GoldenSound’s response to Bob Stuart’s blog response

GoldenSound’s response to Bob Stuart’s blog response:

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A very professional response against MQA’s reply

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This is fascinating stuff. The most fascinating is the coverup, removing the files from tidal!

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I have to admit I find this fixation on whether the MQA format is actually lossless somewhat perplexing. The bits about what kind of sounds the encoder is actually tuned for is much more interesting. Knowing what music will “work” with MQA and what won’t seems like a really critical point for the “Q” of the acronym.

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After the first GoldenOne video, MQA “response”, and GoldenOne response to MQA, the folks who like MQA have one choice: like MQA as much as you want but any attempt to to discuss the MQA claims and “benefits” without addressing the GoldenOne tests, and his response to MQA is just a waste of time.

The real gem of the MQA response is: 'MQA file is delivered lossless".
And that is supposed to address the validity of their claim that MQA is lossless. It is typical to Bob Stuart response, and his way of confusing the audio enthusiasts: 192/24 encoded → lossy MQA → packaged into lossless container → unpacked → decoded by MQA (better than 192/24 because deblurring blah blah blah)
That’s the essence of the garbage we are supposed to believe.

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MQA’s response to “golden one”'s video is both technically accurate and truthful in describing his motives, which are not disguised by his choosing of acceptable words in his commentary. Any attempt to discuss the video cannot be done legitimately without also addressing MQA’s technical answers. The bias levels shown in these many anti-MQA rants reach a level of irrationality. I doubt that one person in a hundred actually understands the techncial questions involved, but there is automatic click-generation toward anything negative about MQA.

The real gem of the MQA response is: 'MQA file is delivered lossless".

After 7 years of discussion in which MQA have never wavered in their description of what is meant by lossless, and why they choose the word, the anti-MQA crowd still cannot leave this alone and accept the technical/psychoacoustic argument. Frankly this is silly and largely an issue of semantics. It’s not about dishonesty from MQA, it’s about the stubbornness (and often lack of understanding) of the anti-MQA crowd.

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@robbi_burdeck do you have any affiliation to MQA Ltd?

Or are you Bob lol

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No and no. Bob Stuart would do a better job of answering than I can.

But the lack of anything like reason in these one-sided and often ignorant rants becomes grating to anyone with a technical background. No amount of explaining ever sinks in, it’s nothing more than ‘us vs. them’.

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The video violates the way the encoder works by using test signals that the encoder screens against. All of the warning messages were ignored by golden one. This is not a valid test.

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This is the part that I find most strange, if the MQA encoder is to be the arbiter of what’s considered “musical” then they should publish a specification with documented limitations. I’m not holding my breath.

This is a misrepresentation on your part, the change of logo and BS’s reference to “reversibly lossless” leaves little room for doubt that the line HAS changed.

How can you ignore warnings you never received?

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It isn’t arbitrary. Their encoder is based on years of measurement of the properties of music signals, all of which (over hundreds of thousands of tracks of all genres including electronic) show a 1/f roll-off in amplitude vs frequency [shown in peer-reviewed publications]. They argue that this is a fundamental property of natural signals as well, and already known from publlished literature. The encoder measures the spectrum, dynamic range, and aliasing of the given signal before choosing encode parameters. If you think about that, you’ll recognize that any test signal putting large amounts of energy in the ultrasonic will not have the properties of a music signal and won’t pass that test. In any case, the encoder just flags the signal for operator attention; it’s trying to let the operator know that something is wrong in his files or hardware.

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This feels like a technical encoding of the “the stuff the kids listen to today isn’t music” response. Innovation be damned eh :wink:

I do wonder myself.

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That appears to go for anyone at all who argues favorably about MQA. So deep is the us vs them mentality. MQA can plainly do nothing right.

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MQA can end this whole debacle by being more open and working with reviewers. They don’t have to give up any IP.

But I think they’ll continue making up new audio terms and changing the definition of what MQA is.

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Thanks for the steer, but I would like to keep my options open.

BTW, many may not want to pay for the privilege…am I the only one who is troubled that the ‘debate’ has gone a bit ‘Only fans’?

Because MQA still hasn’t provided anything concrete to prove their claims nor disprove GoldenSound’s experiments. And they responded to his original video by lying about their previous claims of losslessness.

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It’s most certainly not technically accurate. Or rather if it is its only accurate because many of the terms that their ‘explanations’ rely on they’ve created themselves and cannot be tested by others.

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Firstly, this is simply what they’ve claimed. They have never released any of this research.

Secondly, even in tracks which do adhere to mqa’s rolloff model, flaws are still present. This was also shown in my video.

Thirdly, mqa’s AES paper is NOT peer reviewed.

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Only because it is lossy. Any lossless encoder would have absolutely no issue at all

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This is pure victim blaming. Well done :roll_eyes:

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