Discuss recent MQA developments here

Audio Gear Talk MQA
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Hey Community folks, here’s a place for you to discuss recent MQA news and developments.

Before we get underway, there are a few guidelines and things I want to share. Some of you have cried foul for censorship with Moderators because we consolidated previous posts about this topic into a closed thread. To be clear, I want to take ownership of that. I poorly articulated guidelines to the moderators regarding MQA discussion. I personally apologize for those actions.

We don’t want to censor open discussion of these developments.

We do want you to be respectful toward each other while doing so.

In the past, MQA conversations have quickly devolved into uncivil/toxic behavior, and members have attacked each other for their stand on the MQA format. That behavior quickly erodes the type of environment we’re trying to foster on our forum. Grudges are formed, and ill feelings carry over into other threads, PMs, etc. We don’t want a replay of that. If you have questions about what’s allowed, please review our Community Guidelines before posting in this thread.

We respect your desire to discuss this topic. You’ve seen the MQA developments and have heard interesting news from TIDAL.

We understand that you have opinions and want to share them. Your positive or negative opinions on MQA are allowed - so long as they are in keeping with forum rules.

Roon doesn’t have any behind-the-scenes information on MQA’s current status, nor do we have an official Roon position to share. Please note that we don’t want MQA debate to pour over into every corner of the Community. Off-topic MQA posts in other threads contravene the shared guidelines and will be moderated accordingly.

So, let’s relegate our discussion of MQA developments to this thread and express opinions/thoughts as just that - opinions and thoughts, not facts. Some possible talking points could be:

  • Your feelings on MQA from personal experience.

  • Your feelings on proprietary formats moving forward.

  • Your feelings on having purchased equipment that supports proprietary formats.

  • Your thoughts about how MQA support might look moving forward.

Most importantly, let’s be respectful of each other and not make personal attacks. That also applies to the people who created MQA. It’s always risky to claim to know other people’s intentions and motivations. Let’s not go there.

Posts that do/will/can not abide by these requirements will be moderated. Thank you for your attention and understanding.

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I am curious whether Roon will drop the ability to decode any local MQA files. (I have a few local, purchased from various DL-stores)
Or does the license allow Roon to maintain the compatibility?

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Agreed! :slight_smile:

And, i for one would like to keep the possibility to expand the first part of my local MQA-files, if possible. There were a few releases from the early days that were “white glove treated” that i like, and i prefer over any plain vanilla FLAC’s in my posession.

For what it’s worth, i hope that manufacturers and the business learns from this, and perhaps stay away from non-open source codecs and formats going forward…

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Hey @AMT,

Like everyone else, we’re onlookers and don’t know how things will shake out with MQA. Once we have a better idea of where things stand, we’ll be able to comment on MQA support within Roon. But this is fresh news, and we don’t know what’s ultimately going to happen.

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This seems like the logical takeaway for me but looking at the latest in music, all of the spatial formats are proprietary.

Atmos apparently surprised even Apple in terms of “engagement” from their subscribers so to me, it seems like we are still moving towards a more closed system of playback.

I actually think spatial audio is seriously cool (when done properly) but I really don’t like the hoops you have to jump through.

With MQA you needed both the decoder and renderer, Atmos is the same in HiFi (you still need a receiver, typically, to playback Atmos).

Sony’s 360 audio is so proprietary it doesn’t even work in most places. You can only listen to it on Tidal, on headphones. Maybe that’s more of a technical hurdle (I’m assuming the effect doesn’t work so well on a 2 channel hifi setup) but it’s such a pain.

I saw people all the time on Reddit asking questions on how to playback MQA, the same is true of Atmos and it is really annoying. Closed formats lead to pages full of how to guides, compatible devices etc.

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I have not seen any of the bad faith arguments leveled against Atmos however. the proprietary nature is no different from MQA.

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14 posts were split to a new topic: Are PMs Actually Private?

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Here you go…

I said this back in Feb 2018 about Dolby:

…and I’m rearticulating what Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffat said back in Oct 2016.

I was trying to find my post, and I saw that @crenca explicitly calls out exactly what you are talking about here with the same video of the Schiit guys:

I’ve looked at the contract again briefly, and it looks like there is a grace period in the worst-case scenario. However, how the contract goes depends on what happens to the MQA intellectual property post-administration.

Maybe MQA will go open? I have no idea, but I can only hope.

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I won’t comment on subjective sound quality, but one thing that i did enthuse about when MQA was introduced, was the possibility of ascertaining the pedigree and source of a media file, and that i’d like too see fulfilled. Only in a non license based realization, a public domain certificate based signing would be sufficient.

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Only if you use something like hqplayer where you’d want to send the MQA file with the first unfold done.

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There are also rips of MQA CD (primarily in Asia, I guess).

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To some extent you can do that via a simple MD5 hash of the data.

Obviously that only works if the if you have a lossless copy of the stream or file, transmit it via a lossy compression algorithm and the hash won’t match as the file has been altered.

There seems to have been a few attempts over the years to compile a central database of hashes / fingerprints.

https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Fingerprinting

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I suppose this is the problem with proprietary codecs, particularly when it comes to archiving rather than distribution.

As Danny & Mike say above, Maybe MQA will go open, but there’s no guarantee of that.

But it’s problay a warning for the future, that storing your files (not you personally) in a proprietary format (especially when perfectly usable, non-proprietary lossless formats exist for that purpose) problay isn’t the wisest idea if you want to ensure they will always readable/playable years down the line.

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I am pretty sure there hasn’t been an archiving method invented in the last 200 years we cannot play back today. And indeed when that is software based you just need to figure out the code. And it is just FLAC so it’ll still sound pretty much like it supposed to without unfolding.

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I cam across this today, posted by Peter Veth who runs the MQA group on Facebook

image
image2732×2048 377 KB

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While I personally don’t use MQA I thought this was interesting today.

The full statement from MQA reads as follows:

“Following the recent positive reception to MQA’s latest technology (SCL6), there has been increased international interest in buying MQA Ltd. At the same time, MQA’s main financial backer is seeking an exit. In order to be in the best position to pursue market opportunities and expedite this process, the company has undergone a restructuring initiative, which includes entering into administration and is comparable to Chapter 11 in the US.”
"During this process, MQA continues to trade as usual alongside its partners.

“We won’t be commenting further while negotiations take place.”

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It is great to hear someone talk about the music, and give insight into why some of us liked what MQA could offer.

I think ‘zing’ is a very good word for what MQA can sound like in the right circumstances, plus I also found it usually more tuneful. and more ‘immediate’.

Sadly, in my view, many discussions had a chilling effect that perhaps prevented a personal engagement that could reveal what MQA could offer.

I had rather hoped that there could have been some development of the innovations, and perhaps that is what SCL6 may achieve. And certainly much more ‘white glove’ activity would have been welcome.

But on the whole MQA has afforded me much musical pleasure, for whatever reason, and I hope that continues.

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Here are some descriptions of the Administration process that have had less of the MQA marketing budget spent on them:

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With MQA filing for bankruptcy what the hell are we going to do with all our MQA enabled gear? The labels must feel discussed at being talked into converting their music with the support libale to disappear?