MQA is Vaporware

[botrytis]

P

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

I remember McGrath playing some demos back in 2019 and not even mentioning he was using MQA at that time. Who knows if he can tell a difference or even cares. Sounds like it's JVS making a deal of even mentioning it. 

 

McGrath should move on and use the hi-res source files. How silly this has been all these years using bitrate-reduced MQA playing his own files! Seems really silly to perform a "high end" demo with compromised MQA when the actual hi-res files are readily available.

 

Indeed, will be interesting to see the insolvency plan. Wonder if anyone is going to purchase SCL6/MQAir.

 

McGrath was enamored with mq-anon and has files he recorded, white glove converted, and compared them at AXPONA and at a Wilson dealer in the Midwest. His style was 'Snake Oil salesman'. He would tell you what was different, he would play regular, then mqa and again say, 'Didn't you hear all that detail in the mqa version'? That is a classic way to influence people. 

[firedog]

On 5/31/2023 at 6:05 AM, MikeyFresh said:

JVS goes out of his way to state that "Peter (McGrath) stuck to MQA-encoded files played through his computer" during his hour long demo in the Wilson/Nagra room. 

It's funny/sad that he goes out of his way to point this out when all the content is being upsampled /converted to DSD. Ergo: you can't make any conclusion about "the sound of MQA" from this. Shows either his ultimate fanboy-ism or his ignorance of what he's writing about, or both.

[JoeWhip]

I have heard Peter McGrath do two presentations over the years pre Covid hawking Wilson speakers. One at Overture in Delaware the other at HiFi House in Philly. Both very very unimpressive. First he talked way more than he played music. Second, both times the presentations were way too loud and I mean loud, and too bright. I can imagine the MQA ones being similar.

[krass]

1 hour ago, JoeWhip said:

I have heard Peter McGrath do two presentations over the years pre Covid hawking Wilson speakers. One at Overture in Delaware the other at HiFi House in Philly. Both very very unimpressive. First he talked way more than he played music. Second, both times the presentations were way too loud and I mean loud, and too bright. I can imagine the MQA ones being similar.

 

nothing wrong per se with talking during a presentation… depending on the presentation purpose.

 

Last week I attended a presentation by a very famous speaker designer, who talked a lot about speaker design with quite minimal musical interruption. It was ideal and I’m glad he talked else we wouldn’t have learnt anything about his lessons of speaker design…..

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, krass said:

 

nothing wrong per se with talking during a presentation… depending on the presentation purpose.

 

Last week I attended a presentation by a very famous speaker designer, who talked a lot about speaker design with quite minimal musical interruption. It was ideal and I’m glad he talked else we wouldn’t have learnt anything about his lessons of speaker design…..

I have heard the late Dave Wilson describe his philosophy. It was a very organic description, and very humble description I might add, and I at least started understanding. When a company brought the original WAMM's to AXPONA, that really helped me to understand even more.

[MikeyFresh]

Creditors, employees, and Companies House in the U.K. are now in receipt of the MQA Insolvency Practitioner's "Statement of administrator's proposal", the document is described as being processed and will be made available to the public in 10 days, which I assume means business days, so on or about Friday June 16th.

[Confused]

Link to the recently posted Statement of administrator's proposal:

 

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history

[MikeyFresh]

5 hours ago, Confused said:

Link to the recently posted Statement of administrator's proposal:

 

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09123512/filing-history

Wow so yesterday's posting of "in process" and expect the document in 10 days turned into overnight and done.

[kumakuma]

34 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

Wow so yesterday's posting of "in process" and expect the document in 10 days turned into overnight and done.

 

Underpromised and overdelivered

 

Kind of the opposite of MQA itself...

[MikeyFresh]

Creditors owed nearly £24.6 million (largely Muse a subsidiary/holding company of Reinet).

 

The administrators indicate some ongoing interest expressed by 2 private individual/investor groups, 3 corporate entities, and 2 venture capital firms. Previous discussions with 2 other private individual/investor groups, 2 other corporate entities, and 1 additional venture capital firm now considered "inactive".

 

Also some small mention of the possibility of an MBO, but no formal offers from Stuart/Jbara as yet.

 

I wonder what Reinet is willing to take on that £24.6 million they are owed.

[MikeyFresh]

Interesting mention on the company timeline about MQA audio being released on Amazon Music (2017), then Qobuz, and Deezer (both (2021). I'm guessing that's another shred of truth taken to the extreme of misinformation in true MQA fashion, likely just alluding to various record labels force feeding, surreptitiously slipping by, or plain making a mistake in supplying  MQA to those services. Deezer did sign an early agreement with MQA but were then said to have quietly walked away from any formal implementation.

[Gustave]

Over the years, the company has received more than $35 million in cash. Still the book value has already dropped to $2.4 million. One would think that the intellectual property would be the largest asset, but for whatever reason it is only valued at most at $204,000 (Intangible Fixed Assets). See Appendix E, page 40.

 

You might think the intellectual property has already been transferred to others, or everyone agrees that it is worthless anyway.

[botrytis]

2 hours ago, Gustave said:

Over the years, the company has received more than $35 million in cash. Still the book value has already dropped to $2.4 million. One would think that the intellectual property would be the largest asset, but for whatever reason it is only valued at most at $204,000 (Intangible Fixed Assets). See Appendix E, page 40.

 

You might think the intellectual property has already been transferred to others, or everyone agrees that it is worthless anyway.

IP is only valuable if it benefits a process or if it blocks another patent. This one really has no benefit.

[Currawong]

Just started reading the filing and my first question is: What is the litigation mentioned involving Blue Spike over patent infringement mentioned on page 9 (page 3 of the main document)?

[MikeyFresh]

28 minutes ago, Currawong said:

Just started reading the filing and my first question is: What is the litigation mentioned involving Blue Spike over patent infringement mentioned on page 9 (page 3 of the main document)?

Not sure if they are some sort of patent troll or not, but Blue Spike brought suit against both Warner and Universal over their use of the MQA encoder.

 

If I read the MQA filing right, they are not (yet) being sued directly but had indemnified both Warner and Universal previously.

 

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2022/09/09/warner-music-group-universal-music-blue-spike-patent-suits/

[Fokus]

On 6/4/2023 at 1:46 AM, MikeyFresh said:

Not sure if they are some sort of patent troll or not,

 

 

A patent troll?  In Texas???

 

Noooo.

 

[MikeyFresh]

1 hour ago, Fokus said:

 

 

A patent troll?  In Texas???

 

Noooo.

 

 

How about by way of Ireland, Florida, and Bermuda?

 

Lastly, in terms of the background details associated with both cases, the legal text indicates that Blue Spike International operates out of Dublin, Ireland, and “was recently acquired by Blue Spike Inc., a Florida corporation.” Wistaria, for its part, “is a Bermuda corporation with a place of business” in Hamilton.

[botrytis]

If you read the link, Blue Spike seems to be suing about the DRM built into MQA. They say they have a patent on DRM and the plaintifs are violating that patent by using MQA. That makes sense, the end of the production train makes the cash here and that is who they are going after.

[Confused]

14 minutes ago, botrytis said:

If you read the link, Blue Spike seems to be suing about the DRM built into MQA. They say they have a patent on DRM and the plaintifs are violating that patent by using MQA. That makes sense, the end of the production train makes the cash here and that is who they are going after.

This is wonderfully ironic after all the claims that MQA had nothing to do with DRM.

[botrytis]

29 minutes ago, Confused said:

This is wonderfully ironic after all the claims that MQA had nothing to do with DRM.

"“At the time of these pioneering efforts,” both the UMG and WMG suits claim, “the most widely implemented technology used to address the difficulty of protecting intellectual property was copy protection. However, the industry widely acknowledged a need for a superior IP protection technology because the cost of developing copy protection technologies was high and did not sufficiently reduce piracy.”

The inventions detailed in the mentioned patents represent “a way to solve at least this need,” the plaintiffs maintain, citing as proof purported advantages over the prior art including the improved “handling of authentication, verification, and authorization with steganographic protocols to achieve efficient, trusted, secure exchange of digital information.”

Regarding the precise infringement claims against the defendants, though, the accused parties, as initially mentioned, are said to have used inventions outlined in the patents when partnering with MQA to make high-resolution music available to fans. (UMG announced a tie-up with MQA in February of 2017, whereas WMG did so in 2016.)"

That is a quote from the article.

[botrytis]

Am I reading the article wrong?

 

I don't think so.

 

https://casetext.com/case/blue-spike-llc-v-google-inc

 

 

[Fokus]

20 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

How about by way of Ireland, Florida, and Bermuda?

 

 

Just pointing out that Texas happens to be the Mecca for plaintiffs in patent-related cases. That's where the patent trolls go when they get down to business. Ask me how I know.

 

[Confused]

13 hours ago, botrytis said:

Am I reading the article wrong?

 

I don't think so.

 

https://casetext.com/case/blue-spike-llc-v-google-inc

 

 

 

I think you are reading this right.

 

However, I am wondering if you might have misunderstood my irony post?

 

To add some clarity. When writing about the irony of MQA being sued over the infringement of DRM patent rights, I was actually thinking about "no DRM guy", who was seen in action at RMAF 2018.

 

Clip below:

 

 

[JoeWhip]

What? Wait, the experts in the room with a financial interest in the tech lied about it? I am shocked there is gambling going on at Rick’s.

[garrardguy60]

The thing that is extremely funny, rather ironic, and most importantly poetic justice, is the likelihood that if MQA and Bob Stuart HAD LED WITH THE DRM ANGLE AND BEEN VOCAL ABOUT IT instead of the file compression, IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN READILY ADOPTED by all the labels.

 

 Instead, the label execs probably couldn't understand WTF Stuart was talking about either.

 

(Yeah, I know I'm being speculative here and MQA probably DID talk up the DRM in private -- "It's like a rootkit, except there's no root and no kit. So the music buyer won't even know it's there! We don't even know it's there!" -- But still, this is karmic justice is there ever was such a thing.)