Is Roon supporting MQA? What are the pros and cons of MQA?

Audio Gear Talk MQA
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@Jim_Austin, I’ve read your article. You seem to know a lot. So could you please explain to me in plain English what exactly is the advantage of MQA in a time where bandwith is no longer a problem? I mean the advantage for the consumer and the musician, not for the brilliant marketing brain or his blogging groupie.

Please tell me what it would add to FLAC anno 2018, which is a perfect, non-proprietary alternative to a compressed, proprietary format. Why would I get involved into a format that would limit me in all aspects, just forcing me to buy the whole shabang for the umptieth time, just after these geniuses emptied my pockets yet again with their terribly compressed “remastered, because sound matters” loudness war, the “copy-control protected” legally acquired cd’s that didn’t play in any of my legally acquired my cd-players, the legally acquired dvd’s that forced me to watch a “copying/downloading is illegal” trailer each time I play the dvd. What use are my MQA purchases if the format fails and/or hardware moves on?

Would you be able to provide a serious answer, without all the cynicism or marketing blabla?

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403

So let me understand…you can have a free trial of Tidal and access to MQA albums? You can let a Tidal app do the first unfold, to get a sense of what is achievable? Instead, Jim Austin should qualify the economic, theoretical, perhaps political value for anyone refusing to lift a finger to think for themselves?
I muse if Apple had introduced MQA, there would be so many people looking for conflict elsewhere.
On other forums Jim Austin is accused of attacking those against MQA. I take the opposite view, and believe Stereophile has unnecessarily diluted what is perhaps the best thing to happen since Bob Stuart pushed forward lossless packing many years ago.
MQA is no more perfect than any other format yet has a capability to connect one to the core musical experience better than anything else. Period.
There is no excuse not to try either Tidal Masters or 2L samples. The pervasive anti-MQA voices may make many question what they hear, but if the emperor has no clothes I would suggest it is not Bob Stuart who is unclothed, but the envious bodies of those who cannot enjoy what they hear or would profit should MQA not progress.

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His answer is essentially is it’s good for the industry and therefore the consumer should embrace it. and remember it is good because the consumer has too much freedom in the current digital ecosystem where musical formats are open. The industry, to survive, needs to control us more.

This Faustian choice however is false for several reasons, not the least of which is that mqa will not help the industry because the industry has misdiagnosed the disease it suffers from…

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405

So you did your homework and read I have a free month of Tidal MQA trial? Wow, good for you. You know what “free” trials are like? I hate hiphop and have read enough of Tidal accounts messing up Roon libraries here, so no thank you. Instead, I ask someone who clearly advocated MQA (what’s his interest as a blogger — there’s always a dependency) to provide a clear answer, and of all a sudden, I’m not thinking for myself?

Nice rhetorics. Meanwhile, you too handily avoid the question: in theory, MQA is inferior to FLAC. What do you have to offer in practice that would even make me consider to bother? I have a Meridian Explorer 2, but why should I even bother? I believe that if I buy an album, it should be available in its best format/resolution to me forever, on each device. MQA suggests it will not. So I hope and expect it will die soon. So again: what do you have to offer the customer, besides marketing bs? Such an easy question, so hard to answer (apparently).

We can keep on ping-ponging about what we individually hear (“think for themselves”) but that really is indifferent to me. If a “revolutionary” format like this really is so revolutionary, then why are opinions so strongly divided? If there’s not even the slightest consensus that it’s an absolute progress (and why should it be, compressed and proprietary as it is), then why even bother? What are your interests? I’ve yet have to hear even ONE conclusive fact about MQA.

So charming that all the Meridian fanboys here are so concerned about Bob (“he won’t make a dime, he’s so altruistic”), but excuse me for thinking he’s just monopolising music business for Meridian. Charmed you think he wants to protect the artists, but please wake up. It’s not for nothing that even a giant band like Radiohead took initiative. Wake up guys! Sorry if my English is not up to your level, but hey, I’m happy to continue this debate with you anytime in Dutch if you bother! Looking forward to your reply.

Meanwhile: PLEASE convince me — with (non-marketing) arguments why I should even bother to f_ck up my Roon account with sleazy Tidal hiphop sh_t just to experience a sound that on paper seems far inferior to me than my beloved flac?

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The whole “audibly” thing is political, maybe in an analogous way DRM is to you :wink: .

In any case, there are many debatably inaudible compression schemes that result in much smaller files than MQA, as anyone who’s ever visited hydrogenaudio knows.

There’s very audible stuff that could be done and doesn’t rely on debatable science (dynamic range being the low-hanging fruit here, there’s very likely others), in other words, a new format maybe could solve real problems as well as fix a newly discovered something, in interesting ways, and that’s something they don’t do.

Then you have the problem that we know that whatever MQA has been doing is being applied in ways that don’t respect the ideal, lab conditions that an examination of the claims would require. Does it do cool stuff if the entire chain, from sound capture to speaker, is profiled, a bit like seems to have been the case with the files MQA worked on for Atkinson ? Entirely possible.

Thing is, MQA have screwed themselves hard even on the simplicity claims by allowing material not produced with those stringent demands to be labeled exactly in the same way as those that might be. How am I, as a consumer, to know whether that “master-quality” recording I’m paying for gets its blue light from a recording engineer who painstakingly calibrated an entire chain to it, or whether it was signed by Joe at marketing ?

Because of their overly aggressive marketing claims (master isn’t an innocuous word in the audio world…), they’ve already turned the blue MQA light into something that, whether they like it or not, is questionably different, not unquestionably better, so, in a way, there’s something you’re very wrong about: it’s completely unimportant, maybe other than for the purpose of establishing the good character of Bob Stuart, to figure out whether or not they’re doing something meaningful, because whatever they could be doing, quality-wise, is, by their own fault, already impossible to discern from what they’re currently doing, which, well, doesn’t seem like much at all.

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Yaknow, there’s a reason they nicknamed Frank from marketing “Frankie blue eyes” :stuck_out_tongue:

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413

Please everyone, try not to talk about each other rather than the topic at hand.

I’d just like to clarify that:

  • Tidal will not impose hip-hop (or any other genre) on your library unless you explicitly add it;

  • Complaints about “Tidal accounts messing up Roon libraries” are all about users explicitly adding the “Essentials collections” devised by Roon to fill out an empty library, sometimes inadvertently on initial installation of Roon or subsequently by choice, and then preferring to delete that content. Roon or Tidal do not add any Tidal content to a library unless a user tells it to do so.

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414

Slightly off topic but I still don’t understand this (I’ve seen a few others mention this).

Below are screenshots of the ‘front pages’ of Tidal via Roon.

For both the Masters section and non-Masters section. I don’t see the saturation of Hip-Hop that others are seeing.

The Tidal Desktop App is different but we’re all talking Tidal via Roon here I assume.

13 am
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Screen Shot 2018-02-15 at 10.47.00 am.jpg1909×868 476 KB

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No, the suggestion is that users can try out the Tidal Desktop App to experience software decoded MQA.

I, for one, am pleased that we have a diversity of music available and don’t regard Tidal giving prominence to hip hop (although it is really a broader selection of music than that) as a reason to avoid the other music available through it. If I were running Tidal it would probably be prog Rock and trucking songs on the front page …

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In this case yes agreed, as I noted above, the Tidal Desktop App pushes Hip-Hop and modern R&B heavily. No question.

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417

And genres : "why I should even bother to f_ck up my Roon account with sleazy Tidal hiphop sh_t "

I enjoy both ECM and Hip-Hop, so enough with genre bashing please :joy:

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All …
Let’s stay on topic please … this topic is about MQA … the side topics are just a diversion / distraction from the real discussion.

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419

(I agree that Tidal has a more than serviceable non-Hip Hop selection. They have more CDs that I like than I do.)

I agree with those that have said that to participate deeply in this conversation, it’s best if you’ve at least heard decoded MQA. I’ve used the Tidal app and my Pro-ject S2 Digital. I think some MQA titles sound wonderful. At the very least, they offer an alternative perspective on the music. At best, they reveal albums in a way I hadn’t heard before.

That doesn’t mean I buy (or appreciate) the marketing hype, the use of “Master” or the DRM potential.

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Great to see Mr Diament’s comment supporting unmolested pcm under the latest sterephile article. I love his masters.

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421

Bob, the bringer of the BLUE LIGHT. He that followeth him shall never walk in darkness, but shall have the light of “authenticated music”…:joy:

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422

The Pono had a blue light as well. A leftover from when it was going to be an MQA player. Turns out the light could be hacked so that even non Pono purchased music could activate the “authenticated” light. Imho, it is only a matter of time before the MQA light gets hacked at some point.

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423

The goal of MQA and the labels is clear: to have it become a successful format, and then remove all forms of actual master files from the market. I can forsee a situation where only mp3 and MQA - fake “hi-res” are the only formats sold.
MQA has DRM elements built in, and gives the industry all sorts of potential options for segmenting the market and squeezing more money out of the public.

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MQA lovers:
He that hacketh the blue light shall be cast out into utter darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth…

MQA haters:
Blessed are the blue light hackers, for theirs is the kingdom of Hi-Fi…

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425

Is that true that Pono was initially meant to be MQA?

Would make more sense than Neil going senile I suppose as PONO when it arrived was as new as tomoato soup.

.sjb

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I think that Neil Young in his search for partners in developing Pono was down to Meridian and Ayre as so no doubt MQA was part of the discussions. Very early days for MQA back then though and probably would have taken too long to bring to market as at that time Young was on a timetable he failed to meet anyway.

I’m guessing this from articles I read a long time ago like this one.

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