Want to see hypocrisy on a level never seen before? Here are a few quotes by Amir from his MQA thread. Replace a few terms and see where his arguments lead. Market demand, customer preference, live & let live, etc.
A few of my personal favorites:
“…not remotely big enough problem for people to go after. People do because it gives them a platform to shout about online and make a name for themselves. Look at me. MQA is there. And I am here.”
“It has become a “thing” to dump on MQA on Internet forums. Getting on board that hate wagon seems to have value to folks.”
“We are just an annoying bunch of non-customers for the company. We have to be straight and honest about this.”
“If we are so worried, it seems that we think it is solving real problems!”
Amir quotes:
Huh? I see plenty of users saying the MQA files sounding better with no industry association. And of course they are subjectivists of which Archimago is not one. So all the “we” parts of the article are non-sequitur. Archimago is not the target audience for this format so his personal misgivings are neither here nor there.
The bigger wrong by far is Blu-ray, not MQA.
Really, in the world of audio today, MQA is not remotely big enough problem for people to go after. People do because it gives them a platform to shout about online and make a name for themselves.
Look at me. MQA is there. And I am here.
Whatever it wants to do, doesn’t impact me one bit.
It is just one more thing for people want it to consume it. For the other 99%, we can all go about our business.
That said, I have said elsewhere that I think I can hire the right signal processing experts to build an open-source competitor to MQA for around $100,000. Everyone who is up in arms on this should create a funding campaign and I will then get the people to build it. If it is not worth that kind of funding to people complaining the most, then it is not an important problem to solve.
If it becomes ubiquitous, it means the consumer has spoken and wants it. In that case, that is it and we better not complain.
Way too much energy is wasted on this topic really. It has become cause célèbre for a number of people, distracting from otherwise useful work that could be done.
I also don’t get the sense that any of this negative fighting has had any effect. The people championing MQA are in the population of actual consumers of high-res audio and hence their opinion matters a lot more than someone like Archimago who has fought that notion. It is like Android users trying to tell Apple users to not buy iPhones. It just doesn’t work.
If we are so worried, it seems that we think it is solving real problems!
The notions you all use to scare people from MQA simply don’t hold water. They are scare tactics, no more.
Our nose better be damn clean as we criticize MQA. No argument better be made that “they did this so it is fair for us to do it too.”
The people you want to fear are Apple. You know, Apple pay and such. You guys want to do the world some good, go after them. Complaining about MQA? Give me a break…
It might be but there is market demand for higher sample rate so tech companies rise up to support it.
Again, they do this because there is demand for it.
It has become a “thing” to dump on MQA on Internet forums. Getting on board that hate wagon seems to have value to folks. Why else would Chris volunteer to give that talk? It has become a political movement of sorts.
Well, here we have them attacking a little company, i.e. MQA.
In contrast they have embraced large companies like Apple. Apple sues third-party shops for trying to fix their products for heaven’s sake. Wouldn’t energy be better spent to go and deal with that than MQA?
Yes, that is what I am saying. I am being pure and pragmatic about my argument. The market for MQA content is NOT objectivists. They don’t believe in high sample rate/bit-depths anyway so they are not the customer.
The customer is most likely a subjectivist. He wants to see those specs on his content. We can’t wear the hat of objectivism and complain about MQA
We are just an annoying bunch of non-customers for the company. We have to be straight and honest about this. A ton of arguments about MQA reads like “if it were not lossy, we would like and support it.” Facts is that “we” want to have nothing to do with high-res content in any form.
Once again, there is market demand for sample rate/bit depth above CD. MQA meets that demand while not requiring the full bandwidth.
It doesn’t matter that it is an illusion. It is what the customer is asking. If he wants Wagyu beef, you can’t give him a different kind of beef. That is what he wants to put on the menu.
If that content lights up the 352 kHz light as it did for me in Roon, he is golden.
Instead of that, you are saying the service provider should advertise that he has 16 bit/96 kHz. And that it is automatically generated/chopped down from the master. That is not the offer he wants.
The only answer to MQA is an open-source competitor. You cannot talk people out of using MQA with just some word arguments. MQA has a value proposition that is working in the niche market they are going after to some extent. That market is real. It is there. Success to date of MQA proves it. Building something like MQA is not hard. Folks should do that instead of complaining.
As a wise man once said, ask not for the other person to change, but think of how you can change. You cannot hold back MQA. Chris can do 100 of those talks. It won’t matter. Tidal folks are not there watching it. Don’t waste your energy on me or in forum arguments. Create a gofundme or whatever and get a few DSP people to build this after hours. I think it will take $50K or so to get there.
If it is not worth that kind of effort, then I don’t want to hear about it.
That may be so but your solution lacks bling and sex appeal. It immediately makes an audiophile think you left something on the table when you converted that 384K sample rate to 96 kHz. You may think that there is no difference there but you are not the customer.
A simple modification of flac encoded content though with metadata to say “original was 384k” and upsampling in the player accordingly will go a long way toward closing the marketing gap with MQA.
As I keep saying, “this forum” is not the target customer. “This forum” is just well happy with 16/44.1. The target customer cares very much for such numbers.
A few member replies:
maverickronin
Why is that a valid excuse for a media format to be substandard but not for the latest '“designed-by-ear” DAC or amp to cross you test bench?
maverickronin
If you’re going to say it’s just what the consumer wants because they think they hear a difference then it’s no different from ‘multibit-magic’ DACs.
Back to Amir quotes:
You guys keep wanting to make the meal the way you want versus what your customer wants.
MQA uniquely does this right now. Until you show me how you can convince audiophiles to take CD rips, they are going to fill this niche.
Again, the target customer doesn’t believe that. He wants what is there and is not going to take your opinion instead.
As technologist we could sit in the corner and pout, or build them a solution that doesn’t use exorbitant amount of bandwidth. MQA has decided on the latter. This is the elegance that you are missing in MQA which I appreciate.
maverickronin
So? They’re wrong. Why can’t we tell them they’re mistaken? You do it all the time with reviews of physical electronics.
Interestingly, @amirm hasn’t really shown any apparent interest in the work of @mansr. On the contrary, @amirm has given the community the impression that @mansr doesn’t understand MQA properly.
