of Stuart’s response I’d read was “information free,” too. Perhaps you should ban yourself?

 

[amirm]

100%. But that’s irrelevant to you explaining how it’s “objective.”

You said where is the objective info in MQA response. I told you it is in there. If you think there is not, then you didn't read or understand their reply. I have already quoted objective analysis from their response:

It is not definition of music. It is the spectrum of music in highest frequencies. Across millions of tracks, they have built a very good statistical profile of worst case amplitudes. It looks like this:

The brown graph is the *peak* level of all the content they have seen so far in encoding MQA content. OP's two test files are in olive and red colors. As you see, they wildly exceed the worst case spectrum of content they have seen across million+ tracks.

MQA when asked to encode high res files into standard res it not mathematically lossless. It cannot be. Question is, if music is encoded at its full information-level or not. They say it is and OP's tests don't nullify that.

Vast majority of you are in favor of 44.1 kHz sampling because you think there is nothing useful above 22.05 kHz. It is super odd now to get religion and say that what is above 22.05 has a) a ton of amplitude and b) must be preserved.

I verified the spectrum of OP signal and confirmed that the MQA analysis is correct:

Why? They have 88 kHz high res files with spectrum going to 44 kHz? Here is the spectrum of said test files as posted by OP:

View attachment 132301

You have tones at 35 kHz that are louder than what is at 7 kHz! There is no music content in the world that has this type of spectrum, Basstronic or otherwise. To wit, here is the Basstronic's The Bass that I love overlaid on above:

View attachment 132302

The version I have is the truncated at 16 kHz. Not sure if there is a wider spectrum one or not but even if there is, you can see the trend of the spectrum dropping rapidly. And that is the feature MQA uses to encode content "losslessly." It relies on have very little spectrum above 22 kHz to encode, not what the OP fed it.

So clearly you are not reading either my responses or that of MQA. Please don't waste our time repeating the answers like this.