Y’all, I’m just goofing.
MQA is a rent seeking solution looking for a problem. Its only purpose is to extract fees from every step of music production, distribution, and playback. In my opinion.
My apologies, I’ll stop now.
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Now, if you put an mp3 file into a FLAC container, does it then become lossless??
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Audibly lossless? Not from what was encoded in the first place. Many factors determine that, not just how high the bit rate is. Everything from the first encoding all the way through the final stage needs to be lossless, otherwise noticeable deficiencies will likely show through.
This is the industry where most artists can no longer survive on the revenues of music sales and streaming. Thinking that the altruism of the “creatives” in the industry holds sway over the corporate money men is naivete at best and airbrushes a history of legal wrangles and unhappy artists. Under the circumstances, at least a little cynicism is in order. I prefer the word “realism”, without your rose coloured glasses this is a reasonable position:
I’ve been thinking alot about this, with Amazon and Apple driving a race to the bottom, we could destroy a creative industry? It was also prompted by the documentaries and articles on Delia Derbyshire, who really did change the world…could she have done that now?
I’ve also been thinking my ‘default’ of streaming services, when something else may be better. (Reminds me of the Revealing Reality report that suggests that we use smartphones like Swiss Army knives…for everything, when other devices would be superior.)
So…does anyone know what happens for artists with downloads?
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My understanding is that the artist gets a good bit more from downloads as compared to streams. On sites like Bootcamp that allow you to chip in anything above the base price, I usually go a dollar or two above (except for Ally Venable, where I added five dollars). But in any case, unless you are at the very top, it’s getting harder and harder for artists to make it financially unless they have other sources of income. Like, not everyone is a Michael Nesmith, who inherited $41 million from his mother.
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Got to agree with Neill and I think a prefer the name Bootcamp as well 
When you think that most streaming companies pay less than $0.01 per stream and most of that goes to the record companion.
Bandcamp in particular are providing a great service to smaller bands in particular and giving them the shop front experience. For any band I like I check Bandcamp first and only go elsewhere if it is not on there.
It will be interesting to see what Square does with Tidal, as they are promoting offering the whole experience in one place model to bands. Hopefully competition will be good for this bit of the market and create some new ideas for generating revenue for bands.
This feels a real danger as things stand. Even touring revenues may be endangered, would you sign a 360 deal with a record label?
As I understand it downloads are better for artists. I’ll add a +1 for Bandcamp here and it’s become my first stop for a purchase. Like @Neil_Russell I’ll usually add a little on to the asking price. That said, if I buy 10 albums at once the last couple are often unlucky 
In these MQA threads I hear a lot of talk referring to lossy and lossless.
I also get where detractors are coming from, but they don’t seem to hear where I’m coming from but nevertheless and as in this old video Bob Stuart explains, there are many more loses people may choose to be concerned about over and above the semantics of wether MQA is lossy or not.
The whole video is educational but right at the end Bob talks about losses in the speaker cabinets.
Having owned Meridian SE speakers for some time I still find the experience of the speakers sounding the same at low volume as high startling…
I’ve been thinking much @Chrislayeruk as to why anyone need justify anything (though appreciate your boundless hopefulness for open minds) …is audio now just a maths seminar? It is seductive, thinking that anyone has ‘cracked’ how to record and replay an actual musical experience. We are still in the foothills, not at the peak? That is one reason I am puzzled that anyone thinks PCM is anything like pure gold…it may be very good, but who can foresee something better, even beyond what MQA improves.
Why do I post now, given how unbearable to the repetition of views can be? Well, as I mentioned at the start of this thread, I found myself playing a playlist, crafted for a much longed-for hot summer, which might put COVID behind us. A song of dubious production values, from a time past, ‘You to me are Everything’ by the Real Thing rolled on, and in its 16/44.1 MQA form it sounded better than the PCM that came before.
It would be comforting, in certain forums, to dismiss that utterly subjective experience and indulge in the hate that is fostered (? for commercial reasons). But I can’t do that; nor should anyone.
I later noted, that one track I thought was PCM was sounding very good (Young Hearts Run Free) and then found it was in MQA, against expectation.
The challenge of MQA continues, beyond any graph or video, simply because it can make for a better experience, for me…YMMV etc.
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Are you saying that MQA’s loss of fidelity is irrelevant because speakers aren’t perfect?
This sword cuts both ways though, there are so many losses that to brand yourself as “audibly lossless” or “analogue end to end” makes very little sense either.
List them.
And then explain why it’s wrong to call something “audibly lossless” that is actually audibly lossless.
In other words, explain what is audible that is being lost.
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Let’s start with a point of comparison then. Is that the sound heard in studio? The original tracks laid down on tape? Or one of the myriad of mixes that may be available?
In minimalist recordings, which include those from 2L, Unamas (?), and any like-minded indie labels, studios and artists, it’s whatever the final approved studio sound is.
In the case of standard labels, it’s whatever the mastering studio handed to the label, and the label approved. The quibble here is that the A/D correction might alter the sound from what the mastering engineer approved (dynamic range and audible frequency range are retained). If it doesn’t alter the sound, then it is what was heard in the mastering studio.
On older recordings where the labels have dozens of versions, it has to be assumed that they choose the best version; no listener ever has access to the lot and knows the differences. Unless remastered and approved, those are green-lighted anyway.
“Sound heard in the studio” shouldn’t be confused with “live feed”.
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Does it? Who made that choice, and what was the approval process?
Here’s an alternative version:
The “standard labels” are approached by MQA and for some reason (might be monetary, might be whatever) accept that MQA is the format to go for. They green-light a selection of their catalog for conversion to MQA for some reason (might be that the musician and/or mastering engineer is dead or whatever).
The point is that if you know for a fact that the MQA version is audibly the same or, as is implied by the MQA advertisement material, somehow better than what was heard in the studio, please do share. I’m extremely interested to know how the choice is made and what the process for making that choice looks like, or at the very least why one must assume that a good choice was made in the first place.
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You’re asking for insight into the selection process by the major labels; good luck. It’s out of MQA’s hands. The three major labels decided to convert their catalog to MQA around 2017, as part of an upgrade to higher quality over the lossy codecs they were previously releasing. But “alternative versions” imagined on the spot don’t cut it either, they make no sense without some idea of how and why industry decisions are made.
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So here’s the first “frame of reference” gone, and it’s obvious that claims to reproduce the sound heard in the studio are nonsense. That’s a moment in time and it’s gone, leaving us with the studio artefacts (these will change depending on the recording process) as the most reliable record, i.e. master tapes, etc. right?
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Not quite, I’m asking why you think we have to assume that the master that’s been converted to MQA is the best of the lot. Following that, I’m asking you how you can know that the “studio approval” is actually done by a mastering engineer or a musician, i.e. someone who knows the master they signed off on, and not a bean counter at the label. I’m asking you why we must assume that the conversion to MQA is an artistic choice and not something else.
I suppose releasing music in MQA might be an improvement over poorly converted MP3s in some cases, but seeing as they’re both lossy I don’t know why an artist or an engineer would choose the MQA conversion over straight redbook, which in 99% of the cases was what the mastering engineer and artist signed off on.
So I’m asking you: why do we have to assume that the conversion to MQA was done for the love of high-quality music and not something else?
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I expect you have to be rational about what ‘sound in the studio’ is. Sound is recorded from multiple mics that have to be mixed, whether to stems or otherwise, and a mastering engineer has to produce the final. A minimalist approach may limit nearly all processing. What parts the artist hears probably vary with the situation but surely s/he signs off at the final stage. Assuming the live feed is the ‘right’ frame of reference might be somewhat imaginary as to what stage the sound becomes “the reference”.