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RE: Stereophile: Get your story straight on MQA Please

Posted by Isaak J. Garvey on October 30, 2016 at 16:02:13:
I am sorry to report that Chris Connaker has become an MQA Zombie. He has put on his MQA armour and is defending it to the death, and in my opinion, repeating grand claims.

"If MQA isn't what our music needs, what does our music need?"

and then fully admits that MQA is a marketing check box for DAC manufacturers, regardless if believe in it because it is "good business"

"I'm willing to bet Benchmark will support MQA because it's a good business decision. Meaning, consumers will pass them by for not checking the MQA box. Right or wrong, this is just how consumers operate. Currently many DAC manufacturers support ultra high DSD rates just to check the box. It's a simple business decision and has nothing to do with technology."

And there is blatant misinformation:

"According to MQA once the final version leaves the mastering engineers hands, it's in the hands of the label and then content aggregators. All types of versions are subsequently made, but not all subsequent version are created from the final master version. It's the wild west. Plus, the decisions used to create the other versions aren't necessarily what the mastering engineer would select. MQA should enable the mastering engineer to provide the version we all hear at home. "

The mastering engineer NEVER EVER chooses the final version. It is the label and the artist. The above statement is beyond nonsense. What ever variations that are created of an album are done by the LABELS. For instances. The Iron Maiden remasters were done at 24/96, but there 24/96 and 24/44.1 versions created because different vendors requested them. For no other reason. The same for the recent Bruce Springsteen remasters.

And lastly, he verified with MQA, that most of the albums were batch converted to using MQA artificial intelligence..

"The MQA artificial intelligence is pretty cool. It can recognize equipment used in the production process, even though the label has long lost the information associated with a title. For example, it not only can recognize A to D converters, but serial numbers of those converters base on a signature (if present) and different generations of converters. So, the batch-type of processing isn't without its benefits."

Interestingly, this is contradictory to John Atkinson's claim that labels keep meticulous records:

"..record companies actually keep good records on what converter was used for the original sessions and/or mastering."