agitater appreciation thread

You obviously did not read or understand my article. The problem and solution provided by MQA should be obvious.

The problem is a phantom construction made out of fairy dust. Measurable pre- and post-ringing an entire octave above the audible range? That is an inaudible problem - don’t ignore the reports on SHF by myself and others about their blind listening comparisons of identical-source MQA and non-MQA tracks. The chance of any listener identifying an MQA vs. a non-MQA was no better than a coin flip during my home testing sessions.

Suggesting in reponse, as some other pundits have pointedly done, that “a music listener who can’t hear a difference just doesn’t know how to listen” is only the most egregious of all the arrogant and supercilious defensive statements that the self-styled leaders in the audiophile media have made in recent years. We’re listening to the music, not straining to hear irrelevant nonsense that is beyond the ability of any human to even vaguely sense let alone actually hear.

I can tell you as one who has recorded over 200 session in hirez and 16/44, this is a problem. Bob Stuart's solution, while not perfect, does make sense as it addresses the timing issues.

It’s presumable then that MQA is now, based on your own commentary in this thread, trending toward an attempt to bring all the major labels onto a universal single format bandwagon? That’s seems somewhat implicit in some of what you’ve written here and elsewhere about MQA.



You’re posting about and writing about a problem that is inaudible to normal music lovers and audiophiles, i.e., declaratively inaudible to the vast majority of people. None of the music collectors, music lovers, audiophiles, audio hobbyists and music hobbyists with whom I’ve interacted during regular listening sessions and MQA listening sessions can hear Bob Stuart’s pre- or post-ringing in the first place on any of the dozens of different CDs and TIDAL streams we’ve used for comparison purposes, and that’s why in blind listening sessions MQA’s alleged elimination of the alleged pre- and post-ringing bogeyman has also been inaudible. Ocassionally, differences are heard but not improvements.

So where are your music files right now? I’m referring to the ones you previously mentioned (in this thread) were to be sent to the MQA gang for MQA processing. Have you not yet sent them to MQA? Have they not given you the go-ahead to send the files quite yet? Have you already sent the files but MQA has not yet processed them? The query is of interest to me and others because we’re mystified by the amount of time it takes for MQA to get back to any private individual who sends files (upon invitation to do so) for MQA processing. In one documented processing session, the MQA person/people did their thing behind closed doors during the course of a single morning or afternoon. The owner of the files seemed initially pleased at the results, but then his enthusiasm waned. In any event, he was not allowed to observe MQA vodoo in action. In another documented situation, the individual submitted his files at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way, but after a year of following up with the MQA people they still had not processed his files and had also ceased responding to his follow-ups.

TIDAL is the only truly massive CD-quality stream available in Canada and the U.S. TIDAL is sinking some significant amount of money into MQA. And TIDAL, exactly like all the other streaming services, hasn’t made a penny of profit siince its startup. I really, really hope that Bob Stuart’s MQA fantasy doesn’t end up contributing to the sinking of TIDAL. The alternative streaming services in Canada at least, are all 320 Kbps at best - over-compressed low-fidelity at best. Bob Stuart’s track record as a businessman, the major labels’ well-known propensity to chase down rabbit holes, and the fragility of the music streaming business are not a great combination, and they don’t collectively augur well for a successful outcome. I would not be posting this specific thinking if MQA had ever demonstrated even a shred of benefit during any home listening tests. If it had demonstrated a pervasive audible benefit - or any singularly noticeable benefit - I’d be wholly onboard.

Your untested MQA enthusiasm and your comments (perhaps inadvertently) leveled in part at your own readers - comments specifically about closed-mindedness on the part of some of your readers - are inappropriate for anything but product marketing. Unfortunately, more product marketing is the last thing this forum needs (IMO). What most of the SHF members whose posts I’ve read come here to do is cut through product marketing in order to get to a foundation of accurate information. I don’t think that effort is helped when audiophile writers spead product marketing at SHF at the same time as they offer only a reiteration of MQA marketing collateral in response to hard queries that absolutely require hard, testable answers. Why haven’t you organized your own home listening MQA tests to actually cut through the marketing and bias you’ve absorbed? I’d ask Robert Harley and others the same question. Neither you nor they have gone even to the moderate extent that I have or that [USER=23723]@archimago[/USER] has to challenge the MQA assertions.

Once again though, the results of all of the home listening tests (using identical source comparison files - one MQA stream/one non-MQA stream, one MQA stream/one non-MQA CD, one MQA file/one non-MQA file, one MQA file/one non-MQA CD) describe MQA as a solution in search of a problem. The accuracy of the choices by home test listeners about which file or stream is which, amount to nothing better than a coin flip. All of the hype being promoted by MQA essentially disappears in the face of actual home listening tests. You know, the house, townhouse, cottage, apartment, condo, whatever, in which people actually relax and listen to their music. So how do you respond to that?