Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music Re: MQA status?

Less good news Schiit Audio announced that they would not be supporting MQA.

M

Very interesting, but all I'm thinking is that it's a really poor choice of name for a company.

To me MQA is starting to feel more and more like 4k TV. Sure, it has great potential but hardly anything has been available for quite a long time now.

Was it implied in the article that only Tidal will stream MQA?

Fortunately for them, their products are far from Schiit. We may disagree with aspects of their statement but Stoddard has made a number of very good commercial points. Moffat’s supplementary points are probably less well grounded but at least they have a clear position on the matter and have communicated it to their customers and potential customers in a comprehensive and straightforward way.

The Lavorgna review is also interesting – one conclusion is that MQA applied to a middle range DAC (the Mytek in this case) is not going to elevate that DAC above a top flight DAC that does not have MQA decoding. There will be many DAC manufacturers that will continue to exist and thrive outside the MQA world.

Altus, I agree with everything you've said. But it's interesting having all those (presumed) facts presented together in such stark terms. In today's world, why shouldn't a company make a mint from some outstanding intellectual property? But it's also easy to see why it gets many people's goat.

It might be moot though when Warner (presumably) open the vaults, but it sure is taking an eternity.

I agree it is perfectly acceptable to exploit the value of the IP to make an exceptional profit but it remains to be seen whether there is much take up in the industry. It is possible that MQA is making it too difficult or too expensive to get a large take up in the high end DAC market. I can see why high end DAC manufacturers would baulk at having to "open the bonnet" on their own IP just to get MQA to integrate. Couple this with the "fact" that 80-85% of the MQA goodness is already in the un-decoded MQA file and you can see why it is not an easy sell. I suspect much of this difficulty arises because of the lack of an acceptable software solution.

At the lower end it is not clear to me that MQA will make much difference to sound quality but it may still be a marketing point on phones and similar devices, and this may be enough to get it to fly.

Meanwhile I will continue to listen to my eight MQA albums!

Agreed. But it has yet to be established that MQA stands head and shoulders above other codecs for the high end too. However, the intellectual case has been resoundingly made if we ignore concerns about monopolies expressed by some other manufacturers.

The only point made that is a valid concern for them is sharing their IP, everything else has just been thrown in as 'filler'.

This early on it would have been better for them to have just kept quiet until it had gained traction rather than draw a line in the sand.

If they find that custom is leaving in favor of MQA enabled DAC they would be foolish to hold their position.

T

At the airport, browsing the first edition of the UK Robb Report (austerity clearly isn't hitting the luxury sector that hard...), I found a small article by Ken Kessler which name-checks MQA as the "hope" for audiophile streaming.

I see the Schiit announcement as clever marketing.
Means that they can beat the competition to "take a stance", which clearly some elements of the audio community will agree with, so earns them plenty of brownie points.
More importantly, costs them pretty much nothing to get some free air-time.


Doesn't stop them picking up the technology at a later date and it genuinely takes off and it'll have cost them nothing but a note of "we changed out minds as a result of .... technical breakthrough by our team".

It's a win-win statement by them. Just life unfortunately.


If anything, I see it as very similar to a number of the individuals on forums, happy to slate MQA without ever hearing it. Again, they're in a no lose situation. If it fails, they get to craw "told ya so". If it works, they'll just ignore what they said this year, like any decent politician will do.

DAR review of MQA: An Inconvenient Truth: MQA Sounds Better

Ha ha, that will poke a stick in the Flat Earthers bee hive.... 😎