Archimago

Excellent final update: I suspect for Eric Alexander, this weekend's gotta be some kind of "come to Jesus" self-inflicted moment of reckoning.

Interesting comment about the desire these days for folks to become full-time YouTubers, Tik-Tokers, etc. And the "attention economy". It's certainly a good opportunity for some to become "stars" I guess. In this day and age when real journalism seems to be in decline except for a few places where organizations can have people remain independent on a living-wage payroll, I imagine it would be very hard not to end up becoming obviously biased and even silly in their shilling of products when seeking to make a living if in any way dependent on company sending products and sales! For example, as much as I enjoy what we can get from inexpensive products like the TI Class D chip amps, the CheapAudioman channel has become a kind of hype channel for manufacturers like Fosi Audio. Anyhow. I think Erin's a good guy and clearly passionate about audio hardware, saying it as it is. Tekton/Eric Alexander is not helping the company.

Hey guys, just wanted to send out an invite... Another year, another blind listening opportunity. This time, I borrowed some expensive DACs. Using a recording from a hi-res ADC, I'm wondering if listeners are able to identify a preference between devices of a wide price range? The least expensive DAC in this survey is less than 100x the price of the most expensive one used! I'll keep the identity of the devices hidden for now but I trust when I reveal the names, these would be devices/brands most audiophiles would have no problem being familiar with. And no, these are not "Chi-Fi" DACs. 2024 "High-End" DAC Blind Listening Survey! Have fun! See if you can rank based on such extreme price differences once the identity is revealed.

Fascinating historical thread about Mark Levinson, his Master Class software which supposedly made digital "sound more analog" and over the years evolution of this into filtering/EQ in his Daniel Hertz amplifiers (Mighty Cat DSP chip) and the current line of "Maria" amplifiers. Even now claiming that there are health benefits to the "C Wave" algorithm (which was what's called "A+" in the Master Class). 🤨 IMO, interesting stuff with some twists and turns from one of the most well known marketers in the audiophile industry discussed in my recent blog post... Expensive Audio & Medical Quackery: Mark Levinson promoting Daniel Hertz "C Wave Technology". And the Maria amps.

Hey @ARQuint, given that this could be the last time we might see you here talking about MQA, I certainly can accept that you desire to express your personal opinions and I have no qualms with whether your comments are in any way performative. That's fine. But let me be honest as doctor-to-doctor, because I trust that in our daily work, we value objectivity and truth. More often than we would like, telling patients bad news is one of our responsibilities, a duty... Should that not also be the case with telling audiophiles when something isn't quite right as a journalist of sorts? When you say: "I'm by nature a collegial person in the sense that I love interacting with others with interests and skills like my own. And there's nothing of greater importance to me than music and perfectionist audio—that's why I spend hours every day listening, writing, reading, and corresponding." You have not been correct nor IMO honest when it came to presenting MQA as one professing interest in "perfectionist audio". "Collegial" is not what we actually need more of in the audiophile magazine world even though being reasonable and nice are components of gentlemanly conduct. We need honesty. What happened with MQA were revelations of consistent, objective, demonstrable issues found, documented, highlighted by many. And gradually being understood - over years even - by fellow audiophiles in the community. If you and the magazines are going to be writing about this, then you need to be up to speed and not act like unrealistically optimistic Pollyannas that never acknowledged the underlying persistent misrepresentations all the way to the end. And now discard/ignore that position as if you did nothing wrong. Like I said earlier, I don't believe audiophiles interested in high-fidelity technology are reading the magazines for basically a form of "fan fiction". With MQA, the magazines seemingly could not face up to reality and speak of the unnecessary complexity and resolution limitations. At worst this is unethical, at best, incompetent despite full awareness of the issues raised. If this was a patient with cancer, and all a doctor did was overlook the clear, objective, measurable issues for years, despite complaints, would this not be cause for malpractice claims? (Yeah, a bit dramatic since nobody died although some folks lost money. But the underlying lack of concern, duty to inform, and proactive desire to improve the situation for those "perfectionistic audio" readers who care is the same.) You're free to spend hours "listening, writing, reading, and corresponding". We can all do that. But first maybe consider for yourself and tell your colleagues to make sure they learn about how the technology works and can assess technical concerns so that there is competence to evaluate people like Bob Stuart's claims before jumping into the lovefest of Kuhnian paradigmatic shifts or declarations of the "new world". I would hope that independence from Industry influences, skepticism and technical competence would be pre-requisites to writing for publications.

Hi Andy. @firedog already responded well so I'm not going to repeat much of the same thoughts. I'm glad since 2017 you've changed your position on MQA. I had a look at my article addressing your editorial to be reminded of the ideas back in those days. By September 2017, when your article and Harley's were published, the debate around MQA had been ongoing for more than 2 years and issues such as the unusual digital filter design, reduction in bit-depth, and lossy ultrasonic reconstruction had already been made known. Yet with all that, you still went with the idea that the criticisms have much to do with "civilian enthusiasts, usually with even less hands-on experience with MQA, read them and then ring in confidently on electronic forums about the great hoax that’s being perpetrated on good but gullible people of the audiophile persuasion" or "there’s the question of what actually motivates some of our fellow hobbyists to dismiss MQA unheard" (obviously the motivation is to be honest and speak truth!). Even if there were a lot of incivility, magazines and articles like yours could have risen above all the silly talk and independently fact-checked whether the measurements and claims against MQA were unfounded. That would have been taking on a leadership position and likely shown that the critics were right. Many audiophiles would have respected that. To this day, we still have not seen any independent investigation in the magazines to evaluate claims from the critics (with MQA dead, moot point I suppose). Instead, we had stuff like Harley's analogy of the Copernican revolution applied to MQA! Any wonder why readers question the intent/role of the magazines? Even if a person had not heard MQA content but understood the facts about it based on the objective findings, and became concerned about the questionable nature of the marketing, isn't that still OK to be vocal about the strong likelihood that something is being "perpetrated on good but gullible people"? IMO, we can say this about many products we see being marketed in the audio industry (including the individual and type of products you brought up above). Surely I don't need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on every doohickey or expensive tweak in order to confidently call out BS (like the laughable AQVOX ethernet switch), right? Looking back now in hindsight, is your comment: "But to suggest that Bob Stuart’s diligent efforts to assure that his invention is heard and understood represent some sort of hucksterism is simply bizarre." Is that suggestion still bizarre? When all the evidence even at that point suggested that there were many issues not quite right with this codec? As I said, why don't we just stick to the pillars of TAO (Truth Accuracy Objectivity) in our writings as a general expectation that reflects integrity? Magazine reviews might have an entertainment side and reviewers have leeway, but your readers are certainly not expecting fan fiction.

Well said @MikeyFresh. I really don't think "incivility" or "anonymity" were the real issues at all. Let's not forget that instances of incivility (threats, name calling) even here on this thread were often coming from those who supported MQA and had to be banned. The incivility at Chris' RMAF presentation didn't seem to have originated from him calmly presenting on the skepticism about MQA. There have been and continues to be all kinds of heated debates throughout the internet and have been among audiophiles for decades; perhaps generations now. We've all been afforded with the freedom to be anonymous if we want online. And after all these years, I imagine most of us are able to ignore incivility and trollish behaviors; able as adults to identify posters worth reading and ideas worth considering regardless of whether anonymous or not. IMO, it was never that complicated from an ethical perspective. Unlike many truly complex issues in society where there are countless shades of grey, sometimes there is just truth and there's BS. MQA sold us BS based on unfounded technical claims that could be proven to be false (like the idea of "lossless", "better than the original master", "based on neuroscience", "as the artist intended", or even that it's equivalent to hi-res, etc.). Ideas based on evidence do not just go away especially among honest audiophiles who understand these basic truths. As much as the company would have liked it to happen, no amount of positive lip-service or advertising would have taken away the dissent due to these fundamental falsehoods being perpetuated. The truth will always be stronger and there will be people willing to fight for it. @ARQuint Regarding this: "For as long as the issue's been out there, some audiophiles have maintained that a reviewer not savaging MQA was as guilty as being a zealous proponent." I don't think that's true. As far as I can recall, most of us have been highly critical of extremely flowery language and outrageous claims (like JA's "birth of a new world", or Fremer's idea that the MQA-CD version of an album was the "best" sounding!). Many magazine writers say nothing about MQA or just mention it without extreme claims, and I don't think folks drag those people's names into these critical discussions without cause. I'm not sure about the "moral" stance since morality can be subjective based on all kinds of cultural principles (eg. certain forms of religious "morality" would be abhorrent in the democratic developed world). But how about the ethical stance of being a journalistic enterprise? Truth. Accuracy. Objectivity. Often described at the foundation. While I don't think TAS, Stereophile, etc. need to uphold standards like mainstream news outlets - as you say, there's an entertainment aspect to this so some things might be more "truthy" than absolute truth. I would think/hope that audiophiles look to the publications as being able to at least give us "good enough" truth and accuracy even if openly declaring that there is subjectivity in a writer's opinion when it comes to product reviews. Likewise, out of mutual respect, I hope the magazines will do the same for us, recognizing that as "influencers", you too want to respect the readers' time and desire to write these articles as a source of knowledge (not just information that might be in-line with manufacturers or the industry). Well... I'm afraid the magazines did not do a good job on revealing what MQA was truthfully nor accurately. And to this day, I don't think we have seen any explanation for the failure of MQA or why it was fundamentally rejected by many audiophiles. Whether the magazines are able to portray Ted Denney and his products accurately or explain very pricey cables truthfully, we'll have to debate that another time, another place.

Indeed, way better deal with distrokid. Maybe just a last kick at the can to see if they can squeeze a few bucks off the mQa encoder now that new albums aren't being processed for Tidal anymore - lots of capacity!

Yeah, "Monkey" audio, not "money" above :-). While there are reasons why DSD will not be the predominant digital audio format (eg. limited DSP capability), I still think one of the reasons why DSD has been poorly accepted is the lack of a good universally supported compression file format that also provides good tagging features. I expressed this way back in 2013 and still feel the same way. At least WavPack is available but without good compatibility across software, sadly not going anywhere. In any event, I think it's basically moot these days other than for those who want to use DSD with HQPlayer. Hey, if Roon is looking to implement new features these days, I would certainly love to see WavPack support with DSD. I have a little library of SACD rips to point Roon to :-).

FLAC vs. APE - both lossless. Technical advantage of APE/Money Audio is better compression. But slower than FLAC for decompression speed so FLAC better for lower-power streamers. A lot of the variants are like this. For example WV/WavPack allows DSD compression but unfortunately compatibility limited. Also variation in whether the format handles 32-bit PCM, how many channels, etc...

You must be talking about this article. Imagine that! An audiophile reviewer using a recording with the nuances of a "40-voice choir" that "gradually builds" - great - but the best he could do was AAC?! I bet he (whoever it was) miswrote and should have said FLAC, or ALAC. Typos happen, but it certainly does not convey confidence to the knowledgeable audiophile reader when this kind of thing happens, presumably not even picked up by the editor/proofreader! Then again, I wonder if we were to take an honest poll of all Hi-Fi Choice readers, how many would have been perceptive and knowledgeable enough to pick up the issue! Or can appreciate the nature of the various codec options out there; beyond perhaps MP3 as the prime example of the "bad", lossy, non-audiophile codec.

I thought that article in Stereophile demanded a response. On Stereophile's "Dolby Atmos: A Bleak Shadow?" - really? 🤔 I respect Morten Lindberg and what he's doing, but he really needs to shut up about spreading FUD when talking to people like Jim Austin (and distance himself from the ridiculousness of MQA all these years). If magazines like Stereophile want to stick within their 2-channel lane, that's totally fine and their choice. But if they're going to be prodding into the Immersive world, it sure would be nice to have more realistic coverage than headlines like these and providing little context into actual sound quality. Jim Austin's columns and writings IMO have been disappointing since his role as editor when Atkinson left in 2019. He certainly doesn't seem to write like someone with a physics background! I really wonder what future that magazine sees for this hobby/Industry...

Yup, agree with others. Consult your doctor. Rarely, there are conditions like musicogenic seizures and less specifically misophonia for selective sensitivity.

Thanks @Rt66indierock. I'd be surprised if Lynbrook is seriously considering their own MQA-encoded streaming service as well. That's a lot of work to launch and more than likely losing money in the attempt - I would hope everyone can see that; including Lee and Veth. Who knows, maybe they can contract Sypnios Growth Capital and achieve: "alignment of purpose (that) transforms culture to capture both personal satisfaction & financial rewards". Good luck with that. 🤔 Depending on what handcuffs Lynbrook bought with MQA (Mike Jbara came with the deal?). Otherwise, ~USD$135k total and only £20k for SCL6 seem pretty insignificant even if they just walk away and their already-under-development SCL6-based headphones bomb.

Hey Andrew, PM me. Would love to take a couple off your hands here in Vancouver.