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MQA Update

amirm said:
I would call that "little" revenue, not no revenue. Regardless, it is common in format making to give away the technology initially until it gets adopted. It solves the chicken and egg problem. Companies don't want to pay to create a market for someone else. But if it is free, some will deploy it.
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I'd call it "pathetic". My nearest family owned hifi dealer isn't exactly profitable on way more revenue than that. The second nearest does a bit better, and sells a lot of NAD and Bluesound - more in the years since MQA came out - so potentially has made more out of MQA than the developer, to put things in perspective. The business plan for too many startups seems to be to spend other people's money on new things. SCL6 hype didn't bring any new value, it seems - it took me a little while to see through that hype as well.

I'd be prepared to guess that we can work out how much money Lenbrook would have paid any other owner in royalties and other costs over the next few years, based on what they are paying in the acquisition and salaries. Also I'd guess that they were MQA's largest hardware royalties customer, at least among the committed supporters, which appears now to truly number only Lenbrook, 2L and some journalists.

While there are still some MQA true believers out there, it appears that Tidal has a great chance of surviving the move away, but the number of subscriptions they lose when people can't get MQA any more will tell. I guess they know the numbers, and that subscribers have ditched MQA there for the lower tier over the years as the bad publicity won out. It would be good if Tidal has to improve its service and especially its apps to keep market share, but I suspect a lot of its streaming goes through Tidal Connect apps, and that is where Lenbrook could have impact as a large provider there as well. If they say "MQA or we discontinue Tidal Connect", what then? MQA is not over yet, and the endgame could be more damage for the industry than anything that has happened so far, given that it's really been a storm in a teacup.

Do we know any numbers for the major record companies, particularly Universal? Will they have learned much from this?
 
PHD said:
They're coming up with three new MQA scam technologies:

www.ecoustics.com

Lenbrook Media Group Has Big Plans for MQA But the Devil Will Be in the Details

MQA Labs introduces three new brands to enhance digital music playback: AIRIA, FOQUS and QRONO. Find out what it all means.
www.ecoustics.com www.ecoustics.com
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QRONO sounds an awful lot like a relaunch of the old MQA we grew to love so well....... Couldnt really care less about a bluetooth codec or anything on the production side unless it requires something on the playback side too (so maybe Foqus and QRONO are both sides of "old" MQA just rebadged.
 
Does MQA have a good reputation anywhere at all?
 
Actually a great question for GPT.

Here’s an exerpt from the reply I got.

Regional Perspectives:

  • North America and Europe: MQA tends to face more criticism in these regions, where audiophile communities and media have scrutinized the format heavily.
  • Asia: MQA sometimes enjoys a better reputation in parts of Asia, where audiophile culture and TIDAL are popular, and users are more likely to invest in MQA-capable hardware.
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Blumlein 88 said:
www.whathifi.com

MQA's latest audio technology aims to reduce timing issues and put the soul back into your music

Qrono d2a arrives alongside Qrono dsd
www.whathifi.com www.whathifi.com

Trying to rise from the dead.
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This is only MQA as a brand name though - no special masters or DRM. And it will put the main claim made for the older product to the test, because the "deblurring" will be easily testable in its new setup, as the system will work with normal PCM test tones.

it will be interesting to see if the new whatever-it-is is defeatable for comparison testing or just plain turning off.
 
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Emlin said:
Same bollocks, different name.
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I would very much appreciate those here with the technical expertise to un-pick the white paper, particularly the filter measurements.
Are these real? If they are so meaningful, why doesn’t Amir et al present this type of measurement in their DAC reviews?
 
pogo said:
I don't think Bluesound is going for bollocks, especially as it can't be switched 'off' in the Node Icon.
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Do you mean there is no option to switch to a standard sharp filter? Wow.
 
I don't think appealing to authority (Bluesound wouldn't do it if it wasn't legit) is a useful argument. We know MQA was bullocks, yet many manufacturers and at least one big streaming service bought in.

The white paper reads like bullocks to me. It's the same "time blurring" that they claimed MQA fixed. The time domain is already captured in the frequency response. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but if these pre- and post-ringing artifacts that are supposedly endemic to digital playback chains were an issue, wouldn't it show up in the frequency response?
 
pjug said:
Do you mean there is no option to switch to a standard sharp filter? Wow.
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Why would you want to degrade the performance of the icon and switch to a different filter?
 
If you'll look at the Gibbs "ringing" it occurs at the sample rate. Too high for you to hear it.
 
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