MQA - A clever stealth DRM-Trojan (CCC talk)

Me too! And the more I learn, the less impressive MQA looks to me.

 

When will these secured releases happen?

Then there is the fact I can get lossless copies of just about everything right now on CD and do what I want with it. I've tried MQA through Tidal. No big differences noted other than maybe some slight differences in the mastering. Now if could stream everything that I'd ever want to listen to and MQA ensured that, then I can see it being worth something for streaming. Again though where is all this music? MQA has been around for what 4 years now and other then getting lables excited about bringing back DRM what has it accomplished?

 

24/384 PCM equivalent FLAC won't be as small, right?

I feel like we're going round in circles - suffice to say, having not heard any MQA and being forced to speculate, I'm not convinced that the anti-MQA arguments are as sound as the pro-MQA arguments thus far (and those aren't particularly convincing).

 

I thought we already covered that MQA does not deliver 24/384. The best it can do is 18/96 lossy then upsample one more time to 192 to try to hide the effects of its leaky filters.
The 24/384 shown in the display represents the format found on the master prior to the file being down converted to MQA's 24/48 container. It does not represent the data stream applied to the MQA enabled DAC.

One of those 24 bits is used to trigger the display to illuminate the blue light and display a sampling rate.
Up to 8 more bits are used to house the folded lossy sample from the sample range from 49-96khz ("first unfold").

This leaves the usable data at 15-18 bits at 96khz of lossy file.

 

How would big labels 'commit' to FLAC? As far as I'm aware FLAC is free and open source. This is one of it's major benefits.

 

Yes, as I keep trying to clarify, it's the perceptual equivalent, according to Stuart et. al - that's the core feature of MQA isn't it?

MQA seems to be vastly different things to different people, more so than with other topics at least.

To me it's primarily a perceptual coding algorithm designed to encode the information audible in up to 24/384 PCM in a considerably smaller file-size to the high-res file (and to a FLAC compressed file for the higher resolution MQA encodes). A file-size that the designers claim will enable feasibly scalable streaming of effectively up to the equivalent of 24/384 PCM.

You talk about it as if it's 15-17 bit PCM with a bunch of ultrasonic noise, masquerading as high-res and that it is no better than FLAC for file-size reduction and perhaps worse, not to mention being lossy.

Where to go from here other than around the loop again?

 

That plus DRM. What part of people not wanting "a perceptual equivalent" (which hasn't been proven), DRM, and a secretive, deceptive campaign do you not understand? There is a very understandable lack of trust between the consumer and the content providers because of past behavior. The benefit to the average consumer is practically non-existent (they listen to mp3 on low-fi equipment) and have not been interested in high resolution audio. That is not going to change. This is a way to push everyone into a sealed ecosystem where they hold all the leverage. This is the same industry that put root-kits on compact discs and audible watermarks into audio and video files as part of their anti-consumer behavior. All they care about is cash and they see this as the next step in that process.

 

@Mal I didn't say it was a bunch of ultrasonic noise. It has been shown that this choice of filters typically adds some high frequency noise within the audible range, aka <20khz, on top of the signal. Plus ultrasonic noise. Maybe MQA includes a DSP to reduce that noise in the audible range. I don't know. It's a locked proprietary box that in my view is unnecessary.

And it is 15-18 bits of PCM. See the patent for proof.
Lifted from the patent.

The first drawing on page one of the patent shows the input to MQA encoding being limited to 96khz where they start with 17 bits of lossless 0-48khz, plus some bits from the noise shaping caused by the initial dither down to 17 bits.
Then they can add encoding of the 49-96khz samples within the 0-7 bits which will be unfolded later by the user's DAC, us.

There is no such thing as a 24/352 file for the consumer's DAC to unfold because the front end encoding is limited to 96khz. Therefore 24/192 flac is higher resolution than MQA.

Agreed. We are talking past each other with semantics, perceptual versus actual. As long as you want to stay in the perceptual world it doesn't make sense to discuss this any longer. I'm done too unless you want to misquote me again.

 

It's great if:-

• you're on a very limited data package with your ISP or your mobile phone network provider

It's not great at:-

• living up to its audio claims
• being any better than what's there now, file size and data wrapper features aside
• honesty and transparency (for the consumer)

 

What if it sounds as great as some say? I don't worry about licensing deals, etc. - let the business happen and enjoy the music I say. If it doesn't deliver it won't get very far - it seems to have stalled of late...

 

Misquote? What's 1 bit between friends? [edit: oh, and the ultrasonic thing ]

I'm not in either world - I'm watching from the sidelines wondering why some people are so insistent that it can't be anything more than a scam.

At worst, I think it could be an overly idealistic attempt to optimise the digital audio chain - it's not easy for me to see how it could succeed in its aims.

 

I try not to get personal with it and not call it a scam or use names. I just think that things need to be pointed out for the record because the marketing pamphlets tend to obfuscate.

 

These threads always give me a chuckle.

You know who both made and killed the LP as a dominant format? Teenagers.
You know who both made and killed the CD as a dominant format? Teenagers.
You know who both made and killed the iPod and Walkman as dominant hardware? Teenagers.
You know made mp3 the current dominant format? Teenagers.
You know who kickstarted the vinyl revival? Sorry Mikey Fremer, but it was teenagers.

I'll give you two guesses who is going to determine the success and/or failure of MQA, and then let you get back to your pitchforks.

 

good summary except you left out "more expensive"

 

I will explain further. Record labels have, for whatever reason, decided not to release their entire catalogs in hirez, FLAC or not. MQA has at least convinced the major labels to release entire catalogs in MQA format.

 

I think the problem with the whole "17 bit" discussion is that it's misleading in the following way: MQA uses triangular coding based on a Shannon Diagram. That "triangle" captures almost all of the music content.

As for the deblurring that goes on, I think that has been proven to have sonic benefits even back when apodizing filters first came out.

 

Teenagers did not kickstart the vinyl revival. Audiophiles did.

 

Consumers will decide it's fate. That's why MQA is building an ecosystem of players. Right now they have the labels for content, the hardware providers for playback, the audiophile streaming services for consumer access, and if they get any of Google-Apple-amazon=Spotify-Youtube then MQA have won.

 

And so the kids went out and bought Crosleys? I don't think so.

 

If consumers decide its fate, then MQA is already on shaky ground. Convenience trumps most other factors when it comes to the general public and I don't think folding and deblurring is going to really get their attention.

Not an MQA hater btw, been watching this pretty closely now and still enjoying my TIDAL trial. I'll even consider a MQA DAC if/when my other one kicks the bucket. Or maybe a V30 one day. But how many other consumers really factor in MQA as what they have to have in their next phone?

 

"Always certain, often wrong" - picking up right where you left off.

No one has released entire catalogues, or anything close to it, in MQA format. You've previously asserted that 100s of thousands of MQA-encoded albums were in the pipeline, and then later said it was 30,000, not acknowledging the discrepancy. In either event, those numbers have not yet materialized.

The discussion of MQA's "deblurring" has advanced quite a bit in the days and weeks since you were last active here (and at Computer Audiophile) on this topic. Even Stereohphile has published an As We See It piece airing many of the issues with MQA, and among them is a clear statement that it's unknown how - or if - deblurring works to any sonic benefit since it's inextricably bound up with MQA's lossy encapsulation process.

As for the "triangular coding," you've repeatedly made the assertion that MQA's lossy encoding "captures almost all of the music content." The word "almost" makes it quite slippery, as the use of the phrase "music content," which misleadingly implies that you are referring to an empirically verifiable "music" bit of the digital signal as distinct from "non music." MQA's encoding is lossy, and it produces aliasing (aka distortion), and the triangular encoding itself reduces the effective bit depth to what has been reported as 15-17 bits. These are empirical terms and verifiable, repeatably results.

Ditto for "apodizing" filter, which is just Bob Stuart/Meridian's invented term of art for a minimum-phase filter. Again, you're using terms with the implication that they mean something, when they actually don't.

And as for the vinyl revival, one can make a persuasive argument that audiophile hold-outs who never fully embraced CDs and never ditched vinyl certainly helped keep the flame burning through vinyl's darkest times from the dawn of the '90s through to the mid-2000s.

But (as @Whoopycat notes above), audiohiles did not kickstart the vinyl revival. That was part of a larger retro movement in which young people (perhaps not teens, but certainly early 20-somethings) were prime movers. Record Store Day, which began in '07, epitomized the vinyl revival and caters fo music geeks and collectors but not specifically to audiophiles. Similarly, crate-digging is not an audiophile dominated activity - it's young folks and just general music lovers.

So your assertion, made in typically overarching and evidence-free fashion, is questionable at best, and flat-out incorrect at worst.

 

No cookies?
Against all the odds, sales of vinyl records around the world have been rising every year in double-digit figures since 2007. And most of those buying them aren’t middle-aged people who are nostalgic for the sounds and technology of their youth, but teenagers and students.

 

Lee, do you truly not see how everything in your comment after "Consumers will decide its fate" actually is the opposite of consumers deciding its fate? MQA is building an ecosystem that has nothing to do with consumers at all. As you yourself say, they've got the labels, the hardware provides, and the streaming services. If they get the labels and engineers to master using MQA equipment, and if they get the DAC manufacturers to pay for MQA licenses, and if they get the streaming services to mix MQA files into their premium or lossless streaming tiers, then consumers have no choice.

It's like saying consumers chose whether or not HDMI (and the DRM limitations that go with it) would succeed. Ridiculous on its face, as your own comment illustrates.

 

Sorry but I'm not buying your assertion of effective 17 bit depth. I don't find that to be correct based on my research. Based on my research, I believe most of the musical content is being captured.

 

Consumers always have a choice in the digital age. MQA is being smart by just making it easier for consumers to obtain MQA content. I think any new hirez format will have to do that to succeed. As I wrote in my article, the beauty of MQA is that they are leveraging streaming interest to create a path to more hirez music. I view that as a positive.