you realized I am not criticizing you. Just MQA. I know you didn't watch the movie before replying because there wasn't enough time and the information in it is quite compelling. Just WATCH THE MOVIE. Goldennote uploaded his original masters in PCM 44.1 and 88 and Tidal changed it without disclosing any of the process or the reason why. The MQA was NOT master quality audio because there was all sorts of HF trash in it that was NOT in the master, transients are diminished and get bad reverb, dynamics are compressed, the mqa flac was larger than the original master flac etc. Deezer provided the exact same file as the master file. So Tidal is LYING to you. And Tidal deleted all his files because they don't want the truth to come out. They don't care about 'master quality', they don't care about musicians, they don't care about you.
I understand all your objections (true or misguided). But what I've learned is that the music industry is just like any big corporation: not your friend. All they care about is power (money, if you think that's a thing). And they use marketing propaganda so you will give it to them out of your own free will.
MQA is already expensive. For instance Topping and smsl dacs come in 2 choices, without mqa is €100 cheaper. Your other arguments are also not valid. Mp3 got popular because it was the first codec that brought down the size of an album to 100mb when call-in modems were still common (a cd in wav took forever). Why people still talk about mp3 is because they know nothing of music, computing or sound quality (most people are dumb and they don't care as long as they can can hide it with some buzzword).
Most people don't even know what flac is. It is the first lossless codec based on free software. Free as in freedom, not free beer. Free as in: not proprietary: monopolized by one company like Apple did with Alac. So that has nothing to do with paracy. However... mqa does. It puts proprietary sofrware in a container that should be free to use for everybody.
Also, I have to edit this in, what i realised is that those Tidal 'masters' are 24 bits flac. Whatever HF content there in it has been 'folded' into the bottom 8 bits. You can't do that in 16 bits because the dynamic range is insufficient. Since I am always conscious of space and space gobbling files I often recode files that don't sound that great to take up lots of room. I can tell you that 16-96 takes up just as much space as 24-48. And 16-96 is real HD, 24 bits brings no discernable benefits. So where is the profit? Also, if you compress a cd (wav) in lossless you gain an average of 50%. Real information can not be compressed (try zipping a jpg) so you have to store it somewhere or somehow. Now mqa takes the >44kHz part and stuffs it in the trunk of 24 bits (with all the aliasing and noise issues). Whereas it you would take a real 16-96 wav it would also compress to 50%, roughly the size of a cd. Then you would have REAL HD audio without any timesmearing, transient issues, noise and sidebands. The only problem is... you can't patent it. So no money. It's just like medicinal herbs, you can't charge 100k for a treatment because anyone can pluck leaves. But with a patent...
You just pointed to the fact that mqa is in fact a new way to enforce DRM, digital rights management. In fact this puts all the rights in the corner of whoever manages the data. You could own the 'right' to listen to millions of songs and have your 'rights' (temporal privilege) revoked at the push of a button. The persons pushing that button won't be giving you your money back. And they are the same who are responsible for sloppy mastering, bad preprocessed music, s#itty entitled overpayed 'artists', loudness war and making you pay over and and over and over for the same software. Mqa is a trojan horse. Beware of music executives bearing gifts.
you realized I am not criticizing you. Just MQA. I know you didn't watch the movie before replying because there wasn't enough time and the information in it is quite compelling.
I understand all your objections. But what I've learned is that the music industry is just like any big corporation: not your friend.
MQA is ready expensive. For instance Topping and smsl dacs come in 2 choices, without mqa is €100 cheaper. Your other arguments are also not valid. Mp3 got popular because it was the first codec that brought down the size of an album to 100mb when call-in modems were still common (a cd in wav took forever). Why people still talk about mp3 is because they know nothing of music, computing or sound quality (most people are dumb and they don't care as long as they can can hide it with some buzzword).
Most people don't even know what flac is. It is the first lossless codec based on free software. Free as in freedom, not free beer. Free as in: not proprietary: monopolized by one company like Apple did with Alac. So that has nothing to do with paracy. However... mqa does. It puts proprietary sofrware in a container that should be free to use for everybody.
You just pointed to the fact that mqa is in fact a new way to enforce DRM, digital rights management. In fact this puts all the rights in the corner of whoever manages the data. You could own the 'right' to listen to millions of songs and have your 'rights' (temporal privilege) revoked at the push of a button. The persons pushing that button won't be giving you your money back. And they are the same who are responsible for sloppy mastering, bad preprocessed music, s#itty entitled overpayed 'artists', loudness war and making you pay over and and over and over for the same software. Mqa is a trojan horse. Beware of music executives bearing gifts.
the streaming services have to pay bandwidth costs. so a small file is more interesting to them. and mqa is claiming to be smaller (for high res at least)
all digital music is lossy. even 32 384 is still lossy to analogue. unless a digitial file can redupilcate things atom for atom its still lossy
perhaps in the future there might atom per atom reduplication. and it will be 10GB per song lol
and ya the video you sent is good. thanks for sharing it. i like videos like this
usually fancier codecs use up more cpu when encoding an decoding. like HEVC for video compared to AVC. so what you gain in bandwidth and storage you loose in cpu
flac is a data file, a compressed container for a pcm coded sound file including tagging, coverart, cue file, lyrics, replaygain etc. MQA is an algorithm to recode a pcm file with fancy tricks to store data in a different place to mimic high frequency data (freq minus 20khz, bitdepth minus 16 which they call 'folding'). So the outcome of a mqa algo is a pcm coded datafile put inside a flac container. Restoring is done in several steps, first is to reverse the retucking, then filtering what was low level low frequency info and what was high level HF info (good luck on that because the HF data is superimposed on the reverb and ambient data, or the latter is simply tossed out).
So if you play an mqa coded flac file just as is, like a normal flac file, you will hear the original high frequency music overtones as very soft unrelated buzzing or whistling tones. Under the hearing threshold (-96dB,16 bits). Or so they say. Mind you you need a 24 bit file for that. Thats a lot bigger (~600MB) than a normal 16-44 flac (~300MB) and just smaller than a wav (700).
So what this new firmware can do is recognize if the flac was made with the mqa algo (it is flagged) and recalculate: upsample and shift 20khz and 16 bits and add a filtering algo. This all takes calculating power costing you battery life.
It does reconstruct some HF info but also introduces aliasing tones, HF noise, dynamic compression, softening of transients with faseshift and reverb. Hooray.
Why Hidizs gave us free mqa? I don't think its a full decoder, I also don't believe they would pay a full licence fee for units already sold. Chinese manufacturers are very susceptible for marketing slogans. They love importing western name brands to flaunt. I don't blame them as westerners don't value Chinese technology enough. This will fade. Just as Japanese and Korean did in the past.
flac is a data file, a compressed container for a pcm coded sound file including tagging, coverart, cue file, lyrics, replaygain etc. MQA is an algorithm to recode a pcm file with fancy tricks to store data in a different place to mimic high frequency data (freq minus 20khz, bitdepth minus 16 which they call 'folding'). So the outcome of a mqa algo is a pcm coded datafile put inside a flac container. Restoring is done in several steps, first is to reverse the retucking, then filtering what was low level low frequency info and what was high level HF info (good luck on that because the HF data is superimposed on the reverb and ambient data, or the latter is simply tossed out).
So if you play an mqa coded flac file just as is, like a normal flac file, you will hear the original high frequency music overtones as very soft unrelated buzzing or whistling tones. Under the hearing threshold (-96dB,16 bits). Or so they say. Mind you you need a 24 bit file for that. Thats a lot bigger (~600MB) than a normal 16-44 flac (~300MB) and just smaller than a wav (700).
So what this new firmware can do is recognize if the flac was made with the mqa algo (it is flagged) and recalculate: upsample and shift 20khz and 16 bits and add a filtering algo. This all takes calculating power costing you battery life.
It does reconstruct some HF info but also introduces aliasing tones, HF noise, dynamic compression, softening of transients with faseshift and reverb. Hooray.
Why Hidizs gave us free mqa? I don't think its a full decoder, I also don't believe they would pay a full licence fee for units already sold. Chinese manufacturers are very susceptible for marketing slogans. They love importing western name brands to flaunt. I don't blame them as westerners don't value Chinese technology enough. This will fade. Just as Japanese and Korean did in the past.
ok good news. the ap80 pro with the new firmware is displaying MQA when it detects an mqa flac
i just tested it.
that makes me happy because at least i have a method of knowing if my flacs are mqa or not.
weird thing is the player shows mqa for two of the files and mqa studio for one of the files. dont know why its showing two different things
also it does not display any sign that it is giving out a higher quality then the default stated quality levels of the flac. like when i look in the properties of the file on the ap80
good job hidizs and hiby for that!
i guess the ap80 pro firmware can do up to 4 unfolds of mqa, as it says on the download page:
Just got my AP80 Pro. After updating to the newest firmware and installing my MicroSD card, I have been enjoying the player so far.
I do not have bluetooth headphones, but may purchase a pair in the future. I attempted to test the player's bluetooth capabilities by going to the "Bluetooth" menu, turning bluetooth on, then selecting "Search devices." The player will not find any bluetooth devices even though my phone and laptop are next to the player (which are paired to each other).
Using my Pixel 3a, if I go to "Settings," "Connected Devices," "Pair new device" my phone will not find any available devices to pair with.
Is there something wrong with my player? Is there another test I can run? Am I doing something wrong?
Just got my AP80 Pro. After updating to the newest firmware and installing my MicroSD card, I have been enjoying the player so far.
I do not have bluetooth headphones, but may purchase a pair in the future. I attempted to test the player's bluetooth capabilities by going to the "Bluetooth" menu, turning bluetooth on, then selecting "Search devices." The player will not find any bluetooth devices even though my phone and laptop are next to the player (which are paired to each other).
Using my Pixel 3a, if I go to "Settings," "Connected Devices," "Pair new device" my phone will not find any available devices to pair with.
Is there something wrong with my player? Is there another test I can run? Am I doing something wrong?
Bingo! Getting both devices to to search for other bluetooth devices simultaneously worked. Thanks! And I am a big fan of your list of tips fro the AP80. The included instructions are garbage. Your list has helped me on more than one occasion!
it seems like i have to raise the eq way up to +9 or so (3 notches down from the top) in order for the volume to stay the same when i flick the eq switch on and off
this seems stupid
volume should be the same when its at 0 not +9
so first i have to raise it all up to +9 then i can use the eq and move things up or down
but it only goes up to +12, so that only gives me 3 notches to move things up
because of this annoyance the MSEB is maybe better
Can somebody report on how AP80 Pro performs as a digital transport? Are there any differences in sound/audio related performance compared to a smartphone in this use case? I have found out that active background processes (running apps and system services) on my phone have an impact (subjectively negative, i.e. "darker" sound, lesser perceived channel separation) on sound when I'm using it as a transport with BTR5 in both wired (via UAPP, Neutron MP) and wireless modes, even with 16/44,1 files without any additional resampling and DSP. Same goes for my PC. This leads me to believe that processing power available matters in handling of audio files/digital signal. With this point in mind, I'm concerned about M3 Pro's apparent hardware limitations.
I need a dedicated mobile digital transport device, but my budget is very limited, so the only viable options for me are budget low-performance DAPs like the ShanLing Q1, Fiio M3 Pro or this one, or a budget smartphone like, say, Redmi Note 8 Pro. I'd like to go with the latter to be sure, but in my current financial situation I'll have to save up for it for a few months at least.
Sadly, this issue seems to be pretty obscure to say the least, and it's very hard to find any information on this topic.
Can somebody report on how AP80 Pro performs as a digital transport? Are there any differences in sound/audio related performance compared to a smartphone in this use case? I have found out that active background processes (running apps and system services) on my phone have an impact (subjectively negative, i.e. "darker" sound, lesser perceived channel separation) on sound when I'm using it as a transport with BTR5 in both wired (via UAPP, Neutron MP) and wireless modes, even with 16/44,1 files without any additional resampling and DSP. Same goes for my PC. This leads me to believe that processing power available matters in handling of audio files/digital signal. With this point in mind, I'm concerned about M3 Pro's apparent hardware limitations.
I need a dedicated mobile digital transport device, but my budget is very limited, so the only viable options for me are budget low-performance DAPs like the ShanLing Q1, Fiio M3 Pro or this one, or a budget smartphone like, say, Redmi Note 8 Pro. I'd like to go with the latter to be sure, but in my current financial situation I'll have to save up for it for a few months at least.
Sadly, this issue seems to be pretty obscure to say the least, and it's very hard to find any information on this topic.
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