Andrew_WOT
Headphoneus Supremus
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Is suing for false advertisement still a thing?
MQA.... Scam or not?
- Thread starter pjones5
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I didn't know about the back story of the Neil Young issue, frankly I didn't care.
Out of curiosity I did a bit of reading after your comment above.
When Neil Young would prefer you to sign up his own music service and buy the music player he is involved with it makes it pretty hard to be concerned about what he has to say about streaming services that he is trying to compete with.
It sounds like it has been a long standing situation with him.
Genuinely with respect, all the anti MQA guys go on about false advertising and I get that in principle of course.
However, if MQA and Tidal advertising really was a complete bare faced lie with no substance and not just cleverly put together advertising and marketing words prepared by highly paid professionals to make something sound as good as humanly possible but is still within the legal framework of legitimate advertising, like all big companies do, why hasn't it become a genuine legal issue and not just forum and Face Book page chatter and a You Tube video by somebody that has something to gain from making himself as well known as possible ?
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Andrew_WOT
Headphoneus Supremus
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There is a thin line between false advertisement and puffery which is "a legal way of promoting a product or service through hyperbole or oversized statements that cannot be objectively verified".
Perhaps as you saying the advertisement is put in a clever way to avoid legal issue.
For example from MQA website.
Perhaps as you saying the advertisement is put in a clever way to avoid legal issue.
For example from MQA website.
But if you read through the doc there is no mentioning that it's in fact lossless, bit-perfect and actually true original recording. All they say that MQA unfolding "restores original resolution". There is statement that will make Gretta Thunberg or any other eco-terrorist happy though Sustainable Tech
Actually, I believe he was upset that they were changing his recordings from that which he gave permission to Tidal to use. Whether or not most of us couldn't hear much of a difference, he was upset as a matter of principle. He didn't like the way they did business.... (it's been a bit of time, so may be off a bit with my take, but I don't think so).
Leo
Claypole
100+ Head-Fier
Yes, he said they weren't 'his' masters. Also, I believe it was probably Warner Bros that signed signed off on the deal, rather than Neil himself.
As you say, a matter of principal.
gimmeheadroom
Headphoneus Supremus
Well, from Day 1 the record companies and agents have been screwing musicians. This is definitely not OK, but it also has nothing to do with MQA.
castleofargh
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MQA has been relying on dishonesty from day one. At every opportunity to correct their mistakes, they have elected to reformulate in the most confusing and legally non-binding way possible. It is who they have decided to be, marketing BSers.
The lossy affair took a while and even now, they keep spamming about the sound of the artist in the studio blablablah. Which is false because most files end up not having the original signal but some lossy attenuated ultrasonic crap (so it can fit inside the lower bits in the audible range they sacrificed for their encoding). But they can keep talking about high resolution because they rely on the "more than 48kHz" definition, so, screw bit depth.
Yet they still try to have the cake and eat it as they write that the file you're listening to is 24/192 when of course it's not. It's either 24/48 (the format of the flac container), or whatever remains of the original signal at the end, maybe some 16/192-ish or 18/192-ish. But legally, they take away the encoded signal in the lower bits, then dither the hell out of it, so the final signal can be called 24/192. It's pretty similar to saying that we're increasing resolution by padding 16bit signal with zeroes to make a 24bit file.
It's always like that, and they always precisely formulate things so the consumer will misunderstand in a positive way, while they can hope to get away with it in court. We can call that typical marketing. It's not all that different from the SACD propaganda about a more analog signal and claims of clear subjective improvement that research never confirmed.
When some ad suggests that with a given car we'll be an adventurer and get the pretty girl, we all understand that it's an ad. It still works to some level and that's why they do it, but on the surface, we know. When Stuart tells you about temporal BS by misusing a research paper to provide a false direct 1 to 1 relation between that minimum timing and the period based on sample rate (which is not and never was how you get temporal resolution and of course Stuart knows that!!!!!), people aren't told it's a BS ad for timing requirements that even 16/44 PCM vastly exceeds.
When consumers see 24/192 MQA they think that's the actual level of fidelity of the file, not a BS ad. That's the problem. We know it shouldn't happen, we know that if the organization in charge of checking that stuff did spend some time on it, MQA would be fined and would have to stop lying so openly. But we also know that those in charge of checking and enforcing laws are understaffed, poorly paid, and that they are already late on plenty of actually dangerous products. It's the same reason why nobody stops homeopathic products from getting on the market. Stuff that do nothing, are seen as doing no harm, and that's never going to be a priority for them while they run to handle a backlog of critical stuff.
In the end, for MQA or anything else at or above 16/44, we know that the mastering is audibly more significant and most of the time when there is a clear sound difference, that's what we're noticing. A few other times it's about the DAC handling different resolutions or formats differently, but for those, converting or oversampling often does the trick.
There really isn't much left for the file format itself when it comes to listening to music. If you guys like Tidal, use it. But just because one can enjoy a track that happens to be MQA, doesn't mean he has to forever suck up to whatever Stuart or MQA website says.
You are not your Tidal subscription (read as Brad Pitt in Fight Club).
The lossy affair took a while and even now, they keep spamming about the sound of the artist in the studio blablablah. Which is false because most files end up not having the original signal but some lossy attenuated ultrasonic crap (so it can fit inside the lower bits in the audible range they sacrificed for their encoding). But they can keep talking about high resolution because they rely on the "more than 48kHz" definition, so, screw bit depth.
Yet they still try to have the cake and eat it as they write that the file you're listening to is 24/192 when of course it's not. It's either 24/48 (the format of the flac container), or whatever remains of the original signal at the end, maybe some 16/192-ish or 18/192-ish. But legally, they take away the encoded signal in the lower bits, then dither the hell out of it, so the final signal can be called 24/192. It's pretty similar to saying that we're increasing resolution by padding 16bit signal with zeroes to make a 24bit file.
It's always like that, and they always precisely formulate things so the consumer will misunderstand in a positive way, while they can hope to get away with it in court. We can call that typical marketing. It's not all that different from the SACD propaganda about a more analog signal and claims of clear subjective improvement that research never confirmed.
When some ad suggests that with a given car we'll be an adventurer and get the pretty girl, we all understand that it's an ad. It still works to some level and that's why they do it, but on the surface, we know. When Stuart tells you about temporal BS by misusing a research paper to provide a false direct 1 to 1 relation between that minimum timing and the period based on sample rate (which is not and never was how you get temporal resolution and of course Stuart knows that!!!!!), people aren't told it's a BS ad for timing requirements that even 16/44 PCM vastly exceeds.
When consumers see 24/192 MQA they think that's the actual level of fidelity of the file, not a BS ad. That's the problem. We know it shouldn't happen, we know that if the organization in charge of checking that stuff did spend some time on it, MQA would be fined and would have to stop lying so openly. But we also know that those in charge of checking and enforcing laws are understaffed, poorly paid, and that they are already late on plenty of actually dangerous products. It's the same reason why nobody stops homeopathic products from getting on the market. Stuff that do nothing, are seen as doing no harm, and that's never going to be a priority for them while they run to handle a backlog of critical stuff.
In the end, for MQA or anything else at or above 16/44, we know that the mastering is audibly more significant and most of the time when there is a clear sound difference, that's what we're noticing. A few other times it's about the DAC handling different resolutions or formats differently, but for those, converting or oversampling often does the trick.
There really isn't much left for the file format itself when it comes to listening to music. If you guys like Tidal, use it. But just because one can enjoy a track that happens to be MQA, doesn't mean he has to forever suck up to whatever Stuart or MQA website says.
You are not your Tidal subscription (read as Brad Pitt in Fight Club).
qobuz is better vs tidals mqa? qobuz is flac 24/192 all streams ? https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/music/streaming/offers
Now imagine Apple Music and Atmos,... 
Claypole
100+ Head-Fier
It can be argued that if you don’t like MQA for whatever reason, then don’t subscribe to Tidal Masters, and just stick to the ’Hi Fi’ subscription. (Or drop Tidal altogether).
However, just using ‘Hi Fi’, still doesn’t avoid MQA. For example, if I search for Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, Tidal has one version on offer, which is the ‘Masters‘ version.
If I played this album with a Tidal Masters subscription, and suitable MQA compatible hardware, I would get the full MQA experience, whatever that may be.
I only have a HiFi subscription, though, so before Tidal Masters came along, this album, on my subscription, would supposedly be a 16/44 FLAC. Now though, it’s been subjected to the MQA process, so what exactly am I listening to? I presume it’s a hobbled MQA file, with no unfolding?
However, just using ‘Hi Fi’, still doesn’t avoid MQA. For example, if I search for Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’, Tidal has one version on offer, which is the ‘Masters‘ version.
If I played this album with a Tidal Masters subscription, and suitable MQA compatible hardware, I would get the full MQA experience, whatever that may be.
I only have a HiFi subscription, though, so before Tidal Masters came along, this album, on my subscription, would supposedly be a 16/44 FLAC. Now though, it’s been subjected to the MQA process, so what exactly am I listening to? I presume it’s a hobbled MQA file, with no unfolding?
what is it?Now imagine Apple Music and Atmos,...
Nobody can answer all your questions about MQA.
What makes something better, bigger numbers in the Hi Res specs or how it sounds ? I have seen various older poorly recorded 70s tracks on streaming services in 24/192, all that gives you is a technically better rendition of a crappy old recording, what is the point ?
I use Apple Music because we have an overall family Apple package and I really like Apple Music.
I tried Qobuz because it was supposed to be better and if you were an audio enthusiast you had Qobuz it seemed. I didn’t like the user experience and it didn’t sound any different to Apple Music lossless or Hi Res so I stopped using Qobuz.
A while back Tidal offered a discounted trial period so I signed up. I liked the user experience and to me there was something slightly different in the sound that I liked.
I still use Tidal despite that it seems to be trendy to criticise MQA. Frankly I don’t read the advertising for MQA, I don’t care about being part of the anti MQA brigade and I enjoy the end result of music in my ears which is more important to me than some dickhead on Head Fi telling me that I should think the same as him !
Try this stuff out for yourself and make your own mind up what is best for you.
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A Jedi
500+ Head-Fier
Neil's problem with MQA is not that he's promoting his own music service. His library is on Qobuz for example. His problem with MQA is that their claim of "true to the masters" is totally false.
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