Bat detector? 
Yes but I listen to music I don’t watch it. Bat detector seems a better solution 
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It isn’t and I didn’t say that.
I was merely sarcastically highlighting that you seem to be doing more to promote MQA than Bob Stuart’s entire PR team combined.
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The sarcasm is not required…
I’ve resisted jumping into this thread because I have nothing technical to add. But this article raised some logistical questions. Bob Stuart talks about converting 40 to 50 million songs in six months. According to my simple math, that’s about 40,000 songs per hour. It doesn’t seem like much attention is being paid to authentication let alone remastering at that rate. What am I missing?
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If you have the authentic files in your vaults, that’s not an issue. That work is already done.
An explanation.
That explanation, is that as far as I can tell, there are two entirely separate processes for MQA-ification.
One is the so-called “batch” process, which appears to pretty much be a lossy compression algo with a couple of flags to light lights up and also pick one of a few pre-selected filters at the DAC level.
The second is the hands-on process MQA Ltd has been selling audiophiles.
Both light up the same lights, thus confusing any reasonable individual, and making the cautious come to the conclusion that the explained-in-painful-detail process two is probably only meant as a way to confuse you into thinking process one is the best idea since sliced bread.
Good to see you’re starting to see the light and are now admitting you don’t believe in audible improvements thanks to pixie-dust DAC timeobular correction in the cognal grameters.
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By work done I mean you do not have to search out and locate files to apply the MQA process to. You have them in stock, the ground work is done. There they are ready and waiting. You know they are authentic as you own them, they are not copies upsampled or otherwise buggered about with.
These files you can de blur and authenticate.
Remind me which metadata exactly would be necessary for your claim of a batch timeobular correction in the cognal grameter to be credible ?
(I’ll also take the opportunity to remind everyone that “authentication” does not a new format, let alone a lossy one, require.)
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Think of the numbers, Chris. Batch processing 40,000 files an hour just doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Unless Meridian has a much larger staff with access to much more sophisticated equipment than I thought. Certainly possible, but who’s paying for all this work? Is Warner Music paying for the conversion? I’m genuinely interested in the logistics here. Seems like MQA would have to convert whatever the original master format was to a WAV file, do whatever’s necessary to cleanup that file, then convert that to the MQA format. Since many of these masters haven’t been digitized, you would have to convert them from analog tape which would only occur in real time. That’s roughly 40 minutes per album just to digitize. I just don’t see how it’s possible to do what they’re claiming.
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In most instances, the digital or digitized masters already exist in multiple 16-24 bit 44.1-192 kHz versions from original CD mastering, DVD-A or SACD mastering, and/or remastering. Warner Music is MQA batch processing everything and the kitchen sink.
AJ
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Either it’s possible, Chris is wrong about MQA, or both have a contentious relationship with the real world is of course what it comes down to.
I, for one, tend to believe that, given careful planning and a budget that’d allow for access to enough CPU grunt, it’s entirely credible MQA, Ltd are converting that many files in that type of timeframe, because nobody’s taking the masters out of the vaults. The copies exist already, so now think of .aac or .flac conversion speeds on commodity hardware, factor in computing a few hashes and signing 'em, and you’ve got yourself a plan.
If I were cynical and in their shoes, I’d see if a two-pronged long tail type approach would be feasible: look at what’s going to be most in demand from Tidal’s streaming stats, convert that ahead of time, then launch with an in-line conversion system for the rest. User requests an MQA file, just convert it on the fly, blame a few seconds’ worth of delay on network buffering, and call it a day.
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Also, a lot of time has passed since MQA was first announced and a lot of conversion work was done before that along with forward planning. So for the entire library to be converted by now is easy to appreciate and the final completion could be the reason we have so many new MQA releases now.
This was clearly a major project and serious planing was applied to it’s progression or completion, even if it is complete. We don’t know this.
Take @David_Gibson’s question, and reframe it in the longer timeframe, since the inception of the format if that’s what you want.
Now ask yourself if your claims that any care at all is put into conversion can hold ground. If you’d like to think about it further, ask yourself how many highly trained humans would be necessary to listen to the result, to make sure that the right form of timeobular correction was applied, for example.
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I think they have considered this in depth or they would have never sold the industry on the project. [Moderated]. I also know nothing about the internal processes for encoding MQA but look at the track record and integrity of those involved and judge the results with my ears and experience in my system.
After a lot of listening my conclusion is that whatever they are doing, they are making high benefits to the quality of the music delivered to me.
My impression is (and I could be wrong) that [Moderated] MQA sceptics have done very little MQA listening, probably just some A/B attempts with a view to discredit MQA from the start.
As I say, I could be wrong about that, but that’s the impression I get.
I cannot think of any other reason for the opposite listening impressions.
Chris, please let me know what it is that I said which warrants your ad hominems and accusations of dishonesty.
If there isn’t anything, please take the time to do the simple arithmetic I proposed, and let us know what your conclusions are.
It’s the whole anti MQA attitude across some members of the forum. People cannot even mention MQA without some sort of negative or derisory comment so much that we have to have a separate thread for MQA listening that is not in the Music section. (Hidden for all intent and purpose)
My impressions of peoples motives stems from this and correct me if I am wrong here. I did state that I could be wrong, and I meant it.
MQA is a thing, it exists in the main stream and many people enjoy listening to it. The tone from the anti MQA lobby does get tiring over time.
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Chris, you’re smart enough and you love music enough to know that this is simply not the case, and that MQA is irrelevant to the enjoyment of music.
Maybe the pro-MQA cabal, where many can be proven to have a financial interest and an exceptionally uncouth culture, could be kind enough to provide evidence of an equally funded anti-MQA lobby. If such a thing exists, I would like them to know that I eagerly await the check you imply I deserve.
More seriously, I’ll be derisive of claims when I find them laughable. Do the math @David_Gibson and myself proposed, and you’ll likely also come to the conclusion that your claims don’t pass the smell test.
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I’ve just had a quick look on Tidal and I can see that Nirvana’s Nevermind is listed as ‘Master’ but I don’t see how they could have a master as all copies were destroyed in a fire long before MQA even existed.
How is that possible?
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come on, they sold the industry on 8-track tapes. The industry doesn’t give a damn about anything but money.
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