I’ve always judged MQA on how it sounds in reality through my Meridian system, rather than its technical prowess, and don’t yet have enough information on the technical side of MQA to form an opinion on what Bob Stuart was saying in this video.
What I would say, however, is that he did (separately) make the point that all digital audio is lossy. My feeling is the boundary could become blurred when adding compressed information that otherwise wouldn’t be there on a 16 bit CD (vs MP3 which throws information away) and is recovered when playing back music through an MQA decoder.
On the other hand, an MQA CD that has information hidden in noise beneath the sound floor, but reduces the resolution to somewhere a little above 15 bits might pee some off if they don’t have an MQA decoder. Yet, isn’t this what dithering does anyway (adding low level noise to the least significant bit)?
I’m sure I’ll be more informed when I’ve been able to watch more of the videos on this topic, however it might all become a moot point if MQA did fail.
The subject of this thread is MQA being placed in administration . Whether or not it sounds any good or to what extent it is lossy are not the main subjects. What is is an annual turnover of £ 660K against annual administrative cost of £4.5m. Something comparable year after year. The main ( sole?) investor gives a period to allow rectification and when this expires walks.
I think it’s reasonable for people to explore some potential reasons behind MQA Ltd being placed in administration, however I agree wholeheartedly that the ~£4 million annual loss would likely be a significant factor.
Quite right, thanks for the reminder Pete. The debate over the merits of MQA raged on for years all over the audiophile fora, not much point in rehashing it in this thread yet again.
As for the receivership, there’s clearly value in the intellectual property, but I don’t see how MQA Ltd can survive under the circumstances, especially given it’s sole streaming service supporter, Tidal, has begun to waver. As for SCL6, IMHO it’s DOA.
I agree there is no need to re-debate the sound quality of MQA, and I respect that many have MQA recordings they enjoy. To each his or her own.
However, I do believe there are a lot of lessons to be learned from a closer examination of the rise, fall and business of MQA, and a thread on its receivership seems like an appropriate place to do so, as long as everything is respectful.
I find it absolutely incredible that MQA was able to get a 22 page feature in The Absolute Sound, in which it was extolled as “Better Than High Res” (see my prior post on this topic).
So we have, for starters, an incredible manipulation of the press, which in turn led to great interest in the technology by audiophiles and hobbyists alike.
Then we have Tidal, who, in their advertising was directly lying to consumers.
Then we have very divided audiophiles, with strong opinions on both sides.
Then we have manufacturers like Linn and Chord who refused to support MQA.
And then we have many (many!) manufacturers who did pay royalties to license MQA’s technology, in response to consumer demand, which was created by the aforementioned deceptions.
If you have a better recent drama in high end audio, I’d love to hear it! : )
I can’t believe we haven’t seen any lawsuits yet. Maybe some are forthcoming…
The first thing I did after ordering my Rossini (first streamer I ever owned) was to subscribe both Tidal and Qobuz.
After three months I closed the Tidal account because of MQA. My ears told me that it was not good.
What I think happened: they thought that low bandwidth problems would be around for many years. So they started to research a compression algorithm to allow for hires streaming over not-so-high bandwidth. After a few years (and a lot of money spent) they finally had a viable solution with the added bonus of a built-in DRM system, but the problem was no longer real in those countries where there is an actual market for high cost audio equipment.
So now what they had on their hands was the typical solution looking for a problem, plus financial issues and grumpy investors.
What happened later is known. But we have to admit that if our Internet connections were still those of many years ago, MQA would be seen as a blessing by many audiophiles.
MQA was designed primarily as an efficient streaming technology for high-resolution audio, not as an archival format. Labels are not interested in managing streaming formats.
When it’s a format they can sell to streamers as reducing their bandwidth costs while providing them (the label) with enhanced DRM, the calculus changes a bit.
Regardless, no one has stepped up that I’m aware of, so the point is somewhat moot, though it’s clear the receivership may be more one of reorganization than of liquidation.
Global bandwidth costs are reducing at a rate of around 15-23% annually, depending on which continent you’re in, while trans-continental bandwidth price reductions are even steeper than that, and accelerating. Streaming Service Providers leverage CDNs to take full advantage of those price reductions.
MQA’s real relevance was maybe a decade ago. Now, not so much
Bandwidth still costs something, and that’s the bottom line.
Companies choose vendors or manufacturing locations over a few cents per product; if a technology can save them a few cents per hundreds of songs streamed, they’ll use it, or services other than Tidal and Qobuz would stop using lossy compression.
MQA is an attempt to not simply sell the same content again at a higher margin, or to maintain audio quality in streaming ecosystems: it is an outright land grab. It’s an attempt to control and extract revenue from every part of the supply chain, and not just over content that they hold the rights for. It really is quite extraordinary. Let’s break it down:
The Streaming Service Providers aren’t spared. On hindsight, is it any wonder Tidal’s the only one?
Were they the only one? I am aware that in China Alibaba started a service ( Xiami music) which was announced in 2019 as using MQA However that folded in early 2021. I don’t know if the MQA aspect actually occurred. A further stillborn MQA streaming service was the intended 100% MQA one proposed by HDTracks ( HDStreaming). A certain amount of PR but it just faded away before becoming a reality.
Tidal were interested in adding MQA right from the beginning but that was, what, circa 10years ago? Looks like no other takers despite the elapse of time. Plus an odd few MQA CDs ( mostly Japanese from boutique labels.)
Exactly, I don’t believe Xiami had much MQA after the initial fanfare, before they got shut down.
As for MQA CDs, I’ve got a couple, with the exception of one or two (Rebecca Pidgeon’s “The Raven” being one), the rest of the half a dozen or so are from UMG actually, so, not that boutique.
You were referring to Tidal as wanting to save bandwidth cost. Tidal is a content distributor, they don’t encode MQA, they have to license it. I’m not sure what “buy the technology” you’re referring to.
And what is “UMe”?? If you meant UMG, you were debating about Tidal, not UMG.
Just for background the major audio content companies, UMG, Warners and Sony Music acquired small shareholdings in MQA around the time encoded files started to be supplied to Tidal.
Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) is the global catalog and special markets division of Universal Music Group. Working closely in concert with UMG’s record labels, territories and operating companies, UMe provides a frontline approach to catalog management, an emphasis on strategic marketing initiatives and creating opportunities in new technologies.
So if labels bought small stakes in MQA, one or more might feel it was worthwhile to just purchase them at a discount.
… Do you mean the same few cents (and more!) that’s then lost licensing MQA?