[castleofargh]

as we don't know what they would actually do at each step of the recording/mixing/mastering job, it's hard to be categorical about objective fidelity the way we can be about the codec itself. but my guess is that they could introduce something random and arguably worst for fidelity because somebody felt it sounded better(so very MQA philosophy). or some BS standard like require tracks to always be recorded at more than 192khz so that they can then convert to 192khz with the filter they love so much. or maybe just a little like "mastered for itune", a list of tasks that anybody with half a brain would probably have done anyway, and a nice label to gain money from. because actually converting to MQA files from the start would only serve the DRM overlord. not that it couldn't be reason enough for them.

but I'm getting bored of the guessing game. they claim to be a revolution, but all I see is a complicated codec to end up with PCM at bit depths other than 16 or 24 bit. and some ringing paranoia, but even if I agreed on the audibility(I do not), I would just use anything above 44.1khz and voila I have saved time. in the end the only positive thing I can see coming out of it is that more files will have 48khz multiples which could be nice for standard purposes with video stuff and many default rate for cellphones(and TBH might be half the reason Headfry likes it so much). but do we need all that crap to pick a different sample rate? I vote no.

 

[Brahmsian]

@Brahmsian
the argument that MQA can be assimilated to anything vaguely highres related is a terrible logical shortcut.

I disagree, and here's why: at the bottom of so much of the disagreement is a basic lack of consensus about whether people can hear the difference hi-res makes or not, whether it be PCM or DSD. Let's be clear about what happened. It was bigshot who brought up SACDs. He claimed there is no audible improvement over CD.

 

[Brahmsian]

Has anyone read this study? Just from the summary, it raises a few questions. With training subjects could determine the difference 60% of the time. That isn't much beyond random. And how many of the test subjects were trainable to recognize it 60% of the time? Did they just find one person whose ears happened to ring with ultrasonic frequencies? I know there are people who are more sensitive to the squeal of fluorescent lights, but that isn't an advantage. The real question is if the upper frequencies make the music sound better., not if certain people can perceive high frequency sound pressure.

Well, you asked for a scientific paper and now you don't like the result, so it looks like you will simply discount it. 60% is statistically significant. Now you should question their methodology to see whether it holds up. And I'm not asking you to accept their conclusion. But I've seen so many people on the other side of the argument do what you are doing now - that is, rip to shreds the methods employed by whatever study concluded against their view of the matter. Each camp rejects the studies that don't fit their notion! As for me, I leave the question open. Meanwhile, I simply enjoy my hi-res music and don't bother too much about whether I can hear a difference. I think all our good music should be high resolution for posterity.

 

[Brahmsian]

In any event, the only practical/acceptable point in the entire recording, editing, mixing and mastering chain to encode into MQA is at the very end of it, after the mastering is essentially already complete. So if MQA is applying any sort of "corrections" or any other processing, then the questions become:1. How is MQA part of "every step" if it's not doing or influencing anything until after all the steps have already been completed? 2. How do you process the completed master and more importantly, 3. Why on earth would you want to? There is no conceivable, rational response to these questions, so the only option I can see is either: No response or an irrational response, which going on existing MQA marketing tactics, would take the form of obfuscation by redefining already well established terms and/or some deliberate confusing of scale/context!

G

Here's Bob's description of one MQA project (from their website):

 

[pinnahertz]

Here's Bob's description of one MQA project (from their website):

Yeah, we read all of that a long time ago. What's your point?

 

[pinnahertz]

Well, you asked for a scientific paper and now you don't like the result, so it looks like you will simply discount it.

It's not a "scientific paper" if it doesn't hold up to peer review.

Now you should question their methodology to see whether it holds up. And I'm not asking you to accept their conclusion.
But I've seen so many people on the other side of the argument do what you are doing now - that is, rip to shreds the methods employed by whatever study concluded against their view of the matter. Each camp rejects the studies that don't fit their notion!

The notion is scientific proof of a concept, proven with targeted, controlled testing, with repeatable results. Not too much to ask as far as "scientific" goes.

As for me, I leave the question open. Meanwhile, I simply enjoy my hi-res music and don't bother too much about whether I can hear a difference.

This is a real gem. If you can't tell a difference, why support it at all? "I can't see ultraviolet light, but I want to make darn sure all my light bulbs emit it anyway!"

I think all our good music should be high resolution for posterity.

...just in case human hearing evolves to be able to hear two more octaves? Ok...but....

 

[gregorio]

Well, you asked for a scientific paper and now you don't like the result, so it looks like you will simply discount it. 60% is statistically significant.

Yes, 60% would be significant and although that figure has been publish in the press, the actual figure in the paper was about 53%, which is not significant! Secondly, you keep calling it a study, when it was a meta-analysis. And lastly, the conclusion and the press release are not supported by the evidence actually presented in the paper. For example, one of the studies included in the meta-analysis, which added significantly to the result, was published in 1980, about a decade before hires was even invented!!

Here's Bob's description of one MQA project (from their website):

Thanks for that, it's a great example of one of their marketing tricks, one they've used before. In the paper you quoted, there's a big section criticising DBX tests, presumably in an attempt to discredit the numerous studies which which demonstrate the opposite of the meta-analysis' conclusions. However, the criticism is levelled at an early form of DBX from the 1950's which was discontinued and superseded in the early 1980's and new protocols completely invalidate all his criticism which do not apply to the hires studies! Same with your quote: The PCM 2700 is a DAT machine released in the early 90's (and therefore is not an early ADC!) and while DAT machines were used extensively for a while to store/transfer masters, often/typically the DAT would have been fed a digital signal, thereby bypassing the PCM 2700's ADC anyway! There's probably very few masters which ever passed through a PCM2700's ADC and many/most of those which did, would likely have passed through one or more other ADCs at some point in the recording/mixing/mastering process. Again, they are taking a single case, from probably only a few dozen applicable commercial recordings and making out that's applicable to all the millions of digital recordings made before and since. And, this is assuming that correcting the "time domain inaccuracies" of the PCM2700 is even audible in the first place!

"Using conventional digital converters and processing, audio has been blurred more than we realise and in a way that makes it unnatural, remote and lacking immediacy" - This statement is maybe true in some cases but what has it got to do with MQA? There is no way MQA could correct these "time domain inaccuracies" as has been explained in some detail already in this thread, so why are you just posting marketing material on this point again, what do you expect to gain from it?

G

 

[castleofargh]

I disagree, and here's why: at the bottom of so much of the disagreement is a basic lack of consensus about whether people can hear the difference hi-res makes or not, whether it be PCM or DSD. Let's be clear about what happened. It was bigshot who brought up SACDs. He claimed there is no audible improvement over CD.

MQA is focused in only one direction, the time domain(oh sound waves use 2 axis, that's too bad MQA has a favorite son). they make it look like everything is there in the time domain and as a consequence of course argue that more samples is always better. but at the same time, they agree with people who deny audibility of more bits than CD and MQA is based on that assumption. so just making a big box "highres against CD" and throwing every formats in it, that doesn't prove or disprove anything about MQA. that was my main point.

that's not the only ambivalent approach for MQA. they spammed us for years about fidelity and high res, but ultimately they pick a band limiting method that is not the one allowing for the most fidelity to be kept within the selected band(only the one that makes little ringing at the end of the band). and then they justify it with subjective preference. how is that a fidelity approach? how do you defend that with other highres formats?

then the encoding of ultrasonic content in MQA works under the assumption that the amplitude of those signals is really low which will be true for pretty much all musical content (and the reason why I tend to think it doesn't make any difference to cut it off). but then where is the relevant limit? they don't care about removing bit resolution in the audible range, objectively reducing the accuracy of the signal in that range. but they wish to keep ultrasonic signal at levels close to the noise floor of their 0-20khz because they say, it matters for time domain. of course they only look at time domain again and piss all over the amplitude domain so that's what they would say. but it is IMO another paradox in the "MQA is highres" logic.

the last problem being that as I've said too many times, the original PCM will always have higher resolution than the MQA file made from it(if that is false I need someone to explain it to me), so even for those who believe that highres sounds better, MQA is a half full glass trying to do better than CD in a file that is bigger than CD... if the plan was only to do better than CD, a real 24/48 PCM file does that already.

all in all, we need a pretty strong tunnel vision to think that generic high res arguments apply to MQA. and of course your point about no consensus on high res is important. how could above CD resolution be audibly so important and yet be so hard to demonstrate reliably and consistently? the obvious answer is that even if sometimes it makes an audible difference due to various conditions, it's such a small difference that it hardly registers for humans. in short, audiophiles make a mountain out of a speck of sand. and MQA is but one arguable view about how to polish that speck.

 

[bigshot]

Well, you asked for a scientific paper and now you don't like the result, so it looks like you will simply discount it. 60% is statistically significant.

But it isn't 60% with all the people tested... It's 60% accuracy with a small subset of that group that was capable of being "trained". That raises the question, how were they trained? Did they know they were trained only because they were able to do 10% better than the rest of the test subjects? If so, they simply cherry picked the statistical anomalies and focused on them. That doesn't prove anything except that there are always statistical anomalies.

In any case, even if only a handful of people can hear it only slightly better than the rest of the world, it doesn't matter to your home stereo system. There are MUCH more important things to deal with than that when it comes to audio fidelity.

 

[Brahmsian]

Yeah, we read all of that a long time ago. What's your point?

Who's "we"? Anybody in the world can chance upon this page and read that for the first time. Get real.

 

[sonitus mirus]

Who's "we"? Anybody in the world can chance upon this page and read that for the first time. Get real.

People that have read this thread from the beginning should have seen this link already.

https://www.head-fi.org/f/threads/m...aming-technology.745608/page-64#post-13267877

We are just repeating stuff that has already been stated numerous times and getting nowhere. Honestly, the only thing we need now is a properly controlled, double-blind listening test proctored by a neutral party with results that can be reproduced. Anything else is just not going to cut it.

I don't believe anyone would sponsor such a test, as I am confident the results would not support the claims being made by the developers of MQA. "Indistinct, brittle, and grainy sounding" CDs sound really nice.

 

[gregorio]

that's not the only ambivalent approach for MQA. they spammed us for years about fidelity and high res, but ultimately they pick a band limiting method that is not the one allowing for the most fidelity to be kept within the selected band(only the one that makes little ringing at the end of the band). and then they justify it with subjective preference. how is that a fidelity approach? how do you defend that with other highres formats?

The most troubling/impressive aspect of MQA is it's marketing strategy. The marketing strategy for many audiophile products looks like it was cooked up in an afternoon, others are somewhat more sophisticated but I've never seen anything like MQA! In my experience their marketing strategy is sophisticated beyond compare in the audiophile world; it was obviously very carefully designed years ago, knowing it would take years to execute. How many audiophile products are supported by custom targeted, peer reviewed/published scientific papers? The "typical filters" paper was published in 2014 and work on it must have started a couple of years or more prior to the publication date. It's obvious that they haven't spent so much time, effort and money on such a sophisticated marketing strategy just to hoodwink the tiny niche of extreme audiophiles. They are looking at far greater penetration, the major labels, global distributors and a much wider public demographic. Just as the HiRes/High Definition term was originally borrowed from the video world, maybe the market penetration of HiRes/HD in video/TV/film can also be approached in the music world. In which case, MQA would be perfectly placed in the music distribution world, as h264/h265 is in the HD video world but even better (for MQA) because they're going to be charging for it's use!

Honestly, the only thing we need now is a properly controlled, double-blind listening test proctored by a neutral party with results that can be reproduced. Anything else is just not going to cut it.

I'm not sure how practical that would be. As I understand it, MQA doesn't just encode audio into it's own format, it actually audio processes it. IE. Effectively, adding some mastering processes (like audio compression and/or EQ, etc.). MQA have been unclear what mastering processes it applies and how automatic or configurable those processes are. If there is ANY automatic audio processing (which can't be bypassed) then an ABX differentiation should be fairly straight forward and a subjective preference also relatively easy to manipulate. And, MQA have already covered the possibility of ABX tests not going their way, with the extensive criticism of ABX tests in the "typical filters" paper.

G

 

[bigshot]

To quote Mary Poppins, "A spoonful of snake oil helps the DRM go down."

 

[Brahmsian]

Looks like there's a whole lot of MQA still coming our way:

 

[gregorio]

Looks like there's a whole lot of MQA still coming our way ..

Yep, that was always the danger. I'm sure you'll be very pleased with having "the sound of the studio" delivered to you and simply not care that it's a lie or what the consequences are.

G