Talk:Master Quality Authenticated

Quickstick4's comments here show a clear agenda/bias and should eliminate him from contributing

The portions of this talk page complaining about "legitimate sources" and "factual accuracy" are clearly being made in bad faith against the truth. I expect better from Wikipedia.

Happy to stop contributing (I don't have the time frankly). However, the vast majority of contributions to the critisim section are biased (due to being opinion) against MQA in their content. Wikipedia is meant to be un-biased and based on fact, not opinion. Its an open encyclopedia. I have provided my reasons for the removal of the YouTube video several times. I won't go over it again. Quickstick4 (talk) 11:47, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks

Seeing as Goldensounds in his second video implied that some of my edits were "by MQA" - I thought I should make this clear: I do not work for or have any association with MQA/Meridian. I work in a government role specialising in Audio Engineering. My interest in editing this page is to try and bring it up to standard and provide balance. My OPINION on the goldensounds videos are that they use flawed methodology to prove his point. My reason for petitioning for his video removal is that Wiki Guidelines are clear: self-authored content such as his video are not a valid source of content for an encyclopaedia. Quickstick4 (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

-- Seeing as I have a section just on me, I thought I would add this here: Several comments I added to GoldenSounds youtube video where I challenged his methodology have been removed. Here are the offending screen shots that were removed:

WAV file before MQA conversion File after MQA conversion (differences highlighted)

Changes to sample points: Sample Point Comparison I included this to show why the DeltaWave differences exist. I.e. MQA attempts to fix jitter (they call it De-Blurring) meaning sample points are altered, hence the DeltaWave spectogram looks how it does Delta Wave. This was reference his arguments about noise, distortion etc and that it wasn't as bad as he reported.

I am not going to re-write numerous comments from a different website here. But I find it concerning that I am being labelled an MQA shill on this site (and others), but yet my comments providing evidence of my concerns on the validity of this source of information (i.e. the goldensounds video) are being removed. Quickstick4 (talk) 22:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Unsupported attributions

The article has no apparent issue with unsupported attributions, hence my removal of the warning. Yet there are two instances where weasel words are embraced; in the Criticism section fourth paragraph, and Hardware and software decoders section second paragraph. While the two are not "bad" (see Wikipedia:Embrace_weasel_words) they could be improved by clarifying if the statement is supported by majority or minority. Tanyesil (talk) 19:32, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

This article's lead section seems purposely obtuse and does not follow the Wikipedia Manual of Style

For whatever reason, a significant change was made to the lead section during this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Master_Quality_Authenticated&diff=prev&oldid=1143171728

There are many issues here. Calling MQA a "three part process" is not a clear description of what it is. Is it an audio codec? A transfer protocol? Thinking cynically, the long and arduous description almost seems like it's meant to bury/obfuscate the fact that MQA is a "lossy format" as was previously stated quite clearly.

The Wikipedia Manual of Style on lead sections (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section) clearly states that the first sentence should tell "nonspecialist reader[s] who or what the subject is" using "plain English." The first sentence, as it stands, is in clear contravention of this.

Furthermore, the manual states that the lead should "summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies." MQA has been subject to significant controversy and it is not mentioned in the lead at all.

And finally, what in the world is the relevance of MQA Ltd. being sold? This has absolutely zero place in the lead, as it doesn't even refer to the topic of the article. It also happens to be completely uncited, which is again in contravention of the manual's guidance for lead sections. 50.5.233.172 (talk) 23:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I went ahead and fixed it myself, which meant having to actually go to their stupid website to gather some basic information that was missing (seriously, the article doesn't explain what the "authentication" actually is).

With that said, I have a PhD and still struggled to make sense of the MQA website and Bob Stuart's articles on the technology because it's literally nothing but weasel words, flowery vocabulary, and very little substance. It's extremely clear that their intent is to obfuscate the truth about what the technology is and does (their website now hilariously claims that by reducing file sizes, they are lowering the carbon footprint of music streaming... you seriously can't make this stuff up).

However, I still managed to tweak the lead section to provide a clearer picture without allowing my anti-MQA bias to come in. MQA shills, take note; it's really not that difficult. 50.5.233.172 (talk) 01:14, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Actually I am still fairly intrigued by the concept of "master quality" in the MQA context, having the impression that it is in itself misleading. My impression would be that "master quality" should mean identical to the 2-track master mixdown as signed off by the record executives and artists. These days I am presuming that this would most commonly be at 96kHz/24-bit. MQA is less than this but in reality aspires to offer "quasi master quality" from a smaller file (packed differently, with some information thrown away - in other words it cannot be re-expanded to be identical to the original 96/24 master, just something close to it possibly), but this cannot legitimately be called "master quality" - or can it?

Not sure whether this is in scope for the lead or, anywhere in the article, but it seems to be a failure of logic and/or deliberate deception to me. Your comments welcome. Tony 1212 (talk) 05:20, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't disagree at all. The frustrating thing about researching this forsaken topic is that the developers have been consistently dishonest about the technology. When faced with criticism over the unfolding not being bit-perfect, the developers have been evasive, and moved the goalposts by claiming that "because the human-audible content is unadulterated, it IS master quality" (paraphrasing).

That's why Bob Stuart's articles have all kinds of disclaimers about neuroscience, psychoacoustics, and other nonsense. Here's an excerpt: "Our viewpoint is that ‘Resolution’ is a concept of Perception, best interpreted in the analogue domain. This pioneering insight is better aligned to listening experience than to digital domain definitions of quality." (https://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/mqa-authentication-and-quality/)

And here's an entire article that shifts the goalposts about what "high resolution audio" means: https://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/insight-series/mqa-problem-solved-2-high-resolution/

It's all a smoke and mirror show to avoid admitting that the recording is digitally lossless because they know that's what audiophiles care about. For what it's worth, I think the idea of authenticating that a file came straight from the gold master is valuable; they just tried to monetize it in the scummiest way possible by coupling the authentication with an unnecessary format. 50.5.233.172 (talk) 18:53, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

The inventors do claim MQA is more than a codec. I would call it a business model. The three part description seems reasonable to me. Maybe it doesn't need to be presented in list format. It would be good something about controversy. ~Kvng (talk) 14:56, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

"three part process applied to digital audio music recordings consisting of: 1) modifying and controlling the end to end digital filter response; 2) preparing the high-quality audio for transfer to a smartphone or audio device using a lossy audio compression format; and 3) decompressing the recording for playback."

You're welcome to explain how this is appropriate for "nonspecialist readers" and is written in "plain English."

At the end of the day, it's a codec with the added feature of "authentication." The methodology behind how the data is compressed and uncompressed is not appropriate for the lead section. The Manual of Style recommends explaining the what, who, and when, but not the "how." 50.5.233.172 (talk) 17:22, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Made an account to better track my comments. DoctorSwift (talk) 17:25, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

I've taken a crack at restoring some of the information in a non-obtuse manner. ~Kvng (talk) 20:25, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I apologize as I am still a novice at editing wiki articles, but I edited the MQA page before I found this talk section. However, I believe I did mostly what was discussed here. Particularly adding the paragraph about controversy and simplifying the first paragraph. I restored the three part process statement discussed above since it is an accurate description of the MQA system. There are sections in the article that describe the main parts of this: Codec, Audio processing, and Authentication (new section I added, which could use more detail). I have not figured out if there is a good way to link from the three part process sentence to those sections, but that may be a good idea. Dr Digital Audio (talk) 03:51, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your help with this! ~Kvng (talk) 15:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

MQA format's simple technical capability & flaws is demonstrated

GoldenSound reported technical outcomes and using metrics to objectively evaluate performance. he puts those claims against MQA's supposed claims as well as original high res and low-res content.

further discussion about MQA's validity is bogus from this point on as we have objective information in place of what was previously room for opinion.

he has proven MQA format is a scam, regardless of only using polite language. wikipedia should reflect this objective proof as self-evident from now on, as evident as gravity. it is merely what MQA does, not someone's opinion.

Furthermore, on the social side of matters there is plenty of predatory and/or marketing/hype behavior which seems quite dodge. It should not be this hard to realize something is a scam & move on. 101.98.243.2 (talk) 16:06, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia is based on WP:SECONDARY sources for these sorts of assessments. Can you suggest/cite any that have made this determination? ~Kvng (talk) 14:47, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

is just an obvious scam. it seems the majority of this talk page is having a lot of trouble trying to come to terms with this. why? because we cant simply state the basics of what the thing is.

i dont know how many times it needs to be explained over & over by people here or online. a basic description of what IT IS is enough to indicate that it is a scam. and that should be enough. and we can move on.

we shouldnt need to be sources away to be able to cite factual information in a comment on a talk page.

its clearly a gimmick, and it shouldn't be an uphill battle. scammers dont have any prerequisites for saying things, and will outpace wikipedia at this rate. thats the source of the 'controversy': a failure to outpace misinformation with simple factual info. 203.184.27.191 (talk) 10:17, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

You can say whatever you want on this talk page but if you want the article to describe MQA as a gimmick, that statement will need to be supported by reliable sources. ~Kvng (talk) 02:51, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I have reverted the introduction twice recently due to a detrimental edit and then a reversion from the two IP addresses above. I consider the reversion as bad faith vandalism. I will watch the page more frequently for a while. Dr Digital Audio (talk) 04:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)