• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

Status
Not open for further replies.

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,393
Location
Seattle Area
Well forget MQA, then - Apple might produce their own version with many different resolutions and bandwidth. But either way, widening it out, is it still not the case that the writing is on the wall for 'the file'?
Not for audiophile market. There, people keep listening to the same track over and over again so it makes sense for them to purchase it. And I see nothing but growth of digital downloads because it is so easy to offer a file on a web site than to create a streaming platform.

For general public that is definitely the direction.
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
Not for audiophile market. There, people keep listening to the same track over and over again so it makes sense for them to purchase it. I see nothing but growth of digital downloads because it is so easy to offer a file on a web site than to create a streaming platform.

For general public that is definitely the direction.
Do you mean downloads are the direction for the general public, or streaming..?

If it 's the former you would be contradicting this article totally.
https://www.techradar.com/news/will-2018-be-the-year-the-download-officially-dies
That's a market that's crashing. "Just five years ago, downloads accounted for 70% of global digital music revenues while streaming was only responsible for 18% – and now that ratio is reversed," says Sergey Bludov, SVP Media and Entertainment at DataArt.

...It’s simple: downloads are dying.
If it's the latter, surely that would mean that audiophiles would be caught up in the major record labels' commitment to streaming - audiophiles don't just listen to specialist 'audiophile music'.:)
 

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,393
Location
Seattle Area
If it's the latter, surely that would mean that audiophiles would be caught up in the major record labels' commitment to streaming - audiophiles don't just listen to specialist 'audiophile music'.:)
I said that the general public is moving toward streaming and away from downloads. They want convenience and that gives it to them over downloading to play.

Audiophiles however, are different in that they put up with less convenience to get "fidelity." For them the labels are providing download content and there is no indication they would stop. Stopping just gets them less royalties. Why would they do that?

It is important to note that labels get paid less money from streaming than downloads. They hated the concept with passion and reluctantly joined up the movement. For the full price of monthly Tidal subscription, I would be lucky to be able to buy just one album!

Let's remember that tons of content that audiophiles care about come from independent labels. Classical music for example is not something major labels are pushing. Same with Jazz, etc. All of these independent labels have seen the Internet as a great way to bypass physical media to offer content for download. For them setting up streaming would be a huge undertaking and per above, less revenue.

So I see a continued trend toward ever increasing library of high-resolution content available for download. When I was deep into buying hundreds of dollars of it per month, every week I would see another good chunk of content released to likes of HD Tracks, etc.

Personally I love streaming and am perfectly fine if high-res goes that way. Right now though, not much high-res is being streamed so download market remains robust for audiophiles.
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
I said that the general public is moving toward streaming and away from downloads. They want convenience and that gives it to them over downloading to play.

Audiophiles however, are different in that they put up with less convenience to get "fidelity." For them the labels are providing download content and there is no indication they would stop. Stopping just gets them less royalties. Why would they do that?

It is important to note that labels get paid less money from streaming than downloads. They hated the concept with passion and reluctantly joined up the movement. For the full price of monthly Tidal subscription, I would be lucky to be able to buy just one album!

Let's remember that tons of content that audiophiles care about come from independent labels. Classical music for example is not something major labels are pushing. Same with Jazz, etc. All of these independent labels have seen the Internet as a great way to bypass physical media to offer content for download. For them setting up streaming would be a huge undertaking and per above, less revenue.

So I see a continued trend toward ever increasing library of high-resolution content available for download. When I was deep into buying hundreds of dollars of it per month, every week I would see another good chunk of content released to likes of HD Tracks, etc.

Personally I love streaming and am perfectly fine if high-res goes that way. Right now though, not much high-res is being streamed so download market remains robust for audiophiles.
You seem to arguing both ways: the audiophile market (and therefore MQA) is a tiny minnow in the much larger sea, yet the record companies are going to make special provision for it because it is so profitable..? And if streaming is so non-profitable why don't the record companies just abandon it? Or gradually ratchet up the price? Answer: without DRM, if the price of music increases the punters will revert to file swapping. The case for secure DRM is surely obvious?

A difference between now and 2005 is that constant internet (cloud) connectivity is the default for most people.
 

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,393
Location
Seattle Area
You seem to arguing both ways: the audiophile market (and therefore MQA) is a tiny minnow in the much larger sea, yet the record companies are going to make special provision for it because it is so profitable..?
I didn't say audiophile market was "so profitable." I was explaining that regardless of format, streaming is less profitable for labels than downright sales through downloads. So while the market is moving towards streaming and they have no choice but to go there, they don't see downloads as a bad thing at all.

Importantly, music distributors pay for whatever costs there are to ship them the content. In exchange the labels get either MGs (minimum guarantees) or royalties on whatever is sold. It is found money because they don't do any work to provide those files. Yes, there is some up front contract work for a new commer (hence the MGs for them) but after that, it is a machine that is running and quarters show up. :)

It makes no sense economically for them to wake up tomorrow and say, "oh, let's stop this download business because everything is going streaming."

Again, the proof of the pudding is in front of us. I see nothing but expansion of the high-res download catalog.
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
So while the market is moving towards streaming and they have no choice but to go there
Why do they not have a choice? Are the record companies powerless to prevent the streaming companies from distributing their wares? The record companies weren't forced to allow their product to be used for streaming in the first place, so presumably they were complicit in actually creating this market. Why do it if they didn't want to? And if they do see some potential in it, why not ramp up the price?
 

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,393
Location
Seattle Area
Why do they not have a choice? Are the record companies powerless to prevent the streaming companies from distributing their wares? The record companies weren't forced to allow their product to be used for streaming in the first place, so presumably they were complicit in actually creating this market. Why do it if they didn't want to? And if they do see some potential in it, why not ramp up the price?
They initially did not. They fought tooth and nail against streaming. But ultimately they became a victim of not having a strategy of their own to succeed.

It has been a tradition of content companies being slave to distribution/hardware companies. They let the industry define where they should go. For LP to CD for example. That was good for them. Then came digital and breaking up the lucrative album sale versus selling 99 cent tracks. As you know, most hit albums have one or two good songs. It was the craziest thing to break up the album and let people buy just one track. But Jobs convinced them to "just try it." They tried it and no longer had the option to pull back.

The situation is even worse now. What many of us predicted years back was that the distributors in digital world don't really need the labels. Right now iTunes can make or break an artists. If you are the label and want your artist highlighted on iTunes or Spotify, you have to "deal."

Bluffing with too high a prices and risking having none of your content on Apple music or whatever can be deadly for your artists.

It is a catastrophic mistake for them to go from sales of CD where they had thousands of distribution channels to a handful of digital music distributors. By creating a royalty structure where distributing music is profitless, the number of companies that can get into it is very small. Essentially it is companies like Apple and Amazon who can sell music at zero profit or loss and make it up in selling something else.

It is a messy situation for labels. They have settled into it but it is nowhere near what it used to be. This is another reason why I say they can no longer mandate things onto the channel. Twenty years ago they could demand anything and folks shook in their boots. Today it simply is not like that. You go to them, pay your fees and you can have a license to their bits. There is no overarching strategy forcing other answers.
 

tomelex

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 29, 2016
Messages
990
Likes
572
Location
So called Midwest, USA
That consumer is perfectly happy with 256 kbps streaming. Any adoption of MQA as a result will hugely increase bandwidth costs for the provider with no net gain in adoption. We are talking 5-10X higher bandwidth.

For any mass dominance of MQA you have to create a plausible scenario of consumers caring about high-res audio en mass and that is just not there. If they did, SACD and DVD-A would have been a huge success.

And how would those millions of consumers enjoy MQA anyway? By apple supporting it? No chance. These guys won't pay a cent to some little company like MQA. And they have the resources to make their own if they wanted.

Have you ever sat across the top executives, engineers and bean counters at these companies like Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Pioneer, TI, Analog Devices, Intel, TCL, etc. and discuss format adoption? I have. Ain't no way no how will they adopt royalty bearing technology from some high-end audio company spin off like MQA. Even Dolby struggles to get new formats established and this is all they do and they have consumer power like nobody's business.

And then there is the matter of IP/patents. First thing these companies ask for is indemnity. That is, if they ever get sued, they want to just hand it to you and if you lose, they want you to pay all the expenses! They would then look at MQA and say that it doesn't have enough assets to protect them so that is a non-starter.

Next thing they do is say, "hey, we have patents on that technology and we could sue you and the rest of your customers." And proceed to call you a thief for stealing "their" technology.

If by some miracle you generate some success, they get together, create a de-facto cartel and create their own (royalty bearing) alternative. And since they have cross-licensing deals with each other, it doesn't cost them a dime but you would pay deerly if you wanted to adopt it.

And oh, since they created their alternative in a committee, they call that "open" and yours proprietary. 100% get out of jail free card to get out of any antitrust scrutiny.

It doesn't stop there. They will actually create patent pools or go after your licensees individually and say they have patents that read on your solution and you better pay up or get sued.

When I tried to get our technology adopted against all of these odds, one of the most powerful and top executives from a major CE companies pulled me aside and said, "Amir-san, CE business is dirty business!"

Here is an article I wrote for WSR magazine which gets into more of these issues: https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/politics-of-format-making.1289/


Consider yourself corrected. :) I am not at liberty to discuss my post Microsoft experience. Hush money and all. :) And sure, I am not in day to day meetings with labels today but ignoring my experience would be unwise.

Bob Stuart knows a bit of this from his MLP/Dolby TrueHD days but he gave all the work to Dolby to perform for them.


Amir, now that there post woke me up! And I liked the way you framed it from your experience. Putting us in that boardroom with you really helped make your points more clear. Great post and insight much appreciated by someone who has no respect for the music industry at large, and have felt that way for decades now. Ironic that I depend on their greedy ways for my audible enjoyment....like the great masses though, I do have plenty of other things to occupy my time, and by providing ****** compressed music over the last few decades they reap what they sow, less value for the devalued product. And never forgetting that audiophiles are a flea on the back of the elephant in any case.
 

watchnerd

Grand Contributor
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
Messages
12,449
Likes
10,408
Location
Seattle Area, USA
I don't see how MQA will ever become ubiquitous if most streaming consumers still aren't willing to pay money for premium services and instead are content to live at the "free tier".
 

Cosmik

Major Contributor
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
3,075
Likes
2,180
Location
UK
They initially did not. They fought tooth and nail against streaming. But ultimately they became a victim of not having a strategy of their own to succeed.

It has been a tradition of content companies being slave to distribution/hardware companies. They let the industry define where they should go. For LP to CD for example. That was good for them. Then came digital and breaking up the lucrative album sale versus selling 99 cent tracks. As you know, most hit albums have one or two good songs. It was the craziest thing to break up the album and let people buy just one track. But Jobs convinced them to "just try it." They tried it and no longer had the option to pull back.

The situation is even worse now. What many of us predicted years back was that the distributors in digital world don't really need the labels. Right now iTunes can make or break an artists. If you are the label and want your artist highlighted on iTunes or Spotify, you have to "deal."

Bluffing with too high a prices and risking having none of your content on Apple music or whatever can be deadly for your artists.

It is a catastrophic mistake for them to go from sales of CD where they had thousands of distribution channels to a handful of digital music distributors. By creating a royalty structure where distributing music is profitless, the number of companies that can get into it is very small. Essentially it is companies like Apple and Amazon who can sell music at zero profit or loss and make it up in selling something else.

It is a messy situation for labels. They have settled into it but it is nowhere near what it used to be. This is another reason why I say they can no longer mandate things onto the channel. Twenty years ago they could demand anything and folks shook in their boots. Today it simply is not like that. You go to them, pay your fees and you can have a license to their bits. There is no overarching strategy forcing other answers.
What a strange tale! What you are telling us is that there is no point in us mortals trying to predict logically what will happen. The discussion is moot because rationality cannot get a handle on a business that owns a valuable, scarce, irreplaceable commodity (especially the back catalogues) but cannot help but give away its stuff against its will. A business that was once successful but has now, seemingly, given up on trying to protect its assets such that it would never be tempted to try to take back control of its distribution. OK, I give up.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,608
Location
Central Fl
Some very smart advise from Mark Waldrep
MQA: Archimago Adds a “Final” Nail to the Coffin!
"The best thing that audiophiles around the world can do is let the major labels and everyone else the has bought into the MQA strategy know that we’re on to them. We should avoid doing business with any and all companies that want to force us into their closed world view. Read the article, share it with everyone you know, write letters to the editors, and go to social media and like every comment that resists the MQA message. Collectively we have the power. If no one buys into their nonsense, they will be forced to back off. Then we can get back to making better sounding records!"
http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6109
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/
 

Eric Auer

Member
Joined
May 18, 2017
Messages
43
Likes
24
Some very smart advise from Mark Waldrep
MQA: Archimago Adds a “Final” Nail to the Coffin!
"The best thing that audiophiles around the world can do is let the major labels and everyone else the has bought into the MQA strategy know that we’re on to them. We should avoid doing business with any and all companies that want to force us into their closed world view. Read the article, share it with everyone you know, write letters to the editors, and go to social media and like every comment that resists the MQA message. Collectively we have the power. If no one buys into their nonsense, they will be forced to back off. Then we can get back to making better sounding records!"
http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6109
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...-of-controversies-concerns-and-cautions-r701/

The self importance of "Audiophiles" is amazing.

They are not the economical factor that will make or break MQA.

Eric
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,608
Location
Central Fl
The self importance of "Audiophiles" is amazing.

They are not the economical factor that will make or break MQA.

Eric
That may be true.
But doing the right thing is it's own reward. ;)
 

Palladium

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Aug 4, 2017
Messages
630
Likes
769
That may be true.
But doing the right thing is it's own reward. ;)

If something actually useful like HEVC is already so hated by the tech companies because of the IP minefields, what chance would the audio solution-looking-for-problem MQA has?

And please none of that "hurr-hurr but ESS announced MQA support in their DACs". It's already trivial to throw in a few million IC transistors of dubious utility for free with today's semicon tech.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,608
Location
Central Fl
If something actually useful like HEVC is already so hated by the tech companies because of the IP minefields, what chance would the audio solution-looking-for-problem MQA has?
What justification is that for not opposing what could "possibly" be a very crippling thing to the distribution of lossless music files. I get that some don't believe it a real threat and we're just paranoid, but to ignore it and let it gain as much momentum as possible without vocal opposition is just foolish.
 

Theo

Active Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2018
Messages
288
Likes
180
The self importance of "Audiophiles" is amazing.

They are not the economical factor that will make or break MQA.

Eric
You're right, they are a small, but highly lucrative market, at least for the "audioaddict" industry. IMHO, the MQA selling point is aimed at those, as is hi res BTW, at least at a starting point. If the "audioaddicts" don't endorse the product, will MQA be able to convince the "average" customer to fall into it? So, maybe the audiophiles do have some importance after all?
 

sofrep811

Active Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2016
Messages
253
Likes
319
Not sure if this is posted in the 12 pages? Search didn't pull it up.

https://www.xivero.com/de/hypothesi...per-technical-analysis-of-mqa-by-mqa-limited/

Audiophile Review making sure their audience understands the fact vs fiction of MQA, and to basically just try it. I have tried it, and I don't get why we need it based on the link before this one, and others I've read that offer up a more academic approach to MQA.

https://audiophilereview.com/cd-dac-digital/mqa-the-facts-versus-the-fiction.html
 

Wombat

Master Contributor
Joined
Nov 5, 2017
Messages
6,722
Likes
6,459
Location
Australia
Not sure if this is posted in the 12 pages? Search didn't pull it up.

https://www.xivero.com/de/hypothesi...per-technical-analysis-of-mqa-by-mqa-limited/

Audiophile Review making sure their audience understands the fact vs fiction of MQA, and to basically just try it. I have tried it, and I don't get why we need it based on the link before this one, and others I've read that offer up a more academic approach to MQA.

https://audiophilereview.com/cd-dac-digital/mqa-the-facts-versus-the-fiction.html


Not need but market control. Let MQA show otherwise by introducing technical and marketing clarity to their articles.

Thanks for posting the links.
 

sofrep811

Active Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2016
Messages
253
Likes
319
Agreed, Wombat. My concern is, and I had this happen with 480GB of 24/96 files and ISO rips of 80 SACDs accidently get deleted because my daughter saved a filed in a folder and tried to fix it. Told my daughter, NO big deal, I have it on my ext drive. This from 2008 and it's 2011 and my back-up was a 500 GB Seagate drive. Well, I plug in the Seagate to my iMac...and the iMac won't read it. Spent hours and gave up. Tried plugging into company laptop with MS, no read again. I still have it and when I have the time I'll keep trying.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom