The rMQA: the lossy codec no end user asked for or needs.
By Douglas Whates 25th April 2017
“Hey, let's reinvent the wheel!”
MQA: it’s 1999 all over again...
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I’m not going to work up to a punchline with this rambling essay. I’ll lay my cards on the table right here in the opening paragraph and reveal that I’m skeptical about MQA, and you should be too.
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If you’re wondering what MQA is then you are one of the lucky few who have avoided the publicity. MQA is an audio codec—something like PCM, DSD or MP3—invented by Meridian and now owned and licensed under the company MQA Ltd.
The grass is always greener…
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MQA is just DSD all over again. Remember a few years ago when SACD/DSD was the answer to our prayers? Remember how this new wonder-format solved all the “problems” with traditional PCM. Remember how DSD marketing bleated on about the shortcomings of traditional PCM, time-smearing, steep low pass filters etc.?
The grass is greener on the other side. (Well, it depends on which direction you are facing.)
But also remember how our world turned upside down when it came to pass that DSD64 wasn’t good enough. Then DSD128 wasn’t good enough. Now we have DSD256. And DSD512. And DSD-wide, and, and, and… does it ever end. Please, let’s not go through this whole process again. Let’s stop playing this empty number game. I feel like it’s 1999 all over again with MQA. I beg you, boycott this new format before it’s too late.
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I’m not suggesting a good recording can’t be made in MQA. What I’m stating is this: excellent recordings can be made and relayed in any number of existing digital formats—DSD or PCM, for example. While my own preference is for the latter, there is very little to distinguish between these digital formats and, in ideal conditions, either will play back music which is neither “digital sounding”, nor lacking in fidelity. Comparing MQA to PCM/DSD is comparing apples to apples, particularly if we take physical media (CD-A/SACD) out of the equation. This is not comparable to the vinyl vs CD debate. This is not even analog vs. digital.
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Make no mistake about it: MQA is digital. It uses ADCs and DACs. However, rather disingenuously, MQA Ltd are being very ingenious in their marketing and avoid all mention of the word “digital” (unless it is to specifically disparage other digital formats). They don’t ever talk about MQA in digital terms. They are trying to create a “them-and-us” attitude. They are saying “Digital is bad”. I say “Pot calling the kettle black.”.
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This new kid on the block—MQA—let’s get real… it’s just another digital algorithm. I’m certain excellent recordings can be made in MQA format, but that’s not the point. For reasons which will become clear, MQA Ltd are set on besmirching the reputation of all other digital formats, and I’m not okay with that.
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This new kid on the block—MQA—let’s get real… it’s just another digital algorithm. I’m certain excellent recordings can be made in MQA format, but that’s not the point.
Campaign Trail
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As with all great smear campaigns, MQA Ltd are going to great lengths to expose those dark secrets held by the other candidates. From the MQA site:
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“There’s a problem with digital—it’s called blurring”
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“[MQA] will sound better than CD, the music will be unfolded, reproducing every element that's in the original recording”
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“Standard digital recording and playback (regardless of sample rate/resolution) smears the timing information and thus distorts the musical input.”
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“When a sound is processed back and forth through a digital converter the time resolution is impaired – causing ‘ringing’ before and after the event.”
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Time-smearing this. Neuroscience that. They are trying to give us jitter-fear. Couple that with the pedalling of those same old buzz phrases we’ve been assaulted with time and time again, describing MQA thusly…
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“studio quality”
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“master quality”
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“reproduces the sound of the studio master”
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“step into the magic of the original performance”
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“every tiny drop of emotion is authentically reproduced”
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“a more natural and authentic sound”
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“the result is truly magical”
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...it’s so predictable as to become an embarrassment. We’re told “you can be sure you’re hearing exactly what the artist approved in the studio”. This is all marketing puff. Let me redress the balance.
If you're wondering why the sound engineer looks smug, it's because he knows he is the only one who will hear what the engineer heard in the studio at this session. Because he is the engineer in the studio at this session.
Reality check 1: no one will ever hear what the mastering engineer heard in the mastering studio, let alone what the musicians heard in the recording studio. That would involve being there, at that time, in that particular studio with that particular setup. It’s simply ridiculous to posit that you can sit there in your living room listening to your MQA enabled device and miraculously hear exactly what the mastering engineer heard.
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Reality check 2: Until such a time as music is directly injected to our brain, we listen to music through loudspeakers. Even the world’s finest loudspeaker through the world’s most advanced amplification lags way, way behind high-end DACs in terms of neutrality, time-domain and phase accuracy. The bottleneck is in the speakers, not the source.
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Reality check 3: The hype that MQA is some sort of revolutionary format and that we’ve heard nothing like it before is far from reality. The differences are subtle and in all instances could be attributed to the different hardware used either in rendering or playback.
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The hype that MQA is some sort of revolutionary format and that we’ve heard nothing like it before is far from reality.
But, but… isn’t PCM plagued by pre and post ringing? Answer: if you’re hearing that, then it is the sound engineer or AD/DA designer’s fault, not the fault of current digital encoding/decoding.
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All this MQA marketing hype and I haven’t heard of one reputable, objective test proving human beings can hear any significant improvement (note: improvement, not difference) between this new format and any other hi-res digital format. I’m patiently waiting to read about a single, unbiased, scientific test where someone accurately and consistently identifies MQA as better than PCM. Consumers deserve more than words; we deserve facts.
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And lest we forget: MQA is a lossy compression format. While it compresses in a pretty innovative way, lossy is lossy; let’s agree to call a spade a spade.
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And lest we forget: MQA is a lossy compression format. While it compresses in a pretty innovative way, lossy is lossy; let’s agree to call a spade a spade. Even if we go with the marketing spin and accept that MQA offers hi-res quality in smaller file sizes; well, umm… isn’t that what we already have with FLAC? On top of which, FLAC is genuinely lossless. Yes, we already have a lossless, open source format which is supported by a huge number of devices.
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While you may think I’m anti MQA, that’s not necessarily the case. Or if I am, it’s not for the reasons you might think. I’m sure it’s a perfectly capable technology, but no more or less so than existing digital encoders. That’s the point. We don’t need MQA. No really. It’s completely redundant.
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Q. Why do we need MQA? A. We don’t.
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If you’ve made it through my lengthy preamble, the natural thing to ask yourself is why are Meridian & MQA Ltd making such a big deal about MQA? Why are they spending such a huge amount on marketing? What’s in it for MQA Ltd? I’m glad you asked…
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A very worrying (sinister?) aspect of MQA is that it is a proprietary format.
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A very worrying (sinister?) aspect of MQA is that it is a proprietary format. Creators must pay a license fee to encode in MQA format, and likewise, people making the playback hardware must pay a license fee to implement MQA in their DAC. Similarly, developers wishing to use the format in their streaming platform (e.g. Tidal) must pay (per stream?). It doesn’t take Hercule Poirot’s shrewd investigative skills to realise that MQA stand to make quite a substantial fortune from their new format, should it gain traction.
What we really need is another Dark Side of The Moon release, right?
If this is proprietary technology, and if the existing formats are good enough and free to use, one might be asking why two of the majors, Warner Music Group and Universal Music, recently signed big deals with MQA Ltd. The answer is very simple: the “big three” record labels (Universal, Sony and Warner) LOVE new formats. Just when the execs are starting to panic that they’ve milked their cash-cows dry they can re-release their entire catalogue in a new format and the dumbfounded consumer will buy it all over again, desperate to part with their cash on yet another reissue of DSOTM or Hotel California or Gaucho. And because it’s a new format, the labels can charge even more money. The MQA marketing department have ingeniously planted this idea that MQA can resurrect old masters and correct problems with converters used during the mastering. Yes, that’s right: digital remastering of digital masters. Such a patronising solution to a problem nobody ever noticed (or worse, doesn’t even exist).
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It is ingenious marketing, I’ll give them that. It brings all us insecure audiophiles out in a big rash of upgradeitis.
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It is ingenious marketing, I’ll give them that. It brings all us insecure audiophiles out in a big rash of upgradeitis. We poor hi-fi enthusiasts start to wonder, “maybe the original AD converter used by Greg Calbi at the mastering session wasn’t good enough and maybe if I sprinkle my Graceland disk with this new MQA fairydust Paul Simon will magically materialise right in front of my very eyes.”.
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(Related aside: when talking about original masters, it is very telling that MQA’s marketing team have chosen to use the word “reproduce” as opposed to “replicate”. Given that MQA’s success depends on large record label endorsements, they wouldn’t want to openly suggest that MQA is better than the original master. The last thing record labels want to endorse is the idea a mass produced product could flawlessly replicate the original master; they would much rather keep on pumping out those remasters in new formats, remember?)
If you look closely, you'll note that Lieutenant Columbo (right) appears to be saying "pardon me for saying this sir, but that just seems like DRM by the back door.".
The sinister news doesn’t end there though. Aside from being merely a proprietary encoding technology, MQA Ltd goes one step further and part of the license agreement is that an MQA signal can be decoded and “authenticated” only on commercially-licensed equipment. In other words, the unpacked data must be fed directly to an on-board MQA-compatible DAC and output in analog form. (If that sounds like a familiar paradigm, it’s because it’s SACD all over again.) It doesn’t take Lieutenant Columbo’s level of dogged curiosity to realise this amounts to Digital Rights Management by the back door.
One step forward, three steps back.
MQA is not a step forward, it’s a proprietary, lossy digital format which rewards corporations and conglomerates, not artists or end-users. Digital, be it PCM or DSD, has been good enough for years and years now. PCM in particular is a mature and wonderful format whose shortcomings we have all but completely eliminated. I’ll go further and say that, in the right hands, the humble Redbook CD (44.1KHz/16bit) is a very capable format. This is not empty conjecture, but real world experience recording and listening to a huge variety of music through some of the world’s finest equipment. Today’s equipment outputs a very consistent PCM stream—be it from CD or computer playback—and DACs reclock with such grace and accuracy that jitter (or “digititis”) while a very real threat, can be and generally is completely eliminated.
With an already bewildering array of digital formats, encoders and delivery methods, little wonder people are craving the simplicity of vinyl. All turntables can play back all vinyl, whether purchased today or 50 years ago. In the digital realm, purchase a track or album today and you might find it superseded by a new one at a higher rate or in a different format tomorrow, while a DAC purchased today is becoming obsolete faster than you can say “DSD1024” or “MQA v2”.
Let’s be honest folks—the last thing we need is yet another audio codec.
And finally
Do you remember how perfect PCM digital was when it came out? Remember how it only took a new format to discredit the last? What are the hidden “problems” with MQA? My guess is that it will be only a matter of time before we start to see “flaws” in MQA too. I think “experts” will discover an “issue” with the way it folds audio into the “inaudible” band. Maybe it will cause “aliasing” problems. Maybe the high bandwidth will cause… heaven forbid… jitter! It’ll be something cryptic like that. Some audiophile nerd will notice some anomaly on a spectrogram. And sooner than you know it… along will come a new format to replace it. My prediction is we’re only a few short years away from “MQA-pro”; a larger MQA file where the high frequencies are not folded into the audible band.
So please, let’s stop inventing new digital formats. I and many others are of the firm belief that PCM well implemented is more than adequate. Let’s stop reinventing the wheel. Brainy audio scientists, my sincere request to you… please start looking for something else. Something like the dramatic change from vinyl to CD. We need more leftfield thinking. Not another samey technology with 0.1% innovation, 99.9% marketing.
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Image © Douglas Whates / The Music Room
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