MQA Sounds Really Good!

[amirm]

Audible watermarking is still heavily used by some of the major labels on streaming content, or are you taking about something else?

Yes, I am talking about identifying each buyer in each track purchased. That first music service actually embedded your credit card number as a deterrent for piracy of purchased content!

The type that is used now embeds data from the label and probably which distributor their sent it to. They then trace these in the wild to see which source of piracy is most prevalent.

 

[Ron Party]

Amir, how does that work? If one buys a CD (or SACD, DVDA or Blu Ray Audio), then rips it to one's computer and later gives a copy to a friend, is it possible to peek behind the curtain <thinking of Oz, here> and examine the friend's copy to ascertain the identity of the original purchaser?

 

[dmac6419]

WORD

 

[watchnerd]

Amir, how does that work? If one buys a CD (or SACD, DVDA or Blu Ray Audio), then rips it to one's computer and later gives a copy to a friend, is it possible to peek behind the curtain <thinking of Oz, here> and examine the friend's copy to ascertain the identity of the original purchaser?

Not with normal Redbook.

But there are some unusual exceptions (some Madonna CD if I recall).

Most lossless torrent sites forbid their upload due to RIAA honeypots.

And torrents will be the escape route for HD lossless if MQA gets too restrictive.

 

[RayDunzl]

DRM in firmware:

I had a MacPlus sometime in a prior millenium.

I was actually able to write GUI code for it, thanks to Inside MacIntosh.

I wrote a little thing I called "MemoryView", which would put each bit of memory address space (there wasn't that much) onscreen in a resizeable scrollable window - 1 being a black pixel, 0 white.

You could watch various counters and other dynamically changing locations, find the mouse x/y coordinates, see programs load and unload, etc.

When displaying the address space of the ROM contents, if the correct aspect ratio was chosen (rows vs columns) the little bit image "STOLEN FROM APPLE COMPUTER" appeared onscreen among the more random pixels.

I thought that was interesting, the text wasn't in the ROM, but a bitmap image of the text was.

---

An unexpected thing - when viewing the video memory address space you could get an image of the screen, which would go into and modify the video memory, and be placed on the screen, in a loop, like a pair of mirrors facing each other.

Then, looking at some areas of memory would freeze the system. Oh well.

I digress.

 

[Ron Party]

OK. I had to google that one. It's a good day... every day I learn at least one new word is a good day (I know, I set the bar pretty low), and today I learned a new term: honeypot.

 

[DonH56]

OK. I had to google that one. It's a good day... every day I learn at least one new word is a good day (I know, I set the bar pretty low), and today I learned a new term: honeypot.

Winnie the Pooh would be proud.

 

[Sal1950]

Winnie the Pooh would be proud.

What a strange vocabulary ???

 

[Eirikur]

The reason for thinking watermarking is most likely not possible is because when watermarking the actual audio content is changed.

UMG did do this, and it is audible: https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
Seems they've stopped doing that, but plenty of tainted songs are still around.

 

[LuckyLuke575]

Well, maybe.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-why-amir-is-pro-mqa.5764/page-10#post-130583

Why not just get lossless CD quality, with no fancy-pants hand waving trickery?[/QUOTE]

Well the TIDAL subscription comes with access to both FLAC and MQA which I like, but I naturally choose the MQA version when its available.

 

[amirm]

Amir, how does that work? If one buys a CD (or SACD, DVDA or Blu Ray Audio), then rips it to one's computer and later gives a copy to a friend, is it possible to peek behind the curtain <thinking of Oz, here> and examine the friend's copy to ascertain the identity of the original purchaser?

You mean the settop box version? If so, the watermark was embedded in the audio output of the unit. So if you captured that and distributed it, they would know it came from your device.

 

[amirm]

To expand, watermarking falls in the category of "analog hole." That is, if audio eventually becomes analog, it can't have any copy protection. Content owners want to deter people digitizing that back and distributing it. Hence the watermark which would go out of the device.

I can't tell you how many fights we had with content owners on this topic.

 

[KozmoNaut]

Well the TIDAL subscription comes with access to both FLAC and MQA which I like, but I naturally choose the MQA version when its available.

Why not subscribe to the CD quality subscription instead, and save some money?

Why do you say you "naturally" choose MQA?

 

[LuckyLuke575]

Why not subscribe to the CD quality subscription instead, and save some money?

Why do you say you "naturally" choose MQA?

There is no subscription that seperates the two; TIDAL Hi-Fi includes both FLAC and MQA.

Naturally because it's 96/24 quality lol

 

[KozmoNaut]

Ah, I remembered that it was split into more tiers, but it seems they've consolidated to just two tiers.

 

[scott wurcer]

There is no subscription that seperates the two; TIDAL Hi-Fi includes both FLAC and MQA.

Naturally because it's 96/24 quality lol

96/24 FLAC isn't? I thought this was Audio Science Review, all the stuff about revenue streams, licence fees, and business plans is essentially irrelevant. I'm interested in these marginally believable claims of deburring, etc. Since an open verification of the technical performance of MQA has been made impossible I see no point in most of this discussion.

 

[scott wurcer]

That first music service actually embedded your credit card number as a deterrent for piracy of purchased content!
.

That doesn't bother you? I can make a guilty confession, I have never purchased a single HD download, ever. OTOH I have always paid for MS Office. my company had a $25 blanket employee deal .

 

[amirm]

That doesn't bother you?

It not only bothered me but I spent a decade fighting both music labels and studios to not enable marking content that way. The rest of the hardware industry did the same.

I can make a guilty confession, I have never purchased a single HD download, ever. OTOH I have always paid for MS Office. my company had a $25 blanket employee deal .

That is a good deal. It may actually be better pricing than we got through company store!

 

[scott wurcer]

That is a good deal. It may actually be better pricing than we got through company store!

Probably subsidized by 1000's of seats of corporate computers. We were a no Apple product on the network place, I knew of two Mac users one was our senior tech liaison to Apple (face must be conserved) and one was a friend of considerable savvy that was able to make it work (Face of Another).

 

[600lbs of Sin]

I'm further confused about MQA after a recent interview of Jeff Tweedy on Marc Maron's podcast. Jeff Tweedy described how he would manually splice different sections of analog tape together in order to make the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. This was due to technical limitations of the day. He mentioned this process wasn't filmed in the movie about the making of the album. Jeff Tweedy claimed there could not be a remix of the album, due to the absence of individual recording tracks. Hence, no faders could be applied to change levels post production.

This raised my antenna, so when I got home I pulled up Tidal to see if there was a MQA version of the recording. Not only is there an MQA version, it is labeled as MQA Studio. Per my earlier post, I understand this to be a MQA version from the master tape. Regardless of my opinion of the MQA STUDIO vs Flac version, this raises allot of questions. Its notable to point out that Wilco Produced the album, owns the rights to the album and it was mixed by Jim O'rourke.

1. What is MQA/MQA Studio? A remix. remaster, or both?

2. Is it possible remix the album, in regards to Jeff Tweedys comments?

3. Did Jeff Tweedy sign off on this version, being its a MQA Studio version? Based on my under understanding of MQA Studio.

I profess my ignorance on much of the technical aspects of recording and mixing, however I do suspect something is amiss. Wilco self produced there first 4 albums (analog era), possibly Jeff Tweedy is unaware of what can be accomplished digitally today (as am I.) Perhaps I'm in over my head on this subject and my presumptions are much too do about nothing.

As for my take on both formats of the album, I feel the MQA version is more balanced, but lacks dynamics, especially at the top and bottom of the audible spectrum. The perceived differences are minor and I prefer the flac version, albeit not enough to draw much distinction on this album for sure.

I'm interested on what you guy's think of this, if anything.


FYI: I have not finished listening to the entire interview yet, so I will edit my post if anything relevant is discussed on the podcast.