"The folks at GoldenSound" - as far as I can tell it is one guy with a axe to grind, one of those 'truth to power' types who are committed to fighting for a cause they have perhaps even imagined ..
The videos seemed to have many internet warrior logical falicies and really focused on marketing words, not the actual tech ..
As I see it, innovation can be risky - the premise behind MQA was genuinely innovative but also was a business not a charity. I get the feeling some audio nerds are of the mindset that everything should be open source and free .. which is noble but does itself a disservice when then clichéd accusations of conspiracy or 'follow the money!' get banded about for anything commercial, especially with licencing attached.
I first saw these folks come out of the woodwork when Pono was launched ... and yet high Res audio that they where shouting was a conspiracy and con is everywhere now, even streaming services.
Oh, I agree with that. Open source is great but I like to eat periodically. Giving my innovations away won't help me put food on my table.
I can't speak for the folks at GoldenSound, but I do agree with the premise of the video; that extraordinary marketing claims need to be backed by extraordinary evidence. If MQA is so much better then they should publish measurements that support this. I also agree with GoldenSound that MQA should allow third-party testing, which apparently they don't.
A separate issue is that I honestly don't see a need for MQA. If a record label wants to make studio quality recordings available, why not simply make the 24-bit, 192 kHz files available? They'll compress well and losslessly with FLAC. Storage is practically free these days. Internet connections are fast. So it seems to me that MQA was a good 10+ years late to the market.
Tom
You are very trusting.
It (not she) reads a lot and generates something it considers plausibly similar. Which may be turn out to be correct. Or it may not.
An example: just after ebay start offering AI-generated descriptions, I saw an old Seas woofer listed. The model was 17 F_GWB. The AI-generated description explained this as "Full-range Graphene Woofer - and Beyond". It was a model from the 1970s, several decades before the discovery of graphene.
It (not she) reads a lot and generates something it considers plausibly similar. Which may be turn out to be correct. Or it may not.
An example: just after ebay start offering AI-generated descriptions, I saw an old Seas woofer listed. The model was 17 F_GWB. The AI-generated description explained this as "Full-range Graphene Woofer - and Beyond". It was a model from the 1970s, several decades before the discovery of graphene.
A guy in Winnipeg got scammed when he needed to contact Farcebook customer support. He found a phone number for the customer support online and used Farcebook's Messenger AI-powered search to check to see if the number was legit. The AI told him that it was a legit number, so he called. Was then scammed out of hundreds of dollars.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/facebook-customer-support-scam-1.7219581
So I'd be pretty cautious about just blindly using what the AI spits out as "facts".
Tom
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/facebook-customer-support-scam-1.7219581
So I'd be pretty cautious about just blindly using what the AI spits out as "facts".
Tom
I don't know about Ebay using Open-AI technology , but if I where forced to chose I would trust Open-AI over Ebay. There is no gain in letting Chat-GPT lie about things. If you check her message as quoted in #43 you find it's all close to the trues. She could have mentioned the open standards; TCP, ARP, ICMP, IP, UDP, DNS etc, etc, etc, but I did not explicitly ask about those.
Why do you say "the folks at GoldenSound" ? Have you heard of them, know them well? As far as I can tell it is just the name of one single man's YouTube channel .. no folks at anywhere .
The idea was conceived long before streaming services had the bandwidth to provide high resolution material spotify still doesn't) and to therefore deliver what was important sonically in the high res recording but wrapped up in a 24bit/44.1khz data rate.
The most innovative part was an attempt to use tailored apodizing filters (hence the involvement of the guy who first developed their theory... ) to restore impulse response by first analysing some aspect to determine which specific model of A/D conversation was used on the track and then provide an appropriate apodizing filter on the fly to reconstruct the analogue convertion properly. They worked with many big studios and mastering houses who all saw benefit socially at the development stage, presumably (unless one engages in cynical conspiracy theory without evidence). They stated so anyway ..
All the guy behind GoldenSound did was analyse Tidal's implementation of it .. and yet he completely ignored this vital point. He never tested anything that MQA ltd provided, only this this party's system... A fundamental logical flaw that would see a scientific paper rejected, I sure.
However that is not to say any of it actually worked not that it was ever sonically beneficial... but I hate to see people's desire to kill something off just because of their cynicism without evidence .
I never understood the details of MQA so please forgive anything that sounds wishy washy in my technical description of it .. any equipment I have had that decodes MQA has also been accidental - I never persued it as I don't hear significant difference with high res for a start, but it is (was) at least interesting .
Ah. I dumped Tidal a year or two ago because of MQA. I actually didn't know anything about it but my ears could tell my ripped CDs sounded more musical than Tidals versions. Even though Tidal's were remastered, ultra-resolution, megabits and giga-hertz sampling rates, etc etc etc (add your favourite hyperbolae here). In trying to diagnose the sound problems I found out about lossy/doctored MQA and switched to Qobuz at a greater subscription fee. Music again.
So is it safe to use Tidal now? If so, I'll check out its fees.
Edit: so Tidal appears to be about the same price (C$11) as Qobuz, in Canada. I like Qobuz' features so I'll stay put.
So is it safe to use Tidal now? If so, I'll check out its fees.
Edit: so Tidal appears to be about the same price (C$11) as Qobuz, in Canada. I like Qobuz' features so I'll stay put.
Last edited:
As far as I'm concerned the weak point is not lack of measurements, but lack of evidence that short impulse responses have some advantage for human listeners. It's been a while since I read their freely accessable AES paper "A hierarchical approach to archiving and distribution" (or something like that), but as far as I remember, they did show a measured impulse response (or was it calculated?) and it was quite short, but they referred to literature about the auditory system of barn owls when arguing why impulse responses should be short.
I find the comments about streaming sound quality interesting. I have several thousand ripped CDs and access to all of the same on Tidal which I play through my Roon infrastructure. I have heard some Tidal streams that I thought sounded better than the CD rip, some CD rips that I thought sounded better than Tidal, and some where honestly there was not any difference I could reliably discern. I have heard some bad sounding material on Tidal, and equally I have heard (and own) some bad sounding CDs.
I think intrinsically that Tidal achieves at least CD sound quality on the majority of material I have encountered.
Likely any sound quality problems I have experienced were due to the source material which can be variable and not the process itself whether or not MQA was involved.
MQA was a solution to a bandwidth problem that no longer exists.
I have vinyl and 15ips/30ips 2 track stereo tape for reference. I don' t bother with them much.
I think intrinsically that Tidal achieves at least CD sound quality on the majority of material I have encountered.
Likely any sound quality problems I have experienced were due to the source material which can be variable and not the process itself whether or not MQA was involved.
MQA was a solution to a bandwidth problem that no longer exists.
I have vinyl and 15ips/30ips 2 track stereo tape for reference. I don' t bother with them much.
Last edited:
See the links in post #26, https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/tidal-chucking-mqa.414164/post-7715786 At least they will still do something with the short impulse response stuff.
That's entirely possible.
On the flip side: Have you seen any hard evidence from MQA that their system works and does not degrade the original 16-bit data? I haven't. MQA is the one making the claims out audiophile superiority. They should be the ones backing up their claims with measurements.
Tom
Most likely original studio master @96k 24bit and MQA claim as promoted:
“ ability to preserve more of the original signal’s information at that level. This means you’ll be able to hear your favorite tracks in stunning detail, just as the artist intended (from the studio master)”
… that can be squeezed into CD bandwidth
“ ability to preserve more of the original signal’s information at that level. This means you’ll be able to hear your favorite tracks in stunning detail, just as the artist intended (from the studio master)”
… that can be squeezed into CD bandwidth
Last edited:
This is not the article I wrote about earlier, but judging by the title and authors and browsing through the contents, it must be very similar:
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/download.cfm/20456.pdf?ID=20456
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/download.cfm/20456.pdf?ID=20456
Perhaps another take: looking at downloading this from HDTracks, only two formats available Standard and E, both 48k, 24-bits so, HiRes and better than CD quality but no information on how the studio master was created. If recorded at 48k 24bit then exactly as intended for us to hear. Otherwise, we are sort of missing out on the original version with what is actually ‘flacked’. Who knows it might 16-bit CD quality resampled to look like ‘HiRes’
Attachments
- Status
- Not open for further replies.