How does DRM in MQA work?

[Fokus]

That was 20 years ago. I accused S of willfully starting a format war, and DSD of being an unsuitable production format.

 

Apologies for the OT.

[Ralf11]

ok, well next time address your comments to the FCC - maybe even put #FCC on a twitter feed

 

and then counter-sue them based on their legal 'attack' being a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation)

 

 

other ways to go after obnoxious and large corporations include having judgment-proof people do protests at retail locations as was done a few years ago in England against McDonalds...

 

?

[jabbr]

On 10/11/2018 at 5:04 PM, mansr said:

Slight correction: the PS3 outputs SACD as 88.2/24 over Toslink.

Thankfully my PS3 outputs SACD ISOs over Ethernet  

[daverich4]

On 10/11/2018 at 9:13 AM, mansr said:

The full content of an MQA file cannot be accessed without a licensed decoder. That alone makes it a form of DRM. 

 

No it doesn’t. My 13 year old 720I TV can’t display the 1080P signal that comes to my house. That isn’t DRM on the part of my cable provider. That’s me deciding not to spend the money to upgrade my TV to one that can handle newer technology. 

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

No it doesn’t. My 13 year old 720I TV can’t display the 1080P signal that comes to my house. That isn’t DRM on the part of my cable provider. That’s me deciding not to spend the money to upgrade my TV to one that can handle newer technology. 

Wrong. Assuming it's a free-to-air channel, anyone can obtain the specs of the TV signal for free and build a decoder.

[daverich4]

21 hours ago, mansr said:

Wrong. Assuming it's a free-to-air channel, anyone can obtain the specs of the TV signal for free and build a decoder.

 

I have no idea what you are talking about with building a decoder. Nothing you do is going to make my TV display higher than 720I. For that I will need to buy a new one. Maybe my analogy wasn’t good for you. When cassettes were introduced you couldn’t play them without purchasing a cassette player. Same for CDs. HDCDs. SACDs. MQA. To take your definition of DRM to the absurd, I can’t play vinyl because I don’t own a turntable which apparently means that the main purpose of the vinyl format is DRM. 

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

I have no idea what you are talking about with building a decoder. Nothing you do is going to make my TV display higher than 720I. For that I will need to buy a new one.

Or build one. You don't need anybody's permission to do that. If you don't have the requisite skills or equipment, you are free to enlist anyone who does, such as Samsung.

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

I have no idea what you are talking about with building a decoder. Nothing you do is going to make my TV display higher than 720I. For that I will need to buy a new one. Maybe my analogy wasn’t good for you. When cassettes were introduced you couldn’t play them without purchasing a cassette player. Same for CDs. HDCDs. SACDs. MQA. To take your definition of DRM to the absurd, I can’t play vinyl because I don’t own a turntable which apparently means that the main purpose of the vinyl format is DRM. 

 

There are open standards, like MP3 and AAC for audio that have been standardized and published by recognized standardization body. In this case ISO. You obtain copy of the standard and implement your own MP3 encoder and decoder. For TV broadcasts too, there are public standards how things work, there's no one single company who holds the secret sauce for TV broadcasts you need to pay for. MQA is not open standard and it is not ratified by any recognized standardization body.

 

CD is not DRM'ed, you can easily make things that read CD's. HDCD is very much like MQA and now extinct, there is only partial reverse-engineered software decoder for it. SACD is also very much like MQA.

 

Same goes for the web browsing protocols we all use to browse CA. You can browse this forum with any browser of your choice, or you can develop your own. Ways to decode content CA sends are open standards. If this forum would be like MQA, you would need to pay for a special Computer Audiophile Web Browser to view this site, nobody else without it would be able to view it. HP and Dell could license and pre-install the browser on their computers and add price of the browser to price of the computer. But it would be black box for them too, they wouldn't know how it works. They would just need to pay for it and ship it. Microsoft had that kind of dream in early days of Internet, they tried to make a closed competitor for the internet. Luckily they failed.

 

19 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

I can’t play vinyl because I don’t own a turntable which apparently means that the main purpose of the vinyl format is DRM.

 

Vinyl is actually very nice, because it is very simple and straightforward. If there would be great disaster and most of the civilization would collapse, as a survivor, I would take vinyls with me. Because I know I can make turntable to play those, even with very limited resources. MQA, SACD or Blu-ray would be the last ones I'd take with me.

 

[daverich4]

9 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

CD is not DRM'ed, you can easily make things that read CD's.

 

Not legally without a license from Philips. 

 

http://www.ip.philips.com/licensing/program/18/

[rickca]

7 minutes ago, Miska said:

Microsoft had that kind of dream in early days of Internet, they tried to make a closed competitor for the internet. Luckily they failed.

I like your analogy.  MQA strikes me as collusion among the labels.

[daverich4]

25 minutes ago, mansr said:

Or build one. You don't need anybody's permission to do that. If you don't have the requisite skills or equipment, you are free to enlist anyone who does, such as Samsung.

 

Seriously? Build my own TV? Jeez. In any event, you can’t build your own CD or SACD player without a license so can we at least add those to your DRM list?

[ralphfcooke]

All of the patents referring to the CD player etc. have expired,

Have a look here:- http://www.ip.philips.com/licensing/program/18/

[Miska]

19 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

Not legally without a license from Philips. 

 

http://www.ip.philips.com/licensing/program/18/

 

You can make your own implementation as long you don't sell it. And by the way if you look at the expiry dates, all the patents have expired already. Just like MP3.

 

But same patent license stuff goes for example for AAC and many other codecs. The standard is open and you can make your own implementation, often the standard even contains reference implementation, but you may need to pay for a patent license. This is totally different from closed formats where there's no standard, no information whatsoever available, and you pay for both implementation and the patent license. You cannot choose to make your own implementation and just pay for the patent licenses. If the vendor goes extinct, you are screwed.

 

[mansr]

16 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

Not legally without a license from Philips. 

 

http://www.ip.philips.com/licensing/program/18/

Any patents related to audio CD playback are obviously long since expired. Even if they were not, the CD format is an IEC standard, so they are required to give anyone who asks a licence under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. This is a requirement for inclusion in a standard published by the usual organisations. MQA, on the other hand, can pick and choose who they allow to license the decoder. If you're a competitor (or if Bob doesn't like your hair), they might just say no.

[mansr]

17 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

Seriously? Build my own TV? Jeez. In any event, you can’t build your own CD or SACD player without a license so can we at least add those to your DRM list?

You're right about SACD.

[Jud]

On 10/11/2018 at 7:13 AM, mansr said:

The full content of an MQA file cannot be accessed without a licensed decoder. That alone makes it a form of DRM.

 

This is of course absolutely correct. I only want to point out that this aspect by itself isn’t much different from what one finds in non-software consumer goods.  You can’t drive a car (legally) without the proper key or fob.  And eventually they won’t stock spare parts for repairs.

 

When I see people complaining about DRM in contexts other than MQA, it’s mostly about the more obnoxious aspects MQA hasn’t implemented - yet.

[Jud]

On 10/12/2018 at 11:40 AM, Fokus said:

That was 20 years ago. I accused S of willfully starting a format war, and DSD of being an unsuitable production format.

 

Apologies for the OT.

 

We see how it worked out for Sony to concentrate so hard on attacking any negative comments and encrypting the SACD product so that no one could play it without buying new equipment.  Perhaps what Santayana said about those who don’t remember history will be true of MQA.

[GUTB]

DRM doesn't work in MQA as there is none.

 

Please keep it real.

[Jud]

On 10/14/2018 at 2:29 PM, Miska said:

 

There are open standards, like MP3 and AAC for audio that have been standardized and published by recognized standardization body. In this case ISO. You obtain copy of the standard and implement your own MP3 encoder and decoder. For TV broadcasts too, there are public standards how things work, there's no one single company who holds the secret sauce for TV broadcasts you need to pay for. MQA is not open standard and it is not ratified by any recognized standardization body.

 

CD is not DRM'ed, you can easily make things that read CD's. HDCD is very much like MQA and now extinct, there is only partial reverse-engineered software decoder for it. SACD is also very much like MQA.

 

Same goes for the web browsing protocols we all use to browse CA. You can browse this forum with any browser of your choice, or you can develop your own. Ways to decode content CA sends are open standards. If this forum would be like MQA, you would need to pay for a special Computer Audiophile Web Browser to view this site, nobody else without it would be able to view it. HP and Dell could license and pre-install the browser on their computers and add price of the browser to price of the computer. But it would be black box for them too, they wouldn't know how it works. They would just need to pay for it and ship it. Microsoft had that kind of dream in early days of Internet, they tried to make a closed competitor for the internet. Luckily they failed.

 

 

Vinyl is actually very nice, because it is very simple and straightforward. If there would be great disaster and most of the civilization would collapse, as a survivor, I would take vinyls with me. Because I know I can make turntable to play those, even with very limited resources. MQA, SACD or Blu-ray would be the last ones I'd take with me.

 

 

Rolling your own is quite impossible for the vast majority of the population.  The far more practical advantage to open, standards based goods or software is that it allows a competitive, thriving marketplace where significant economies of scale can occur, benefitting both consumers and makers.  

 

The classic example in the US is the standardization of railroad track gauge.  Before this, railroads were a relatively small boutique industry, prohibitively expensive for consumers.  After standardization, prices fell and the industry thrived, to the advantage of companies and consumers alike.

[mansr]

6 minutes ago, Jud said:

Rolling your own is quite impossible for the vast majority of the population.

That's why there are many companies willing to do it in exchange for money. With a proprietary format, the owner gets to decide who is allowed to make a player. That is a bad thing. Before someone says Dolby, I'll point out that they had to open their spec (as ATSC A/52) in order to be accepted for use in broadcast TV. They still made tons of money on patent licences, of course.

[hvbias]

On 10/10/2018 at 10:30 PM, trappy said:

I have noticed that the MQA versions of some of the most obviously watermarked recordings (i.e older DG) do not exhibit watermarking signatures. Especially obvious when both versions are there. I’ll try to find an example later. I’m thinking the Chicago Abbado Mahler 5...

 

No idea how it works...

 

What is the original source, Tidal?

[Jud]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

That's why there are many companies willing to do it in exchange for money. With a proprietary format, the owner gets to decide who is allowed to make a player. That is a bad thing. Before someone says Dolby, I'll point out that they had to open their spec (as ATSC A/52) in order to be accepted for use in broadcast TV. They still made tons of money on patent licences, of course.

 

Thus the rest of my post.

[trappy]

3 hours ago, hvbias said:

 

What is the original source, Tidal?

 

Yessir.

[tmtomh]

5 hours ago, GUTB said:

DRM doesn't work in MQA as there is none.

 

Please keep it real.

MQA is DRM, as has been discussed many, many times here. Please keep it real, indeed.

[hvbias]

On 10/15/2018 at 8:47 PM, trappy said:

 

Yessir.

 

Yeah as I mentioned in the ASR watermarking thread I can definitely hear the watermark on many classical pieces. I have a harder time hearing it on some rock or pop (using Matt Montag's blog for samples).