Tidal + MQA

[Tore]

Tidal + MQA : http://tidal.com/no/masters?utm_source=vero&utm_medium=email&utm_content=control&utm_campaign=MQA%20Churn


Peter, what do you think about this?

Tore

[PeterSt]

Hi Tore,

First a very general response (probably too general) :

Doing it this way will only degrade SQ.
Btw on a side note I can not interpret "through the desktop application only". Maybe it means that we can not get it through the API (how XXHighEnd does it). But this is not really crucial as of now because :

The other day I asked P.B. (you know) and it was the 4th time in a row that he just did not respond. Maybe he does not like me any more for some reason. I also had questions about where the API description had gone, because it has gone. All implies two major problems :

1. I won't be able to make any decoding for MQA because I just don't know how to;
2. Without knowing the proper calls to the API I wouldn't be able to get to those albums (in that format).

Otoh, you asked my what I think about this. Well, this and I think like this for several months by now. I just don't know where to go to.

Best regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

Hmm ... I just looked again for the API page(s) and see that they are back now (but all different). So, good ...
But at this time I see nothing about MQA. I will search further for it ...

Peter

[Tore]

OK, thanks

I will test MQA on my Rega dac later


Tore

[PeterSt]

FYI :

XXHighEnd just plays those MQA albums, which Tidal calls "Masters". But I did not find a way yet to search for them via the program. If you want to try them, look for them first in the Tidal Desktop Application (not the player in Browser version !) under What's New and then in the ALbums section under Masters.

For those who can't easily install the Desktop Application, here's one you can search through XXHighEnd and find the right one unambiguously when you type this in Album Name :

The Division Bell*

The one you see below is the one you need and notice that this comes forward as a 16/44.1 because it requires an MQA decoder to make it "hi res".

Regards,
Peter

[GerardA]

Would this help:?

For implementation manufacturers, we have two potential routes to market for supporting MQA on your products: (1) by you supporting the MQA engineering team and getting them up-and-running with your development platform. This way, they can port the technology themselves (minimising engineering costs on your side) and generate object code to supply to product manufacturers; or (2) by becoming an Implementation Licensee, which would give you access to MQA source code. You would then port the MQA technology to your platform in-house, and distribute the MQA technology as firmware at the point of sale. For more information about getting MQA implemented on your platform, please contact us.

[PeterSt]

Hi Gerard,

Yes, I know. Now wait until I tell you the fees for this fun. If you read the document (which you apparently did) then you've seen GBP 5000 - 20000 to be expected. The latter will be the first situation mentioned and the former possibly this last situation. Now let's wonder who is going to pay this. 100 of you for 50GBP per person ? I wonder. Maybe it is 10 ad 500 the person. And because of that it is zero persons.

Maybe others can help out, but it looks like that the whole idea of "adopts to the ADC used" story has disappeared from the encoding. In the past I read about this; today nothing any more (but this doesn't necessarily tell all). So what will MQA be then ?
Hires !!!
Yahoooo

Uhm, ... but I already have those and I don't like it.
So if MQA will only be about smaller sized Hires which even has been manipulated (and things surely do NOT look good at this moment) and all what people shout about is that it sounds different while everybody says it sounds better (we know us), then nobody will even like to have it for free.

Please notice that for the time being I can still say things about this. But this will end today or tomorrow because of being under NDA (I already am) and will receive non-public information soon.

Best regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

A small update on MQA :

To be honest, from the start of hearing about it, I have been excited already. However, it seems it has been difficult to get this going, which also is related to a sort of chicken-egg thing because MQA was non-existent. This latter now changed recently and people (can) go two directions with it :

1. Without any real knowlegde of technicalities have some judgement and because of no knowledge debunk it (as a kind of MP3);

2. With clearly in mind what the deep purpose is, understand what issues theoretically can be solved which never could be solved before.

Ad 1.
This is what we see happening at this moment all around us (other forums etc.).

Ad 2.
This is why forums are controlled by what we may call "idiots" (between quotes) with only the hope that me and all of you of this "community" stay with both feet on the ground - and how forums may kill good initiatives in advance.

On a side note I have tried to remain neutral, however, the sheer fact that I asked many months ago (via Tidal, August 2016) and did not receive an answer (for actually the 4th time in a row) is, well, poor marketing. I too started to be biased because I did not run into any force against that.

This all now changed;
At this moment, what counts for me, is how we can unleash the forces of MQA via XXHighEnd and beyond, knowing that there is one and one only software player which suits 100% exactly what's MQA's goal : no ringing with the Arc Prediction filtering which thus exists nowhere else. If this is combined with the inherent vehicle that drives MQA, you will indeed see that the result will be unheard.
The path to it is a tough one, because we can only know the result after all has been developed. And well, good that music playback is my own hobby, so I can always think I am doing it for myself, right ? Anyway, this makes me 10x more enthusiastic than DSD, to name something.

Now we have to wait until I receive the necessary tools ... (with no idea yet how much work will be involved to get something going)

If anyone has questions, just shoot. But please keep in mind that I can only "unveil" things which have been unveiled before by MQA themselves. This is different from understanding it all, and your questions can easily be about that and I can try to explain.

Peter

[manisandher]

OK Peter, here are a couple of really simple questions (for my simple mind!):

1. If an MQA file has been derived from a digital 24/192 master, can it sound even better than the master on replay?

2. Apart from DSD, is there such a thing as a non-ringing ADC?

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Mani,

1. Yes. Notice this addition : even right in the studio but not to the extent of many of us with our NOS1 DAC.

2. I suppose not, but the question is (sort of) irrelevant IMO.

Notice that the ringing subject is "dangerous field" because, mind you, "we" with our Arc Prediction zero ringing filter are a. spoiled and b. have totally accepted the phenomenon. This, while a whole other world does not accept it at all, just because they don't like the plots coming from it and next don't listen as well. This means that :
MQA commercially expresses the very same as I (and we) do, with the small notice that we were long gone first.

If we now totally accept what "we" are doing and like, for us -and only for us !- things counter (is that English ?) and what "we" can gain is the frequency domain. Ha !
So for those who like the Custom Filtering (to whatever degree) over Arc Prediction on its own, already know that they like a bit of better supported frequency domain for the better. So the gain is in the exact different corner from what you might expect at first glance, while the whole of the other world has no clue.
As a bonus we should have even less ringing which is what you hint at with #2.

As you know, I operate almost fully theoretically, which as far as I can tell always works out (never mind some times theories nobody can follow). In rare occasions the theories follow practice because something happens which is at first not understood or thought to be irrelevant;
In the MQA case it is to be noticed that I never listened to it, but that I also notice that without exception that I have seen, everybody likes it for the way better. Watch out, because I am not talking about today's "Tidal trials" and whatever happened in the Tidal Desktop App which could be wrong or half or whatever, but which is not hardware and most certainly not under my own control. Point now is, when all is done properly, people gain on the ringing just because they used different software and DAC from what we mosty use. So envision : ringing is deminished (to some degree) while the DAC used rings as much as it ever did.

Do you now have an idea of the #2 real answer ? It is only that we both can not guess by far what happens when both are brought together in decent fashion (like NOS1a and MQA and Arc Prediction somewhere in the chain as well). Now my theory : you will drop dead, assumed you like XXHighEnd over anything else for the same reason but which really can apply only half of it all : non-ringing during playback.

Peter

[Tore]

http://audiophilereview.com/cd-dac-digital/mqa-master-streaming-on-tidal-rules.html

[acg]

Peter,

To date I have been a bit "meh" about the MQA stuff in general, but if you are suddenly excited by the possibilities then I will be as well. 

If the result is access to "the best masters" of the recordings plus with XXHE we will end up with a mix of fabulous time and frequency domain then that does sound very nice to me.

Cheers,

Anthony

[PeterSt]

The other day I asked P.B. (you know) and it was the 4th time in a row that he just did not respond. Maybe he does not like me any more for some reason.

Hmm ... I just learnt that he left Tidal close to a year ago. That explains all ...

Peter

[PeterSt]

All,

Suppose that you have been trying that Division Bell album and thought "hmm, not much difference to what I am used to !" ... then this was correct; After quite some days of "fighting" and puzzling what could be wrong (because things did not look as expected), it was just found out that the internal Tidal ID of Phasure was not MQA enabled.

So if you *now* want to listen to the undecoded MQA version you can retry and you'll have the real thing.
Remember : UNdecoded is not good in itself, but it could tell how bad it really is (I did not listen yet).

If you look below ... things change regularly and the one named "24/96 download" or whatever it was, does not exist any more (or I don't see it any more). You'll want the right one (mind the left one which shows red whatever between the mouths and which is just 16/44.1. So if you get the other one it should show 24/48 (with the notice that it will be something like 16/48 "net" (without MQA decoding) but that's another story).

Peter

PS: Don't mind the {} number you see below; this is new in XXHighEnd.

[PeterSt]

Here's a nice example of what just that tad of extra resolution can do, assumed the (re)master is not flawed.

This is Led Zeppeling III, track 01, "Immigrant Song". If you look at second ~88 and 120 you see that something wants to happen :

While the above is Redbook (16/44.1) with a sharp roll off filter, you can see below what actually wanted to happen (so to speak) :

This is the (software) decoded MQA version in 24/96, with the notice that this probably is a re-recording in 24/96 from analog because of the high noise you see. It can be taken that this noise has been there right from the start in 1970.
OK, wait, here :

So yes. And what we also nicely can see is why we like to avoid Remasters, because it is easy to see how the previous both versions are completely "overblown"; about all ends up at the maximum level of mind you (!) frequency. Thus the Redbook version has more variation in frequency (level per tone). Nice eh ?

Peter

[PeterSt]

What you see below went a kind of automatically (I made the screenshot for some reason, outside of our interest). But it could be introduced as a standard feature, perhaps. It would allow to see what we are going to listen to ...

[PeterSt]

[acg]

All,

Suppose that you have been trying that Division Bell album and thought "hmm, not much difference to what I am used to !" ... then this was correct; After quite some days of "fighting" and puzzling what could be wrong (because things did not look as expected), it was just found out that the internal Tidal ID of Phasure was not MQA enabled.

So if you *now* want to listen to the undecoded MQA version you can retry and you'll have the real thing.
Remember : UNdecoded is not good in itself, but it could tell how bad it really is (I did not listen yet).

If you look below ... things change regularly and the one named "24/96 download" or whatever it was, does not exist any more (or I don't see it any more). You'll want the right one (mind the left one which shows red whatever between the mouths and which is just 16/44.1. So if you get the other one it should show 24/48 (with the notice that it will be something like 16/48 "net" (without MQA decoding) but that's another story).

Peter

PS: Don't mind the {} number you see below; this is new in XXHighEnd.

Hi Peter,

Probably a stupid question, but I do not see any MQA results for "The Division Bell" when I search Tidal on XXHE 2.07-05.  Should I?  Or is this something that only you can do with your beta XXHE?

Regards,

Anthony

[PeterSt]

Hi Anthony,

Now I don't get how you'd see "MQA results" as such ? ...

If you - at this moment - type
the division bell
in the search field for Album Name / General, the MQA one comes up (but you won't know it). When you'd type
the division bell*
in there, the other one also shows (denoted "Remastered").

Notice that you can only see the 24/48 when you press Play on a track of it. Thus,
Load album
Play
then after some "Prepare" it starts playing and you see the 24/48 if you have the right one. If that does not happen, let me know.

Regards,
Peter

[acg]

Hi Peter,

If I type in either of those searches just the single album appears which is the Redbook version.  No remaster and no MQA it seems.

Regards,

Anthony

[PeterSt]

But Anthony, if that is so it has to be what's provided for Australia. So that too matters. Nah ... What can you find in the Windows Desktop App (mind you, only this one !) ? Via Search I mean, and then look in the right hand border.

Anyway, I see no normal without the "Remaster" text. And the other one (with normal text) is MQA.

Peter

[acg]

Yes, of course, I should have known.  I checked the tidal app and only the redbook version of "The Division Bell" is available.  I downloaded "Killing me Softly" as a master and played that today.  Nice.

[manisandher]

At this moment, what counts for me, is how we can unleash the forces of MQA via XXHighEnd and beyond, knowing that there is one and one only software player which suits 100% exactly what's MQA's goal : no ringing with the Arc Prediction filtering which thus exists nowhere else. If this is combined with the inherent vehicle that drives MQA, you will indeed see that the result will be unheard.

Hi Peter, has your thinking on MQA advanced any further?

FWIW, I've compared the MQA version of 'The Division Bell' (HD 24/96 Download Version) to the CD rip I have, and I believe it does indeed sound different. But here's something weird...

In my office, I use Roon -> HQPlayer -> NOS1a pretty much exclusively. If I play the MQA version from my hard drive, it sounds very different to the MQA version streamed directly from Tidal. In both cases, a 24/48 file is being outputted by Roon, which is then upsampled to 768 705.6 in HQPlayer before being sent to the NOS1a. The Tidal streamed version sounds substantially 'cleaner'.

Because both files are 24/48, I'm assuming there's been no unfolding of the MQA file in either case. So could the difference in SQ be attributed solely to the means of accessing the file (i.e. from a HDD on my music server vs. streaming from the internet), and the respective associated noise profiles of each mechanism?

Mani.

[PeterSt]

has your thinking on MQA advanced any further?

Hi Mani,

Not only thinking, also many hours of work.

Assumed that your Roon version supports MQA (and the screenshot seems to tell so), the streamed version will be unfolded. Your HDD version will not because you don't have the right XXHighEnd version for that (haha). So via XXHighEnd you will be listening to 24/48 and via Roon to 24/96.
Also via Roon you miss a stage of so-called "unfolding" because you need hardware to do that. Next, if you'd have the hardware, you can't use the software any more because this is not allowed. Also, you would not be able to use any of the filtering (of HQP or XXHighEnd, etc.). These things I never see told and only insiders (me) know it.

I have the hardware here but I am not sure what to do with it because it requires the usage of a pre-amp or other attenuator, because without that - not allowed again.

MQA, by now, is a missed chance, if it had any chance in the first place; its technical merits brought it to its own grave.
I just have not been able to listen to it in the way it is meant, because as you know, any attenuator kills the sound (for me) right away and so the apples and oranges difference will be huge because of that already. There is just no way out.

What I can do though is the same as you do with Roon but then via XXHighEnd, and there is no way I want to listen to that (after trying hard, I mean). Of course this starts with the good old sh*t that it all so necessarily needs to be Hires of the same sh*t kind as we are used to from all the falsifications from everywhere, although I notice that most of the masters are different. Different, but still no Hires to be seen anywhere (XXHighEnd 2.08 automatically generates the spectrograms for you, which I made for the very purpose).

Of course there's much more going on ...

Regards,
Peter

[manisandher]

Assumed that your Roon version supports MQA (and the screenshot seems to tell so), the streamed version will be unfolded. Your HDD version will not because you don't have the right XXHighEnd version for that (haha). So via XXHighEnd you will be listening to 24/48 and via Roon to 24/96.

Thanks Peter.

I don't this is important really, but let me just reiterate that I didn't use XXHighEnd at all in this comparison - I was using HQPlayer in both cases. I don't think there was any unfolding going on because HQP was showing a 24/48 input in both cases. Yes, the HDD screenshot shows 'MQA 96kHz', but I have no idea why - Roon is not capable of doing any unfolding... yet. Maybe it means 'would be 96kHz if unfolded'?

MQA, by now, is a missed chance, if it had any chance in the first place; its technical merits brought it to its own grave.

OK, this was what I was really after. In a way, I suppose it's a bit of a shame because we can only work on 'half of the equation'. But on the other hand, when regular 16/44.1 files sound as good as they currently do, I'm not that upset.

Maybe non-ringing ADCs will become the standard in the future, in which case we won't need MQA anyway.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Maybe it means 'would be 96kHz if unfolded'?

What it "officially" says is that the native file is 24/96. Whether the 24/48 can be "unfolded" to that is something else (and if Roon can't do that then apparently it can show this data from the file (already)).

Peter

[manisandher]

Yep, I think that's exactly the case.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Hi All,

Let's say that strange things are happening;

Yesterday was the 3rd day that I could listen to MQA without any disturbances of explicitly preparing an album, not being sure whether it played correctly and all kind of more things that can distract. IOW, I have MQA playing as should, and this includes the Prepare from Tidal which is like a breeze now. In other words : find album in MQA version, Prepare it, play it.
In reality this goes a bit different, because one can spend quite some time in finding MQA versions of the albums or artists you like. So it is hit and miss for say 75% when you try to find one album of one of your beloved artists, but if you do this on the couch with the tablet and XXHighEnd at the other end set for that (on the Music Server PC now), then the time spent goes unnoticed and the PC is doing the work for you in the background. So this is how I last Sunday Prepared 20 or so MQA albums, which I can still benefit from tonight (but almost ran out so I need to spend some time again).

Back to the strange thing :
At first I was sure that MQA sounded different but that I did not like it at all. It was even ear-hurting IMO. I never expressed so much about it, although all what you may have read from me (mainly elsewhere) is hints which allowed either direction (so I'd always be right later ). But in fact I did not like it at all, and one of the strange things is that I held on.
I didn't count the hours spent, but it really ain't few. And, say that I left off 2 months or so ago because things got a bit difficult and I faced the hurdle of formalise all or get rid of it (the get rid of it is still in my ToDo as a fact), ... I sat down to eliminate all for you (from the XXHighEnd software I mean) and ... instead I thought of finishing it because of the wasted time otherwise. Additionally it seems that nobody is really able so far to bring an MQA player forward on the Windows platform, so that motivated me to accomplish it after all.

Maybe it is because I made it all neat and formal with MQA icons and blue and green (or no) lights and everything, and maybe it is because I really liked the result of it, also observing that what XXHighEnd can do, others won't be able to (haha) ... but when I then pressed play I only heard good things.
Is it psychological ?
I can't imagine that I can be fooled by that, but maybe I can after all.

Maybe it is because I never compared or looked back at normal Redbook (CD), which btw in itself is because I wanted to explore the next MQA album (). But anyway, with the first one coincidentally a success and the success continuing, at this moment I "don't know better" and because I am not disturbed I continue. On the other hand, I am a little bit afraid for all the albums I played 3-4 months ago, and which I each for each did not like at all; they had potential but I didn't like them. So at this moment I avoid those ...


I am not trying to bail out by any means, but there is something else which - I am confident - is highly related. Thus, I have applied something new and this improves all over vastly. And the stupid thing is, I am able to reason out how what I heard from MQA previously, is now not a problem any more. I find it unbelievable myself, but I think this is just so. It is only that the guys at MQA don't know about this, nor could they anticipate it.


With all of it together, there's an unbelievable clarity to the sound which - in my thinking - only leads to less inherent distortion. But it is very difficult to think that for real.
For now it motivates me, though.

Peter

[acg]

Sounds promising then?  I'm looking forward to what comes of it Peter.  There are some guys in my part of the world that love what they are hearing from their MQA dacs and players, but I take all that with a grain of salt...after all they are already starting from behind us regarding SQ.