Part 2 – We Go Deep into the World of Those Opposed to MQA & Bill Leebens Speaks with GoldenSound
STRATA-GEE: This is the second installment of our series on the controversy engulfing MQA, conducted in partnership with guest poster Bill Leebens. In this post, you will learn more about those who are critical of MQA, with some going on the record for the first time for this story. MQA has been controversial almost from the beginning – with an intense opposition that ebbs and flows over time. But as we told you in our introductory installment (see MQA Controversy – A True Audio Breakthrough? Or a Marketing Scam?), a recent YouTube video critique from an audiophile not involved in the audio industry, has spurred a huge resurgence of interest (that video had over 267,000 views!), in part because of the perhaps naive but seemingly earnest reasonableness of “GoldenSound” and the heavy-handed backslap from MQA.
Learn more on why some oppose MQA
Henry Kissinger allegedly once said, “University politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.” Yes, both the origin and the exact wording are in dispute. Get over it, there is still truth there.
If there is a realm in the audio world that seems the domain of academicians, it’s digital audio: the AES Journal in the last 40 years has featured more differential equations and Fourier transforms than discussions of sound quality. It seems to be distasteful to even discuss sound as a physical phenomenon.
Personal Attacks of Bewildering Intensity
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that discussion boards on digital audio are filled with personal attacks that bewilder with their intensity, allied to topics that can’t be described in an elevator pitch, much less understood. And that brings us back to MQA, and the recent resurgence in the controversy surrounding it. In true academic style, this installment will be somewhat lengthy, and perhaps a little repetitive – but we’ll try to keep things moving.
Through the years, there have been plenty of folk in the audio biz who have expressed wariness or skepticism over MQA, raising philosophical objections, commercial concerns, dislike of sound quality—you name it, somebody somewhere disliked it and felt free to express their feelings, at high volume and at very great length. Those feelings may or may not be valid, depending on your point of view. As mentioned last time, the floodgates reopened on the topic because of a YouTube video posted by a young economics student who had long been involved in music and audio, and was curious about MQA’s claims, and its workings.
The First GoldenSound Video
If you haven’t seen it, the first video by “GoldenSound” can be viewed below. In putting together his video critique, GoldenSound did something quite clever and that no professional reviewer thought of – he submitted music files to be published on the Tidal streaming service that included embedded test-tones and other features designed to test the effects of MQA processing. You can learn of his process and findings by viewing the video below.
The video generated a lot of views and a new wave of online audio blog discussions about the relative merits or demerits of MQA. It even generated a response from MQA’s founder, Bob Stuart, which you can see in its terse and pithy entirety here: https://bobtalks.co.uk/a-deeper-look/all-that-glitters-is-not-golden/.
GoldenSound Video #2 Responding to the Bob Talks Reaction
As you’ll learn from my discussion with GoldenSound below, even though he had not originally expected to do so, he ended up responding to MQA’s blog post in another widely viewed video critique.
Feel free to go through all with a fine-toothed comb and draw your own conclusions. The point is that a YouTube poster who had previously averaged about 1,000 views on his videos, suddenly had a video with over a quarter-million views. One might infer from such that the topic already interested or concerned a whole lot of folks.
The GoldenSound Interview
I talked with “GoldenSound” – he prefers that you know him only by that name – and our exchange follows. The well-modulated dulcet tones you hear in the video are exactly what I heard over Zoom; if nothing else, he has a future doing voice-overs for Jaguwar:
Were you surprised at the amount of attention your first video received?
I was VERY surprised. When I posted that video I had around a thousand subscribers, and most of my videos would get around a thousand views or so. I figured that given the topic it’d likely get viewed a bit more than a normal review, but certainly was not expecting it to get the level of attention it did.
When you set out to make the first video, did you think of it as simply informative—or cautionary, or both?
I think it is both, I set out with the intention of performing a test that no one else had done. I felt that it would be interesting, and whatever the results happened to be, would contribute to the conversation around MQA with some good evidence.
In the end it turned out that the result of my tests showed and reinforced much of what others had shown before in other ways, most importantly, that MQA is not lossless.
There is a line between ‘fluffy’ marketing which is fine, and in this industry where everything is inherently quite subjective, is ever-present. But making a claim that a product sounds wonderful or warm or dynamic is very different to making an objective claim that a product has a certain performance spec, in this case, being lossless.
These claims should always be taken with a pinch of salt no matter what they are. Manufacturers SHOULD be called out when they give specifications that are untrue, it’s just dishonest and will lead customers into buying something thinking it is better than it truly is.
If a car manufacturer sold a ‘turbocharged’ car, which later turned out to NOT have a turbo inside, people have every right to be annoyed about that. It doesn’t matter if it’s still a great car, a fast and agile and all [a]round wonderful machine, the marketing was a lie and some people will have bought that car based on that false claim. The fact that it goes 200mph does not change the fact that this “turbocharged” car has no turbo.
The cautionary tale is that specs and claims of any product should always be double-checked, because they are not always true. And especially when a company makes it VERY difficult to actually test something, it suggests there is a reason they don’t want you to….
The tone of vid 1 struck me as outrage mixed with disappointment. In your second, after MQA’s reaction, you seem resigned and almost amused. Why was that?
In the first video I was quite shocked, I’d sort of expected MQA not to be lossless, but I didn’t expect all the issues I encountered to come up. And I was angry that many consumers, including myself at one point, had been misled into paying extra for something based on what appears to be false claims.
I was also rather disappointed that MQA didn’t respond more constructively. In their email to me and their ‘bob talks’ response, they focused much more on trying to discredit the testing rather than offering any alternative evidence or means of proving the claims. There was no real progress toward transparency made which was what frustrated me.
In my eyes, people’s money had been taken based on false or heavily misleading claims and that was a real shame.
For the second video, I was resigned to the fact that MQA was not going to offer any middle ground, access to testing, or real transparency of any sort. And that was made clear by their response once again focusing on trying to discredit me and the tests I conducted, rather than offer any evidence to show that their product does what they say. This is a recurring theme it seems, such as when they tried to counter the concerns about the ‘leaky’ filter design raised at RMAF 2018 by questioning who the source was, rather than actually addressing the concern.
They provide convincing looking explanations in their response that don’t actually hold up once you properly look at them, and they still rely on unproven claims of things such as ‘deblurring’.
And so whilst I didn’t really want to make a 2nd video as I don’t like spending hours working on something inherently rather negative, I felt that it was important to say something and leave the door open as wide as possible for MQA to be transparent and so I offered several easy ways for them to provide concrete evidence that MQA is indeed lossless.
As I mentioned before, all I asked for from the get-go was transparency. Myself and others have raised substantial concerns which fairly conclusively disprove their claims. The ball is in their park to provide real evidence to the contrary now and attacking those who are raising concerns won’t fix anything.
The MQA reaction to your video seemed to combine disdain, antagonism, and threats (“libelous”). At the same time, it seemed to avoid a direct response to most of your observations. Did you expect a different reaction from them? If so–what did you expect?
I’d agree completely. It was a long and clearly quite carefully constructed response which didn’t actually address or disprove the concerns raised by me and others at all. I didn’t actually expect MQA to respond at all, and was very surprised when I saw the bob talks blog. I’d expected that they would either simply not address the video at all and try to just let any attention from it fizzle away, or that they would make a statement with some fairly clear evidence of…something at the least.
I certainly wasn’t expecting the response they put out and if I’m honest I think it did more harm than good. Some of the statements in that response were in my opinion so clearly crafted to imply one thing whilst leaving legal wiggle room for them to say they didn’t actually claim what they were implying that they must have underestimated the intelligence of the average reader if they felt that people wouldn’t notice.
After the post came out I had quite literally dozens of people on forums, discord and via email mentioning the “MQA files are delivered losslessly” quote alone, before my part 2 video came out.
To an outsider—albeit one in the audio biz—the response from the public to your vids seems almost completely positive. Is that how it’s seemed to you?
This was actually the most surprising thing about the video. I’d expected to get a LOT of negative reaction to it. I had expected that many MQA fans would be vocal in their defense of MQA, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how positively people responded to the video.
There have been the vocal few who are very defensive of it of course, though in most of those cases not for reasons that I actually discussed in my video. The most common defense is that they simply like the sound of MQA, which is totally fine. As I mentioned in the video, anyone can and should be free to listen to what they enjoy the most. But it becomes a problem when that product infringes on the ability of others to choose if they do or do not wish to use it.
You SHOULD be able to choose MQA if you like it. But you should NOT be forced into paying more for a product because it has MQA included with no ability to opt out, and you should not HAVE to stream MQA versions of songs because there is no lossless version available.
Given that there are now numerous streaming services offering hi-res, how do you perceive the future of MQA?
I think that MQA is likely to struggle. Their company filings are public and it is clear they are losing a LOT of money. They have investors which will carry them through for at least a year or so, but beyond that, it’s hard to see how it can survive unless something drastic happens.
Their business plan seemingly relied on MQA ‘snowballing’ and becoming quite dominant as a format, and omnipresent in audio hardware. But with Apple and Spotify both offering their own lossless streaming platforms, that throws one enormous spanner in the works. This will be a struggle for Tidal as well as MQA as Apple and Spotify both have some serious pull. Even as an audiophile myself, the only thing keeping me subscribed to Qobuz at the moment is the Roon integration.
Time will tell if Spotify integrates MQA, but I can’t ever see Apple working with them. Not because of anything to do with MQA specifically but just because Apple typically prefers to just make their own alternative to something rather than work with third parties.
Not to mention, Tidal themselves are now offering subscription tiers that exclude MQA. Meaning there is little left to ‘push’ MQA to the masses and I personally cannot see how in the current market climate MQA can move from where they are now to where they need to be to make a profit.
What have you learned about MQA from having done these videos? Is there anything you’d like the public to know about your reasons or motivations for doing the videos?
I can’t say I’ve learned too much about MQA specifically. The testing for the most part just provided more evidence for existing concerns.
But as to why I made the video, it’s twofold.
Firstly, because I felt it was fascinating. I love tinkering with and looking deeper into anything to do with audio. MQA was an interesting product no matter what I or others feel about it and it was worth looking into.
One of my biggest issues in audio is that there is not much room for a curious middle ground. People tend to lean heavily into a ‘just use your ears’ or ‘measurements are everything’ camp.
And there isn’t much room in the middle to sit and go ‘hmm, this R2R DAC measures worse but sounds better than this Delta-Sigma DAC, let’s find out why that is’. And I want to make some videos to try to change that and encourage others to explore, poke at, and test things more, and challenge popular assumptions for which there isn’t much evidence.
And secondly, because false marketing irritates me. This isn’t anything to do with MQA specifically, and there are products that I like a lot which I’ll without hesitation call out false claims made by the manufacturer. In fact I have a review coming up soon for a product which will be my go-to recommendation for its price point, cause it sounds wonderful, but the review will also talk about how one of the major selling points of the product is completely untrue.
Manufacturers should be honest about what they’re selling.
Let me conclude by thanking you for your time and thoughtful explanations of the evolving issues you faced in making your case on MQA.
Others in the Anti-MQA Camp
As mentioned, from MQA’s outset, many have expressed concerns over it, both inside and outside the biz. One of the first companies to reject MQA was Scottish manufacturer Linn, which historically has been the focus of a lot of controversy themselves. The title of their initial salvo, “MQA Is Bad For Music. Here’s Why” left little doubt regarding their view.
Schiit Audio (snicker if you must), led by digital pioneer Mike Moffatt and fellow engineer Jason Stoddard, made it known early on that they wouldn’t support MQA: https://www.schiit.com/news/news/why-we-wont-be-supporting-mqa
One of the most consistent and visible non-fans of MQA is PS Audio’s CEO, Paul McGowan. His Daily Posts and “Ask Paul” YouTube videos made it very clear early on that he didn’t like the sound of MQA, or the involvement required to implement it—but ultimately, PS products offered MQA, due to demand for it. Here is just one of Paul’s videos below.
(Full disclosure, if it matters: I was Director of Marketing at PS during the period of debate regarding MQA, and its subsequent licensing.)
Industry CEO Explains MQA Fails to ‘Meet the Threshold’ of True Innovation
Digital audio company Exogal’s CEO Jeff Haagenstad echoed the feelings of a number of companies I spoke with – but interestingly enough, Haagenstad was the only one willing to go on record. This is excerpted from a much longer statement:
“In the case of MQA, there were a lot of aspects we were uncomfortable with. Having to hand over all the Intellectual Property around our proprietary DAC to a company with a historical connection to Meridian was uncomfortable. The fact that in testing, we were not achieving the same results as claimed was uncomfortable. We were repeatedly assured that if we handed over the IP, MQA could be “tuned” to our DAC architecture. Also, the backbones (1GB home internet, 4G mobile, etc.) for streaming high resolution files had improved dramatically to the point where you can stream true high resolution music, in a car speeding down a freeway, with no losses or glitches, seemed to obviate the usefulness of a semi-lossy compression scheme. Since we had a lot of questions around both the business issues and the technical efficacy and usefulness of MQA, we decided to roll the dice and pass. We weren’t making a judgment on whether or not MQA was an actual innovation, it just didn’t meet the threshold that EXOGAL has set for what qualifies as innovation for us, our products, and our target customers.”
Audio Bloggers Weigh In on MQA
And of course, the online commenters have their say as well.
“Archimago’s Musings” has appeared as a Blogspot since 2012. The heading on the site says, “A more objective take on audiophile topics among other topics.” Through the years he has taken on technologies he views as deficient or overhyped, as well as companies that he views as disingenuous or misleading. MQA – both the technology and the company – have frequently been targeted. In an entry from 2017, he wrote: “I don’t like talking about MQA based on my general impression of what they’re trying to do and the way they try to convey supposed ‘value’ to the audiophile world through their advertisements and sponsored articles in the audiophile press. Nonetheless, sometimes it’s just necessary [italics his] to comment and more importantly to put some of the rhetoric to the test. There appears to be a remarkable schism between those who advocate and praise MQA and those who have concerns. I’m pretty sure there are many wishing that MQA would just go away instead of complicating music playback with yet another questionable variant.” See more here: https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/mqa-a-review-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/.
According to the “About” page on the AIX Records site, Dr. Mark Waldrep is “the head of the Audio Recording area of the Division of the Digital Media Arts Department at CSU Dominguez Hills, founded and manages AIX Media Group, AIX Records, and iTrax.com, the world’s first high definition, surround music download site.” Waldrep records music in 96/24 PCM, and through the years has come out against higher-rate hi-res recording as being unnecessary, decries DSD, and following early curiosity about MQA, became an ardent opponent. He has frequently linked to or featured Archimago’s criticisms of MQA, and recently lauded the GoldenSound videos on his blog: https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7258
Editor of Audiophile Style Says that MQA is a ‘Solution in Search of a Problem’
Finally: the website Computer Audiophile and its subsequent incarnation Audiophile Style have been harsh critics of MQA for years, and Editor Chris Connaker was the presenter during the MQA-related dust-up at RMAF a few years back. His statement regarding MQA is surprisingly moderate and focuses on control issues. By agreement, it is here presented intact:
“I’ve always looked at MQA as a solution in search of a problem and a Federal Government style approach to music playback as opposed to letting the states (equipment manufacturers) decide how best to digitally process audio. In addition to manufacturer choice limitations, MQA Ltd’s stated goal of providing record labels with a single deliverable MQA file for all services removes consumer choice for playing non-MQA music. Many consumers are taking advantage of the expanding application of digital signal processing for convolution, room correction, Dolby ATMOS audio, and user-selectable filters, all of which are incompatible with MQA. For many consumers who’ve lived through proprietary music formats, and some who turned to piracy because of it, the time to use freely available technologies that have proven extremely capable over two decades has come. Newer isn’t always better, especially if there’s a tax associated with it like there is with MQA.”
Next Installment – MQA Supporters Have Their Say
This installment has focused – at great length! – on the critics of MQA, and the recent resurgence of criticism of MQA, indicating that an undercurrent of interest and concern has long existed. The next installment will focus on the enthusiastic supporters of MQA in both the audio and music worlds and a long chat with founder Bob Stuart.
A Bill Leebens Guest Post
Bill Leebens has been a published writer since the age of 15 and has worked in audio since he was 16. He edited Copper magazine while at PS Audio and has also worked in automobile racing, medical imaging, and even as an IRS tax examiner. Bill lives in Colorado with two impatient dogs and several very patient humans.
Reach Bill at: bill@leebensllc.com
I find it difficult to ignore the irony in GoldenSound’s cries for transparency from others while simultaneously refusing to even provide their own name.
Hi GlennQNYC,
First, I want to thank you for being a long-time reader of Strata-gee! I truly appreciate it!
Second, in regards to your comment about GoldenSound: At first glance, it might seem as though GoldenSound is being inconsistent. But I beg to differ. And while GoldenSound is perfectly capable of answering your point without my help, let me throw my 2 cents worth into the mix:
– GoldenSound revealed his true identity to us, but to encourage his open participation we decided not to include it in the story
-His actual name is not necessary to validate his criticisms. He is NOT saying, ‘You should accept my facts as true because I am an expert in this technology.’ In that case, you would need to know his actual identity to determine if he is truly as expert as he says. But in this case, he is not claiming any particular expertise. He conducted a test…which was fully described…and had a certain result which he fully revealed. He held nothing back, no secret process or hocus pocus – all was revealed for your inspection and comment.
-GoldenSound approached this project from an academic perspective. As my math teacher son would say, “He showed all his work.” If he had made a mistake, he was fully prepared to have others test his process and point out where he was right or wrong. He was conducting sort of an informal peer review system.
-GoldenSound is not a person, but an online business, with website and social media. Much like many people call me “that Strata-gee.com guy” rather than my name…one tool to promote your online business is to do everything under that business name.
-Finally, there has been a long history of MQA pushing back hard against criticism…even when it’s meant to be constructive. Part of the controversy surrounding the brand is that they made many bold claims in the beginning and evidence emerged that appeared to challenge that. The company has pushed back hard. FOR EXAMPLE, I have had several people warn me against publishing anything about MQA, that it would be dangerous. I was told by more than one person that the pushback would be hard and dangerous. So I understand someone being reticent to put their personal identity out there to open the door to bad things happening.
As a long-time reader, you have seen many stories from Strata-gee – some of the biggest stories – where I had to grant anonymity to one or more sources. While Leebens suggests this allows people to say things they would not say in public, my experience is that this allows people to tell you the truth, protected from backlash. By the way, granting anonymity for sources to pursue a story isn’t unique to Strata-gee.com, this is true of all major news organizations – without protecting sources from possible or likely retribution, all you would ever read is sanitized copy that bears little resemblance to the truth of the situation. News stories wouldn’t be news, they would be an endless stream of PR fluff.
I applaud GoldenSound for his gumption to come forward – whether his position is right or wrong – and put his findings into the public domain for scrutiny.
Thanks again GlennQNYC for sharing your thoughts!
Ted
My perspective is the only “gumption” is criticizing someone else’s transparency while keeping your own identity secret. I used irony, but after consideration, perhaps hypocrisy is a more apt description.
This attack wasn’t casual; it was tactical and deliberate. They should be forthcoming and open so everyone can see where any of their personal motivations may be.
I find the obvious escalation in your rhetoric interesting. You have moved from noting “irony” to accusing “hypocrisy.” The GoldenSound MQA review, with its clever approach to testing the entire MQA process that none of the professional technology reviewers thought of trying, is an “attack.” And, you tell us that this attack, was, like some kind of military maneuver, a “tactical” one…even “deliberate.”
But you have no comment on the results of the GoldenSound testing, whether it does or does not effectively undermine certain assertions of MQA, or perhaps otherwise offer your alternative argument of what you believe are the advantages of the MQA system.
We can have a healthy discourse on the GoldenSound review, his methods, his findings, MQAs approach, MQAs response, the uniqueness of the MQA system design, the resulting MQA sound, and your beliefs on MQA…all without knowing GoldenSound’s identity – or your identity for that matter.
Thanks for reading and contributing!
Ted
You are correct; I haven’t commented on specific assertations from GoldenSound nor MQA here. While I find the topic interesting to observe, but I don’t believe I have a unique enough perspective to add anything meaningful to the discussion. This audiophile is largely agnostic on MQA.
Again, my contribution is purely focused on the concept of complaining about a business not disclosing its proprietary intellectual property, while simultaneously not willing to disclose its own identity.
This lack of disclosure would be far less of an issue if we were talking about a casual comment added on a forum or blog, but that isn’t the case here. This was anything but an objective and unbiased review. We are talking about a covert and strategic plan to attack and diminish the value of MQA’s technology in the marketplace. Personally, I find this behavior malicious and shameful.
GoldenSound is attempting a version of peer-reviewed science. If they want their work respected they need to be transparent. Then, we can properly evaluate their qualifications and potentially uncover any personal interests they may hold. Personally, I disagree that we can properly discuss GoldenSound’s video without knowing whom it is making the accusations. What drove them to go to such lengths as they did to disparage MQA’s IP?
As they say- Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Let’s not assist in keeping GoldenSound’s identity in the shadows.
Glenn Quatrochi
(real name)
Glenn,
I guess we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. As Michael notes, GoldenSound’s identity will not help you draw any conclusions. He is unknown to the industry. He is an audiophile with a curiosity of how things work, and, I would say, a disdain for any who makes unverifiable claims. You can draw no conclusions or “influences” if you will from his name. You can infer more from watching his video critiques, there are several available on other products than just MQA.
What drove him? To learn the truth about MQA is what drove him. And you can tell that from his methods, discussions, and conclusions.
Consider this: You claim to be agnostic about MQA, but your word choice betrays a different characterization of your feelings. Now GoldenSound is “malicious” and even “shameful.” Either you’re seeing something in his videos I’m not seeing or perhaps you are trying to goad him into a response.
I know your name, that tells me nothing about your motives or point of view. I draw my conclusions from how you express yourself and your choice of words.
Finally, you said, ” If they want their work respected they need to be transparent.” Did you watch his videos? It is very clear that his work is very transparent. He told you exactly what he did, why he did it, and how he did it.
So my friend, as I said at the start…I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Ted
Actually a reply to your next comment, but there was no reply link on that one. I looked at another GoldenSound video about a totally different topic. My takeaway from both is that he’s a guy very into the minutiae of digital audio. He also has strong opinions, some of which I think are simply wrong (that human hearing is much more sensitive to time-domain errors than frequency-domain errors, for example), but then, I have strong opinions, too. And he seems to be pretty much of a perfectionist. Taken together, it inclines me that he’s being straight up in his criticism and that his main motivations are an intense desire to feed his DAC the best signal he can and a companion desire to get more digital gear to play around with and test. I, too, would prefer to know who he is, but just knowing his birth name might not provide any more insight than knowing his internet handle. Most of what we know about anyone who does any sort of criticism typically is gleaned from the criticism itself. Does knowing my name help you evaluate my comments? Ted and Robert have known me for (too many) years, so they have more context, but you probably know less about me than you do about GoldenSound at this point.
In any event, the guy has shown his work, which can stand or fall on its own. And even if he turns out to be dead wrong technically, there’s still the question of whether MQA fills any real need. It only about halves the data rate achieved with FLAC alone, after all. A service like Tidal could offer two easily understood tiers: FLAC-encoded 48-kHz/20-bit PCM or, at a premium, FLAC-encoded 96-kHz/24-bit PCM for those convinced they can hear the difference. That FLAC is free saves money for everyone, especially consumers, who have to fork over for a fancy decoder to enjoy the presumed benefits of MQA. I realize that MQA claims to add value through an ability to optimize for the characteristics of original recording equipment, but, honestly, that sounds like a fairy tale even apart from GoldenSound’s reasonable critique of the idea.
A refreshingly cogent explanation of MQA can be found at https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/mqa-explained-everything-you-need-to-know-about-high-res-audio/4/.
Glenn, every criticism of Bob Stuart and MQA has been tactical and deliberate since January 2, 2017. The goal has been stated often enough, the liguidation of MQA LTD and the intellectual property not in Bob Stuart’s or Dolby’s hands.
The lack of due diligence about MQA by companies like KEF has surprised me. Dull accounting information should have trumped the audiophile press promoting MQA before it was a real product. And Bob Staurt told me MQA changed the sound of a recording but he didn’t tell anyone else? Seems far fteched to me.
Interesting comments, but I have no idea what they mean.
1. What’s the significance of the date?
2. “Tactical and deliberate”? That suggests organization–by whom? And who has stated the alleged goals? I sure haven’t seem them anywhere.
3. Your second graph seems to imply that there’s no there, there—so what’s the IP that is supposedly under attack?
4. What seems far fetched? It’s unclear what, exactly, what is far fetched.
I appreciate your comments, but they’re more cryptic than illuminating.
I also know his name.
Really nice guy.
There certainly is that.
I am not a fan of internet anonymity or the use of monikers (“GoldenSound”, “Archimago”).
I understand why people do what they do: the world, especially the world online, can be harsh, unfair, vicious, cruel, and even evil. I get it.
However, my Midwestern upbringing is deeply ingrained, and I have Harry Truman bouncing around my brain: “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”. But that’s me.
I fear that anonymity frees up people to say things they would never say in real life—assuming there is a separation between “online life” and “real life” any more. I further fear that such behavior creates an upward spiral of aggression as dueling commenters can safely hide behind their monitors, lobbing fireballs at one another from the comfort of Mom’s basement.
I’ve been online for 25 years, and have had some fairly high-profile gigs where I was often a target. But I have ALWAYS posted under my own name, which isn’t exactly “John Smith”, either. There is one and only one “Bill Leebens” in America, AFAIK. I have nowhere to hide.
There are times when I wish I could hide. There are times when I look back at indiscreet comments I’ve made and say, “Leebs, ol’ buddy, ya really shoulda just STFU.”
Oh, well. I’m here, with my own name. Others can and will do what they think is necessary.
So it goes.
Thank you Bill and Ted for this. It is interesting. One of the challenges for MQA is also that the landscape has changed. Originally Bob proposed this as full encode/decode system, but was rejected by an industry that a) already had a full range of options and b) is full or artists and others that want to do it their way.
Considering this, the appeal was to be able to run one system to serve them all. However, costs have come down and the top services as we see moved ahead (again each in their own way). It does not seem likely for them to change tack now.
However, I doubt that MQA is some form of marketing scam and I believe Bob acts in good faith trying to improve things. As to the fate of MQA we will see.
thanks again
Robert
Robert,
Thanks for your insight into this story. I just wanted to jump in and make clear that we are NOT saying that MQA is “some form of marketing scam.” We only sought to present a picture of the controversy that has surrounded the company since its founding. There are those out there who DO suggest that it is some form of marketing scam – and it would be impossible for Strata-gee to cover the controversy without acknowledging that this is part of the discussion. But we HAVE NOT taken a position on this argument.
THANKS again for your contribution!
Ted
Again, I haven’t kept up with this very well, but: Did MQA ever actually claim that the process is lossless? I’ve looked at the current, rather sketchy, explanations they offer online, but nowhere do I see a claim to losslessness, only to the ability to reproduce the sound of the original masters. On the flip-side, the same claim could be made for pretty much any good lossy codec. They do claim better than CD quality, which is dubious, at least for the vast majority of recorded music. (CD’s 16-bit/44.1-kHz PCM coding allows dynamic range greater than almost anyone would tolerate in home listening and frequency response extending well beyond the limit of nearly all adult listeners.) Bob Stuart himself, back in the day, conducted listening tests demonstrating that listeners could not hear the difference between original audio and CD-quality digital. Not a very marketable position these days, but truth.
Michael,
Yes, in the early days they did claim lossless. But they have changed that claim recently to “Better than lossless” – which is marketing-speak at it’s best (worst?)
Ted
Yeah, “better than lossless” is kinda out there. Maybe it has to do with the apparent claim that they can go back and fix problems introduced by A/D converters and such earlier in the chain. Perhaps associated with the filter-mania that has permeated conversations about digital audio almost from the beginning. Lots of focus on minor discrepancies that are obliterated by loudspeakers (which almost without exception do not preserve the waveform) before being even more completely obliterated by the human hearing system. Reminds me of a conversation I had with the Nakamichi brothers, back at the dawn of the digital era. They were, realistically, on point with their concern, which was that their business was built on attending to small deviations — actually audible deviations — that digital audio effectively put out to pasture. The solution adopted by the high-end audio community was to misconstrue how digital audio works and to fixate on errors and deficiencies largely inaudible and certainly minuscule relative to what we routinely accepted from LP playback. Guess this is why I don’t pay much attention anymore. :-)
Hi Michael, as of a couple months ago, mQa was still advertising lossless audio on its Japanese website.
Also, here is the registered trademark and logo for mQa Lossless.
https://uspto.report/TM/85965607
Hi Guys, thanks for including my quote verbatim. With respect to anonymity, it matters not, when objective repeatable data is involved.
2+2=4 whether your John Doe, Joe Bloggs, or Bob Stuart.
When we at Audiophile Style published Archimago’s article about mQa, I knew his identity and stood behind the story. If there were inaccuracies in the story I’d take full responsibility and it was my reputation at stake.
Attacking anonymity for GoldenSound’s videos doesn’t make sense. Attack his tests and prove him wrong. That’s where the high ground is, not in going after the person running the repeatable tests.
Last, after receiving threats against my young daughter from a keyboard warrior, I encourage everyone to stay anonymous if at all possible. The train has already left the station for me, but others should use a pseudonym if they still can.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Chris. And thanks especially for contributing to our story.
Ted
I used to advocate for self-identification, and I still strive for that in circumstances where I feel comfortable. But there are a lot of crazies online these days.
Jeez, I haven’t received a death threat in 10 years.
I feel neglected.
Bill, to answer your questions.
The date is the post MQA is Vaporware in what is now Audiophile Style. The thread has more than 1.5 million views and more than 23 thousand replies. It is the primary place for dissent about all things MQA.
Bob Stuart said early on anybody who says MQA has Digital Rights Management in is trying to destroy my company. Ok, the second paragraph of MQA is Vaporware is about Utimaco the company who did the DRM. Their MQA case study is still on their website.
Who has the stated the goals? Not alleged goals, nice try though. You didn’t see it because you weren’t reading the Vaporware thread. Other current examples are:
Archimago June 6, 2021 Stereophile “Give us ONE good reason for MQA to exist in 2021?
Mark Waldrep June 18, 2021 Real HD-Audio “Apple Lossless Audio is Death Kneel for MQA”
The IP is whatever the investors bought in 2015 from Meridian Audio Limited.
It seems far fetched to me that Bob Stuart didn’t tell anyone beside me (at the LA Audio Show in 2017) that MQA changed the sound of the recording.
The Vaporware thread is the organization, a central place where information could be shared and used to counter the audiophile press promoting MQA. I am amazed at the anger toward the audio press and marketing types by manufactures and technically astute audiophiles. Finally, I want to encourage people to continue to be critical of anyone supporting MQA.