Yes. Only way to do it, as far as I know.
You would need to replicate the TLS/SSL certificate authority stuff for individuals … keybase.io was doing that type of thing. they’ve since failed to find a use for their tech and are all about secure messaging and chat 
prove who you are by publishing your public keys in public places before you get “famous”, then from that point on it can be verified – kinda like the old “pgp keys on usenet” technique.
once you have identity, you need a chain of certification, also like TLS/SSL – then you can verify someone said something hasn’t been modified and you can be reasonably confident that the someone is who they say they are.
anyway, this is what I proposed to Bob back in 2013-2014 to solve the provenance stuff
Yes. You only need an [X.509] public key certificate that identifies you as a publisher. You then need to define how to obtain a canonical stream from the audio file, sign the stream using the certificate, and finally define the metadata that hold the signature. I guess there’s no real interest though.
I suspect the vast majority of ‘consumers’ really don’t care, and the few that do have actively killed an initiative that could - maybe - have delivered it.
I for one really don’t care. I don’t see any reason online stores would change the files labels provide, just for fun. I also don’t believe in “secret sauces” like special filters or processing that pretend to improve SQ. Finally, I don’t need to see a special light turn on when I play music. Once a track is mixed at the artist’s or label’s discretion, it should simply be published in Red Book format and any lossless container.
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Yeah, that’s kind of the point. My research firm used to say, find an aspirin, not a vitamin. Authentication doesn’t solve a problem that people are currently willing to pay for. It’s a vitamin right now.
If I ran the zoo, I would have used MQA steganography not for some pseudo high sample rate folded audio but rather for nothing more than authentication/provenance.
Metadata, including provenance, could be carried in the PCM digital audio stream itself. No metadata container format necessary. And with what few bits that would need to be borrowed, per se, audio quality still would be effectively lossless. Because each borrowed 0 or 1 here and there still would remain true to the audio data statistically at least half of the time.
AJ
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So, MQA R.I.P finally? Good. Useless thing, also expensive thing.
PS. Yep, MQA Limited = bankruptcy, so Tidal know that its sinking boat.
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From 3 years ago -
MQA, evidently a lot of wasted effort for hardware/software developers that could have better been spent elsewhere.
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Kaboom. The last shoe dropped
But the recap of MQA is exciting:
As difficult as it is to believe here Robert Hurley in 2017 is comparing MQA to …Copernican revolution, a complete shift of paradigm in acoustic. https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/let-the-revolution-begin/
When supposedly reasonable people with credentials start behaving like clowns something is not right.
Then Archimago and @GoldenSound essentially demolished most of the MQA claims to technical superiority but the hype and lying did not stop. Record companies were supposedly batch encoding millions of tracks into Master Quality AUTHENTICATED, in batch of course. Blue light was appearing on many DACs. Roon invested a lot of money, from our subscriptions.
Great credit goes to smart people at Schiit, and all pro audio companies. They did not pay any attention to the entire circus, and continued making great, affordable audio equipment.
At the end it is a great illustration what happens if your business model is " we developed a great product, and we will make sure that you will have to use it", and you are not Google. And your product is not even better, is actually worse, than what has been available for free.
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In the more recent detailed filing they list the enquiries made, summarising:
Obviously this was before Tidal effectively pulled the rug on MQA. The interest mainly appears to be in SCL6 (wireless lossless for headphones), in particular from their launch partner PSB (part of NAD). If I want lossless headphones I’ll use a cable, don’t need a new codec. I thought Qualcomm were introducing lossless Bluetooth with their Snapdragon hardware.
It appears Reiner put in about €400k to fund the Administration. Meanwhile, the Administrators have burnt most of the cash, running the business at £500/$600 per hour. Can’t see this lasting long.
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They are but from an audiophile perspective, it’s still not lossless:
“ Qualcomm told What Hi-Fi? that CD-quality (16-bit/44.1kHz) audio transmission is achieved between 1.1Mbps and 1.2Mbps (1,100 and 1,200kbps) with aptX Lossless.”
At least, that’s my understanding that you would need 1400 to guarantee a lossless transmission.
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I suspect that improved sound quality and reduced latency for wireless headphones is aimed more at the gaming community.
I have no idea if SCL6 is just a codec or requires your phone to have an MQA SCL6-enabled chip, just as you need the latest Qualcomm chip to get their quasi-lossless audio. To me is just seems like Bob Stuart once more asking the world to another one of his unnecessary platforms, just like DVD-A and MQA.
There is an article here suggesting only marginal theoretical improvements over AptX, dependent on many factors and needing new hardware.
I think the vast majority of punters/consumers are more-than-happy with the current range of BT CODEC’s. Do we really need another one?
A bit like the vast majority of consumers were more-than-happy with FLAC/AAC etc before MQA came along.
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Extremely few people use HD audio at all and lossless is also a small minority.
I bought a pair of Sony headphones in New Delhi Airport on Saturday, cost me £110, mainly for noise cancellation. Wireless and Alexa enabled. After a couple of movies and some podcasts, very pleased with them.
I have a good pair of planar headphones (MrSpeakers Aeon), can do mobile HD with my phone and a Chord Mojo, but I hardly ever bother.
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Looks like they see that new codec as their last item of real value. So, it is understandable the SCL6 is of some (imagined) value to them. They might try to build a new company around it.
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You don’t. That is the uncompressed rate of CD audio. With lossless compression, that will of course reduce. For example, FLAC is able to achieve compressions of about 60-70%, which translates to 850-1000Mbps.
Ah that makes sense, thanks for clarifying.
I thought one of the benefits was this was a software only codec and could be installed and upgraded via firmware for future updates and did not needing specific hardware.