I see Archi's taken the words right out of my mouth! LOL
"Seriously guys & gals, I hope this is the last time we need to talk about the MQA encoder/codec.
Let it die."
I'm gonna enjoy watching the way Stereophile and TAS find to eat their words.
They were both way overboard on the snake-oil scam from day 1.
Note: This is a developing story. Updates will be posted as they unfold. Lenbrook Corp, the privately owned Canadian enterprise whose holdings include NAD electronics, PSB speakers, and Bluesound (the maker of the BluOS music operating software system) has acquired the assets of MQA, Ltd...
www.stereophile.com
They are all still all-in on MQA as of today. How often do Stereophile publish a news story on the day the news breaks? Outside of show launches, pretty much never, but
here it is.
Much of the reporting elsewhere in audiophile-land has used the word “rescue”. Too much of that for each site to have chosen the word independently. There's always another push.
There are a lot of people who don't want to let it die.
Given the last seven years, I wonder why. I mean, do we really need "special filters to compensate" for, what, 75% of the DACs measured on this site? Has anyone shown that MQA actually is perceptually better, in public? Why have the company and its supporters only ever met challenges to the format by insulting their critics? When has anybody outside of a couple of dissident forums and a few independent researchers ever asked the right questions?
I mean, journals like Stereophile have resources that we don't. The flawed investigation that GoldenSound gave us should have been done by a hardbitten jounalist who could in turn have recruited an actual expert in perceptual codecs. Even if these journals are in bed with parts of the industry, they should choose their friendships with a bit more care, and be prepared to represent their readers to the industry just once in a while.
Instead, we once had this, which at least I guess was more honest in a way:
MQA has once again floated to the surface of the perfectionist-audio pondnot belly-up as some have hoped but forced there by relentless pursuit by anti-MQA predators posing as impartial jellyfish.
www.stereophile.com
... "jellyfish?"
The bit of that article that actually got me was this:
This noise level is probably higher because of the issues I've already discussed, but even so, high-frequency noise 45dB below a –60dB signal—itself barely audible—won't be audible at all. (The much higher level of high-frequency noise in the 88.2kHz track was surely a result of the excessive levels of ultrasonic information in the file.)
Please, Mr Austin. Something's actually inaudible? That's a rare admission from you. Your journalists report hearing changes from far smaller differences in signal than that, every single month.