MQA is Vaporware

[Dr Tone]

17 minutes ago, ARQuint said:

Dr. Tone

The issue with the A10 filter upsampling all content (MQA and otherwise) is old news. John A reported his findings in October of last year but since then, with the Aurender software update in mid-December, users can easily defeat that filter. It was Aurender's feeling that the filter improved the SQ of all formats but (appropriately, I think) decided to give people the choice of whether to use it or not—in part, I'm sure, because of all the objections that were raised in places like CA.

 

So the user has to manually switch the filtering between non-mqa and mqa albums and/or tracks?

 

Maybe that’s the elegant, MQA supporters talk about? 

[ARQuint]

5 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

 

So the user has to manually switch the filtering between non-mqa and mqa albums and/or tracks?

 

Maybe that’s the elegant, MQA supporters talk about? 

Elegant, it ain't. But I maintain that MQA will not be of critical importance to the majority of A10 purchasers—the product has so much else going for it, no matter how you feel about MQA. They'll either leave the filter off all the time or—if they conclude, as Aurender maintains, that the filter helps non-MQA content—leave it on.

[Dr Tone]

1 minute ago, ARQuint said:

Elegant, it ain't. But I maintain that MQA will not be of critical importance to the majority of A10 purchasers—the product has so much else going for it, no matter how you feel about MQA. They'll either leave the filter off all the time or—if they conclude, as Aurender maintains, that the filter helps non-MQA content—leave it on.

 

I guess if someone likes the kool-aid they’ll drink it all the time.

[Fair Hedon]

I think it's important to keep reminding people that if you don't stream Tidal, MQA is of no consequence. Even as designers start incorporating "MQA style" filters in their products, as long as they are defeatable, it is all all good.

 

It will no different than some of those DACs that come equipped with numerous user selectable filters, of which most people end up leaving on the default. I have had DACs with selectable filters and after a week i just could not be bothered.

[russellbobby]

As a A10 owner I can attest it runs as designed   You can choose to upsample if you like. Naturally a MQA file will override any filter settings to MQA proprietary settings. 

[Dr Tone]

4 minutes ago, russellbobby said:

As a A10 owner I can attest it runs as designed   You can choose to upsample if you like. Naturally a MQA file will override any filter settings to MQA proprietary settings. 

 

Now you are saying the opposite of @ARQuint

[ARQuint]

1 minute ago, Dr Tone said:

 

Now you are saying the opposite of @ARQuint

 

I apologize for the confusion because russellbobby's description is absolutely correct. What I meant to convey is that with the switch "off" the filter's engaged only for MQA, when it's "on", the upsampling is applied to all files. (Hope that's right—I no longer have the A10 here!)

[Ralf11]

where is Scoggie today?  is he on vacation?

[Indydan]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

where is Scoggie today?  is he on vacation?

 

He's waiting for Bob Stuart to provide him with more persuasive talking points...

[Fair Hedon]

NAMM 2018: PMC partners with Capitol Studios to demo Hi-Res audio

 

"The main technology driver behind Hi-Res Audio is MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), which claims to bring higher quality sound to consumers without sacrificing portability and ease of streaming."

?????

 

[Archimago]

20 hours ago, Indydan said:

 

He's waiting for Bob Stuart to provide him with more persuasive talking points...

 

And busy duking it out on Steve Hoffman's forum...

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/my-new-article-series-on-mqa.723574/page-26

 

[Ralf11]

He's gonna wind up on Audiogon...

[asdf1000]

On 19/01/2018 at 1:18 PM, Fair Hedon said:

I think it's important to keep reminding people that if you don't stream Tidal, MQA is of no consequence.

 

For now. Remember Deezer (with over 6x the subscriber numbers of Tidal) has MQA coming.

 

http://www.mqa.co.uk/customer/news/post/deezer

 

 

[psjug]

58 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

Remember Deezer (with over 6x the subscriber numbers of Tidal) has MQA coming.

 

Maybe, but I wonder if Deezer is backing off.  They haven't said anything about it since September.  Here is what they say on the Deezer Community forum:

 

I can't share any info just yet and we don't know for sure if and when MQA will be available with Deezer tracks

[asdf1000]

1 hour ago, psjug said:

Maybe, but I wonder if Deezer is backing off.  They haven't said anything about it since September.  Here is what they say on the Deezer Community forum:

 

I can't share any info just yet and we don't know for sure if and when MQA will be available with Deezer tracks

 

True. Like everything to do with MQA, we'll have to wait and see how it all unfolds. Especially over the next year and two.

 

[FredericV]

5 hours ago, Fair Hedon said:

NAMM 2018: PMC partners with Capitol Studios to demo Hi-Res audio

 

"The main technology driver behind Hi-Res Audio is MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), which claims to bring higher quality sound to consumers without sacrificing portability and ease of streaming."

?????

 

MQA is not highres (only 15~17 bits after unfolding) and not the master (MQA completely messes up the ultrasonics, adds aliasing, adds higher noise floor, and alters the soundstage because of leaky minimum phase upsampling which does not have correct phase).

How can they call this high-res?

[FredericV]

4 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

And busy duking it out on Steve Hoffman's forum...

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/my-new-article-series-on-mqa.723574/page-26

 

Scoggie busted once again, using EXTERNAL AUTHORITY argument:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/my-new-article-series-on-mqa.723574/page-26#post-17937777
 

Quote

It's like if we can't measure something, it doesn't exist. It seems no amount of experienced listening and subjective judgment is ever good enough for anonymous posters like Agitator and Archimago. We are supposed to believe that running a blog makes one more qualified than folks like Bob Stuart and Peter Craven to build digital filters and opine on digital technology. These are folks who objectively have written many of the best peer-reviewed papers on digital audio and created many of the advancements in PCM and DSP technology.

 

Yes the intermediate phase filter as described by Archimago is technically better than the minimum phase filters MQA is using:

 

Minimum phase messes up the phase, and soundstage suffers from this. To get the time domain precision of MQA, you'll need a variant with one cycle of postringing. To accomplish this, we need to allow aliasing in the filter.

It's clear that Scoggie is a cheerleader for MQA, just like Peter Veth. They all use the same arguments. They never reply to technical arguments, change the discussion using the GO LISTEN or EXTERNAL AUTHORITY argument.





 

[Confused]

11 hours ago, Fair Hedon said:

NAMM 2018: PMC partners with Capitol Studios to demo Hi-Res audio

 

"The main technology driver behind Hi-Res Audio is MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), which claims to bring higher quality sound to consumers without sacrificing portability and ease of streaming."

?????

 

Some systems have better portability than others ....

 

[Fair Hedon]

8 hours ago, FredericV said:

MQA is not highres (only 15~17 bits after unfolding) and not the master (MQA completely messes up the ultrasonics, adds aliasing, adds higher noise floor, and alters the soundstage because of leaky minimum phase upsampling which does not have correct phase).

How can they call this high-res?

Of course it is not hirez, and the audacity of this report to claim MQA and Hirez are one and the same....I see a new strategy developing here for them....

[Archimago]

9 hours ago, FredericV said:

Scoggie busted once again, using EXTERNAL AUTHORITY argument:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/my-new-article-series-on-mqa.723574/page-26#post-17937777
 

 

Yes the intermediate phase filter as described by Archimago is technically better than the minimum phase filters MQA is using:

 

Minimum phase messes up the phase, and soundstage suffers from this. To get the time domain precision of MQA, you'll need a variant with one cycle of postringing. To accomplish this, we need to allow aliasing in the filter.

It's clear that Scoggie is a cheerleader for MQA, just like Peter Veth. They all use the same arguments. They never reply to technical arguments, change the discussion using the GO LISTEN or EXTERNAL AUTHORITY argument.





 

 

Just as a point of clarification. Remember that the MQA filter is extremely weak. As a result if we plot it out like in the graphs above, it will actually not "smear" the waveform visually as obviously as that minimum phase 95% pass setting I used above (which is a proper strong antialiasing filter). In any event, the general concept that linear phase filtering will not cause phase shift compared to minimum phase filters remains...

[Samuel T Cogley]

13 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

And busy duking it out on Steve Hoffman's forum...

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/my-new-article-series-on-mqa.723574/page-26

 

Very interesting that Hoffman himself (no doubt receiving a TON of PMs from Scoggins) made a statement that's basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Quote

That's life on a public forum! You were expecting something different?

 

And having spent years reading the forums over there, I can say with confidence that once you've lost Metralla (one of the original forum members from 2002), you're done.  And it sure looks like even he is not impressed with Scoggins' MQA lovefest.

 

Scoggins has gone so far to suggest that cable skeptics are not qualified to evaluate MQA because, well, if they can't hear the increase in sound quality that happens when high end interconnects or power cables are used, they certainly won't hear the awesome benefits of MQA.

 

I really don't think Scoggins was expecting this level of push back on what he considered a "friendly" forum (Hoffman).  And the fact that all those critical posts about MQA are still there and threads are not locked or vanished tells me that Hoffman has decided to let MQA face withering fire.

[Fair Hedon]

14 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Very interesting that Hoffman himself (no doubt receiving a TON of PMs from Scoggins) made a statement that's basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

And having spent years reading the forums over there, I can say with confidence that once you've lost Metralla (one of the original forum members from 2002), you're done.  And it sure looks like even he is not impressed with Scoggins' MQA lovefest.

 

Scoggins has gone so far to suggest that cable skeptics are not qualified to evaluate MQA because, well, if they can't hear the increase in sound quality that happens when high end interconnects or power cables are used, they certainly won't hear the awesome benefits of MQA.

 

I really don't think Scoggins was expecting this level of push back on what he considered a "friendly" forum (Hoffman).  And the fact that all those critical posts about MQA are still there and threads are not locked or vanished tells me that Hoffman has decided to let MQA face withering fire.

Let me correct you.......STEREOPHILE, TAS, and Uncle Bob did not expect this level of push back..

 

They thought they were going to spoon feed MQA to all their little fans who see them as a voice of authority.

 

Guess how that turned out.

[JoeWhip]

Reading Lee’s comments over at SHF, I must say as far as I am concerned, that once you trot out you can’t hear the improvement because your system is not resolving enough, you’ve lost the argument. It’s like arguing my system is better because it costs more. That attitude just turns me off in this hobby. While there is occasionally some good stuff in Stereophile and TAS, most of the other on line only sites are not worth reading. Ever notice how their show reports read like ad copy? I learn far more on forums than any of these sites. No wonder this hobby is shrinking.

[Archimago]

36 minutes ago, Samuel T Cogley said:

 

Very interesting that Hoffman himself (no doubt receiving a TON of PMs from Scoggins) made a statement that's basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

And having spent years reading the forums over there, I can say with confidence that once you've lost Metralla (one of the original forum members from 2002), you're done.  And it sure looks like even he is not impressed with Scoggins' MQA lovefest.

 

Scoggins has gone so far to suggest that cable skeptics are not qualified to evaluate MQA because, well, if they can't hear the increase in sound quality that happens when high end interconnects or power cables are used, they certainly won't hear the awesome benefits of MQA.

 

I really don't think Scoggins was expecting this level of push back on what he considered a "friendly" forum (Hoffman).  And the fact that all those critical posts about MQA are still there and threads are not locked or vanished tells me that Hoffman has decided to let MQA face withering fire.

 

Good point Samuel,

I was wondering why Hoffman would come out and make a comment since he's typically in the background. Probably a fair bet that Scoggins or someone of the same mindset clicked on the "Report" link to some of the comments more than a few times :-).

 

[Lee Scoggins]

1 hour ago, JoeWhip said:

Reading Lee’s comments over at SHF, I must say as far as I am concerned, that once you trot out you can’t hear the improvement because your system is not resolving enough, you’ve lost the argument. It’s like arguing my system is better because it costs more. That attitude just turns me off in this hobby. While there is occasionally some good stuff in Stereophile and TAS, most of the other on line only sites are not worth reading. Ever notice how their show reports read like ad copy? I learn far more on forums than any of these sites. No wonder this hobby is shrinking.

 

Please stop taking things out of context. This was in response to Agitator claiming that he cannot hear differences between cables.

 

And it is also established that higher resolving systems do highlight differences from equipment changes as well as format differences, all else being equal.