That's the idea behind it, but it's a bit odd that they refer to papers about barn owls as substantiation. I'm still not sure if they are nuts or geniuses. Most of Peter Craven's papers are very good, though.
" Oh hang on, actually I started by asking if besides speculations about neuroscience and physics they had actual controlled listening trials to back their story up. Bob Stuart replied that all listening tests so far were working experiences with engineers in their studios but that no scientific listening tests have been done so far. That doesn't surprise any of us cynics but it is an astonishing admission from the man himself. Mhm, I can just see the headlines. "No Scientific Tests Were Done, Says MQA Founder". "
I think this is an important point to understand ..
In the world of audio production, the people who have the multi-miillion dollar equipment that the determines the sound of the music we hear in the first place ..
.. scientific testing of audibilty of improvements in equipment does not exist culturally!
In that world, everything is essentially a working subjective test, maximum self performed ABX testing via software, level matched.
And it is that world that determines the maximum possible resolution, detail, the whole sound of all commercial music consumers can hear ..
It is interesting how the lower down the chain you go, how people want to be more sure that differences are being claimed are real, where perhaps people want to know they're not being parted from their money by snake oil... the same people who are less likely to hear differences due to room acoustics, their systems and their lack of ear training (probably in that order).
In a sense , it's a folly for mere mortals like us to even pay attention to things like MQA and instead just focus on the higher magnitude stuff, like room treatment and better speakers ... and ear training .
And vice-versa, engineer's audiophile obsessions in treated rooms with accurate monitoring .. shouldn't really determine what is then sold to consumers, because the differences are likely to be irrelevant.
Its worse that that. The engineers focus on what can be easily measured with equipment they already have, and they already believe that equipment sums up all that can be heard. Of all people, it would be expected that the engineers will know what needs to be measured, but most of them don't know the limitations of their own test equipment when applied to the real world user music playback equipment which is sold today. Most of them don't even understand what ESS meant by talking about PSS and non-PSS measurements. IMHO most of them didn't want to know.
So you know how much money is spent on those trials and the amount of time it takes to conclude them?
The incentive for that upfront cost and time spent is billions in profit through high pricing and exclusive ability to produce the drug, protected in law.
So ... how would you expect someone with 'golden ears' to do anything similar?
And yet you use that lack of similar large trials as .. proof of something?
It's not a serious point.
And have a culture of gear-lust, much emotional.
Ultimate trust in their own perception is essentially the very thing that gets their their job.
If they had any doubts in what they heard, they couldn't make confident sonic decisions .. therefore they are likely, by way of their position, highly susceptable to perception biases.
.. on the other hand, they do have good room acoustics and brians that are working on audio critically, 14 hours a day most days - which consumers lack.
Actually, this is a good point ..
MQA is also lossless just like CD.
Why? Because MQA is a .flac.
By very definition of lossless, both CD and .flac are lossless. The data that went in to their encoding is fully reproducible. That's the definition of lossless.
However, the PROCESS of making a CD from 24/96 recording deletes data. As does the process of the MQA encoding.
So either CD is lossy or it's not ... and whichever CD is, MQA is also.
And yet, the one we are arguing about with people decrying 'its lossy!' has arguably more information in it that represents its 24/96 file origins .. than the CD that is considered fully lossless in concept.
Crazy world huh ...
Both CD and MQA involve data reduction when converting from a higher-resolution original recording.
MQA uses a form of lossy compression and claims to retain high audio quality from the CD data. And that is what MQA trickster fingers do. They don’t go back to the “master”.
As explained plenty of times, MQA is worse than CD. MQA is like homeopathy applied to music...
Anyway, who needs compression in this day and age with multi-gigabit internet connections and data storage prices that have never been cheaper?
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The new iteration of MQA coming near you very soon... 🤣 🤢
https://audioxpress.com/news/lenbro...-mqa-labs-and-exciting-plans-for-ip-portfolio
https://audioxpress.com/news/lenbro...-mqa-labs-and-exciting-plans-for-ip-portfolio
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I should have clarified the latter case. e.g. current practices, record at hires 96k/24bit or 48k/24bit (Studio Master) and down-converted CD quality also offered for distribution which is the “lossy” I was referring to.
MQA, though lossy itself, purports to embed more of the original hires information - folded into CD bandwidth. Possibly even DxD this way. See my post #70, how Linn distributes …
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How so?
I disagree. As far as I understand it, MQA claims that their algorithm does not touch the original 16-bit data. It is up to them to show that their product lives up to that. All they would need to do is to allow someone to compare a 16-bit file with the upper 16 bits of the corresponding MQA file. If their claim is true, those bits should match.
All I want as a consumer is the ability to play CD quality sound from Tidal. I want the original 16 bits on the CD. Not 16 bits that MQA promises they won't garble even though measurements by GoldenSound and my own listening experience say they do.
So you're saying that MQA deliberately distorts the original data to fit their idea of what sounds good? That's pretty far from the musical origami marketing babble I read from them.
Oh, OK. So I need a MQA file (-> licensing fee), an MQA decoder (-> licensing fee), and a system that's set up for MQA? Yeah... No thanks. How about just giving me the original 16 bits from the CD and letting me decide what to do with them?
Tom
Sure - but if what you put in there is lossy to begin with - i.e. the MQA coder, the "transport package" doesn't matter.... what you listen to is still lossy...
You started with linear PCM. Could be a crappy ADC but still, linear PCM say 24/384. Now, you process this to a 16/44 and distribute it losslessly compressed in a flac container- we don't call this "lossy". Now, instead as for MQA - you take the most significant bits and do the same downsampling as in previous example - "lossless"... but here comes the bugger... now MQA makes a mp3 like compression of the bits 17-24 and combine it with the lossless most significant bits and codes it into a bigger file than the the previous example and call it ... whatever... I dot care but it is a scam. Then there is the timing/impulse crap on top of this.... 99% of all testaments to greater (but probably different) sound is due to a new mastering before the MQAification.
//
It sounds like you're not understanding the concept. The origami bit has nothing to do with distorting the signal. You're essentially saying that dither also distorts the signal.
Well, how do you propose to get a 24 bit, 96k recording down to 16/44.1 without causing distortion from truncation or rounding down ?
Bob Stuart has been one of the pioneers of noise dither since the late 80s. MQA's 'audio origami' is much of the same but to the extreme due to how much real estate there is in a high resolution recording that has no musical information ..
Where are your large sample controlled tests that show us a real discernable degradation in the 16 bit MQA file? Or is it more subjective mumbo jumbo.. but this time mumbo jumbo that you approve of because it supports your already help position?
All this works both ways ... else it's a double standard.
Ah, seems like my previous reply that uses those other quotes didn't send earlier .. shame.
It was a whataboutism by definition because we were talking about Goldensound, the validity of his argument and why you called them 'they' as if a group or an organisation that had some authority on the subject ..
and then your argument against that was 'well MQA hasn't made any convincing argument' implying Goldensound is therefore correct ..
Well ... if there is an an argument between a scientist and flat earthers and a group of onlookers who want to know the truth, and all the scientists can do is get flustered and just say ".....you're just wrong, you're stupid! The earth is obviously an elgonated sphere!" ... Does their unconvincing argument mean they are therefore wrong?
Yet, in the social media and online world .. those unthinking onlookers would happily side with the flat earthers just because they were more elequent and confident in their argument.
People's arguments do not change the facts.. they just convince people or don't - it's about the audience and psychology, not truth.
And what of Goldensound now??
He, a single individual, has now used his MQA fame as a springboard to be the anti-audiophile's audiophile with slick looking YouTube reviews. Perhaps ego plays a big part in his opinions, who knows..
It was a whataboutism by definition because we were talking about Goldensound, the validity of his argument and why you called them 'they' as if a group or an organisation that had some authority on the subject ..
and then your argument against that was 'well MQA hasn't made any convincing argument' implying Goldensound is therefore correct ..
Well ... if there is an an argument between a scientist and flat earthers and a group of onlookers who want to know the truth, and all the scientists can do is get flustered and just say ".....you're just wrong, you're stupid! The earth is obviously an elgonated sphere!" ... Does their unconvincing argument mean they are therefore wrong?
Yet, in the social media and online world .. those unthinking onlookers would happily side with the flat earthers just because they were more elequent and confident in their argument.
People's arguments do not change the facts.. they just convince people or don't - it's about the audience and psychology, not truth.
And what of Goldensound now??
He, a single individual, has now used his MQA fame as a springboard to be the anti-audiophile's audiophile with slick looking YouTube reviews. Perhaps ego plays a big part in his opinions, who knows..
You started to make a point but then trailed off to say it's a scam.. sounds like you would have strong confirmation bias about it being a scam so wouldn't be willing to learn what it actually does.
Me personally .. I would have to study some stuff for a long while to understand whether the concept is really feasible or if it could be a scam .. so I don't know.
But everything that has been explained about it that I have seen, shows it to be a relatively credible concept! It's along the same lines as a lot of previous noise dither stuff that is widely accepted. Craven's work appears to be fairly accepted in technical circles too .. although i think it gets more use in other realms of signal processing.
Whether it makes an audible difference or not .. well, the MQA concept took so long to come about, internet speeds increased enough that much of MQA is no longer relevant... and mobile audio normally goes through Bluetooth compression .. so who cares. Haha.
The point you started making is all conceptual.. you just say 'you process the 24/384 and make a CD with it' as if that was just a simple thing .. It is not and lots of data is lost. That is no less lossy than using MQA techniques to do the same.
Yep, I agree.
The same concepts were around in the late 1980s and Meridian sold consumer noise dither units in the form of the 618 and 518 that allowed you to record in 20 bits, use noise dither to 'fold down' some of the detail of the 20bit recording into the noise of a 16bit data (losing 1 or 2 dB of dynamic range in 16 bit - largely not used by any form of music) tha would then give you about a 19bit dynamic range when run through a DAC of at least 20 bits..
No controversy, all about the maths of the data, and all factual. Apogee did something similar with UV22 encoding, later UV22HR, and JVC had a technique of their own too ..
I guess social media wasnt as ubiquitous back then to declare these as scams too .. especially as, again, these were sold to folks on the music production side, the consumer left out of it (the path MQA should have gone ..)
Dude. You're way off the rocker here. You're reading things between the lines that I never said and never intended to say, so you're basically arguing with yourself here. I see no reason to be part of that.
The pronoun 'they' can be singular. At least according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Tom
The pronoun 'they' can be singular. At least according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Tom
I don’t get why MQA goes to all that trouble just to save some bandwidth. Was it ever a compelling proposition in the age of broadband? Maybe if it was released in the 90s?
Or maybe it was never about the file size … it was about what could be sold?
I do feel a bit sad for MQA because the original idea of characterising the conversion process to get back to the master is actually quite cool.
It seems they lost their way.
Or maybe it was never about the file size … it was about what could be sold?
I do feel a bit sad for MQA because the original idea of characterising the conversion process to get back to the master is actually quite cool.
It seems they lost their way.
Possibly about storage space on the servers. I did ask Quboz about DSD streaming plans and they indicated likewise - not the bandwidth concerns on modern networks. Anyway, just have to wait for Lenbrook to start MQA streaming possibly next year
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