Lenbrooke acquires MQA

[Zensō]

The sound was scarily good. Like listening to a live feed during a studio Recording session.

The only blind, publicly available listening tests comparing MQA to lossless showed that there is virtually no audible difference (McGill, Archimago). In my opinion, the lavish praise poured on MQA by members of the press and industry insiders has only worked to undermine the credibility of the technology.

 

[Timcognito]

MQA given its questionable audible enhancements was scheme to give a DRM scheme to music industry and royalties to MQA Inc. from the music creators and producers and hardware companies. Similar to the attempts by Sony and Apple.

 

[Sal1950]

The only major negative is the app. It’s dog shit slow and annoying to use, especially on MacOS.

Yea, even the one inside the Apple 4k box is the same, and the Apple 4k Streaming box's remote is the biggest
POS I've ever owned. But after I learned to work around it, using a cheap under $20 wireless keyboard so I can just quickly type in what I'm looking for things got much better. I'm far from a Apple lover, the 4k TV box is the only Apple thing I own.

 

[Galliardist]

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.

FLAC is not MLP but a separate development. MLP is the base for DVD multichannel audio and as far as I’m aware is now effectively a Dolby technology also in TrueHD and Atmos. MLP is definitely not open source.

As it happens, I think we should mention the late Michael Gerzon, who was a key figure in Ambisonics, and by many accounts was the lead developer of MLP as well as the lead author of the paper that described the Meridian filtering schemes (that work also was drawn on by others in the development of the noise shaping DS DACs we mostly use now). Gerzon's close colleague Peter Craven, another important figure in those developments and who has done a lot of other work in similar areas, was a key developer at Meridian and is also involved in MQA. Ambisonics is currently undergoing a big revival - Ambisonics experts worked on Dolby Atmos, Apple Spatial audio draws on it also, as do current DTS products, and it is at the heart of a number of VR initiatives, including Google's. Without those two, and Stuart was a collaborator with them as well as their employer on the later Meridian work, we don't get surround audio as it is today.

That people as involved in developing the future of audio, never mind the present, as Craven and Stuart developed MQA, makes me somewhat cautious about writing it off in its entirety: there may still be something there. The problems with openness go a lot deeper than the lossy ultrasonics being lossy: after all, nobody has yet demonstrated that we even need ultrasonic content, and the product is lossy in the audible range as well - just in a different way, through banning some signal that is not present in the vast majority of music. MQA makes an extraordinary claim, in fact several: one of the common sayings here is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and we have... none.

As for "hatred", you have to remember where many of the ASR members are coming from. These are people who have found that the dominant subjective ethos of consumer audio has led to a lot of con jobs and products that really do little or nothing for sound. When we see something like MQA, with unsubstantiated claims, apparent DRM (the history of digital audio is littered with such stuff) and the "master quality" marketing with the blue light: if their sole aim was to annoy people like us they couldn't have developed a more perfect product.

That's why I said in my earlier post that if Lenbrook want us to buy MQA in any form, they need to be open and honest about the product as a first step.

 

[Sal1950]

As for "hatred", you have to remember where many of the ASR members are coming from. These are people who have found that the dominant subjective ethos of consumer audio has led to a lot of con jobs and products that really do little or nothing for sound. When we see something like MQA, with unsubstantiated claims, apparent DRM (the history of digital audio is littered with such stuff) and the "master quality" marketing with the blue light: if their sole aim was to annoy people like us they couldn't have developed a more perfect product.

I agree with most all you've said here but I would like to make a point which is more about the use of the modern term, "hatred" Hatred to me is an extreme emotion, one that if your a religous person might even be reason to condemn you for eterity. LOL. But the point I'm trying to make here is that in todays PC world, when ever someone voices a strong dislike for just about anything, he/she is referred to as a "hater" by some. The goal being to have that persons ideas or viewpoints then removed from serious, honest discussion as being irrational or even dangerous. Many will use the term hater in an attempt to put anothers reputation into disrepute.
There's a lot of things in audio and the world in general I have a strong dislike for.
But the only thing I really hate is liver. LOL
May the force be with you.

 

[Galliardist]

I agree with most all you've said here but I would like to make a point which is more about the use of the modern term, "hatred" Hatred to me is an extreme emotion, one that if your a religous person might even be reason to condemn you for eterity. LOL. But the point I'm trying to make here is that in todays PC world, when ever someone voices a strong dislike for just about anything, he/she is referred to as a "hater" by some. The goal being to have that persons ideas or viewpoints then removed from serious, honest discussion as being irrational or even dangerous. Many will use the term hater in an attempt to put anothers reputation into disrepute.
There's a lot of things in audio and the world in general I have a strong dislike for.
But the only thing I really hate is liver. LOL
May the force be with you.

Agreed.

Except for the liver bit

 

[voodooless]

the Apple 4k Streaming box's remote is the biggest
POS I've ever owned. But after I learned to work around it, using a cheap under $20 wireless keyboard so I can just quickly type in what I'm looking for things got much better. I'm far from an Apple lover, the 4k TV box is the only Apple thing I own.

Get an iPhone, it’s an excellent remote for the AppleTV

 

[Zensō]

Get an iPhone, it’s an excellent remote for the AppleTV

Yup, works perfectly.

 

[unexperienced]

The dogs bark, but the caravan (Lenbrook) goes on...​

 

[Mulder]

I don’t hate MQA. There are more important things in this world to focus such energy-demanding feelings on. But I strongly dislike when someone lies to me, and in the marketing of MQA claims are made that I would describe as lies, or at least claims without any substance.

 

[Mart68]

. The sound was scarily good. Like listening to a live feed during a studio Recording session.

I get that from good old CD - the secret is properly engineered loudspeakers and good room acoustics, not the time domain.

Hate is too strong a word but no-one likes to be conned or see other people being scammed out of their money.

 

[Sal1950]

The dogs bark, but the caravan (Lenbrook) goes on...​

MQA's time is slowly coming to an end.
The shyster's con game has been revealed
The blue light is flickering and will soon blink into eternity.

 

[Jimbob54]

My clear idea is strictly a guess: Trying to Monetize (the words) Quality Audio!

Yup , regardless of the science behind it , what got rolled out was a way for a party unconnected to either the recording or distribution of music to extract some cash from the process .

I suspect the big dream was for everything from the major labels to be mqa before release and the only digital version. That was never going to happen so it began its limpet like existence as an unwanted extra in tidal .

 

[mmi]

if Lenbrook want us to buy MQA in any form, they need to be open and honest about the product as a first step

I love how this is up the top on Apple’s lossless audio info page:

“While the difference between AAC and lossless audio is virtually indistinguishable, we’re offering Apple Music subscribers the option to access music in lossless audio compression.”

And this from Bandcamp:

“You can also download in FLAC, ALAC (Apple Lossless), AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and AIFF formats. These options are, ahem, for “audiophiles and nerds.””

 

[antcollinet]

limpet like existence

LOL

Also - parasitic - would not be an inaccurate descriptor.

 

[Snoopy]

MQA's time is slowly coming to an end.
The shyster's con game has been revealed
The blue light is flickering and will soon blink into eternity.

I think it will stay with us. Still plenty of MQA CDs are getting new releases and they actually sell really well (at least in Japan and other parts of Asia they seem to be popular). This is probably a bit niche for people here but similar to SACDs there are audiophiles that like to buy them even if the same master is used for hires files and Blu-ray audio.

But there are a couple of cd reissues that I'm interested in and they are only available as "MQA HQCD" so seriously annoying.

So I would be paying a premium for something that isn't even CD quality. I wonder how anybody ever thought this would be a good idea.

The apple music app is seriously garbage. Same like qobuz and Deezer and basically everything else If you are used to Roon.
I currently have a apple music subscription and they really have lots of stuff that I couldn't find on qobuz, tidal and KKBox .
But some is only AAC

 

[Sal1950]

Whatever may happen with MQA in the end, I want to tip my hat to the audiophile community.
For the first time ever in my memory, they stood up on websites across the world and said HELL NO
to a snake-oil peddler and called him out on the deceptions. Good job folks, for once you were thinking for
yourself and not just drinkin the kool-aid, I'm impressed.

 

[mhardy6647]

The dogs bark, but the caravan (Lenbrook) goes on...​

Which reminds me of a perhaps (?) related, and perhaps (??) also apt colloquialism:

Not my circus, not my monkeys... but the clowns know me*

____________
* sometimes rendered as but I know the clowns.

 

[Galliardist]

Whatever may happen with MQA in the end, I want to tip my hat to the audiophile community.
For the first time ever in my memory, they stood up on websites across the world and said HELL NO
to a snake-oil peddler and called him out on the deceptions. Good job folks, for once you were thinking for
yourself and not just drinkin the kool-aid, I'm impressed.

True (as far as it goes - for me it's a minority that stood up), but it's also a sad story, and one we may never really understand.

When you listen to Atmos, you listen in a big part to work done by the same community of researchers from where MQA emerged. What went wrong?

The original fate of Ambisonics maybe: perhaps later there was a drive among the people concerned to just push their later developments out into the commercial world as the way to get recognised, and it led to cutting corners and bad decisions.

Whatever, it's clear to me that a lot of the industry has yet to leave MQA behind even if most of us have. Not just Lenbrook.

We can also take note of companies like Linn, Naim, the Sound United group who never went there. In fact if I remember correctly, Linn were the first to speak out and they got into some trouble for doing that. It's not like they are some hardcore objectivist company. And remember that a lot of the companies that build MQA products today are smaller outfits that were all but forced to adopt it by customer pressure (many of the same people who turned against it later, even). The audiophile community has to share some of the blame, as well.

I spent time following this, and only after seeing the work of the independent researchers into MQA did I really understand why it was a bad product - the odd thing is, if you go back to the original Stereophile articles, you can see that it was problematic from what MQA did tell us at the launch, even.

MQA is still slowly disappearing from the Tidal Windows client, so it looks like they aren't changing course again just yet. They could still leave it on in the BluOS apps, I guess, especially if Lenbrook refuse to make the relevant changes to their Tidal client.

It would be interesting to know if the September releases in Tidal under BluOS are still MQA encoded, but I'm sure not buying a Node to find that out. Maybe someone with BluOS could confirm what is happening there?

 

[Jimbob54]

It would be interesting to know if the September releases in Tidal under BluOS are still MQA encoded, but I'm sure not buying a Node to find that out. Maybe someone with BluOS could confirm what is happening there?

I'm not sure any 3rd party clients (or even Tidal Connect) is anywhere near making the move from Master to Max. Tidal did say initially that any such changes would be first to their own platforms and 3rd party stuff "later". So this isn't just a client software shift needed but Tidal at their end too.