Lenbrooke acquires MQA

[Sal1950]

But do we put up a guillotine in the town square or what?

I'll vote for that!

Subjectivists—who themselves have created an environment in which this type of subterfuge is possible—are certainly not the “victims” in this scenario. In a healthier environment based on science and engineering (as opposed to deferring to “golden ears”), those who push products that are blatantly anti-consumer would not be so emboldened in the first place.

You hit the nail on the head here.
They embraced MQA along with all the rest of the BS spread by the subjective media and their deep pockets sponsors.

And if the allegation is in fact a conspiracy to defraud, victim blaming doesn't seem entirely like the best response. If I got someone to buy the Brooklyn Bridge off me, they may be an idiot, but I'm still the criminal, right?

It was a VERY good scam from the beginning! One that almost no one in the industry was able to pick up on early on.

I want to cover something here I've not brought up before.
To his credit, five years ago Chris Connaker went to the 2018 RMAF show and "attempted" to put on an presentation about MQA. For a few years prior, some of the smartest digital tech guys around had been posting some of their MQA findings and thoughts on his site and he desired a public forum to discuss these issues. He had invited all the MQA suits to attend. What transpired that day was IMHO the most disgraceful industry reaction and attempted coverup I've ever witnessed outside of Washington. They shut down almost everything he had at hand for debate with a constant flurry of shout-downs from the back of the room with many irrelevant statements.

After the whole MQA deal brought some fame and fortune to CA/AS, it remains a real shame that shortly after all this, Chris turned to the dark side of the force and has shut down almost all objective discussions on other subjects such as cables, grounding boxes, and all the rest of the industries snake-oil on his site (Computer Audiophile-Audiophile Style)

 

[Galliardist]

Am I being accused of posting a link that is irrelevant or some such???
I think you are just repeating from the link but not much more.

I suspect you posted the link for a different reason to where the conversation went - which became about what formats could hold MQA data.

Though of course with the right code and a value for a custom entry in the header, you can stick anything you like in a FLAC or an Ogg container: a picture, or tbe text of War and Peace.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Archimago take.

Yes, Archimago's been on the case for years now, exposing what a dishonest piece of sh*t it is. I was always puzzled how it could possibly do what was claimed, and he has demonstrated a number of times that it simply cannot. The real mystery is why someone like Bob Stuart, respected for Meridian digital products, would play any part in this.

It's no surprise, though, that the usual suspects at Stereophile and TAS have fallen for its false claims.

I do have one product that is "MQA compatible", but I didn't buy it for that and hope the licensing didn't inflate the price by any significant amount.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I worked at Meridian at the time when they separated MQA. It’s quite funny that it’s now back with a manufacturer/brand.

I’m very new to this forum and I’m surprised the sheer hatred for MQA here. It’s an intriguing technology and has, in my opinion, real technical merit in terms of what it does to improve time domain issues across the entire capture -> replay chain.

Where MQA tripped up I think is with the lack of transparency (pun intended) in the early days over the lossy element to the encoding. Instead of explaining that lossy data encoding of ultrasonics is justified in terms of the analogue resolution of the end result, they just denied any “lossy” element in the grounds that the end result wasn’t “lossy”. And I believe their argument has real weight, but they should have been far more open in the early days.

Anyway I digress. I can’t imagine MQA will prosper as a brand under Lenbrook. Hopefully Bob et al, got something decent financially out of the sale, though. MQA was the continuation of the work he did to create FLAC (Meridian lossless packing) and the Meridian apodizing filters in DACs.

I will always remember a demo Bob gave to me and a client in one of their listening suites using some white glove MQA content (apparently a lot of the MQA on Tidal was made using less than ideal conversion schemes in order to quickly batch process large amounts of content quickly, hence some cynicism from listeners). The system was a pair of custom two way passive speakers using an old Meridian cabinet design, and a Meridian UltraDAC and 857 power amplifier. The sound was scarily good. Like listening to a live feed during a studio Recording session.

RIP MQA.

What did Bob Stuart have to do with FLAC? MLP is something else, even though they are both lossless.

 

[Galliardist]

MQA is Bad For Music. Here's Why. | Linn International

www.linn.co.uk

I'm trying to work out who else in the industry (manufacturers and such) remained opposed to MQA and spoke publicly.

I'll vote for that!

That guillotine would be very busy. Out of the commonly popular electronics companies in these parts, it looks like only Benchmark have never made an MQA compatible product!

A lot of companies seem to have only included it because customers wanted it, so to that extent the subjectivist public do carry some responsibility, especially when they kept asking as the details came out.

Just this once, though, kudos to Linn.

 

[Zensō]

The real mystery is why someone like Bob Stuart, respected for Meridian digital products, would play any part in this.

We’ll never know, but the prospect of collecting licensing fees from one end of the music delivery chain to the other could be very enticing to some.

 

[kacos]

MQA is Bad For Music. Here's Why. | Linn International

www.linn.co.uk

I'm trying to work out who else in the industry (manufacturers and such) remained opposed to MQA and spoke publicly.


That guillotine would be very busy. Out of the commonly popular electronics companies in these parts, it looks like only Benchmark have never made an MQA compatible product!

A lot of companies seem to have only included it because customers wanted it, so to that extent the subjectivist public do carry some responsibility, especially when they kept asking as the details came out.

Just this once, though, kudos to Linn.

Thanks for the link - Hadn't read that Linn blog post.
Like !!

 

[AudioSceptic]

AAC is not an Apple codec.

ALAC is, but is fully open source.
Modern DACs mostly support it. File sizes are smaller than those of FLAC, as well.

Yes, lots of people think the first A in AAC stands for Apple, not Advanced. It's strange that MP3 is still so common when AAC (MP4 Audio) has been around for so long.

When I compared sizes a while ago, the ALAC files were slightly larger than the FLAC versions. At first I wondered why Apple didn't simply adopt FLAC, but I think they wanted the option to use DRM, and they also wanted to reduce CPU usage, compared with FLAC, on portable devices like iPhones. (Do ALAC files from Apple Music have DRM?)

 

[AudioSceptic]

Thanks for the link - Hadn't read that Linn blog post.
Like !!

Yes, I was pleased to read that at the time, or shortly afterwards.

 

[CleanSound]

If MQA disappears today, how many people in the world would notice? 2,000, 4,000 people worldwide?

But if FLAC disappears today, how many will notice? Let's just say streaming will collapse and storage spending will sky rocket for the HiFi industry, it would be HiFi apocalypse.

And according to many sources, MQA is lossy. . .so. . .who cares?

 

[Zensō]

(Do ALAC files from Apple Music have DRM?)

Like all of the streaming services, Apple music has a DRM component, but it’s applied to the MP4 container, not the ALAC file.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Or better yet: how did anyone ever master it properly?

What are we talking about? Analogue or digital masters? CD or "hi-res" product? Most "hi-res" product isn't really that anyway (I hesitate to call it "fake").

 

[AudioSceptic]

But MQA is not just lossy in the ultrasonics. It's lossy in the audioband too.

I did an analysis of MQA some five years ago now. I took an original 24/96 FLAC and compared it to the equivalent decoded 24/48 MQA. Here's what the null looks like:

View attachment 314423

What on earth is the MQA processing doing?

If the MQA was anywhere near lossless in the audioband, the null should be <-200dB across the whole audioband... and it isn't. (And FWIW, the original FLAC sounds better to me.)

Not just a one-off - I made a number of FLAC vs. MQA comparisons, and all gave similar results.

RIP MQA indeed!

Mani.

I think Archimago found the same.

 

[AudioSceptic]

If MQA disappears today, how many people in the world would notice? 2,000, 4,000 people worldwide?

But if FLAC disappears today, how many will notice? Let's just say streaming will collapse and storage spending will sky rocket for the HiFi industry, it would be HiFi apocalypse.

And according to many sources, MQA is lossy. . .so. . .who cares?

ALAC is open for anyone to use, so FLAC disappearing would create a lot of work in reconversion of source material but otherwise we'd be OK.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Like all of the streaming services, Apple music has a DRM component, but it’s applied to the MP4 container, not the ALAC file.

Thanks. BTW I've always found it odd that AAC and ALAC files both use the m4a name extension.

 

[Galliardist]

MQA is Bad For Music. Here's Why. | Linn International

www.linn.co.uk

I'm trying to work out who else in the industry (manufacturers and such) remained opposed to MQA and spoke publicly.


That guillotine would be very busy. Out of the commonly popular electronics companies in these parts, it looks like only Benchmark have never made an MQA compatible product!

A lot of companies seem to have only included it because customers wanted it, so to that extent the subjectivist public do carry some responsibility, especially when they kept asking as the details came out.

Just this once, though, kudos to Linn.

I think we can add Yamaha to that list, and Denon whose AVRs get recommended (there's a note that HEOS could do MQA, but it seems none of the Sound United hardware decodes MQA that I can find).

 

[voodooless]

What are we talking about? Analogue or digital masters?

Does it matter... It's about making sure the ultrasonic bit sounds "good" Who ever does it? And if nobody does it, why should we care about it?

 

[TonyJZX]

Schiit Audio: Audio Products Designed and Built in Texas and California

www.schiit.com

obvious this is going way back but obviously a company like Schitt is never going to take... um.... shit like MQA

i think its almost pretty shameful that some companies, many companies did take to MQA... now that's a lot of companies but it seems like they did not look at the science and really only saw... the money.

 

[Zensō]

Or better yet: how did anyone ever master it properly?

Does it matter... It's about making sure the ultrasonic bit sounds "good" Who ever does it? And if nobody does it, why should we care about it?

Here’s a photo of my mastering assistant…

 

[AudioSceptic]

Schiit Audio: Audio Products Designed and Built in Texas and California

www.schiit.com

obvious this is going way back but obviously a company like Schitt is never going to take... um.... shit like MQA

i think its almost pretty shameful that some companies, many companies did take to MQA... now that's a lot of companies but it seems like they did not look at the science and really only saw... the money.

I think they were just persuaded that MQA was a feature they needed to have, to "cover all the bases", otherwise the sale would go to someone else.