MQA, Worse than FLAC?

[Gregadd]

So this video appeared on you tube. MQA false claim to be lossles?

MQA, Worse than FLAC?
I am sure this is beyond my pale. It is quite an indictment of MQA and tidal appears guilty by association. That is assuming the author's facts are true and correctly interpreted.
That is also dependent on the resultant sound. quality. I think we can agree, if you pay for something you should get it.
Reading terms like "subjective preference' indicates an objectivist who is openly hostile to anything greater than lossless.
The author may seek to add fuel to fire the argument against the necessity for anything greater than redbook

 

[Gregadd]

Paper 2 MQA Response
You tube

 

[Al M.]

It would be more useful if you would post links. Here they are:

Testing MQA: Is it worse than FLAC?

TLDR: MQA isn't lossless, is arguably worse than normal flac, and is seemingly nothing more than a (quite effective) scheme to generate licensing fees. With the frustrating addition that if you are a Tidal user, even if you have no MQA dac, and use the "Hifi" streaming quality setting, MQA encode...

audiophilestyle.com

 

[Gregadd]

Point taken about URL

Imo there is nothing unique about lossless. It does not matter to me how you get there. I see no reason to pay a premium for it. It would appear ot is less expensive for them bit more expensive for the consumer. Fobo you don't want your product left on the shelf because it does not support MQA.
Memory is progressively less expensive. That means compression plans become redundant.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Imo there is nothing unique about lossless. It does not matter to me how you get there.

That is true but MQA has admitted that it is not lossless. It is said to be better than lossless.

 

[Gregadd]

That is true but MQA has admitted that it is not lossless. It is said to be better than lossless.

Did they really?
Better than lossless? You or they are going to have to elaborate on that. Who is saying that? MQA? You?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Did they really?
Better than lossless? You or they are going to have to elaborate on that. Who is saying that? MQA? You?

You will have to look it up in the MQA discussions on AudiophileStyle but this is not my statement (although I relay it with tongue in cheek).

 

[Gregadd]

I think they obfuscated and did not admit anything

An admission that MQa is less than lossless would mean there original claim for whatever teason is false.
My admittedly rudimentary understanding of digital suggests lossy can never be superior to lossless.
I welcome a correction should it be warranted.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I think they obfuscated and did not admit anything

True to form.

An admission that mqa is less than lossless would mean there original claim for whatever teason is false.

They have said as much without being overt.

My admittedly rudimentary understanding of digital suggests lossy can never be superior to lossless.

Agreed.

I welcome a correction should it be warranted.

I don't have the time or inclination to re-visit the issue. I try to ignore MQA.

 

[Gregadd]

Well there are those who are deeply concerned. I guess I am late to the party.
A weak rebuttal is the same as an admission.

 

[MPS]

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

It is not very surprising if a lossy coding would not match the sound quality of the lossless original. What makes more sense is to compare the lossy HR MQA to standard CD-quality version, do we get improved sound quality with equal amount of bit stream or not.
As always there will be people's personal opinions that will never be totally in unison with that of others. There are downloads with and without MQA coding so everyone can make up opinion of their own by experimenting.
One thing to note is that the support for MQA decoding will vary from device to another.
Then there are differences between different streaming services, masters and remasters etc..
It'll never end but that's what it is to be a addict to SQ.

 

[Gregadd]

I almost hate to say it. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own set of facts."
Consequently you can argue your sugarless pudding is as good as the original. But you can't deny that it is sugarless.
.

 

[MPS]

I almost hate to say it. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own set of facts."
Consequently you can argue your sugarless pudding is as good as the original. But you can't deny that it is sugarless.
.

That's a good point, sometimes opinions get taken as facts which they are not.
Any opinion is a correct one but only to it's holder whereas facts are facts to each and everyone.
I'm still not too sure what's all that has to do with MQA or FLAC.
It's a fact that MQA is lossy and original (whatever that might be) is lossless as it is. FLAC is a lossless container but it might carry a lossy MQA or lossless data depending of the source material.
We could discuss about whether MQA is better or worse than something else but I see very little point in doing so as better and worse are mostly personal subjective opinions. However it's a fact that MQA will not carry information in 100% accuracy being a lossy codec. My personal opinion is that Tidal MQA "Masters" seem to sound better than their standard CD-quality versions and so I would normally opt to play the "Master" version if available. Since Tidal does not stream lossless HR material and I'm not purchasing HR downloads, I have no opinion about MQA vs HR but I would never deny that MQA is a lossy version of the original.

 

[Gregadd]

I think the producer aptly sidestepped the issues of sound quality. For me that is the linchpin.
So the question is should MQA charge for something they are not providing? The answer should be obvious.
In addition Imo compresion schemes are not worth a premium. For reasons I have already stated.

 

[K3RMIT]

I don’t own and mqa CD players and I don’t own an mqa dac so I can’t hear the last unfold.
I will say mqa is better in sound but I feel it’s a rigged reason. first off mqa takes great stuff and
eq and then adds the mqa special sauce stuff. on tidal to me it’s very good.
regarding lossless or lossy
I think a given format matters to a given dac / server. why I dont know and I’m sure I’ll get bashed now.
my fav most times is AIFF
wav coming second but wave is complex there is two kinds I know of the holy grail one I dont think is better amd to me aiff is above wav.
even if I convert flac to aiff it’s better on air and top end
there also is lossless flac if one unchecked all the boxes. still aiff or wav win to me.

 

[K3RMIT]

I almost hate to say it. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own set of facts."
Consequently you can argue your sugarless pudding is as good as the original. But you can't deny that it is sugarless.
.

Hey my facts are facts all the rest who dont agree with my facts are just fake facts

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Any opinion is a correct one but only to it's holder whereas facts are facts to each and everyone.

Yes. And they remain facts whether or not any individual denies them.

 

[Gregadd]

If you check my signature line.

 

[Daverich4]

If you check my signature line.

Not sure if this is of any interest to you or not but this MQA thread was started 4 years ago and as there are currently over 23K posts in it pretty much every aspect of MQA has been discussed and argued to death.

MQA is Vaporware

MQA was launched on December 2014. It is now January 2, 2017 so let’s see where MQA is at today. Remember all the people who said that MQA was not Digital Rights Management? Well Utimaco disagrees. “MQA turned to Utimaco, a leading manufacturer of hardware-based security solutions that provide th...

audiophilestyle.com

 

[Al M.]

Not sure if this is of any interest to you or not but this MQA thread was started 4 years ago and as there are currently over 23K posts in it pretty much every aspect of MQA has been discussed and argued to death.

MQA is Vaporware

MQA was launched on December 2014. It is now January 2, 2017 so let’s see where MQA is at today. Remember all the people who said that MQA was not Digital Rights Management? Well Utimaco disagrees. “MQA turned to Utimaco, a leading manufacturer of hardware-based security solutions that provide th...

audiophilestyle.com

Yes, that's a good thread, I have read quite a bit of it.