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MQA Out of Business?

173.34.242.63
Posted on April 6, 2023 at 14:28:58
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 In about 2014 in the hi-fi press, several writers from mainly a couple of print magazines began promoting MQA to readers. Readers were told it was a "brand new world" and "game-changing" technology. From the outside looking it, they came across as shills.

It didn't take much research to know that that, all along, there wasn't much there -- and SoundStage! took that stance more than 7 years ago. And I'm glad we did.

From what it appears, the jig is finally up. See link below.

Doug Schneider
SoundStage!

 

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I think that MQA's intentions were good; it's just that, posted on April 6, 2023 at 15:08:43
John Marks
Manufacturer

Posts: 7806
Location: Peoples' Democratic Republic of R.I.
Joined: April 23, 2000
 I think that MQA's intentions were good; it's just that the implementation was kludgy.

Look at the confidently-voiced expectations that SACD would be THE World-Bestriding Colossus. and while it is still technically a viable format, it's popularity is, to reference one of my favorite Rodrigues cartoons, below that of the Latin Mass.

amb,

john

 

RE: I think that MQA's intentions were good; it's just that, posted on April 6, 2023 at 15:16:22
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 No they weren't.

What set me off right from the start was the "lossless" claim, which was false. Then they changed the story to "perceptually lossless" -- and the same argument could be made for MP3.

Then there was the point that they wouldn't tell reviewers or manufacturers much detail about their supposed technology. It was all a secret -- even to the manufacturers implementing it. But the manufacturers who were on the up and up and weren't buying into it knew better.

Still, the shills kept their stories going and people were mislead.

I was there from near the beginning of this -- and was part of the bogus demos. The intentions WEREN'T good. From what I could tell, it was an attempt to put a licensed and paid-for music format in the market when we didn't actually need it. FLAC was always better.

Doug

 

Furthermore..., posted on April 6, 2023 at 15:38:13
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 BTW, I want to sum up several reasons why MQA's intentions weren't good.

One was that they were attempting to implement a lossy format when we already had umpteen lossless formats -- and mislead everyone by telling them it's lossless.

Another was the BS about authentication. Pure BS when someone understands even a little bit about recording companies and how recordings get made.

And yet another was their filter tech, which was nothing special. Shifts the ringing to mostly after the impulse, which had been done over and over before.

I could go on, but there was, essentially, NOTHING THERE. So you can't have good intentions with that.

Doug
SoundStage!

 

RE: Furthermore..., posted on April 6, 2023 at 18:00:23
slovell1
Audiophile

Posts: 497
Location: Chesnee, South Carolina
Joined: October 11, 2008
 It was just another con to get you to buy more gear and replace your catalog once again. No telling how much money changed hands to get reviewers to hustle this.

 

I think the answer is zero dollars., posted on April 6, 2023 at 18:57:30
John Marks
Manufacturer

Posts: 7806
Location: Peoples' Democratic Republic of R.I.
Joined: April 23, 2000
 People who write about audio technology are usually technology geeks, and therefore they are vulnerable to letting their tech enthusiasms blind them to the fact that for about 80% of the listeners, music is simply a SECONDARY accompaniment to other activities such as socializing, reading, or knitting.

Remember SACDs? Where are they today?

Remember DTS Surround Sound on Music-Only DVDs?

Where are those today?

In other contexts, such as History, one of my catchphrases for more than 40 years has been:

NEVER ASCRIBE TO CONSPIRACY THAT WHICH
COMPLETELY CAN BE EXPLAINED BY STUPIDITY.

I am not saying that the audio journalists who felt that they had heard the future, and it was MQA, were stupid. No.

But they were not as tuned into marketplace realities as they were into fascinating new technology.

BTW, I know at least one famous classical-music record producer who is a true believer in MQA. That guy recorded three of the CDs in the monster suitcase-sized boxed set, "The 200 Most Important Piano Recordings of the 20th Century."

I am sure that nobody paid him off.

jm

 

RE: Furthermore..., posted on April 7, 2023 at 00:01:10
slovell1
Audiophile

Posts: 497
Location: Chesnee, South Carolina
Joined: October 11, 2008
 It was just another con to get you to buy more gear and replace your catalog once again. No telling how much money changed hands to get reviewers to hustle this.

 

You seem to want a pat on the back..., posted on April 7, 2023 at 05:02:05
RhythmDevil
Audiophile

Posts: 229
Joined: November 23, 2014
 Here you go then...

Thank you for your righteous crusade against a dangerous and misleading format! Never before has anyone attempted to claim that a new format was a "brand new world" and "game-changing", that it was, in fact, the holy grail of audio! Unless, of course, you ignore the last 50 years of audio: quadrophonic sound, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital, DTS, CDs, SACD, DVD-A, to name but a few... or to bring us to a recent example, ATMOS.

So, thanks for the "good work", I look forward to the entertainment of the next witch hunt. Until then, I will continue to enjoy my music in all of its formats, each of which, including MQA, have their own virtues.



Cerebrate!

 

It's been his 7 year itch. Nt, posted on April 7, 2023 at 06:04:53
geoffkait
 Nt

 

Not so much a pat, but..., posted on April 7, 2023 at 10:16:52
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 Hi,

Glad we're on the same side. I confess it does feel better to be vindicated at least somewhat. I was the first to speak up in an article I wrote back in 2015 questioning this -- and that had a number or reviewers questioning me. "How can you question Bob Stuart?" was the gist. But I knew the truth would come out.

However, this little crusade was more in memory of Charles Hansen, who'd founded Ayre Acoustics. He and I would talk often about what MQA wasn't -- and how misleading it was having writers and even editors championing it the way they were. "I want to hold their feet to the fire on this," was what he said often, because they had done it before. So I vowed that the feet would be held there for the long-term.

Doug
SoundStage!

 

RE: I think the answer is zero dollars., posted on April 7, 2023 at 10:27:59
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 "But they were not as tuned into marketplace realities as they were into fascinating new technology."

I don't agree with this. It wasn't fascinating if you peeked behind the curtain -- even a little bit.

Doug

 

I disagree, and with all due respect... well, why should I bother?, posted on April 7, 2023 at 15:28:10
John Marks
Manufacturer

Posts: 7806
Location: Peoples' Democratic Republic of R.I.
Joined: April 23, 2000
 I know more about MQA than I choose to discuss publicly.

You will just have to take that on faith.

I had my caveats as to how the process was rolled out and presented. Specifically, the "bundling" aspect of the mastering technology being bundled with the data-compression technology.

As far as I know, single-ended MQA "De-Blurring" of pre-existing digital files is a very-well-regarded, very much relied-upon digital tool in remastering and cleaning up old files.

Which is a totally separate matter from streaming services and Master Quality Authentication, and so forth.

And as for that specific technology: I, for one, with 55 years experience in recording technology ("Songs My Mother Taught Me" just celebrated the 40th anniversary of its recording sessions); I found that technology fascinating.

jm

 

RE: I disagree, and with all due respect... well, why should I bother?, posted on April 7, 2023 at 15:55:50
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 >>>>You will just have to take that on faith.

Give me a break -- that's the weakest of weak arguments. It translates to: no argument.

>>>>>As far as I know, single-ended MQA "De-Blurring" of pre-existing digital files is a very-well-regarded, very much relied-upon digital tool in remastering and cleaning up old files.

"As far as I know" is telling. Please, where is this happening? It was pointed out rather quickly that most recordings are made with MULTIPLE analog-to-digital converters, so the question was, how could all these "blurred" steps be accounted for. Nobody could answer it... Furthermore, the efficacy of the de-blurring could've been proven with a simple before-and-after test, but that never happened.

>>>>>I, for one, with 55 years experience in recording technology ("Songs My Mother Taught Me" just celebrated the 40th anniversary of its recording sessions); I found that technology fascinating.

So "55 years experience" amounts to....??? Have you read the patents? Did you understand the digital encoding? Can you actually tell us what in there was special?

Trumpeting "55 years" and taking what you say on "faith" are poor arguments as well. It's also what some will call an "appeal to authority." Sorry, try again, rather than "I know something no one else does."

If anyone knows something, it's the best digital designers in the world -- and when MQA came out, and for years after, I talked to all I could. There wasn't a single designer who thought that the technology amounted to anything.

Doug

 

the manufacturers ... knew better, posted on April 7, 2023 at 19:14:38
DAP
Audiophile

Posts: 668
Location: Toronto
Joined: January 1, 2010
 Getting the manufacturers on board as "partners" seems to have been MQA's one success story. Not all did, Linn, Total, Weiss, Benchmark and Schitt come to mind, but the list of the ones that did is long, dCS, TEAC, Esoteric, bel canto, Pioneer, Boulder, Audioquest, Lux, d'agostino, Berkley, EMM Labs, Lumin, Chord ...

Benchmark published a blog in May 2016 Is MQA DOA? that seems prophetic.

In the meantime Stereophile had rediscovered the con, while before there were no cons mentioned in the conclusion of a dac review, now there was one, if a dac did not support mqa, and was not therefore "future proof".

Daniel

 

RE: the manufacturers ... knew better, posted on April 8, 2023 at 05:22:08
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 The point about manufacturers coming on is more complex than thinking that the manufacturers that did actually supported it.

The big thing was that the reviewers acting as shills made it seem like it *had* to be there. So it became a checkmark on the spec sheet -- and certain manufacturers thought they had to have that checkmark. But what it easier for them was when it got built into certain DAC chips.

I think the whole thing was a real sad state of affairs for most the "legacy" press. Old-timers trumpeting up the next big thing that really wasn't. It built a lot of distrust.

Doug

 

RE: I think that MQA's intentions were good; it's just that, posted on April 8, 2023 at 13:46:55
Krav Maga
Audiophile

Posts: 2358
Location: Texas
Joined: October 19, 2017
 Please remember that MQA's goal was for "all" digital music to be MQA encoded.
"All thoughts are prey to some beast" - Bill Callahan

"I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are" - Lou Reed

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein

 

RE: You seem to want a pat on the back..., posted on April 8, 2023 at 14:07:20
Krav Maga
Audiophile

Posts: 2358
Location: Texas
Joined: October 19, 2017
 Did you want all digital music to be MQA encoded?

That was MQA's goal.

As a reminder of what the stakes were regarding the MQA audio format, let me remind you what the company's ambitions for MQA are as stated by MQA's Spencer Chrislu (SC) to Jim Austin (JCA) on Stereophile.com. And I quote:

"JCA: What are the company's ambitions for MQA? Do you hope/expect that all digital music will someday be MQA encoded?

SC: Well, that's the goal!" (Link below)
"All thoughts are prey to some beast" - Bill Callahan

"I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are" - Lou Reed

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein

 

RE: Not so much a pat, but..., posted on April 8, 2023 at 14:08:23
Krav Maga
Audiophile

Posts: 2358
Location: Texas
Joined: October 19, 2017
 The MQA debate is what brought me to register with Audio Asylum in order to enter the MQA debate in Critic's Corner.


Back on November 21, 2017, in response to a post by John Atkinson, I wrote:

"In the Critics Corner thread "What Happened in the Last 30 Years?", in response to Charlie Hansen's response to you posting the following: "starting with Stereophile's January issue, Jim Austin will be on-by-one examining the technical claims made for MQA.", you wrote:
"Please note that I have been studying the criticisms you and others have made about MQA since they were made. I have also been studying the MQA patents and papers, talking to others as well as you and reading as much as I can on the work of Turing, Shannon, and others on information theory.
In what I believe is /not/ an uninformed opinion, I think the vast majority of the criticisms made of MQA are not based on facts; are based on societal and financial factors that I don't regard as relevant; are commercially self-serving; are based on circular reasoning; or are nothing more than uninformed conspiracy theories. In other words, I am not convinced that you or others have yet made any kind of case that would cause me to question my own opinions."

In the context of the Jim Austin's forthcoming article in Stereophile magazine, just as you concluded that rt66indierock was "framing" the article to try to delegitimize the work ahead of its publication, one could also conclude that you were "framing" the article to delegitimize any criticism of the work ahead of time.

So, one could conclude that your criticism of rt66indierock using a debating tactic called "framing" is an example of, oh, what's the word I'm looking for, oh yeah, HYPOCRISY!

As a reminder of what the stakes are regarding the MQA audio format, let me remind you what the company's ambitions for MQA are as stated by MQA's Spencer Chrislu (SC) to Jim Austin (JCA) on Stereophile.com. And I quote:

"JCA: What are the company's ambitions for MQA? Do you hope/expect that all digital music will someday be MQA encoded?

SC: Well, that's the goal!" (Link below)

HOPE/EXPECT THAT ALL DIGITAL MUSIC WILL SOMEDAY BE MQA ENCODED!
(Yes, ALL!)


This is why we are concerned, why we care, why we must ask questions and why the questions need to be answered. We want to get this one right. The stakes are too high to get it wrong!"


To which Charles Hansen responded:

"Thanks for the link. That is truly scary. Talk about an organization obsessed with power, control, and money. Where does music fit in to their equation? Or the artist? Or the end user?

Equally scary to me was the way that the interviewee would repeatedly (and presumably knowingly) lie to promote his money-making scheme. Those are simply not the kind of people with whom I enjoy doing business."

People forget that MQA's goal was that all digital music will someday be MQA encoded.

I'm glad that that never happened.
"All thoughts are prey to some beast" - Bill Callahan

"I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are" - Lou Reed

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein

 

Now, it more likely seems to be a brute-force legal strategy to protect the new owners who will buy it., posted on April 8, 2023 at 14:12:12
John Marks
Manufacturer

Posts: 7806
Location: Peoples' Democratic Republic of R.I.
Joined: April 23, 2000
 Any time a company changes hands, there is always the fear that ticking time bomb undisclosed obligations will arise to bite the new owners.

"Sheep Dipping" a company that very well might be bought, via a planned Bankruptcy, is a somewhat extreme legal strategy, but in the right cases, very well justified.

It seems that there might already be potential buyers interested in acquiring MQA, because of its new WiFi-capable version SLC6. Such buyers want a very clean deal with no loose threads.

Using a Bankruptcy filing to force all real and imagined creditors out of the woodwork is, in that scenario, a prudent path to take.

So, the more comes out, the more it looks like MQA will not go "out of business," but rather, will have new owners.

jm

 

Nope, never cared about MQA, posted on April 8, 2023 at 14:33:52
RhythmDevil
Audiophile

Posts: 229
Joined: November 23, 2014
 Did I want all music MQA encoded? Nope, didn't care. Didn't then, don't now.

I learned my lesson about digital encodings a long time ago. All of them struggle to give me the musical enjoyment that I get from vinyl recordings. But I am hardly a Luddite; I've been there for all the various digital formats over the years, use most of them to this day, and it has been quite a ride. And all of them, bar none, wanted to take over the world of audio, to be the one true format, and were championed/marketed to death. Truths were stretched to the breaking point, then and now. But the marketplace is brutal, and truth will out. Will I miss MQA? Nah. Didn't care. Why?

In pre-retirement life, I once (or twice :) ) designed systems for real time signal processing; I do, in fact, understand the underlying math of MQA. I've always thought the math/algorithms were interesting in and of themselves; I was just not interested in applying them to my music.

In principle, there is something to the concept of advanced processing techniques.
In practice, what we get is crap like AutoTune.



Cerebrate!

 

"I know more about MQA than I choose to discuss publicly.", posted on April 8, 2023 at 14:55:22
Krav Maga
Audiophile

Posts: 2358
Location: Texas
Joined: October 19, 2017
 "I know more about MQA than I choose to discuss publicly."

Do you not see that your statement adds nothing to this discussion and only adds to questions about you?
"All thoughts are prey to some beast" - Bill Callahan

"I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are" - Lou Reed

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth." - Albert Einstein

 

I just counted 3 or 4 logical fallacies. Nt?, posted on April 8, 2023 at 15:04:06
geoffkait
 Nt

 

RE: "I know more about MQA than I choose to discuss publicly.", posted on April 8, 2023 at 15:28:09
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 If anyone really knows that much about MQA, then they'd know it's a farce. The first thing I did was read their patents to figure out what they're doing. You don't have to go much beyond that...

Doug

 

I'm glad someone else is speaking up!, posted on April 8, 2023 at 15:37:52
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 I'm glad to see you speaking up! MQA was not and has never been good for digitized music. It was and still is an unnecessary licensing scheme, IMO.

Doug

 

"If anyone really knows that much about MQA, then they'd know it's a farce." Logical fallacy! Nt , posted on April 8, 2023 at 16:03:03
geoffkait
 Nt

 

Wouldn't bankruptcy wipe out the equity of its old owners, including Bob Stuart?, posted on April 8, 2023 at 17:18:41
DAP
Audiophile

Posts: 668
Location: Toronto
Joined: January 1, 2010
 It seems to me it means MQA's assets are worth less than MQA's obligations, otherwise they wouldn't do that. Which basically means that MQA has failed.

Daniel

 

RE: Now, it more likely seems to be a brute-force legal strategy to protect the new owners who will buy it., posted on April 8, 2023 at 17:42:38
Doug Schneider
Reviewer

Posts: 881
Location: North America
Joined: April 16, 2005
 Wow! Let's try to put lipstick on the pig... but why????? ...

If you click the link below, you can see the regular filings the company has had to make. Check out those balanced sheets...

From what it appears, the company has been hemorrhaging cash for years.

The initial "lossless" but is "actually lossy" compression scheme didn't really make any money.

Now they appear to be banking on a Bluetooth codec that, under the name of MQair, didn't fly, so to speak. Now it gets renamed SLC6, with the hope SOMEONE will buy it.

You can put lipstick on the pig -- or you could just look at the pig.

Doug

 

What everybody knows, posted on April 8, 2023 at 17:55:53
DAP
Audiophile

Posts: 668
Location: Toronto
Joined: January 1, 2010
 Everybody knows that Stereophile and TAS have been evangelizing and promoting MQA. We have the data, it's on the site, it's in the articles and the reviews, there's no question about it. But we don't know why.

I'd guess why? is one of the things you know more about, but choose not to discuss publicly.

Best regards,
Daniel

 

That's weird, posted on April 9, 2023 at 04:53:45
geoffkait
 The ones that did sign up generally are high end, the ones that didn't aren't. Coincidence? You could also say the ones that did sign up are less desperate.

 

Not necessarily... it depends on the selling price, and whatever the deal with Reinet Investments was, posted on April 9, 2023 at 07:46:41
John Marks
Manufacturer

Posts: 7806
Location: Peoples' Democratic Republic of R.I.
Joined: April 23, 2000
 It is a valid use of a Reorganization-style Bankruptcy to get past a serious cash-balance problem, when all the value is tied up in assets, but there is not enough cash flow. That's why they call it a Reorganization.

In some Reorganizations, the original owners swallow the bitter pill and do what has to be done. An obvious target issue in this case are the mysteriously high operating/administrative expenses.

In other Reorganizations, the axe is wielded by the new owners.

Some times, you have to be cruel to be kind.

As the Chinese used to say, "In all matters, Truth will be the Daughter of Time."

john

PS: I believe I still hold the record as co-filing counsel in the single largest personal Involuntary Liquidation Bankruptcy in this Federal District. A Savings & Loan crumbum who claimed Zero assets against $67 million in debt. I helped the FBI get a new Orange wardrobe for him.

I tried to get the Saudi Arabians or the Japanese interested in buying a water company utility in New Hampshire he owned through one of his companies... but lawyers representing Rhode Island as a major tax creditor mysteriously did not have my back on that one. The Trustee was sure mystified. Forget it, Jake; it's Chinatown.

 

Never understood the concept of, posted on April 13, 2023 at 10:52:29
E-Stat
Audiophile

Posts: 37666
Joined: May 12, 2000
Contributor
  Since: April 5, 2002
 "lossy high resolution". That's oxymoronic at best!

 

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