It means this:
1. I use MQA for free on Tidal. It was added to my subscription at no cost to me.
2. I have DACs and players that decode it. Definitely did not pay for it in my player (Roon).
3. I have no issue with someone/MQA trying to build a format and charge people to use it. MP3, AAC, WMA, Dolby, DTS, MPEG, etc. all have license fees (some with very high dollars). The few that were not likely infringed on someone's patent and left it to the implementer to deal with the lawsuit. Folks are paying probably $10 to $20 to license Blu-ray format to build a player and that hasn't cause riots in streets. And companies like Netflix and such are getting sued for millions if not billions of dollars over codec/DRM IP. It is just the way this field works.
4. I see no fear of MQA taking over the world and predicted that Apple and Amazon's of the world would never pay a fee to use it. Amazon has since come out with high-res service with no MQA proving that MQA had no leverage over them, or the the labels.
5. I consider Bob Stuart a professional colleague with major contributions to audio research (AES Fellow, highly reference journal papers, etc.). I would need really good reasons to throw arrows at him.
I realize some of you are motivated differently and that is fine. Just don't ask me to shed blood with you. I have a review to get out.
Your questions were too free form for me to figure what to answer. Anyway, briefly, MQA is not lossless and never was. It was originally pitched as an archive format for analog content so they could have characterized ADC and produced conjugate DAC filtering. In practice they seem to be mass encoding without it. It would be hugely expensive to sit there and encode and analyze one file at a time. I don't know if it sounds worse than something else. I listen to a lot of it and some stuff sounds lousy, some stuff sounds great, much like CD quality tracks. I bought one CD that was was supposed to allow testing of MQA but have not had time to test it. I forget if it was the non-MQA version of the same content on Tidal or what.
I don't know what being neutral has anything to do with the specific questions you are asking. I will answer anyway.
I am not privy to what files the record labels are giving to them. If past experience is any kind of predictor, you can't rely on anything the record labels send as "true master."
I don't know the artist intent. I do know that the artist and labels have the right to approve any distribution so if bits are going out, it is with their implicit permission.
I already answered this. It is not lossless.
No one knows what they heard and I doubt that any of them have gone back and listened to MQA versions any more than they listened to any other releases.
No. As I mentioned, this is something they can do but likely are not doing it.
Within reason, yes. Any cryptographic system can be broken but I suspect theirs is not yet since no one that knows how to break it, cares to do so.
If they both cost the same, I want the original high-resolution files. No MQA. No down conversion to 16/44.1.
Indeed they do...
https://www.mqa.co.uk/newsroom/qa/is-mqa-lossless
You really think you can argue such a case in front of a lay judge and jury? If we had just facilities, we should go after people who sell $30,000 cables...
Well therein lies the rub doesn't it?
Agree, however said consumer laws vary drastically from one country to another. Companies here in Aus are very particular about how they word marketing material to avoid such issues, however what is claimed there on MQA UK's site in my opinion would breach our laws here as it appears to be a blatantly false claim simply based on definition of lossless and lossy.
I think what many object to the most is the quasi DRM, secrecy and lack of transparency from MQA. It would be easy for them to clear all this up, however one assumes their data on this is proprietary.
Not really. You asked a bunch of questions which had nothing to do with my net conclusion which is I don't care one way or the other. MQA is there for me to use for free. If a music I search for is MQA, I play and enjoy. If not, I still play and enjoy. If you were in my shoes, would you slash your wrist when you saw an MQA clip come up in Tidal? If so, then you are violently against it. And I am not. I am not going to tell anyone to adopt MQA. Or not. I just don't think this is at all an important topic. This is neutrality in the most pure sense.
?,you have a Tidal or MQA CD's?
