TIDAL to add 'millions' of Master Quality (MQA) Tracks

So they should stop referring to MQA as the sound that “the artist intended” and replace “artist” with “music label”…

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Almost. You need to replace the word “sound” with “control” as well.

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Yup. They are a little behind … such is the life of software dev…

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“As for MQA compression, it has a tendency to time-shift transients to the nearest sample instead of rendering these transients with the proper timing. The effect is audible, and I do not like it. From a streaming bandwidth standpoint, MQA offers no advantages. There are lossless schemes that can achieve the same bit rate”

I think that applies to specifc titles, not all.

To enable everyone here to form their own picture of the facts, the following is an excerpt from the relevant chapter. By the way, this was not written by Neil Young, but by his co-author Phil Baker, an experienced manager for the development of consumer electronic products and responsible for the PonoPlayer:

“Bob Stuart still had not delivered his software that was to be incorporated into the player, the software designed to compress files to use less memory while remaining high-resolution sound. Making it available was part of an early agreement between Stuart and Pono in exchange for a sizable chunk of equity. But, as I later learned, the agreement was written in very general terms and failed to define the software with any precision.“

“… we never received the software. I didn’t know if Stuart’s technology was not ready or if he was reluctant to provide it to us. I kept thinking that this was not the way a partner with equity should be behaving, but there was little I could do.

Finally, in our November monthly meeting, Stuart said he was ready to discuss the terms for Pono using the software. Hamm (Pono’s CEO) flew to the UK to meet with him and the investors in Meridian…“

“The terms they proposed to Hamm included monthly payments, royalties for each player sold, more stock, and no exclusivity. The terms were much more onerous than Pono could afford and made no business sense based on normal industry standards. Not only would the software not be exclusive to Pono, but it also restricted what Pono could do with it. For example, if Pono was sold or licensed its player to be built or sold by another company, then his technology could not be included. During diese negotiations, Hamm explained our economics and tried to negotiate a more favorable arrangement. Discussions and negotiations continued for several months and included Hamm, Elliot, Neil, Cohen, and Stuart and his investors, but they never were able to come to an agreement.“
“When I interviewed Stuart for this book, he thought that Pono management had been unreasonable by not accepting his terms, because of the value his software would provide. Stuart felt its value was much greater than what Pono believed it to be. Stuart’s software eventually became the basis for a proprietary compression technology called MQA.“

“This turn of events was a huge disappointment and a serious blow. Stuart had worked closely with us for two years, since the beginning of Pono’s development, and we assumed he would provide this technology with terms we could all agree on.“

I interpret it like this:
At the beginning of the business relationship, there was no MQA, only the idea of jointly developing a low-cost high-res DAP, with Meridian providing the software and receiving a high equity share in return.

The granting of exclusive rights was only one of several negotiation items that had already been addressed verbally in the course of the previous cooperation. But in the end, this is not what failed.

Meridian’s negotiating strategy in the November meeting clearly shows me that Bob Stuart was no longer interested in the project. Probably because he already had a much bigger fish on the line at that time, Warner Music with the other major labels in tow. The Pono project was more of a hindrance. The bait was a new, proprietary music coding format with a built-in DRM option, which we know today as MQA.

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I couldn’t speculate as to the Stuart/Meridian/Reinet business decisions and their timing. A book written by Hamm/Young is going to be biased toward their side, and Meridian never comments. What’s clear is that this occurred just prior to the MQA release in late 2014 and that Meridian had been intensively involved for years getting MQA done. It probably was late, which accounts for the stalling on Stuart’s part. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of working in a start-up, you’d know how it goes: 48/7 crammed into 24/7, and then some. If Meridian was simultaneously negotiating with the labels, hardware manufacturers and streaming services, it’s not hard to believe they’d be too inundated to deal as well as they might with Pono. That’s everything I can offer.

As an irrelevant aside, I’ve worked with start-ups where the business model and even targeted use changed three or four times.

Added this:

because he already had a much bigger fish on the line at that time, Warner Music with the other major labels in tow. The Pono project was more of a hindrance.

Labels and streaming services were essential, w/wo Pono. Pono is only a portable player and the labels would need to be on board for Pono-MQA anyway.

There is no DRM in MQA, let’s be clear. You can play it, stream it, buy it copy it, do as you like.

Chris-

[Moderated] DRM doesn’t just mean copy protection. It means any type of control over how an item is used - including the demand for specialized equipment, licensing…like an MQA DAC.
Even tractors have DRM these days - they’re licensed so only authorized factory sites can repair them.
[Moderated]

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Cool. So I can play MQA files in full fidelity in Windows Media Player or JRiver without a special dac? Cool, cool, cool.

You can play the file in CD quality but you need a decoder for full MQA in the same way you need a Dolby pro logic decoder for that format, or DTS or Dolby tru HD. Laser disc anyone :joy:
That’s not DRM in the accepted understand of most people.

Nope DRM is generally known as a copy protection facility and your constant stating of this is misleading at best.

So, there is no DRM in MQA. It’s an end to end system because that’s how it works. Couldn’t be done any other way in the same way your car need wheels, they just need them. If you want to drive, you gotta buy them

Lol. Ok, then.

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This IS called DRM in the accepted understand of most people. But not in the mqa world of alternative facts.
DRM, authentication, lossless, hires: all these familiar terms get a new meaning in the brave new mqa world

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Perhaps you did not understand my formulation “DRM option”.

At the moment, DRM in the strict sense is not active at MQA, but MQA has acquired the patents for a DRM implementation and no outsider knows whether the codes are already implemented or not, as MQA is a black box. But they could be implemented or activated at any time.

In a broader sense, DRM already exists because without the necessary certified hardware, the “second unfolding” is not possible, without which there can officially be no optimal playback “better than the original”. Without an MQA-capable DAC, “optimal” playback would not be possible.

By the way, if you haven’t noticed it so far, MQA is in no way an “end to end system”.

To my knowledge, there are no recordings available who are originally digital recorded with a MQA ADC. Even the 2L Label use the DXD as master and storage format and not MQA.

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Utimaco provides hardware security modules. These boxes are used in public key infrastructures. It is used to authenticate the end-to-end process of music recording.

What does that mean? Why does MQA need public key encryption? Don’t tell me, that artists can authenticate …

It is more like this: You can always copy the file, but once the certificate is expired, you cannot play it in HiRes anymore. Then you have to yearly renew the certificate. It becomes a yearly fee to play HiRes music. For the big players in the music industry it also has the advantage, that they don’t have to hand out HiRes files to everyone, which can be copied and played without control.

You can only play the file in HiRes, if you payed your fee.

If your DAC does not have the right certificate applied, you only play LowRes.

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Sorry. I don’t see why MQA requires PKI (which means certificates that eventually expire). Public key encryption just requires that the recipient possess the public key corresponding to the private key of the sender.

PKI is all about providing a mechanism for distributing those public keys over an insecure channel. But MQA doesn’t require that. The public key can be embedded in the hardware at the time of manufacture.

This does raise the interesting question of what happens when, at some point, the private key is compromised or otherwise needs replacing. That instantly renders every existing piece of MQA hardware obsolete.

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Clearly there is stuff you don’t know and think the people at MQA don’t understand

Find me an artist that ever did. Or sound engineer.
That Dr.Axis, nor Niel Young ever did sign off anything tells me that the whole MQA is a scam. Reading that paper is scary.

If, what was in that paper was true, it may be a good thing. Not sure. However none of it is true. Who sign for dead artist’s. Who signs for a band.

Who signed off the batch process of all those red book files ?

Thanks for bringing this paper to our attention. Take a copy, before it’s redrawn.