MQA - Time for a rethink?

Well i understand the science, not the why!
There is no need for MQA, it is a solution to a problem that does not exist.
Its about money, selling licenses, and nothing else.
Empty promises and false claims; Authenticated… Master Quality…

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I see what you did there.

Yeah. Many disregard what MQA advertised to do. Until then all believed its godlike thing. Then slowly some have questioned what it ACTUALLY does not what some paper says. As we all know its not open source technology and they dont even want you to test it with limited time samples - thats red flag right there doesnt matter what some white paper says.
Tidal was fast to remove test samples from their database. That was clear to me i wont support MQA.

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Surely you jest?

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Surely you’re not really asking?

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Surely, he’s unsure

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Hard to tell the difference.

The big boss - the label itself or other representative.

Almost all Warner’s catalogue in tidal available as Tidal Masters are signed off as MQA Studio and its derivative as MQA.

Universal are a mix bag with MQA Studio and MQA, their new releases are now in MQA.

Could you explain how in the world it can do that when it has no information whatsoever what those characteristics were?

What you’re describing is only possible in the cases when MQA i used end-to-end, and we know very well that that only happens in the rarest of cases.

Whatever this is, it’s an anthropomorphic explanation and not a technical one.

So, effectively and explicitly changing the data in the music file from whatever exited the studio, in a process defined as “lossy”.

No, only in the rarest of cases (basically only 2L recordings) it knows about the ADC process. The vast majority of MQA conversions have no idea what equipment the ADC process entailed.

i.e. implementing a minimal phase reconstruction filter which may or may not go well with the rest of your DAC gear.

Definitely not, except in the case of 2L. In the vast majority of cases, the MQA file is the definition of what was not heard in the studio.

I suppose this is like asking someone to read the TOS for a piece of software. Begrudgingly accepting, if caring at all.

No, it is not clearly explained, although various MQA blog posts go on and on about it.

Do you believe that studios and streaming services only care about audio quality and cater to an audiophile audience? Do you ever wonder why nobody uses MQA as an archival format?

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I suspect you’re taking this post at face value seriousness when it’s really a little “word salad” humour :wink:

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:scream:

My sarcasm sensor is malfunctioning!

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Do you really think all those tracks were listened to by people that actually heard what was recorded. Heck, on a lot of recordings, the tracks are recorded with the musicians at different sites, send all the contributions to one site to be processed and assembled. As such, on many recordings, it’s impossible to define a sound that is authentic. The people who sign off do so blindly, just as the have on every different format of variety ever released, be it 78, 45, LP, 8 Track, CD, FLAC, etc. they sign off at every possible opportunity for $$$$. That is why, imho, the MQA tag is 100% useless.

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For you it’s useless.

For the major labels it’s not. :slight_smile:

That’s reality.

Of course it’s not useless for the labels. It’s a money maker for them, whether MQA actually works or not. I’m, just saying that the MQA moniker is useless as far as actually authenticating anything. 98% of the music industry is about marketing, and 100% of it is about making money anyway they can. And to a certain extent, all of us (including moi) buy into it.

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I know or have met a good many people at all stages of the music industry, recording and mastering engineers, musicians, label execs, consultants, designers, journalists, academics. I can’t think of a field where people are more dedicated and want to make music an accessible, enjoyable, better thing. Corporate boards necessarily oversee finances. But getting to a point where buyers think the entire structure is there to lie and fleece them at every turn is a level of cynicism beyond reality.

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  • take a pcm master
  • make an mp3 from it and play it in a studio
  • then play the mp3 at home

And it will also be reproducing exactly what was heard in the studio when playing the mp3, isn’t it?
And look, it’s a bitperfect copy of the mp3 that was played in the studio.
Should we call mp3 lossless then?

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Mp3 files ARE lossless. If parts of a file were missing it wouldn’t play, right? Same with MQA. Flac protects all the bits. It’s like magic. Incredible, really.

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No they are bit perfect when copied but not lossless

Bit-Pecfect means that the 1s and 0s are are not corrupt, and not losing any information. As any lossy format looses information, none can be bit-perfect, The playback of lossy files can be bit-perfect, if nothing in the file changes, i.e. the integrity of the 1s and 0s remain in tact. But the overall process beginning with converting something to mp3 through the playback of it is not bit-perfect.

But, an mp3’s 1s and 0s do not faithfully represent what was fed into the mp3 encoder. Same with MQA. Both are lossy, but both playback. Whether something is bit-perfect of not really has no bearing on whether it will play back or not.