[Erratic Gravy]

I can not sleep...

Dammit!! And dammit to Hades! It...has...MQA...I am done. Never will I kowtow to Blob Stewfart's disASSterpiece. That creature is a foul sincubus.

Too bad as this is a thing of beauty and its beauty nearly blinded me to the truth. So overcome was I by its HUGE tracks o' land, that I failed to pay attention. I have already done my due diligence having said many a prayer of penance.

NAD, we nearly knew ye. Screw MQA.

ORT The Penitent

Post Scriptum - I recently purchased a decades olde G.E. (with tubeses!) mini-console stereo. Rather than languish in my anguish over that scumbag Blob Stewfart and his musical familiar (MQA), I shall instead rally my self and see if I can suitably upgrade this little gem with HEOS and perhaps get the fully automatic turntable working again. The game's afoot!

Indeed.

Struggling to see what the big problemo with MQA is ? its potential is highly interesting - BTW I have met Bob Stuart a couple of times in the 1990's and he really isn't the devil incarnate

 

[Luckyleo]

Clean thoughts on a dirty wall.......

When I was growing up, I'd go to McDonalds, or a doughnut shop, in the morning on the way to school and as I matured, eventually to work. There was always a table with a bunch of "mature" men (almost always 100% men). Every morning, there they would be discussing issues of the day. Well, now in 2022, I can't eat McDonalds or Doughnuts every day. No opportunity for me to sit with the guys and shoot the Schiit...... Instead, I come here and feel like this is the modern day equivalent of those days...

Thanks guys!

Leo

 

[Paladin79]

I decided to build a turntable plinth with a custom dust cover. Oddly enough, and to Cowen's delight I plan to use birdseye maple because of the lovely contrast with a solid black turntable.

This kind of contrast…


I may also make a turntable stand/record cabinet but most likely it would be solid cherry.

 

[US Blues]

I was going to say the same thing! You beat me to it.....

Leo

I needed two words to convert the notion of feeling the performer was live in my living room. Whether it's Jerry or John Coltrane, that is the illusion I wish to create for myself: my ears, my system, my room, and so forth.

Right now Bill Evans, Paul Motion, and the blessed Scott LaFaro are here with me on a Thursday morning.

 

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

Struggling to see what the big problemo with MQA is ? its potential is highly interesting - BTW I have met Bob Stuart a couple of times in the 1990's and he really isn't the devil incarnate

Objectively, MQA is not delivering on most of the promises its concept and marketing is trying to make. And even the concept is flawed in a lot of ways to begin with.

If you want to use MQA, if you like its core idea and its execution, more power to you. The beauty of a free(-ish) market is that there's something for everybody.

But at least for me, MQA is a solution in need of a problem. Even properly encoded and decoded, it doesn't sound any better than FLAC or ALAC files that received the same care during encoding and decoding. File size benefits are negligible these days. And the claimed "science" behind their entire "audio data origami" strategy just doesn't really fully check out — at least not to the degree that MQA Ltd. and its apologists wish to claim, and not without a decent amount of circular reasoning and some rather liberal cherry picking.
To the contrary, enough independent tests have been done and published over the years to indicate at least somewhat of a trend that MQA encoded files might actually perform worse, especially if the encoding wasn't done to MQA Ltd.'s own standards. Which, let's face it, is the norm with most labels and publishers in the real world, meaning outside of MQA's own laboratory. To anyone with a modicum of experience in the field, expecting anything other than that would be seriously naive.
FLAC and ALAC obviously suffer from the same problem. But at least in those cases, no one is trying to talk you into believing otherwise.

The single-best thing about MQA is that it's completely closed and proprietary. That's great because it enables MQA Ltd. to ask for licensing fees — and I'm not even being facetious. I develop software for a living, and in the 20 years that I've done this, I have yet to see an open standard or platform that was objectively better all around than a proprietary alternative. I know that this is a highly unpopular position to take, but I have no problem whatsoever to objectively defend its case.
Meridian and MQA Ltd. did the work, they should benefit from it.
But with additional cost comes additional scrutiny. And to this day, MQA wasn't able to live up to the claims they've been making. At least not to a degree that would warrant the cost to the consumer over PCM (CD/WAV), FLAC, or ALAC.

If you want to offer a proprietary solution in a market that is dominated by open standards (FLAC and ALAC), you have to outperform these open standards to warrant the license fees that you intend to ask for. If you can't outperform these open standards quite yet, the goal of asking for licensing fees should help you remain motivated to keep improving your product until you do.
MQA was publicly presented eight years ago. That's plenty of time to work on and improve upon your product. Yet very little has happened in this regard over those eight years. Which raises the question: Do they not want to improve their product so that it can outperform its open counterparts, or can't they because it's physically just not possible to actually do what their marketing material claims them to be doing?

So, yeah. I'm not sure anyone sees him as the devil incarnate. He is, however, a snake oil peddler. Which is fine, simply yet another guy trying his best to make a decent living. It's just not one that I feel the need to support with my wallet.

Edit:
And just to be clear, the whole folding business is utter bullschiit and nothing but a thinly veiled attempt at artificially creating a unique sales proposal to motivate people to buy into MQA's licensing business. That's the snake oil peddling part that rubs me the wrong way.
But where MQA actually does have a leg up—at least in theory—is the "A" in their name: Authenticated.
What I'd like to see for FLAC and ALAC is a checksum-based certificate, embedded into the file itself, that authenticates the audio blocks or any given FLAC or ALAC container as unaltered from what it was since it left the mastering process. Feel free to edit metadata until the cows come home, but change one bit of the actual audio blocks within that container and a red flag pops up. That way, labels, publishers, and streaming services will no longer be able to screw up (as in, needlessly re-encode) these files while they are being pushed through their pipelines. If they do, not only will they be able to immediately notice the issue themselves and improve their own workflows internally, they will also no longer be able to talk their way out of it whenever they do screw these files up.
Which they do.
A LOT.

 

[Paladin79]

I needed two words to convert the notion of feeling the performer was live in my living room. Whether it's Jerry or John Coltrane, that is the illusion I wish to create for myself: my ears, my system, my room, and so forth.

Right now Bill Evans, Paul Motion, and the blessed Scott LaFaro are here with me on a Thursday morning.

I get the live part, what about the dead part?

 

[Erratic Gravy]

Many thanks for the explanation of MQA, its still a fascinating concept which IF properly implemented -------BUT it's still beholden to the appalling standard of mastering and obscene amount of dynamic compression that strangles too many a performance these days,
Snake Oil pedlar is harsh - As part of the Boothroyd Stuart - later Meridian team Bob was one of the pioneers of 'hot-rodded ' consumer Cd players back in the day (Meridian MGP pro for example) along with Marantz (Ken Ishiwata) . Many of the DSP techniques used in active speakers etc etc can be credited to him too.
Having said all that 95 % of the time I listen to /watch live concert Cd and DVD predominantly via a Cambridge Audio transport, Bifrost Multibit, Saga and 40 yr. old Meridian M30 active speakers and equally old REL sub !! Bliss .

 

[Erratic Gravy]

And Yes - this remastering Lo Res as HI res is shameful practice - by people who are either greedy, ignorant or plain don't give a damn

 

[Erratic Gravy]

Love the notion of an embedded authentication code - I have already posted about the horrendous variation in sound quality of streamed content from various vendors even within the same broadcast parameters

 

[OldRoadToad]

Struggling to see what the big problemo with MQA is ? its potential is highly interesting - BTW I have met Bob Stuart a couple of times in the 1990's and he really isn't the devil incarnate

Several years back I took the listening challenge as T.H.E. They were using an Onkyo DAP and had songs with MQA and with out. They wanted to control the dial and I said I would do so and was allowed to. I had no idea what "version" was playing as I do NOT look at little lights that inform me there is a "difference" present. With out looking at the DAP I listened to the music and changed the MQA/No-MQA throughout each selection.

I never heard a difference. N E V E R. Other's had swoooooned over the supposed difference but then they knew when to swoon as they "saw the light", LOL! Kmart Blue Light special, indeed.

Stewart is a farce. His laundry fold/unfold BS is just that BS. I was told I had to "seriously listen" in order to hear the magic. Pffft! Why would I want to do that? That is patently dumb. On top of all this, we have to pay to be lied to?! Yup. And even if I never use the "feature" I have still paid an entry fee to Stewie. Like Hades I will.

Like Lone Wati said to the elixir salesman in the film "The Outlaw Josey Wales" when that pusher tried to get him to try/buy his wares, "You drink it."

At least Stewie ain't trying to sell me tennis shoes to go with his Fool-Aid.

ORT

 

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

Many thanks for the explanation of MQA, its still a fascinating concept which IF properly implemented -------BUT it's still beholden to the appalling standard of mastering and obscene amount of dynamic compression that strangles too many a performance these days,
Snake Oil pedlar is harsh - As part of the Boothroyd Stuart - later Meridian team Bob was one of the pioneers of 'hot-rodded ' consumer Cd players back in the day (Meridian MGP pro for example) along with Marantz (Ken Ishiwata) . Many of the DSP techniques used in active speakers etc etc can be credited to him too.
Having said all that 95 % of the time I listen to /watch live concert Cd and DVD predominantly via a Cambridge Audio transport, Bifrost Multibit, Saga and 40 yr. old Meridian M30 active speakers and equally old REL sub !! Bliss .

The snake oil peddler comment wasn't meant as criticism of his person. I don't know him personally. Or much at all, really. I'm sure he contributed a lot to the industry. One doesn't get to where he is without any merit. And I'm sure he's a nice guy on a personal level.

But the audio data origami stuff his company is trying to get you to buy into is snake oil. And while I've witnessed my own share of highly capable industry professionals getting lost in their own biases—which is of course only human—I have a hard time believing that someone with his background isn't at least to some degree aware of the fact that what they're selling can't really work within the confines of physics and various other realities within this industry. Which makes him, in this one particular instance, a snake oil peddler.

 

[Odin412]

IMHO MQA is a solution in search of a problem.

 

[33na3rd]

Swara Sudha

Sanskrit is OK, right?

That prompted a Google search that brought up quite a few nice ragas.

 

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

I get the live part, what about the dead part?

I'm pretty sure they're referring to this particular bit of aural bliss:

Live/Dead is one of the single-most enjoyable live albums ever to come out, and—please correct me if I'm wrong, guys—I think it perfectly encapsulates what they're looking for in an audio system.

Especially the Dark Star—St. Stephen stretch alone has never failed to draw me in and blow my mind. It's my personal highlight of The Dead's entire catalogue. Whatever they smoked that night, it just fucxing worked.

 

[Erratic Gravy]

The snake oil peddler comment wasn't meant as criticism of his person. I don't know him personally. Or much at all, really. I'm sure he contributed a lot to the industry. One doesn't get to where he is without any merit. And I'm sure he's a nice guy on a personal level.

But the audio data origami stuff his company is trying to get you to buy into is snake oil. And while I've witnessed my own share of highly capable industry professionals getting lost in their own biases—which is of course only human—I have a hard time believing that someone with his background isn't at least to some degree aware of the fact that what they're selling can't really work within the confines of physics and various other realities within this industry. Which makes him, in this one particular instance, a snake oil peddler.

I understand entirely and thank you for your comeback - Now if you want to talk about snake oil do a bit of research into a guy called Peter W Belt in the UK !! In the late 80's he had a reviewer (Jimmy Hughes if I recall) from a well-known rag lapping it all up - hilarious