Show references from reputable sites stating that. I was unable to find any connection between MLP and FLAC. But, a couple of sites indicated that MLP was a very tightly closed system with no source code available to anyone else. That indicates FLAC must have been independently developed, as MLP’s source code was unavailable for xiph.org to draw upon.
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The ideas, but not the implementation, would have been available in the papers and patents from Michael Gerzon and Peter Craven.
Lossless coding in general has been around since the 1950s when it was developed within the computer industry. It’s been used in various fields but has to be evolved for the particular problems of each field. Gerzon and Craven were the first to develop it for audio and rightfully are given credit.
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This is simply not true. True MLA was the first lossless audio codec (to my knowledge) but it uses different techniques than FLAC encoding. While they both implement prediction algorithms the compression algorithms used by FLAC have their origins in Linear Prediction and packing algorithms, some dating back to as early as the 1940s. It’s difficult to see how the MLA algorithms could have been copied since Bob does love his patents and secrets. I await claims that in the beginning was the word and the word was Bob Stuart, beating God to the act of creation 
BS indeed…
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As I said, lossless coding was invented in the computer industry in the ~1950s. There are only a handful of approaches that work well and they require evolving for each field they’ve been used in. Prediction coding is part of MLP too, as you say. It is absolutely true that MLP was the first such audio codec. Lossless as an option would have been known to the other companies developing lossy codecs in the same era but they didn’t bother with it at first, probably because it didn’t offer enough compression.
No one developing lossless codecs after MLP would have failed to read their patents. Why reinvent the wheel? There are multiple ways to do prediction algorithms and it doesn’t change the overall picture whether you use linear or non-linear prediction. Anyone claiming Meridian “invented” lossless coding though would be overstating the case, and Meridian never claimed that.
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That’s not an argument against proprietary formats.
Pre-ringing is one of the issues yes.
Ok, agreed. I was trying to keep the discussion simple.
FLAC is not an audio encoder. It’s a packaging method for PCM to reduce the size of the PCM. It is lossless to the encoded PCM. Other popular packaging methods are ALAC, WAV, AIFF.
You’re confusing an audio package method:
With an audio encoding method (referred to as COde DECode or CODEC)
LPCM is a CODEC (shortened to PCM in all the above)
MQA is a CODEC
The MQA encoded bitstream is close enough to LPCM it can be decoded as LPCM (with noise but, possibly not audible noise as argued by MQA). This allows it to be backwards compatible with all LPCM DACs as well as fit nicely into a FLAC package. It is, however, not LPCM which is why it needs its own DECoder to retrieve the “MQA bits” (and remove the noise). A DECoded MQA bitstream becomes LPCM because that makes it universally compatible with all DACs. All audio CODECs decode to LPCM (ok, not all but almost all. DSD is not PCM and there are a few others).
When people confuse these two things I generally dismiss anything else they say. CODECs can be very complicated things but the difference between a CODEC and the file storage format (the package) should be simple if one decides to argue for or against any particular encoding method.
I’m going to go listen to some music now. I’m not even sure encoding this thread into MQA can make it sound any better at this point.
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Oh dear - what does the ‘C’ in FLAC stand for then?
Here’s a clue:
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
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Good catch… FLAC is certainly a CODEC as it does encode and FLAC must be decoded before it is usable to the DAC. I should have provided more clarity in my statement…
FLAC encodes LPCM. It cannot encode anything else per the documentation:
flac only supports linear PCM samples (in other words, no A-LAW, uLAW, etc.),
This is different than MQA which can encode a pure analog sample (off an ADC) and that’s where I was making the distinction in my previous post. I should have said “analog audio encoder” which both LPCM and MQA are but FLAC is not. FLAC only encodes an LPCM digital bitstream which must come from somewhere using a different CODEC.
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???
Not sure what you are trying to say here.
In particular, how can this “analog audio encoder” you mention obtain, never mind encode, a pure analogue sample from an ADC’s LPCM digital audio signal output?
Yep, Flac is like an Amazon delivery box. Put that you like inside it, but that is what it is… you gotta open the box and deal with the innards…
ASR-Tidal’s New Losless Tier says goodbye to MQA
Here is really an interesting one:
For less than 18$, albums can be ‘upgraded’ to Tidal MQA masters.
But only for new albums, or if you remove all non-mqa versions!!!
Great stuff (and I am sarcastic here, just to make sure)
Dirk
That’s brilliant and means MQA is available to artists for essentially an admin fee. I’m impressed, I’d jump at it if I had music to stream in Tidal. They are hardly making any money here, just making a service available. I understand the artist also has to approve the end result… That’s all good
How many “plays” does it take to get back your $18? Ridiculous.
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This is the magic “white glove” service MQA was supposed to provide to justify their better quality at the time of recording. I don’t think they ever gave details on exactly what was occuring to provide benefit with that service. Lacking serious interest in that by the industry it appears they have shifted to re-encoding PCM masters as their primary source for content generation.
Just how many hula hoops of MQA justification can you keep spinning at once? Fascinating and impressive.
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I hear the quality of MQA and so I’m happy with it. I’ll defend it if people are so scared they need to attack it. I just don’t get the Anti MQA passion when 1. So many say they are going broke and 2, All the major streamers do not use it…
You have choices in the most part, so just move on if you don’t like it. Also, this isn’t a perfect world and if you currently don’t have a choice, well, that’s tough luck. Some people are starving out there…
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Listen to the Tidal version of Blind Faith’s Can’t find my way Home song . And then listen to Steve Winwood album version in flac,
Listen to the first 1 1/2 minutes.
You tell me if the high frequency vocals are better in that 1 1/2 minute in the MQA version or the Flac version.
Tell the truth.
In fact i urge anyone to do this test blind or not. Tell me I’m wrong.