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Topic: How to identify MQA decoding? (Read 18912 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #25
From the source site of my original post here, comes the following announcement:

https://www.facebook.com/highresaudio/photos/a.177697382273382.35252.110873468955774/1335010219875420/?type=3

Very interesting to see MQA being banished from one of its original supporters.

From the page:

Breaking News: HIGHRESAUDIO to stop offering MQA. Proprietary system solutions and licensing models aren't what customers want. MQA is NOT lossless, the original signal is never recovered, estimate to recover at most 17bits (reduces the sampling rate), reduces the frequency range, SNR reduced by 3bit, aliasing with artifacts at 18kHz. MQA encoding filters manipulate drastically the original source. No analysis tools are available to verify the encoded MQA content. Therefore no quality control is possible. highresaudio.com stands for offering purity, original mastering source, none manipulated, tweaked or up-sampled content and codecs that are widely supported and offer use of freedom.

"We hope that MQA will adjust all the above issues. We are truly disappointed, the way MQA has progressed in the past year. We have been mislead and blinded by trust and promises."


I for one see no advantage in another "standard". This is all about controlling distribution, which is DRM. FLAC at similar bitrates provides better bandwidth, for those streaming. I don't stream, so why in the world would I want to "unfold" anything or worry that I need proprietary software or hardware? Those who like it are being fished into a mess.  Be wary....Meridian already did this with MLP way back.

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #26
Was the facebook page hacked? I can't see the message and the web homepage happily offers MQA.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #27
LOL....I can't see anything now either....anti MQA forces at work? or is it werk?

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #28
anti MQA forces at work?
Wouldn't classify the legal team for BS and the deep pocket record companies, "anti" MQA. To the contrary.
Loudspeaker manufacturer



Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #31
Did you even read?
Yes, both original page and "scrubbed" by BS/record companies one.
Did you?

Scrubbed?

Look, I'm no fan of MQA either. There is absolutely no business case for it as far as the consumer in concerned. This is clearly an attempt to keep HiRes audio under control, with only certain software and special DACs able to "unfold" the data. This is DRM, make no mistake about it.

This is the same company that brought us MLP. MLP was great, but Meridian kept it so close to themselves. The could have licensed a 2.0 version for cheap for home use to show people how they could put lossless audio, but smaller in size, on a DVD-A and CREATE a market for DVD-A. Sadly, they did not, and DVD-A went the way of the Dodo bird. They will not open up MQA for all, so I'm hoping it goes by way of the Dodo as well. I won't buy...ever.


Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #33
Did you even read?
Yes, both original page and "scrubbed" by BS/record companies one.
Did you?

Scrubbed?

Yes.  aj is suggesting that Meridian had the page taken down...'scrubbed'.

(Seems to be a clusterf*ck of misunderstanding going on here)


Why do you say "here" ?...it WAS posted by someone both on Facebook and Twitter. Seems like misunderstanding is with those outside of HA. Regardless, MQA is fools gold.



Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #36
Did you even read?
Yes, both original page and "scrubbed" by BS/record companies one.
Did you?

So not only do you claim claim that Bob Stuart's legal team wrote "stop offering MQA [...] truly disappointed, [...] been mislead and blinded by trust and promises."  - you even claim to have read it before you posted?


Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #38
Comedy gold! The message yesterday was no fake. Today on facebook:
"P.S. This is a revised version from our post yesterday! Which was not a fake. Upon request from MQA, we deleted that post."
MQA obviously disliked the facts they based their first message on. They may not be allowed to say MQA is crippled 17bit PCM at best.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #39
Comedy gold! The message yesterday was no fake. Today on facebook:
"P.S. This is a revised version from our post yesterday! Which was not a fake. Upon request from MQA, we deleted that post."
MQA obviously disliked the facts they based their first message on. They may not be allowed to say MQA is crippled 17bit PCM at best.

Breaking News: HIGHRESAUDIO to stop offering MQA. We decided not to offer and support MQA any longer. We will take MQA out of the shop by 01.03. We already have taken down the MQA icon and search function in our shop.
HIGHRESAUDIO stands for offering purity, original mastering source, none manipulated, tweaked or up-sampled content and codecs that are widely supported and offer use of freedom. You can trust us in what we do and have to offer!
We sincerely hope for the future, that MQA will supply analysis and verification tools in order to ensure the quality of product.
P.S. This is a revised version from our post yesterday! Which was not a fake. Upon request from MQA, we deleted that post.


Now HIGHESAUDIO does sell DSD does it not? So perhaps they want to protect that. MQA is muddying the waters for no benefit to anyone.

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #40
For some reason I get the vibe that this was a decision as a result of a partnership agreement going wrong (some greedy side?), rather than HighResAudio being solely a strong supporter of audio quality.
I might be wrong, have no proof of my statement (labeled it a vide in the first place anyhow), but certainly this is a big hit for MQA “balancing” in a weird way the Tidal collaboration.

On the other hand, the original HRA post took the extra leap to be more technical even in a somehow “slang” language but I presume HRA expertise probably isn't as strong as that of Meridian to backup such statements hence the decision to “speak in plain English” now. We might actually have here a proof that HRA is indeed focusing vividly on quality negating my own initial vibe. :-P

Interesting change of events in any case...

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #41
For some reason I get the vibe that this was a decision as a result of a partnership agreement going wrong (some greedy side?), rather than HighResAudio being solely a strong supporter of audio quality....
I may sound like a broken record but HRA most likely doesn't seem to have a problem with selling UMG watermarks so the reasoning against MQA should be taken with a grain of salt.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #42
Crippled 17 bits, is that to say that we just can dither away the crippled LSB and have the CD?   8)

The "and codecs that are widely supported and offer use of freedom" part is not so stupid, though. 


Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #43
When undecoded you have 13-15bit 44.1 or 48kHz music. All lower bits are noise that can recreate a signal that combined creates a lowpassed, aliased, noise shaped, maybe 17bit signal of higher samplerate.
Crippled means here that it surely is not the 24/96 that entered the process but some marketing sentenses somehow talk about some kind of lossless. HRA dislikes the fact they can't really verify what comes out of what came in.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #44
When undecoded you have 13-15bit 44.1 or 48kHz music. All lower bits are noise that can recreate a signal that combined creates a lowpassed, aliased, noise shaped, maybe 17bit signal of higher samplerate.
Crippled means here that it surely is not the 24/96 that entered the process but some marketing sentenses somehow talk about some kind of lossless. HRA dislikes the fact they can't really verify what comes out of what came in.

So does this mean that the MQA folks will not specifically tell resellers how it is all supposed to work? Presumably there would be some method HRA and like others could employ to ensure what they have received is right. If not and it is a "trust us" scenario, then why would anyone use it?

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #45
So does this mean that the MQA folks will not specifically tell resellers how it is all supposed to work? Presumably there would be some method HRA and like others could employ to ensure what they have received is right. If not and it is a "trust us" scenario, then why would anyone use it?
No idea. As soon something is MQA it must be right by definition of itself. In the facebook post "No analysis tools are available to verify the encoded MQA content. " HRA seems to have some interest to verify it for themself. Isn't it?
Surounding MQA there are many strange things and much digging in the dark.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Re: How to identify MQA decoding?

Reply #46
So does this mean that the MQA folks will not specifically tell resellers how it is all supposed to work? Presumably there would be some method HRA and like others could employ to ensure what they have received is right. If not and it is a "trust us" scenario, then why would anyone use it?
No idea. As soon something is MQA it must be right by definition of itself. In the facebook post "No analysis tools are available to verify the encoded MQA content. " HRA seems to have some interest to verify it for themself. Isn't it?
Surounding MQA there are many strange things and much digging in the dark.

There are strange things indeed. If one has no access to the software to "unfold" the music data (or a new DAC), then why support it? Isn't this just hi-res obfuscation?

 

UMG adopts MQA

Reply #47
And here's UMG's CTO Ty Roberts' explanation for choosing MQA:
Quote
If you look at other media – film, TV and so on – they have all improved their quality and dynamic range. In music, we’re a little behind. We actually had good sound on CD, but we squeezed it for digital, and we sacrificed some of the quality for the convenience of carrying around so much music.

There were good technical reasons for this. But now we’re at a point where most smartphones can output 24-bit audio. Bandwidth has been a problem. Even wifi can’t support what’s needed for hi-res audio. But a bunch of companies are solving this. MQA is one. And that’s why we signed the deal.
Simple, isn't it ?  :o