Provenance and MQA

Audio Gear Talk MQA
104

I’d think of it as something similar to the signal path light, with an explicit declaration of the information provider on mouseover / click - “According to MQA Ltd’s information, this file was signed by John Doe of BigLabel”. That explicit declaration is important, because it absolves Roon of the inevitable cock-ups.

Step two would of course be to open that up to multiple information providers, by working with Xiph and others to provide authentication as a service (say, get hashes from Qobuz and HiResDownloads, or possibly check an uncompressed version of lossless formats against AccurateRip during analysis, or do it via hardware keys directly to the artists). But you’ve probably already thought of all that.

Not to be cynical here, but would artists with 360 contracts really be given that level of control ?

105

having done some work for one of the global industry bodies which has representation from all the major labels it is clear that they have poor processes, data and infrastructure to enable effective rights management - the very thing that drives who gets paid what (incl the labels themselves). It’s not unusual for multiple rights owners’ representatives to make conflicting claims regarding rights ownership relating to the same performance. Now, if the industry can’t get that sorted and there’s money involved, what chance do they have of getting provenance sorted? What’s their incentive?

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106

Not very good, but I’m an optimist, and I’ve seen Bob Stuart move mountains before. I don’t need to move the mountains, I just need to move the mountain mover.

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107

First, let me state that I would love to have the provenance information for all the music I listen to; including production details for each remix or re-master. It would be fantastic to have that presented in Roon; and I think it is a worthy goal to strive towards.

Certain music lovers care very much about this and lots of other do not. There is a reason that people pay attention to Steve Wilson remixes; they know him and they trust the fact that as a remix he has gone back to the original tapes (or as close as can be given what might still survive). The provenance in that case is very much part of the marketing. Audio Fidelity recordings are another one. But, those are rare cases in the music industry.

Even if MQA does release the provenance for everything it produces, they still have headwinds in actually getting the data and whether said data is worthwhile. As for going away over time, I think with the eventual passing of artists and engineers, the information is slowly being lost; and eventually the best you can get is a Label guy to say “Yes, that is the latest and greatest remaster and we gave it to MQA to process” for older recordings.

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109

I agree. MQA signage needs to start at the artist level. In fact, it should already be embedded at point of file creation (if it is not already). That way it starts at the authentication source that matters most to fans.

Studio’s not being equipped to take MQA files is interesting. If a file is MQA’d, then the Label’s themselves are limited in the mucking around they can do to it.

110

Provenance can be a messy subject. And, sadly, as noted, when intertwined in such a way with MQA, other topics also get intertwined.

But, I wanted to step back and think about what provenance actually means in practice. Let say, that you had the provenance for every single release of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”. What do you do with the information? It is not like the provenance will tell you which is actually the best sounding version; it might give you clues, but, at the same time it might steer you wrong. There are examples of artist led re-masterings that, for whatever reason, does not sound as good as a previous existing version(s), cue Tony Banks in 2007.

111

Yes, but done right, it would also provide a UUID for the track (the SHA-256 checksum of the data) which is wnat is actually encrypted by the digital signature. That UUID could be tied then to reviews of the track. So a reasonable design would give you both identification and authentication.

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112

All this discussion of MQA and provenance sort of misses the point. Prior to MQA, was there a huge demand for provenance? I didn’t hear anything. Seems to me MQA is another example of a solution looking for a problem (and attempting to profit off that non-existent problem) along the way.

113

MQA happened in the same “era” that made hi-res audio accessible (not available, but easily accessible). So, previous to this era, there was no major concern. Read all of the above posts for many situations where people (including me) find provenance interesting.

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114

I personally found this session to be really poor. This whole session was a bad presentation of poorly formed ideas scraped from the web. I’m not making a comment on the positions held from anyone in the session. I’m saying the journalism represented here was not well-prepared, well-presented, and the audience was allowed to take over the presentation. It made for a painful watching experience.

A better way (but not the only better way) to do this would have been to pick a topic, state the hypothesis, such as “MQA is lossy”. Then present 2 sides of it. First, present a a few different reasons why MQA is lossy. Then present a few different reasonings of why MQA is not lossy. Then let the audience make up their own mind. Do not blindly state that “MQA claims it is not lossy” and follow that with “MQA is lossy - I can’t explain why, but there are people on the web that say so”. Also, keep the audience in check.

Sorry @ComputerAudiophile, I’ve seen super high quality work out of you, but this was not it. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you had no idea how hard this subject is to talk about in a live environment. Please do a practice run next time and get some second opinions on BOTH sides of the debate. This is a topic that can’t be done sloppy.

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115

Monday morning quarterbacking is always easy @danny :~)

My presentation wasn’t a Ted Talk, AES paper, or anything meant to be a final word on the topic. I was asked to present something, so I came up with the concept I talked about. If this was going to be a formal thing, I would have certainly done it differently.

With respect to losing control over the presentation to the audience, absolutely. I expected adults to act like adults and professionals in the same industry to act respectful. This didn’t happen and I don’t believe it was possible to make it happen.

In my opinion this quote from Carl Sandberg is appropriate here:

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell”

I personally invited the MQA team to the presentation, immediately after coming up with the concept, thinking we could address some of the issues after I was done talking. However, not a single fact was addressed by them. They pounded the table claiming Archimago’s anonymity prohibited anyone from agreeing that 2+2=4.

The MQA representatives at the presentation certainly didn’t act like they have nothing to hide, while at the same time they totally acted like they have nothing to hide because to many MQA is a bunch of nothing.

P.S. I love that we can have an open discussion about this and neither of us fear retribution from the other.

P.P.S. I can’t say the same about MQA. I’ve been pressured through third parties to get in line.

P.P.P.S I do believe your information is coming from one side of the issue. I’ve talked to “every” engineer in audio and not a single one will speak well of MQA off the record.

OK, back to provenance :~)

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120

People who buy hi-res downloads have been asking for provenance for years.

121

You mean “Some people who buy hi-res downloads have been asking for provenance for years.”

That “Some people” is probably one in ten…or less.

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122

Not too many of those, though. Would adding provenance significantly increase download purchase, or just still the griping about it?

123

Provenance in connection with MQA is nothing but trying to get a foot into the door again.
MQA is completely burned though. I don’t believe they manage to re brand MQA.

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124

Interesting point. Knowing the Provenance would have absolutely no impact on my music purchases.

125

I think a more interesting point is the difficulty some artists are having in providing MQA tracks to labels. It would be pretty simple to extend FLAC, for instance, to include digital signatures in tracks, and provide a free open-source tool, “flac-signer”, to use that extension to sign or verify signatures in tracks. But would that kind of provenance provision fit into existing recording work-flows? Would it help? What is the recording workflow like for those artists?

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126

This is not true. The boutique (most of them considered “audiophile”) labels identified and “fixed” the province “problem” (such as it is) years ago, which itself is a subset of the “quality” problem.

[EDIT: moderated to stay on-topic about provenance]

127

How did they do this? How can you be sure your hi-res download has not been altered? Many people are concerned (see above) and some services (highresaudio.com) are actively automating detection of upsampled content.

128

MQA only assures content hasn’t been changed between points A and B. It doesn’t address any of the other provenance issues.