Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music Universal signs to MQA

Universal commits to hi-res audio with MQA collaboration.

Said in the release to be preparing 100,000s of MQA tracks for distribution in the year.

Fantastic news, only Sony to go for the MQA hat trick.
Hector

Good spot.

Are you going to tell the good folks over at Computer Audiophile? I swear some of them may explode.

I wonder if we will see a new streaming entity emerge solely concentrating on MQA material. How good would that be, eliminating the current frustrating search (non) facility on Tidal.

Hector

Tidal's approach to me is deliberate they will quietly remove the non-MQA files from their servers and offer only MQA encoded files. After all they play as normal 44.1 FLACs anyway when you don't have the hardware. This is but a transitioning phase.

The other services should be interesting how they roll it out. I have very limited experience apart from Spotify. I recall reading that Spotify and Apple Music have lower res than TIdal even..this could put them under the gun.

I'll tell the CA folks but I now understand the timing tone and rationale for Linn's article on MQA being bad - they probably already knew the UMG decision was gonna happen, and expressed their frustration through the article.

My deepest of admiration and respect for Bob S and team; how they transformed the industry TWICE - first with MLP now with MQA - and did so with quiet earnestness, tirelessly working to perfect their art. Here we were oogling at the DSPs and Ref 800s, when in truth they had much more paradigm changing plans in motion over decades.

The guy should receive a Grammy Lifetime Award.

Dont forget Peter Craven et al.

I think the appropriate text to all of these learned friends is "Its Over".

With Warner and Universal on MQA, Sony is out on its own in the frost. Nothing they roll out will be standard setting unless it is non hardware dependent (highly unlikely) and even then, it forces carriers and consumers to support 2 standards.

Today is the day MQA becomes the standard of audio reproduction.

Good find. Thanks for posting. I am sure you are right that this now secures MQA's future. And I think that what you say about Linn is spot on.

For (some) audiophiles maybe, but in the mainstream I think MP3 will still be around for quite a while in the audio streaming arena

I saw this over on Facebook this morning. Interestingly one poster brought up his concern over some files only being in 44k. To which Bob Stuart answered the question quickly. Maybe some of the questions being asked here should be posted on The MQA facebook page as it seems you are likely to get your answer directly from Mr Stuart himself.

For those interested, below are just some of the UMG Labels... a lot of historic stuff buried within those... particularly Jazz at Blue Note, Verve & ECM... and the Classical vaults at Decca and Deutsche Grammophone are rich with classic content... and the R&B / Soul classics from Motown.

ECM!