Only if you want to use Tidal and access the mqa bullshit there.Warner is replacing all their music on Tidal with MQA. If the studios decide to only supply MQA, then you will no longer have a choice.
Only if you want to use Tidal and access the mqa bullshit there.Warner is replacing all their music on Tidal with MQA. If the studios decide to only supply MQA, then you will no longer have a choice.
Is it better than lossless? Yes, that's the sort of progress you should expect from the world-class team who developed lossless compression in the first place (30 years ago).
No. Licensing for hardware decoding has nothing to do with rights management of the content. DRM is designed to protect the rights of the content owners, not hardware makers. To the extent you can freely copy any MQA content as purchased, then it has no "rights management."
Licensing to decode MQA is no different than license to activate Windows. Or use your phone on a carrier.
And you don't need to freely copy output of your DAC as that is analog anyway. You are free to give me a copy of said file and I can play it without paying the license holders. I can play that file without MQA decoding, or with.
The fact that you have issue with MQA making licensing fees has nothing to do with "DRM." Video codecs have licenses. Every TV you buy pays for these licenses. Every Blu-ray player pays for these license. They also then add DRM so the original content can't be distributed without authorization. No such thing exists in MQA yet you consume content on your PC/BD player, but complain about MQA?
Hmmm. Nice meaning guys but 44 minutes of the presentation is on audio in general and nothing to do with DRM. The first presenter actually starts trying to justify that there is audible difference between audio cables! That all you have to do is listen for a while. I assume you post it due to the saying, "my enemy's enemy is my friend. :"
They started giving away the "crown jewels" well over a decade ago. Where have you been? You have not been go HDtracks where you can get huge library of high-res files with zero copy protection?Nonsense. MQA, which is 21% owned by the major labels, has been clear in public interviews that the attraction for the labels - the rights-holders - is that they can put out "high-res" digital music without "giving away the Crown Jewels" aka the unmolested PCM files.
This is MQA's plan. It has nothing to do with record labels which continue to happily distribute normal PCM and in the case of smaller studios, DSD files.The entire purpose of MQA is to market "high-res" files that are simultaneously "as good as or better than" the original source and yet at the same time keep the full resolution of the original source locked up inside a proprietary format that cannot be "given away" aka can only be live-streamed through MQA-capable equipment that has an MQA tax built into it.
This is MQA's plan. It has nothing to do with record labels which continue to happily distribute normal PCM and in the case of smaller studios, DSD files.
Since the baseline MQA files are playable on any system, your assertion to the contrary is wrong anyway. Nothing is "locked" because the baseline PCM file plays everywhere. Since vast majority of people and I assume some of you could care less about high res files anyway, I am not sure why you would care that the MQA extension requires a license.
Importantly to the extent MQA is mainly available in a streaming service, you could not tap into that service without "DRM" anyway. The streams are proprietary whether they use MQA or not, requiring Tidal endpoint to play the content.
I predicted long time ago that major providers would get into this business without doing MQA and that is what happened with Amazon. Having proven right in that regard, I suggest not trying to second guess what I used to do for a living day in and day out.
They started giving away the "crown jewels" well over a decade ago. Where have you been? You have not been go HDtracks where you can get huge library of high-res files with zero copy protection?
The world of audio has changed. Record labels gave up on copy protection once Steve Jobs convinced them to distribute MP3s/AACs in the clear. Once they did, they no longer cared one bit about copy protection. All the execs that were trying to "protect the crow jewels" were fired and new regime could care less. You show up with a check to pre-pay MGs (minimum guarantees) and you too can start to distribute studio masters with zero copy protection.
Perhaps you have heard of the little company release HD masters that wall called Amazon?
You are repeating talking points from late 90s and 2000s. The people who say such things have zero experience in the field. I suggest not listening to them.
I wonder though. There is the question of watermarking those HR files. Personally I couldn't care less if the record companies keep the crown jewels. Just give us well mastered redbook and I'm happy.All the execs that were trying to "protect the crow jewels" were fired and new regime could care less.
Sure did. It mandated HDMI with HDCP copy protection which killed analog component video. We went from a format that just worked -- analog HD component video -- to a format that has been nothing but grief (HDCP in HDMI). Heck, they even mandated new audio formats in Blu-ray could not play through Toslink and Cox by edict! You can only get those streams through HDMI/HDCP breaking a bunch of other scenarios. Before that Dolby AC-3 and DTS could play through Coax/Toslink with no copy protection. So insertion of copy protection happened and happened good.The reason I don't complain about Blu-Ray is that Blu-Ray did not insert itself into a pre-existing market of high-res digital discs that were freely copyable, better quality, and lower cost.
I think that is the real market that exists. Create a high-res master that is prior to compression for CD and online destruction. Sadly no one is championing this even though it is so easy to do. Ton of people who prefer LP to CD do so because of lack of such loudness compression in LP.Just give us well mastered redbook and I'm happy.
Dumb? What is dumb about it? Record labels tried high-res+ copy protection in the form of SACD and DVD-A. Both formats failed and that was that. Dumb would be to forget that history and want to repeat it with some screwy scheme with MQA to go after the high-end of the audiophile market! Typical exec is worried about getting their artist high up on Spotify playlists not some scheme called MQA. And putting the Genie back in the bottle with DRM.There you go again: Just because MQA's and the labels' reasons for the DRM are dumb doesn't mean MQA is not DRM'd.
Thank you for sharing your well informed perspective. In your opinion is MQA, from a consumer perspective, good, bad or neutral?This is MQA's plan. It has nothing to do with record labels which continue to happily distribute normal PCM and in the case of smaller studios, DSD files.
Since the baseline MQA files are playable on any system, your assertion to the contrary is wrong anyway. Nothing is "locked" because the baseline PCM file plays everywhere. Since vast majority of people and I assume some of you could care less about high res files anyway, I am not sure why you would care that the MQA extension requires a license.
Importantly to the extent MQA is mainly available in a streaming service, you could not tap into that service without "DRM" anyway. The streams are proprietary whether they use MQA or not, requiring Tidal endpoint to play the content.
I predicted long time ago that major providers would get into this business without doing MQA and that is what happened with Amazon. Having proven right in that regard, I suggest not trying to second guess what I used to do for a living day in and day out.
To the extent MQA is seeking better masters for their encodings, then it is a good thing. If not I think it is neutral.Thank you for sharing your well informed perspective. In your opinion is MQA, from a consumer perspective, good, bad or neutral?
I think that is the real market that exists. Create a high-res master that is prior to compression for CD and online destruction. Sadly no one is championing this even though it is so easy to do. Ton of people who prefer LP to CD do so because of lack of such loudness compression in LP.
Let me turn around the question: why on earth is the community going after him instead of the countless people selling junk to audiophiles? Why don't they all get together and go after the people behind those products? After all, few if any of them have the credentials and contributions Bob has.
People really have the wrong guy here. Bob knows more about signal processing than all of these people going after him:
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If these people have something to say that is proper and devoid of emotion, then they should write a paper and submit it to AES.
I will say this direct: this dog don't hunt. They should not go after Bob as an individual. He has more than enough qualifications here.
And his contributions in the case of MQA is significant. It is not easy to build a perceptual codec that is backwards compatible with PCM.
Indeed if people want to beat up MQA, they should build their own version of it. If that solution is open and free, then the market can rally around that and MQA will die assuredly.
Obviously others disagree and what is why MQA exists and hasn't closed shop. Fact is that high-res audio has some market credibility and MQA does as well. To the extent there is enough demand for said formats, there will be supply to meet them.There is no need for MQA, so why would people want to produce their own version?
Sure did. It mandated HDMI with HDCP copy protection which killed analog component video. We went from a format that just worked -- analog HD component video -- to a format that has been nothing but grief (HDCP in HDMI). Heck, they even mandated new audio formats in Blu-ray could not play through Toslink and Cox by edict! You can only get those streams through HDMI/HDCP breaking a bunch of other scenarios. Before that Dolby AC-3 and DTS could play through Coax/Toslink with no copy protection. So insertion of copy protection happened and happened good.
Furthermore watermarking was added to the content itself to detect the source of such content. Whereas before you could camcorder a video and put it on a disc and play, now a watermark check and detect the content to "not be authorized to be on blu-ray disc" and refuse to play.
Despite the world massively going towards ripping CDs to hard disk, studios did everything in their power to make this difficult if not impossible to do with Blu-ray discs.
Even the blu-ray drivers themselves have authentication logic that handshakes with the player. This is exactly what MQA does yet you seem to say you are cool with that.