TIDAL Brings MQA, Matt analysis

[Todd Anderson]

So for you the sound quality of movies matters more than the sound quality of music?

I actually find it hard to judge absolute sound quality with movies. Music is much more where sound quality matters for me.

Yes. Outweighs it by quite a bit.

 

[ddude003]

I would consider it niche even if I’m a part of it. It’s total world wide market is $1 billion. It’s expected to remain stagnant or shrink. By comparison, home theater is about 15-20 times that size and is growing (and that is still considered a small and unhealthy market segment). Headphones alone are almost the same size market segment as home theater today.

Smart speakers is like a 10 billion dollar market and rapidly growing.

So when individual product sectors are selling ten to thirty times more product in revenue than the entire broad high end audio market, I think it’s fair to call it niche.

If you are talking about the market segment considered by many to be "Luxury Home Audio" with components costing $5,000 or more and with speakers costing $10,000 or more per pair, I would agree that this segment’s total world wide market is at $1 billion today... And we both know you don't have to spend $15K on a system to get into the world of High-Res sound... We are also splitting hairs as there is Hi-end Smart speakers and Headphones which may also fall into the Luxury segment as well as other areas of overlap... Marketing segments are often arbitrary and chosen by Marketing folks that aren't even in the industry they report on...

Although we are seeing some consolidation in this and other segments, there is expected world wide growth in all segments... We will again have to agree to disagree...

 

[Todd Anderson]

If you are talking about the market segment considered by many to be "Luxury Home Audio" with components costing $5,000 or more and with speakers costing $10,000 or more per pair, I would agree that this segment’s total world wide market is at $1 billion today... And we both know you don't have to spend $15K on a system to get into the world of High-Res sound... We are also splitting hairs as there is Hi-end Smart speakers and Headphones which may also fall into the Luxury segment as well as other areas of overlap... Marketing segments are often arbitrary and chosen by Marketing folks that aren't even in the industry they report on...

Although we are seeing some consolidation in this and other segments, there is expected world wide growth in all segments... We will again have to agree to disagree...

I agree with the notion that you don't have to spend $15K to get Hi-Res sound. I'd even argue you can spend as little has $1500 and get great Hi-Res sound.

I don't have any info on how healthy or large the high-end segment is. My personal perceptions are purely speculative based on some industry conversations I've had and my impressions of what the current teenage/early 20's generation seems to want (paired with the massive movement toward convenience based technologies).

My impression is that the industry is watching the high-end buyer segment age... and there's some concern that the next wave of buyers isn't really being cultivated. Or hasn't been cultivated. But that is all generalizations.

And the luxury segment definitely has blurred lines.

 

[ddude003]

Meanwhile, back to MQA... Codec description from the wiki... MQA encoding is lossy... Let me say this again...

MQA encoding is lossy... It hierarchically compresses the relatively little energy in the higher frequency bands into data streams that are embedded in the lower frequency bands using proprietary dithering techniques.

After a series of such manipulations, the resulting 44 kHz data, the layered data streams, and a final "touchup" stream (compressed difference between the lossy signal from unpacking all layers and the original) are provided to the playback device. Given the low amount of energy expected in higher frequencies, and using only 1 extra frequency band layer (upper 44 kHz band of 96/24 packed into dither of 48/16) and one touchup stream (compressed difference between original 96/24 and 48/16) are together distributed as a 48/24 stream, of which 48/16 bit-decimated part can be played by normal 48/16 playback equipment.

One more difference to standard formats is the sampling process. The audio stream is sampled and convolved with a triangle function, and interpolated later during playback. The techniques employed, including the sampling of signals with a finite rate of innovation, were developed by a number of researchers over the preceding decade, including Pier Luigi Dragotti and others.[13][14]

MQA-encoded content can be carried via any lossless file format such as FLAC or ALAC; hence, it can be played back on systems either with or without an MQA decoder. In the latter case, the resulting audio has easily identifiable high-frequency noise occupying 3 LSB bits, thus limiting playback on non-MQA devices effectively to 13bit. MQA claims that nevertheless the quality is higher than "normal" 48/16, because of the novel sampling and convolution processes.[15]

Other than the sampling and convolution methods, which were not explained by MQA in detail, the encoding process is similar to that used in XRCD and HDCD.

However, unlike other lossy compression formats like MP3 and WMA, the lossy encoding method of MQA is similar to aptX, LDAC and WavPack Hybrid Lossy, which uses time-domain ADPCM and bitrate reduction instead of perceptual encoding based on psychoacoustic models.

This may account for the issues you are seeing with MQA... I apologize for not including the footnotes referenced above...

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Meanwhile, back to MQA... Codec description from the wiki... MQA encoding is lossy... Let me say this again...

MQA encoding is lossy... It hierarchically compresses the relatively little energy in the higher frequency bands into data streams that are embedded in the lower frequency bands using proprietary dithering techniques.

After a series of such manipulations, the resulting 44 kHz data, the layered data streams, and a final "touchup" stream (compressed difference between the lossy signal from unpacking all layers and the original) are provided to the playback device. Given the low amount of energy expected in higher frequencies, and using only 1 extra frequency band layer (upper 44 kHz band of 96/24 packed into dither of 48/16) and one touchup stream (compressed difference between original 96/24 and 48/16) are together distributed as a 48/24 stream, of which 48/16 bit-decimated part can be played by normal 48/16 playback equipment.

One more difference to standard formats is the sampling process. The audio stream is sampled and convolved with a triangle function, and interpolated later during playback. The techniques employed, including the sampling of signals with a finite rate of innovation, were developed by a number of researchers over the preceding decade, including Pier Luigi Dragotti and others.[13][14]

MQA-encoded content can be carried via any lossless file format such as FLAC or ALAC; hence, it can be played back on systems either with or without an MQA decoder. In the latter case, the resulting audio has easily identifiable high-frequency noise occupying 3 LSB bits, thus limiting playback on non-MQA devices effectively to 13bit. MQA claims that nevertheless the quality is higher than "normal" 48/16, because of the novel sampling and convolution processes.[15]

Other than the sampling and convolution methods, which were not explained by MQA in detail, the encoding process is similar to that used in XRCD and HDCD.

However, unlike other lossy compression formats like MP3 and WMA, the lossy encoding method of MQA is similar to aptX, LDAC and WavPack Hybrid Lossy, which uses time-domain ADPCM and bitrate reduction instead of perceptual encoding based on psychoacoustic models.

This may account for the issues you are seeing with MQA... I apologize for not including the footnotes referenced above...

Maybe. If that were true I would expect to primarily see only issues in the ultra high frequencies however. This larger project has the help of a digital signals experts. We are both a little baffled and waiting for official word from MQA on diem fidnings. The best guess is that some of this is the lossy encoding and some of this is actual eq of the tracks. Since I am not directly testing MQA but rather Tidal vs Qobuz, there are a ton of variables in the mix. I don’t have a simple way to test MQA tracks directly. I need to find a player with software decoding and try that. I don’t really want to spend any more money on this project for now since this wasn’t the purpose. The guy helping me believes strongly this is de-emphasis eq that shouldn’t be there. Like the music didn’t have emphasis eq applied but the decoded track was de-emphasized anyway. I also found something he didn’t notice. He was using a method to match levels based on the average over a wide range from 500hz to 10khz. Well I found the levels to be lower at high frequencies from 800hz to the max bandwidth. So his matching method was matching in a way that emphasized the Low frequencies. So we need to retest the tracks now using a low frequency level match method.

It also explains an odd result I didn’t share earlier because I thought it was a mistake. When I made a difference track I had a ton of musical cont my. It just sound s like a slightly quieter version of the song.