No, it's not. Roon is actually doing what it claims to do (if it is overpriced or not is up to anyone). Not MQA.
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MQA entering into administration - comparable to Chapter 11 in the US
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Let's hope.
computer-audiophile
Major Contributor
If it is considered as overpriced, this can also have a negative impact on its future. Acceptance may wane or not be enough for a stable business. (Not so important for me, I don't need it and I have seen already countless platforms come and go).
Is not the core snakeoil in MQA the leaky apodizing filter with only post ringing ?
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Ok thanks. So basically MQA seems in financial trouble and people are "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead (dying)" about it.
I've mostly only seen audiophiles railing against MQA, though maybe they were just the loudest bunch. Where there many audiophiles on the pro-MQA side?
Galliardist
Major Contributor
It includes John Robert Stuart. I'm pretty sure that's the one.
I never saw the value in MQA, saving a few bits and bandwidth plus DRM was never going to win over music aficionados... remember the Sony CD DRM disaster?
But they seem to be equally bullshitish in collapsing as they were with the early hype. Oh yeah, going into administration is a great step to convince a potential buyer the business has a lot of value to offer etc... right.
But they seem to be equally bullshitish in collapsing as they were with the early hype. Oh yeah, going into administration is a great step to convince a potential buyer the business has a lot of value to offer etc... right.
boxerfan88
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The core issue with MQA, in my opinion, is that MQA corrupts the 16/44 content to do its magic, resulting in corrupted 16/44 for non-MQA users.
If MQA did their magic by adding bits, and leaving original 16/44 content intact (lossless), the backlash would likely be far more muted.
If MQA did their magic by adding bits, and leaving original 16/44 content intact (lossless), the backlash would likely be far more muted.
Going beyond 16/44.1 makes technology almost irrelevant for Apple products users, who are the majority of music streaming consumers.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
A large part of the industry were against it from the start. Look for a Linn product with MQA, a Naim product, a Sounds United product (there may be one tucked in their range somewhere), and so on, and so on (I'm showing my British audiophile roots here). They didn't just not adopt it, but argued against it. Most of the main recording studios were resistant. Several of the people involved in the early research stages that led to MQA were anti the final product.
It's worth remembering the initial marketing of MQA. They set out to seduce key players in magazines and record companies. The difference between early descriptions of specially made MQA masters for early reviewers, and what you read pf Tidal sound quality in the 2020s, is spectacular. As a result, some magazine reviewers still defend MQA based on those early experiences. I assume that a lot of this is that most MQA now is basically an automated process run by someone at Tidal. All the early promises about involving artists, and a large chunk of what MQA could do, went out of the window.
As for the other part of the question, 99.9% of people who listen to music have never heard of MQA and even Tidal listeners find the "Master" tag but don't all realise that means MQA. And of that remaining 0.1%, practically all are audiophiles whose experience are the production line Tidal conversions. Audiophiles had had a gutful of other proprietary technologies, and had decided to concentrate on stereo: and the vinyl revival was already underway. MQA made it pretty much impossible to do much with objective testing as well, and had obfuscated their own product to the extent that the GoldenSound incident really exposed people's knowledge of what MQA was doing, as the format itself.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
Briefly:
MQA had the ability to switch between a set of different filters, but it was rarely used, and the company's attempts to get manufacturers to use their standard filter for all PCM playback did them more harm than good. Bolting the product into existing chip technologies meant that one potential advantage of the system was thrown away. In fact the story of MQA is in many ways about compromising their product.
Also, the original MQA target, as I understood it, was to use 24/96 as the standard package and to sell downloads. One thing about MQA was that they continually chased a market, rather than working on their own terms. The decode/render thing and compressing further into 16/44.1 was chasing the streaming market on top of the original spec. They chased the CD market. And their final act was MQAir, trying to get into Bluetooth as the last place where compression is necessary for those parts of the market they wanted to sell into.
On an interview, Bob Stuart talked about the cost of data rates for mobile, and while some people might not worry about that, he said that for a hypothetical guy in Japan, the cost was a big deal. First, let's set aside that data rates are constantly rising, while competition increases and cost for a given data rate drops. While the amount of data to be stream remains constant for a given format. In other words, any such issue with the guy in Japan would be maybe a year away from being irrelevant.
Even without that, he was basically saying that we needed to turn audio production, players, licensing and oversight, to a private entity. Because, apparently, it's too sad that the guy in Japan can only afford 16-bit 44.1k streaming, yet wants something closer to 24-bit 96k...
while listening on a mobile device
(and realistically, probably on earbuds while on a subway train).
Once you realize what an incredibly bad argument there is for the marginal compression aspect, you have to wonder why not just stream 24-bit 96k, if that's perceived to be better than 44.1k. So, the next argument must be that it's better than linear PCM, and in particular better than 24/96. The problem there was that all the available material (AFAIK) was transcoded from existing linear PCM. So, if MQA had a magic sauce that made linear PCM better, why not just build that technology in a player, and skip streaming MQA? Well, less money for MQA. Now, I realize that the full MQA experience would be more end to end—including content production. But, they never argued "we admit it doesn't do much now, but some day, just you wait!" The bottom line is that even if it isn't outright snake oil, they certainly made poor arguments why we needed that level of intrusion from a licensing entity. And they never offered scientific proof that it was a noticeable improvement, much less one that was worth the level of intrusion and the cost over time.
I never thought it had much of a chance, but it was still comforting to read of its demise this morning.
MQA reminded me of those videos promoting Pono, where professional musicians sat in Neil Young's car, then exited claiming it was the best audio experience they'd ever heard in their lives. People who record in the most expensive studios in the world.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
The collapse is not happening in an uncommon way for a technology company. There are two ways for a tech company to fail. The first is that the technology is actually unnecessary. The second is that the company fails to exploit the technology. In this case, while in administration someone has to work out whether (a) there is a business model that actually allows the company to continue, and (b) is there value in the underlying technology that can be realised by selling or better licensing that technology.
Being in administration makes sale of technologies more tangible to potential buyers, and who knows what IP MQA has apart from SCL6. Remember they are an offshoot from Meridian, which apart from MQA has two successful offshoots in the form of Sooloos (which was the basis for Roon) and MLP, which has proved to be a very forward-looking development in its original form.
The administrator is there to work for Muse Holdings and Reinet. Effectively there is every possibility of a fire sale here to get them something back. The combination of potentially valuable IT, administrators in place, the sudden absence of funding, and indeed the skills of the people involved with the company, will attract potential buyers, refinancers and asset strippers that may not have touched the place as it was before. How much they will find that is useful to anyone, we don't know.
Galliardist
Major Contributor
The biggest losers are almost certainly Richemont/Reinet, though.
Declaring bankruptcy openly is a business failure. The way to market a company's value is while it's still doing business. You have zero leverage with potential buyers if they know you have no other options. The value of the company takes a huge dive, and typically most of it goes under and only bits and pieces get acquired at garage sale prices.
“MQA folds” now has a double meaning 
Isn't that like saying "the operation was a success but the patient died"!
Galliardist
Major Contributor
The company has not declared bankruptcy. That state in the UK would be advertised by the company or a creditor appointing a receiver, and creditor meetings and court cases would normally be involved.
The administrator has probably been appointed because of the departure of Reinet. What the exact arrangements are there we don't know. In cases like this, much depends on the actual value of assets like the IP around SCL6 and what future revenue the MQA technology may see in the future. In administration, the company does retain other options unless the administrators themselves decide that the company is insolvent.
Potentially useless analogy time: if an art gallery becomes insolvent, the chairs in the boardroom aren't going to raise much money, but the most collectable artworks don't lose much value at all.
Quite confused by a lot of comments - based on what MQA has provided, their codec is indeed lossless, altered perhaps in ways they aren't transparent about, but lossless. The closure of their business (or change of hands) might result in the code becoming public and proper assessment of the extent of alteration being done similar the efforts of Goldensound.
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