headfry
500+ Head-Fier
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Just what I thought, thanks for the honest reply.
Tidal Masters & MQA Thread!
- Thread starter headfry
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judomaniak57
100+ Head-Fier
i will post it here since i am not debating i am stating a fact- DCS, aurender, moon , nad, esoteric, lumin,
mark levinson, meridian, yba, alo ,ifi, astell and kern just to name a few of the big names that support mqa
mark levinson, meridian, yba, alo ,ifi, astell and kern just to name a few of the big names that support mqa
Bluecactus123
100+ Head-Fier
Imagine if these brands did not support MQA. They would lose half of their customers. PS Audio themselves stated that they only implemented MQA into their equipment because they didn't want to lose clients.
gimmeheadroom
Headphoneus Supremus
Add Mytek, Bluesound, Oppo (dead but still kicking). It's good to have choices. None of these manufacturers stopped supporting PCM or flac.
Guys, just because MQA is not lossless does not mean it doesn't sound good. There are other lossy codec that sound great like ATRAC (later versions). Probably the most unusual thing about MQA is that it is lossy but also high res. I don't think there is another example of such a codec.
So apparently people do want it?
Again, if you don't like it nobody is holding a gun to your head.
Bluecactus123
100+ Head-Fier
It seems people do, for reasons mostly unrelated to technical performance or the difference in sound quality compared to FLAC I'd wager
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Surely the issue isn't whether it sounds good or not, it's the apparently misleading BS that it's marketed with. I don't mind the SQ either on my phone with grados, but I object to being sold something that doesn't actually do what it claims to do. That's deception, and I object to that kind of crap. Once we just accept stuff, "cos yeah it's OK, I don't care how it works" , we might find that we have "social media apps" running the world.... Oh wait.
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Palyodgree
100+ Head-Fier
LOL!. I guess you skimmed through GoldenOne video with clenched teeth and pounding your fist though if you did actually listen you simply can’t take truth in the evidence , facts sometimes hurt people’s feelings in this day and age and you seem to fit in that category and finally you also failed to grasp the marketing decision of these companies to add MQA to their product line, express your support on the pro MQA thread .
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Palyodgree
100+ Head-Fier
If you can refute any part of GoldenOne video I’ll wholeheartedly agree with you on MQA ,.please no word salads You show me hard evidence any part of Goldenones forensic analysis on MQA are false....
GoldenOne's test is massively flawed in its very premise and lacks basic understanding of MQA's working. He managed to trick the encoder into creating its worst possible output, by telling it to encode real music while feeding it synthetic square waves and spike signals outside its encoding envelope -- and ignoring the encoder's warnings about it. The predictably poor results were then "analyzed" and posted as representative of MQA's performance.
In a better context, the analysis wasn't that bad, and even raised a few interesting questions. But it was poorly premised and misleadingly framed: There was no desire to truly "explore how MQA works". And GoldenOne has shown zero interest in performing similar analysis on "best effort" real music samples, say using the free 2L tracks which provide multiple DXD recordings and MQA encodes for comparison. His analysis would be far more credible if it were based on the best MQA can do rather than the worst it can be tricked into doing.
(As a note, even a comparison between 2L's DXD files and their MQA encodes would show differences, as the MQA encoder re-aligns samples to compensate for ADC peculiarities. Yes, it is a lossy codec, aimed at analog-to-analog fidelity. )
I have posted about this in other threads on head-hi, and far more knowledgeable people have posted about it on ASR (including Amir himself). That hasn't dented the excitement of anti-MQA crusaders, who are salivating at the thought of finally killing Tidal -- and through that MQA.
I thought of posting about this here when GoldenOne first advertised the coming of his video (since its outcome was fully predictable) but I chose not because it does not belong in this thread as has been repeatedly pointed out.
I am not even that enthusiastic about MQA myself: I do wish they were more transparent and open, and I have often posted that I would prefer if MQA didn't exist and studios happily shared their crown jewels in HiRes FLAC without watermarks. But that is not this world. I also have issues with Tidal's recent changes: I dislike that they no longer have parallel CD and MQA versions of albums, but instead stream truncated (and downsampled in the case of 48KHz base rate tracks) versions of MQA albums to those who choose the Hi-Fi quality setting. My concerns about the Warner 16/44 MQAs are well documented in these forums, although my stance has softened after recent tests I performed.
In any case do I prioritize quality of recordings over format any day: HiRes FLAC or MQA doesn't matter compared to good recordings. But I have a Tidal subscription (which I just renewed for 3 months) and some of my music there is MQA -- and sounds fantastic on my Gustard A18 DAC and my LG V30 phone. Mostly because that's how it was recorded.
The reason I bother responding now is less in defense of MQA and more in defense of common sense and factual analysis. And most of the fanatical venom spewed against MQA possesses neither. And either way, it still doesn't belong in this thread. Including this post of mine. Thus I do not intend to debate it further in here. And I have no desire to attend the anti-MQA echo chambers.
Have a great weekend, everybody. Listen to some good, well recorded music from your preferred source, whatever it may be
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gimmeheadroom
Headphoneus Supremus
Outstanding! Best post in recent memory.GoldenOne's test is massively flawed in its very premise and lacks basic understanding of MQA's working. He managed to trick the encoder into creating its worst possible output, by telling it to encode real music while feeding it synthetic square waves and spike signals outside its encoding envelope -- and ignoring the encoder's warnings about it. The predictably poor results were then "analyzed" and posted as representative of MQA's performance.
In a better context, the analysis wasn't that bad, and even raised a few interesting questions. But it was poorly premised and misleadingly framed: There was no desire to truly "explore how MQA works". And GoldenOne has shown zero interest in performing similar analysis on "best effort" MQA encodes from real music, say using the free 2L tracks which provide multiple DXD recordings and MQA encodes for comparison. His analysis would be far more credible if it were based on the best MQA can do rather than the worst it can be tricked into doing.
(As a note, even a comparison between 2L's DXD files and their MQA encodes would show differences, as the MQA encoder re-aligns samples to compensate for ADC peculiarities. Yes, it is a lossy codec, aimed at analog-to-analog fidelity. )
I have posted about this in other threads on head-hi, and far more knowledgeable people have posted about it on ASR (including Amir himself). That hasn't dented the excitement of anti-MQA crusaders, who are salivating at the thought finally killing Tidal -- and through that MQA.
I thought of posting about this here when GoldenOne first advertised the coming of his video (since its outcome was fully predictable) but I chose not because it does not belong in this thread as has been repeatedly pointed out.
I am not even that enthusiastic about MQA myself: I do wish they were more transparent and open, and I have often posted that I would prefer if MQA didn't exist and studios happily shared their crown jewels in HiRes FLAC without watermarks. But that is not this world. I also have issues with Tidal's recent changes: I dislike that they no longer have parallel CD and MQA versions of albums, but instead stream truncated (and downsampled in the case of 48KHz base rate tracks) versions of MQA albums to those who choose the Hi-Fi quality setting. My concerns about the Warner 16/44 MQAs are well documented in these forums, although my stance has softened after recent tests I performed.
In any case do I prioritize quality of recordings over format any day: HiRes FLAC or MQA doesn't matter compared to good recordings. But I have a Tidal subscription (which I just renewed for 3 months) and some of my music there is MQA -- and sounds fantastic on my Gustard A18 DAC and my LG V30 phone. Mostly because that's how it was recorded.
The reason I bother responding now is less in defense of MQA and more in defense of common sense and factual analysis. And most of the fanatical venom spewed against MQA possesses neither. And either way, it still doesn't belong in this thread. Including this post of mine. Thus I do not intend to debate it further in here. And I have no desire to attend the anti-MQA echo chambers.
Have a great weekend, everybody. Listen to some good, well recorded music from your preferred source, whatever it may be
GoldenOne's test is massively flawed in its very premise and lacks basic understanding of MQA's working. He managed to trick the encoder into creating its worst possible output, by telling it to encode real music while feeding it synthetic square waves and spike signals outside its encoding envelope -- and ignoring the encoder's warnings about it. The predictably poor results were then "analyzed" and posted as representative of MQA's performance.
In a better context, the analysis wasn't that bad, and even raised a few interesting questions. But it was poorly premised and misleadingly framed: There was no desire to truly "explore how MQA works". And GoldenOne has shown zero interest in performing similar analysis on "best effort" real music samples, say using the free 2L tracks which provide multiple DXD recordings and MQA encodes for comparison. His analysis would be far more credible if it were based on the best MQA can do rather than the worst it can be tricked into doing.
(As a note, even a comparison between 2L's DXD files and their MQA encodes would show differences, as the MQA encoder re-aligns samples to compensate for ADC peculiarities. Yes, it is a lossy codec, aimed at analog-to-analog fidelity. )
I have posted about this in other threads on head-hi, and far more knowledgeable people have posted about it on ASR (including Amir himself). That hasn't dented the excitement of anti-MQA crusaders, who are salivating at the thought of finally killing Tidal -- and through that MQA.
I thought of posting about this here when GoldenOne first advertised the coming of his video (since its outcome was fully predictable) but I chose not because it does not belong in this thread as has been repeatedly pointed out.
I am not even that enthusiastic about MQA myself: I do wish they were more transparent and open, and I have often posted that I would prefer if MQA didn't exist and studios happily shared their crown jewels in HiRes FLAC without watermarks. But that is not this world. I also have issues with Tidal's recent changes: I dislike that they no longer have parallel CD and MQA versions of albums, but instead stream truncated (and downsampled in the case of 48KHz base rate tracks) versions of MQA albums to those who choose the Hi-Fi quality setting. My concerns about the Warner 16/44 MQAs are well documented in these forums, although my stance has softened after recent tests I performed.
In any case do I prioritize quality of recordings over format any day: HiRes FLAC or MQA doesn't matter compared to good recordings. But I have a Tidal subscription (which I just renewed for 3 months) and some of my music there is MQA -- and sounds fantastic on my Gustard A18 DAC and my LG V30 phone. Mostly because that's how it was recorded.
The reason I bother responding now is less in defense of MQA and more in defense of common sense and factual analysis. And most of the fanatical venom spewed against MQA possesses neither. And either way, it still doesn't belong in this thread. Including this post of mine. Thus I do not intend to debate it further in here. And I have no desire to attend the anti-MQA echo chambers.
Have a great weekend, everybody. Listen to some good, well recorded music from your preferred source, whatever it may be
It would be great if you could provide hard evidence to refute any of GoldenOne’s findings other than opinions, speculation, and theories. Seriously. I’m not being argumentative. I would simply like to know the truth. I think everybody would regardless of the camp they are in.
The main giveaway is in the early minutes of GoldenOne's video: The encoder rejected his synthetic samples until he tricked it by wrapping them in music. MQA's response (shown only as small-print legalese) elaborates on that and how the samples triggered many warnings from the encoder.
MQA was designed to encode music, as perceived by humans; recorded by microphones and sampled by ADCs. It uses FLAC for backwards compatibility, but instead of wasting space to bit-perfectly preserve noise and high frequency amplitudes that never exist in music, it uses that space to store ultrasonics (HiRes samples in a compressed form). This is a deliberate trade-off assuming that these contribute more to musical fidelity. One can disagree, but that was always its premise.
So when GoldenOne tricked the MQA encoder into encoding signals far outside its envelope, it was destined to fail. And it warned about it. Most conclusions in his analysis become invalid because the entire premise is false.
Such tests can be perfectly useful when applied to DACs or a bit-perfect codec. But that is a different premise. And I think he knew that.
Beyond that look for my recent posts here on head-fi, and posts by mieswall, filter_listener and amirm in the thread on ASR:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...i-published-music-on-tidal-to-test-mqa.22549/
It's a vast thread with much hate, salivation and guesswork, and little understanding of MQA outside of those three members.
And that's all from me. Already more than I intended.
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Very interesting...and in my humble opinion, a more than relevant complaint. There do indeed appear to be flaws in the testing method(s). Well, not so much flaws as lack of options due to the immediate takedowns of his tracks and the lack of transparency from MQA. It would be great for him (or preferably someone else) to retest to either validate his findings or refute them. Seems like the problems are they check for pulse signals to make testing and validation harder plus they seemingly lack transparency. A little bit of truth and examples could go along way and MQA could quell this and squash it for good. It sure would be nice if they did. Seems like they will see a bit of a blowback in the audio nerd community until they do.
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Taz777
1000+ Head-Fier
One issue that I have is that so many audio forums are being ruined by this hostility. Many people enjoy TIDAL for the depth of its music catalogue because the music that they enjoy listening to isn’t available on other streaming services. Conversely, audio enthusiasts may find other streaming services that are more aligned with their musical interests. I really cannot understand the hostility that now prevails on several audio forums.
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