Its all good to get diversity of views on new platforms, formats and technologies. So the article put out has its place and function. However, it would have been so much better if Linn was willing to couch their concerns neutrally, and discuss MQA in the context of the pros/cons of existing alternatives, such as DVD-A which Linn uses frequently.

I have very limited experience with Linn's DVD-A range; To try it out on my Sooloos system, I bought and downloaded one of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's albums from Linn's website in DVD-A. It was 3 times the file size of some 96k albums I purchased, and it took a while to complete even on a fast connection.


Listening wise it was good clean and clear but didnt make me go back and buy the whole series. The album was Haydn's symphonies and truth be told, between this DVD-A recording and TIdal streaming DG's rival recordings under Trevor Pinnock at 44.1 upsampled to 88, I couldnt detect a glaring difference. The file size definitely played at the back of my mind.

Further, I am not sure whether it can be directly credited to the de-blurring and wider frequency capture, but, while this DVD-A recording was good, the 2L MQA titles have that extra palpable presence that just hits you, slightly below the heart and spreading through your gut. Not all MQA titles have this impact; but that is can be achieved on recorded media is relevatory.

A similar and earlier article here. Its striking in similarity how both articles focus on monopoly of the music supply chain, aided it would seem to them by the efficiency of the file size achieved by MQA encoding. Yet there is no discussion at all on the MQA functionality in digital deblurring and frequency capture. Its an oversimplification to say that MQA is just about compression.

So I welcome a dissenting view to keep the discussion grounded, but it needs to be objective in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of MQA.

Zone 1: DSP5200SEs, 818v3, Sooloos MC200 (1 Master, 1 Slave), Samsung LED 55" TV and Bluray
Zone 2: F80, MS200