MQA RMAF Live!

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey guys - I'm going to attempt live streaming the MQA seminar live from RMAF. 

 

Stay tuned here for a link or embedded video. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

 

 

[rickca]

This is sounding like it's going to be another defense of MQA.  Another 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain'.  I'd have walked out by now.

[4est]

Defense? It's presented as almost a public service to the masses because they haven't gotten on-board with high res.

[esldude]

Thanks for doing this Chris. 

 

For anyone who missed it live, you can watch in youtube from the beginning. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks to the CA community for suggesting I do this. It was easy and I was going to the presentation anyway. 

[esldude]

This presentation is rather pathetic.  Why hifi?  Yes experience driven.  In the past you likely heard some hifi rig and were gobsmacked at how good it was versus whatever your own music apparatus was.  Infected with the hifi virus as he says. 

 

The problem with hires: it does something between nothing or maybe, maybe a tiny little something only the most astute listeners on the most wonderful gear can barely discern.  It's influence is somewhere between non-existent and trivial in the extreme.  

 

4K TV, like 2K TV before is going to sell well because most people can experience the difference in a demo with ease.  If basic hirez was half this much difference we wouldn't be arguing about it at all.  Not every music lover would need it, but plenty would and 24/96 or more would have made a big impact already.   The gap between redbook (or even high rate data compressed audio) and 96/24 or DSD or any thing like MQA is so exceedingly small and always will be that it is going exactly nowhere.  Worse with MQA, there are possible real tangible easily perceived benefits to DSP in several stages of the playback chain, and MQA invalidates their use.  If for no other reason whatsoever it should be roundly, soundly rejected.  

[esldude]

Not sure why this was called an MQA presentation.  It consisted of one big false equivalency after another ending in, "technology moves on, we should get behind MQA as that is what's available to get behind." The cogent point brought up near the end is exactly right.  Hirez audio, via MQA or any other method is not going to get hifi where you want it to go. Or where this presentation was pointing toward as the way forward.  The presenter didn't appear to want to hear that point being made since he blasted over the discussion about it with the Dr. Strangelove movie clip. 

[miguelito]

35 minutes ago, esldude said:

The gap between redbook (or even high rate data compressed audio) and 96/24 or DSD or any thing like MQA is so exceedingly small and always will be that it is going exactly nowhere. 

 

Indeed. And so many other issues affect the result in much bigger proportion...

 

Quote

Worse with MQA, there are possible real tangible easily perceived benefits to DSP in several stages of the playback chain, and MQA invalidates their use.  If for no other reason whatsoever it should be roundly, soundly rejected.  

 

Exactly my point. A lot of people use DSP to fix room issues. This is not rare, every room has bass modes and in most instances the only way to deal with them is either via DSP of the bass, analog crossover adjustment, or room treatment (but this one is limited to dedicated listening rooms for the most part). So completely agree with you here...

 

And lets not mention DRM...

[fas42]

Well worth watching  ... ummm, was it about MQA? The key point was "selling the experience", which I agree with 100% - but of course, the industry does do a terrible, terrible job of this ... I gave up expecting any reasonable delivery of such a loooong time ago ...

 

The "Ferrari experience"?? Yes!!! This fell into my lap 30 years ago, on my own tweaked setup - and ever since nearly everything else gives me 20 year old bottom of the range car, with 200,000 miles on the clock vibe - but still costs like that Ferrari !!! No wonder people aren't interested ...

[plissken]

@ 51:50

 

Of course the musician heard it in the highest fidelity they could. They here it in the recording studio, they hear it live, they hear the rough mastering...

[Johnseye]

There are 300M people who watch TV based on the latest Nielson stats.  Assume those same people watch movies at home and go to the theater.  There are 100M people who stream music.  While I was surprised at the number of people who stream, it's still 1/3rd.  There was a constant comparison to the video broadcast affiliates.  Out of 300M people how many can see a difference between 108Op and 4K HDR?  Out of 100M people how many can hear a difference between 320 mp3 and 96K flac?  Also consider the delivery method of those 100M streamers.  How many are listening through low quality ear buds which degrade the ability to hear the difference?  What are they doing while streaming; exercising or other activities maybe listening at work.  Not focused 100% on the music.  Consider that a 96k album costs around $20 where the mp3 $10.  2x the cost.  Same as Tidal HiFi vs basic.  These facts make high sample rate recordings much slower to sell.  Only when the cost drops will high sample rate recordings have a fighting chance.

[rickca]

1 hour ago, esldude said:

Not sure why this was called an MQA presentation.

 

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

ummm, was it about MQA?

My impression as well.  I could only take about 15 minutes of it.  Boring.  

Still, I really appreciate @The Computer Audiophile live streaming the presentation, thank you Chris.  Amazing you were able to set it up so quickly.

[Rt66indierock]

I'll write more but I leaned on Danny hard enough that it may have changed his plans a bit. Everyone avoided the topic of MQA around me and others said it was rarely mentioned. 

 

I sit in the second row and most like the questions I ask. A couple of times Danny wanted yes answers and the first thing he heard was my no.

[asdf1000]

33 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

I'll write more but I leaned on Danny hard enough that it may have changed his plans a bit. Everyone avoided the topic of MQA around me and others said it was rarely mentioned. 

 

I sit in the second row and most like the questions I ask. A couple of times Danny wanted yes answers and the first thing he heard was my no.

 

Right after your first interaction with Danny:  I'm not sure if/how his 2 L.A based musician buddies can speak for ALL musicians/artists, regarding not caring about how the sound quality the end user hears the music on. I thought that was a silly sweeping generalisation. Unless he was just speaking about those 2 buddies that don't care, which is fair enough.

 

From ~34mins onwards

 

[asdf1000]

I found the comments in the audience interesting at the end around ~57mins and ~59mins.

 

I may have mis-heard but there was a gentleman that said he spoke to a music exec at a previous audio show and there are other things being worked on separate to MQA? Or separate Hi-Res streaming format?

 

My ears popped up! What was that about 

 

[PeterSt]

Thank you Chris.

 

For those who can't bear more than 14 minutes of this, start at ~ minute 56. Then 3-4 minutes later the fun is over but you keep on watching because only a few minutes left.

Good that you stayed because you can see the real moron standing up.

What was he doing anyway ?

[PeterSt]

5 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

Everyone avoided the topic of MQA around me and others said it was rarely mentioned. 

 

Possibly my English isn't good enough to see what you're saying here.

 

Anyway, maybe there comes a time for real that people start believing that Hires-Audio doesn't bring a thing.

 

 

... says he who just created this for the MQA playback ...

 

Stubborn me.

 

[asdf1000]

I have to say a big thanks to Chris @The Computer Audiophile for recording and streaming this.

 

But sadly this presentation ended up (no way of knowing beforehand of course) being "as useful as t!tt$ on a bull", as we sometimes say.

 

Pls continue these streams in future though Chris (whenever possible)! It's cool for those of us on the other side of the world that may never get to attend these kinds of things.

 

 

[Nikhil]

Just how long are we going to be subjected to this BS?  What is it going to take to convince these folks that they are being taken for a ride.  

 

I mean seriously ... 

 

But thanks Chris. Just great to get stuff like this on CA!

[miguelito]

19 hours ago, plissken said:

Of course the musician heard it in the highest fidelity they could. They here it in the recording studio, they hear it live, they hear the rough mastering...

The bit I find particularly interesting is the claim that musicians/producers verify the MQA result in the studio... How does that actually work?

 

Do they play the original and then a roundtrip MQA-encode/MQA-decode and they say in a blind test which they prefer? For every production?

 

Given there are no tunable parameters in the MQA-encoding step other than possibly a tuning to the ADC used (which I find dubious in most multitrack recordings where different ADCs might be used, and some pure digital sources might be blended in as well) what are the options if they prefer the non-MQA version?

 

These types of claims are what enrage people...

 

[Rt66indierock]

10 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Possibly my English isn't good enough to see what you're saying here.

 

Anyway, maybe there comes a time for real that people start believing that Hires-Audio doesn't bring a thing.

 

 

... says he who just created this for the MQA playback ...

 

Stubborn me.

 

 

Hey Peter,

If you know I'm there conversations with supporters of MQA or members of the press which is about the same thing tend to stop.

Ken Forsythe of MQA and I had a brief encounter and I expected him to ask questions or make comments and he did not. 

 

On the other hand people who oppose MQA and other areas where we have common ground were very welcoming. Once MQA goes away then I can focus with many others on some marketing ideas that will help the industry in the US.

[Rt66indierock]

6 minutes ago, miguelito said:

The bit I find particularly interesting is the claim that musicians/producers verify the MQA result in the studio... How does that actually work?

 

Do they play the original and then a roundtrip MQA-encode/MQA-decode and they say in a blind test which they prefer? For every production?

 

Given there are no tunable parameters in the MQA-encoding step other than possibly a tuning to the ADC used (which I find dubious in most multitrack recordings where different ADCs might be used, and some pure digital sources might be blended in as well) what are the options if they prefer the non-MQA version?

 

These types of claims are what enrage people...

 

 

Got to agree with you.  And MQA Ltd and their supporters seem to be in a mode of throwing out every claim they can think of to see what sticks. 

[hmartin]

15 minutes ago, miguelito said:

The bit I find particularly interesting is the claim that musicians/producers verify the MQA result in the studio... How does that actually work?

 

Do they play the original and then a roundtrip MQA-encode/MQA-decode and they say in a blind test which they prefer? For every production?

 

Given there are no tunable parameters in the MQA-encoding step other than possibly a tuning to the ADC used (which I find dubious in most multitrack recordings where different ADCs might be used, and some pure digital sources might be blended in as well) what are the options if they prefer the non-MQA version?

 

These types of claims are what enrage people...

 

Well it is quite obvious that many MQA reissues are never listened to at all as quite a few of the first batch of MQA files on Tidal contained serious digital clipping. These files were quickly removed when this was reported, but I managed to check one such reissue with clipping before it was removed from Tidal (see Roon-forum for details don't remember which albums this was).

 

So this is pure BS as pretty much every claim by MQA has been proven to be, simple as that. Thanks to Mansr and other great guys on this forum.  

[hifial]

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Possibly my English isn't good enough to see what you're saying here.

 

Anyway, maybe there comes a time for real that people start believing that Hires-Audio doesn't bring a thing.

 

 

... says he who just created this for the MQA playback ...

 

Stubborn me.

 

 

Peter, I am having trouble getting the image of the chart you posted to be large enough to read and still be clear. Is there a way for you to post it for download in a larger format? Or is it already somewhere that I can access?

It would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Cheers, Al.