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MQA > Lenbrook > SCL6 codec > ?

bargainguy

bargainguy

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I've been a skeptic of MQA, thinking that it was a way to lock you into a proprietary format with questionable sonic benefits. The whole "we're optimized for the time domain, not frequency response" thing.

Now I'm beginning to wonder. I just read a J. Robert Stuart article in The Absolute Sound where he is talking about the SCL6 codec being the latest incarnation of MQA as their sixth-generation scalable code.

He originally developed SCL6 as a means to conduct high-quality signals via Bluetooth, where the bit rate is often severely limited (lower than 1.4 megabits per second), and didn't feel that existing codecs were up to the task.

The interesting thing about SCL6 is that it is either lossy (as low as 200 kbps) or lossless (up to 20 mbps) depending on the requirements of the music and the bit rates involved.

Now this is something I haven't heard before. The ability of a codec to switch between lossy and lossless on the fly is a new development.

I hope SCL6 won't be made proprietary like MQA, but I have a feeling it will be.
 
Last edited:
Stop reading BS and A-B test with your ears.
 
Can't. I don't have MQA and SCL6 isn't out yet.

I am curious, though. You summarily dismissed a new codec which can theoretically improve transmission efficiency (especially wireless) and take up less storage space.

Please enlighten me on how this would be a bad thing sonically, and be quite specific in your response.

If it's the old "what we've got now is fine, we don't need this," yeah, I've heard that one before. If you're going there, got to do better than that.
 
I have spotify that automatically adapts to lossless or lossy depending on network speed.
Bluetooth does it; probably all streamer devices using chromecast, airplay or any other streamer platform too. Netflix does it, disney+, apple music probably too.

This is how wireless works ime.
No magic.

Otherwise you would experience dropouts- moments where music just stops, reappears, accelerates to catch up.
 
bargainguy said:
I've been a skeptic of MQA, thinking that it was a way to lock you into a proprietary format with questionable sonic benefits. The whole "we're optimized for the time domain, not frequency response" thing.

Now I'm beginning to wonder. I just read a J. Robert Stuart article in The Absolute Sound where he is talking about the SCL6 codec being the latest incarnation of MQA as their sixth-generation scalable code.

He originally developed SCL6 as a means to conduct high-quality signals via Bluetooth, where the bit rate is often severely limited (lower than 1.4 megabits per second), and didn't feel that existing codecs were up to the task.

The interesting thing about SCL6 is that it is either lossy (as low as 200 kbps) or lossless (up to 20 mbps) depending on the requirements of the music and the bit rates involved.

Now this is something I haven't heard before. The ability of a codec to switch between lossy and lossless on the fly is a new development.

I hope SCL6 won't be made proprietary like MQA, but I have a feeling it will be.
Click to expand...
At this point, anyone reading this would do well to simply use their common sense.
The starting point is high-resolution audio; so, listen to the difference between high-res tracks and current Bluetooth codecs on your own system. That represents the maximum difference AIRIA/SCL6 could possibly offer, because anything beyond that is definitely not feasible.

Fortunately, it is just a codec, not something that needs to be integrated during the actual recording process.
However, for one thing, it hasn't been made available to anyone for independent testing, which is not a good sign.
For another, it was unveiled almost exactly two years ago, and absolutely nothing of significance has happened since then.
Both facts speak volumes.
 
bargainguy said:
Can't. I don't have MQA and SCL6 isn't out yet.

I am curious, though. You summarily dismissed a new codec which can theoretically improve transmission efficiency (especially wireless) and take up less storage space.

Please enlighten me on how this would be a bad thing sonically, and be quite specific in your response.

If it's the old "what we've got now is fine, we don't need this," yeah, I've heard that one before. If you're going there, got to do better than that.
Click to expand...
What music will I be able to buy that is scheduled to be on SCL6? And as said, who want to go back to lossy compression with MQA ? Is it going to to proprietary and charge licensing fees? - probably, so it's already dead in the water.

For full CD quality, you only need 1.4mbps of transmission bandwidth, and only 60% of that for FLAC files - that is trivial and practically works over wet string. My home WiFi is good for 300Mbs - 4K vids play fine on my TV. My internet is shortly going to be 1Gbps. So what problem to do with transmission bandwidth still needs to be solved?

I have net 15.6TB of storage on my RAID/NAS, and my massive collection of music from the last 50 years fits into 1.5TB. A 2TB HDD disk is about £90, and SSD is about that for 1TB - what storage issue is anyone facing?

I'm happy if some develops new codecs, lossy or lossless, but I for one don't want to pay extra for MQA, or whatever possible scam these bozos could dream up next to foist onto the gullible, for mucis I have already bought (often in several formats to date already, like vinyl to CD etc).
 
Mr Stuart like me, is now of an elderly generation where our hearing is WELL past its best, even assuming it's not affected as mine is (I once knew Bob Stuart in his Orpheus and early Meridian days). All this academic stuff dealing with noise levels most of us audio peeps cannot perceive in day to day life (no matter how 'golden eared' some claim to be). Just listen to levels of '-25dB' under a mean music signal to hopefully get what I'm talking about ;)
 
Redacted said:
What music will I be able to buy that is scheduled to be on SCL6? And as said, who want to go back to lossy compression with MQA ? Is it going to to proprietary and charge licensing fees? - probably, so it's already dead in the water.

For full CD quality, you only need 1.4mbps of transmission bandwidth, and only 60% of that for FLAC files - that is trivial and practically works over wet string. My home WiFi is good for 300Mbs - 4K vids play fine on my TV. My internet is shortly going to be 1Gbps. So what problem to do with transmission bandwidth still needs to be solved?

I have net 15.6TB of storage on my RAID/NAS, and my massive collection of music from the last 50 years fits into 1.5TB. A 2TB HDD disk is about £90, and SSD is about that for 1TB - what storage issue is anyone facing?

I'm happy if some develops new codecs, lossy or lossless, but I for one don't want to pay extra for MQA, or whatever possible scam these bozos could dream up next to foist onto the gullible, for mucis I have already bought (often in several formats to date already, like vinyl to CD etc).
Click to expand...
As I already wrote in my previous post, it’s just a codec; it has nothing to do with the recording.
It’s supposed to be just another—supposedly better—Bluetooth codec.
 
bargainguy said:
I hope SCL6 won't be made proprietary like MQA, but I have a feeling it will be.
Click to expand...
MQA went bankrupt in 2023. Lenbrook bought the remains for a a mere £100,000.
Obvious it is proprietary.
In 2024 Lenbrook announced to partner with HD-Tracks to provide a streaming service using MQA/Airia.
Don't know if it materialized.
 
Soniclife said:
I thought LDAC already did this
Click to expand...
It switches between 900-600-300 kbs (more or less, 990 kbs is the max)
As CD is 1411 kbs, it is not lossless.
To the best of my knowledge, the encoding part is open source, the decoding part is not.
 
bargainguy said:
The interesting thing about SCL6 is that it is either lossy (as low as 200 kbps) or lossless (up to 20 mbps) depending on the requirements of the music and the bit rates involved.
Click to expand...
I don't think the interesting thing is to be able to stream everything between low quality lossless and hi-res. We already have that. I thought that the real innovation is switching within a track on the fly if bandwidth suddenly becomes restricted. I don't know if that is a problem needing solving though.
 
MQA is, and will always be, MQA. No matter what kind of trousers it wears...
We already have adaptive codecs. We already have lossless compressed formats. What we don't have enough, though, is proprietary formats enhancing DRM...
 
Soniclife said:
I thought LDAC already did this, and it's open source and in lots of products already.
Click to expand...
Similarly aptX lossless which is not lossless as it switches between a lossless and lossy codec depending on the performance of the lossless codec and the link quality.

The issue is that the worst case performance of a lossless codec with pathological samples is to make the data bigger so your link layer has to be able to cope with that and Bluetooth can’t as in the mode earphones care about it tops out at about 1Mbit/s

The bare truth is that most of the time Bluetooth RF performance is dire and any such codec will have its lossy mode activated so there is no advantage over just using AAC.
 
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