Good news, MQA files for bankruptcy

[admin]

https://www.ecoustics.com/news/mqa-bankruptcy/

Ok, so this may be controversial but I am glad MQA is going bankrupt. I have not been a fan of their codec and have thought it has been a step backwards in the home audio community. We don't need another closed source, license fee based protocol, lossy format with a company that is not transparent as to what the format does (or doesn't do), and does not offer tools to test its claims. MQA has been caught in the past making dubious (if not all out lies) claims about its format.

Although I doubt that manufactures are going to drop support immediately nor do I see MQA disappearing from Tidal anytime soon, I hope this serves as an example to other companies that want to head down the road of extracting licensing fees from every step of music production and listening. We have much better open source formats to choose from which will keep costs down not just for producers but also consumers.

For those that may not be familiar with MQA and their shenanigans, GoldenSound has an excellent 2 part series on the format that generated a lot of buzz:
https://youtu.be/pRjsu9-Vznc


Paul McGowan, although respectful as he is friends with the creator of MQA, is not a fan either:
https://youtu.be/lPfmWKjiccA

[AnotherJohnson]

I agree that we don’t need more little piggies at every trough in the music creation chain.

I watched the McGowan video, and I think he makes some good points, one of which is that his customers insisted that he include MQA decoding.

What I remember about this phenomenon is that it was driven by the usual gang of lead eared reviewers from the usual magazine suspects. I seem to remember that at the unveiling, some of the “listening thought leaders” were so impressed that they declared that we were entering a new world of excellence in audio reproduction.

McGowan says that Linn have been negative about MQA sound because they didn’t adopt it. I suggest that the reverse is true. Linn didn’t adopt it because their standard for listening has always been the very best analog sound. Even so, Linn has a huge digital streaming customer base and they offer some very pricey digital gear. If Linn thought MQA sounded better, they would have adopted it and passed the charge along.

It sounds like the MQA story is another audio scam destined for the bin. From McGowan’s description of the process, anyone with half a brain should have recognized that the basic premise of their idea was fatally flawed. You could probably optimize a coding/decoding process that improved some recordings from an artist-studio-master-production-chain, but you could never force everything produced by that chain into that same optimum.

The audio press needs to accept some of the blame … they’re the ones who gushed about it. Reviews are for entertainment, not education.

[AnotherJohnson]

McGowan uses his video to promote DSD. In many instances, I like DSD too. I was reading Dorgay’s review of the Vivaldi stack in Tone last night. Although I do not have a Vivaldi, the Rossini has enough similarities regarding DSD upsampling that I can relate to his comments.

He said that he did not find the conversion to DSD uniformly an improvement over the original file for higher resolution formats. But for 16/44.1, he said that he noticed the DSD conversion to generally improve things.

I had not paid attention to this resolution issue, but in hind sight, I think he’s probably right. Red Book CDs and 16/44.1 files are nearly always startlingly better through the Rossini compared to other DAC options here.

There is something magic about the Rossini. Is it the Ring DAC? Or is it the DSD upsampling? I don’t know and I have no way of figuring it out. And why is the Nucleus better at feeding the Rossini’s Roon Ready resident module, than a Roon Core running on my MacBook Air?

Sigh … who cares. It is. Settle in and play some music.

And that idea brings us to the central point. It is about the music. I’ve bought several of PS Audio’s DSD disk productions. The Mini Brazilian Beasts album is the only one that I’ve felt rose to a level of excellent performance. I have criticized Wilson Audio Specialties recordings too. These small recording fanatics are focused on the sound, not the music. Their in-house efforts to make reference recordings are important for the advancement of their core products (speakers for both Wilson and PSA, and electronics for PSA), and these reference recordings may be interesting, but they are mostly not important as musical revelations or interpretations.

[admin]

DSD is a good format. It's also bandwidth intensive which is one of the reasons why streaming services don't use it.

As for which format sounds better, DSD or PCM,... I don't know. Both can sound extremely good and in my experience the recordings origin plays a bigger factor than whether it's served up as PCM or DSD.

As for your Rossini. Frankly, both PCM and DSD is going to sound pretty dang good because you have a top of the line DAC. I've played around with PCM to DSD conversion on my Holo Audio May DAC and I haven't heard "magical improvements". I think this is going to come down to personal preference. I also don't perceive a benefit to upsampling in general but many disagree and software packages like HQ Player are built upon the premise that if you take that 44.1khz audio and upsample it to a crazy high level it will sound better. I don't think there is a clear winner, I think you will have to experiment and see which one sounds best to your ears. Luckily, you got one of the best DACs ever made so you will find something that you like.

[AnotherJohnson]

It is good to have choices.

I do think that what matters to one listener in one installation might literally be “in the noise level” for another listener in a different installation.

I think the focus needs to be in your music choices.

I’d rather listen to something I enjoy on a mediocre system than I would to something I don’t care for on a great system … although this idea can be wrong headed. I’ve listened to works by Bartok, for example, where on a bad system they are horrible, but on a good system they are actually enjoyable on some level.

[Big Dog RJ]

Yes, the highend audio press and reviews went bonkeroos on MQA... nearly everyone and anyone had to have it, otherwise their gear wasn't worthy. I remember having an in-depth chat with my Esoteric importer and talked about this MQA format. I asked him what the big deal was and he actually said that he wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit of hogwash...and now this, uh!

Anyway, I hope they didn't tread on too many toes... it always comes full circle to bite you in the ass!

I reckon it's time for some fine tunes!
Cheers, RJ

[roberto]

hola Chicos,

I was severed criticized because in another forum I asked for the benefits of using MQA, and I did not find any good results with it. I was asking to them, who were very polarized to MQA, if I needed a special filter, another software, or what I was doing wrong. At that time I was an Exasound DAC user.

Then I heard and saw sometime ago in Youtube the MQA reviewer GoldenSound, same person who did like my Holo May Kte DAC (he owns one Holo May Kte DAC after his review too) and he was not too happy with the MQA. I said to myself, it looks that I am not the only one who did not like MQA much.

I am now using a special filter made by https://accuratesound.ca/hang-loose-convolver-hlc/

Here, I can report a very good improvement with the Audirvana software. I find more precise, better holographic sense, and a very natural dynamics, great stage presentation, with much easy fluent sound quality. This is my liking and not necessary must be yours.

I wish to you a very happy listening!

[admin]

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-thea ... -lossless/

Looks like the rats are fleeing the sinking ship. Tidal is going to adopt FLAC as an alternative hirez solution. Again, good news.

The article is reporting on a recent AMA done on reddit from the CEO of Tidal. There is a fairly heavy attack on MQA in there (well deserved in my opinion) and it is actually interesting to hear some slips of information. The CEO hints that the reason why MQA was adopted initially was due to the much lower bandwidth requirements of MQA compared to FLAC. In other words, it was a way to sell "hirez" to the masses while not having to float the cost of bandwidth.

[AnotherJohnson]

Hans Christian Andersen’s Emperor’s New Clothes story comes to mind.

If you trust the initial gushing reviewers, then the initial demos were custom “cooked.”

If you don’t trust them, then it’s just another example of the fact that reviewers have to be clever writers, not discriminating listeners.

And then you add in the audiophile tribal, pack, and OCD mentalities … and you get to Aesop’s Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted story.

I do not trust reviewers or demos.

Your ears for your system.