[earnmyturns]

Do not buy MQA encoded content and help choke off their monetary gains. Then, it will drift into oblivion.

Here's what I fear could happen. MQA is compatible with current DACs, at the cost of dropping the bottom 2-3 PCM bits. Average listeners. trained on lowish bitrate MP3 and loudness wars, won't notice or care. The major labels will move to distribute all of their digital content in MQA only, and those who want to get a few more bits of resolution will be forced to get MQA-certified DACs. It will be advertised as an "improvement." Eventually, the majors will also stop pressing CDs, which are a fast-shrinking revenue source anyway. There won't be any lossless source of music from the majors, which is how they'll preserve their "crown jewels." It may not hurt my listening much, as my musical tastes tend to exotic experimental music from small labels, whose musicians make a living performing live, not from pitiful royalty streams from the majors. But it will destroy the small but lively market for high quality digital music reproduction. Time to splurge in getting all those lossless classics you may want for your library before they evaporate?

 

[rlow]

Here's what I fear could happen. MQA is compatible with current DACs, at the cost of dropping the bottom 2-3 PCM bits. Average listeners. trained on lowish bitrate MP3 and loudness wars, won't notice or care. The major labels will move to distribute all of their digital content in MQA only, and those who want to get a few more bits of resolution will be forced to get MQA-certified DACs. It will be advertised as an "improvement." Eventually, the majors will also stop pressing CDs, which are a fast-shrinking revenue source anyway. There won't be any lossless source of music from the majors, which is how they'll preserve their "crown jewels." It may not hurt my listening much, as my musical tastes tend to exotic experimental music from small labels, whose musicians make a living performing live, not from pitiful royalty streams from the majors. But it will destroy the small but lively market for high quality digital music reproduction. Time to splurge in getting all those lossless classics you may want for your library before they evaporate?

This is exactly where my head goes WRT MQA as well. It's "backward compatibility" scares me for exactly this reason.

 

[FLTWS]

My collection of CD's is large enough that if they stop pressing them tomorrow I don't see me needing any more.

 

[Snowpuppy77]

My collection of CD's is large enough that if they stop pressing them tomorrow I don't see me needing any more.

Agree. And there are tons of very good used CD available to buy. You can find just about anything you want used on Discogs.

 

[jimmers]

I ordered a Lightning->30pin adapter from JameCo for $2.95 yesterday. $11 once all the fees were included. I'll let y'all know if it works.

I take it you already have a 30 pin camera connection kit to use with it

 

[earnmyturns]

Agree. And there are tons of very good used CD available to buy. You can find just about anything you want used on Discogs.

I agree with you regarding old music. The problem is new music. My tastes include a lot of independent work that the majors don't control, but also some somewhat more popular contemporary artists (such as Yo-Yo Ma, Brad Mehldau, Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Vijay Iyer, ...) recording on specialty imprints (such as DGG, ECM, Nonesuch, OKeh, ...) owned or de-facto controlled by the majors.

 

[artur9]

I take it you already have a 30 pin camera connection kit to use with it

I have some old 30pin devices I intend to use with it.

 

[alpovs]

Here's what I fear could happen. MQA is compatible with current DACs, at the cost of dropping the bottom 2-3 PCM bits. Average listeners. trained on lowish bitrate MP3 and loudness wars, won't notice or care. The major labels will move to distribute all of their digital content in MQA only, and those who want to get a few more bits of resolution will be forced to get MQA-certified DACs. It will be advertised as an "improvement." Eventually, the majors will also stop pressing CDs, which are a fast-shrinking revenue source anyway. There won't be any lossless source of music from the majors, which is how they'll preserve their "crown jewels." It may not hurt my listening much, as my musical tastes tend to exotic experimental music from small labels, whose musicians make a living performing live, not from pitiful royalty streams from the majors. But it will destroy the small but lively market for high quality digital music reproduction. Time to splurge in getting all those lossless classics you may want for your library before they evaporate?

I am pretty sure that if MQA goes mainstream like DVD and Blu-ray it will be hacked quickly and it will be possible to extract full resolution FLACs (fully unfolded MQA).

 

[ScubaMan2017]

I am pretty sure that if MQA goes mainstream like DVD and Blu-ray it will be hacked quickly and it will be possible to extract full resolution FLACs (fully unfolded MQA).

As long as I fly below the RADAR (no rebroadcasting, copying AND redistributing for profit), I feel justified to buy used CD stores and borrow discs from public libraries (and then give them the Foobar2000-to-FLAC or ALAC treatment). Alas, The Toronto Public Library is getting more and more into online platforms like Hoopla, Naxos Music Library, and Overdrive. There must be a way to capture it and store it...
Great. It's like the 1980s again. Bootlegging. Charming...

 

[ScubaMan2017]

Agree. And there are tons of very good used CD available to buy. You can find just about anything you want used on Discogs.

I hope your right. There was a fantastic used CD shop just North of Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue. Unfortunately, it folded a couple of years ago.

 

[earnmyturns]

I am pretty sure that if MQA goes mainstream like DVD and Blu-ray it will be hacked quickly and it will be possible to extract full resolution FLACs (fully unfolded MQA).

Even if full unfolding is hacked, the result is still lossy relative to 24/96 FLAC. Please read the very detailed Archimago discussion linked to by @Alcophone earlier in this thread.

I had a front seat at the discussions between the major labels and some of the first parties interested in setting up an infrastructure for digital downloads back in the late 90s. The labels were complete suckers for DRM pixie dust while trying to do everything to squeeze all the other parties. They finally met their match in Steve Jobs, who humored them with pseudo-DRM in the (then loss-leading) iTunes Store while taking them to the cleaners with iPod, which could take any non-DRM rip. I guess the labels think they now have a savior in latter-day DRM (aka MQA), but the reality is that their decline is their own doing through technical ignorance, cargo-cultishness, and exploitative practices. If they succeed, Meridian/MQA will be drinking their piña coladas at the pool at the expense of music consumers, but the decline of the labels will continue.

 

[Snowpuppy77]

I agree with you regarding old music. The problem is new music. My tastes include a lot of independent work that the majors don't control, but also some somewhat more popular contemporary artists (such as Yo-Yo Ma, Brad Mehldau, Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, Vijay Iyer, ...) recording on specialty imprints (such as DGG, ECM, Nonesuch, OKeh, ...) owned or de-facto controlled by the majors.

Yes all good points. We need to get them in pure PCM or other non DRM format while we can. Hopefully independent labels will bypass DRM stuff.

 

[rkw]

Alas, The Toronto Public Library is getting more and more into online platforms like Hoopla, Naxos Music Library, and Overdrive. There must be a way to capture it and store it...
Great. It's like the 1980s again. Bootlegging. Charming...

Why do you feel that you are entitled to make your own copy? Have you thought of buying the music?

 

[Karlthehusky721]

If overnight it becomes impossible to acquire CD's and by virtue of this - lossless audio, there will most likely be an uptick in the amount of content being acquired by means other than that which is profitable for labels... I will not be purchasing any files encoded with MQA, and if MQA is all that there is to purchase - it is not my music interest that will suffer losses. Labels should think carefully before alienating the people who pay them.

 

[Baldr]

So here is my catch-up post (transparent) for today for which the topics are: life is what goes on between audio; karma; and finally, a hint. I know it is a little noisy, and redundantly posted, but it is all I have time for now.

So, a little bit of life – it all started out with a toothache in mid January. Since I am of course, superman, I ignored it sure it would go away which it did after a week or so. On January 31, all of this schitt started floating in one eye, which turned out to be the torn retina, which after repair and slowly improving vision left me ready to come back roaring to work until the toothache came back. I then started taking the antibiotics that the dentist gave me for my last toothache last century or so. I soon ran a fever and turned bright red from head to toe only to discover all of my skin was sloughing off, a reaction apparently to the antibiotics. I went to the doc and they put me in the hospital until I had grown back skin. Hurt like hell. I got out on Valentine’s Day and I was catching up for the upcoming release when my wife fell down and couldn’t get up without massive amounts of back pain – couldn’t walk. Took her to the Doc and he gave her stupid strong pain pills and told her to go home. She got worse and worse, I was her caregiver (man do I suck at that) and she hates drugs, so we took her to the hospital, they checked her out, MRI’d her and they told her something like her spinal cord was OK, but three of her discs had to come out or be reworked or something even more painful. She went to another my doc who gave non addictive liquid medicine which worked and two weeks later she is walking into my orthopods office who rebuilt my neck who is telling her to wait for surgery until she really needs it. Then I get the flu – then I give it to her. Not a sympathy story – sympathy is between schiit and syphillis in the dictionary. We’re fine – well, almost. I went back to the dentist and I need two implants, bone grafts, and some other fiscally and physically schiit that hurts. Two kilo bucks.

Now a little bit of Karma. Several years ago my friend Phil Huckstable had a round of bad hemorrhoids and went to the hospital overnight to get them surgically removed. I couldn’t wait to visit him with a box of hot sauces, peppers, jellies, cooking pastes, etc. full of megascoville units; the absolute hottest stuff I could find. That would keep hunger at bay while he was sitting on his donut. Hah! Well, it turns out I have to go to the hospital overnight myself the week after next. Exactly what for, well, yeah, shucks, phuck. (Tonsils?) No smart comments or I will upload photos. So I may be sporadically around for a bit more time.

Finally, a hint what is coming very soon from me is something I said I could/would never do. More also from Jason.