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MQA is Vaporware


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3 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

fortunately there are still some beacons of customer and music oriented behavior. Some artists are selling HiRes albums in best resolution as FLAC download in their web stores and some indie labels noticed the signs as well.

 

Hi Thomas,

 

Yes, one of my favorite artists is Sam Phillips (not Elvis's producer, but a female singer songwriter). She won a Grammy and then faded to obscurity. Her online shop sells things all the way up to 96/24 FLAC files - I think mostly because I helped sway Michael Hobson of Classic Records (another Sam Phillips fan) to re-issue her popular albums in high-res digital. But a lot of her offerings are unfortunately only in MP3. Still she's a fantastic artist and when selling semi-direct (there is some sort of fulfillment house in the middle), she probably makes enough money on music sales to stay alive. I think she still does live shows (I've only seen her once), but largely only in the LA area.

 

Clearly the times they are a changin' and the old ways don't work well in the new world. Cheers!
Charles Hansen

Charles Hansen

Dumb Analog Hardware Engineer
Former Transducer Designer

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1 hour ago, DarwinOSX said:

I'm liking MQA a lot but until they can do at least the first unfold on a phone or tablet it's hard to see it being worth the trouble for the music studios even though they signed on to it.  

My goodness, it a TELEPHONE bro,

Not your source for high definition music.

Just call someone on it.  LOL

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

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Just now, Sal1950 said:

My goodness, it a TELEPHONE bro,

Not your source for high definition music.

Just call someone on it.  LOL

 

It is far more which is obvious to pretty much everyone.  Bro.

I have an MQA Dac but it is also pretty obvious that if MQA is to succeed it will need to work from mobile devices.

 

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2 hours ago, DarwinOSX said:

 

It is far more which is obvious to pretty much everyone.  Bro.

I have an MQA Dac but it is also pretty obvious that if MQA is to succeed it will need to work from mobile devices.

 

 

So are you going to ditch your iPhone for an LG V30 next month? It is rumored to have MQA in the hardware. But as I have noted from MQA Ltd financial statements software decoding on phones will cannibalize revenues from hardware decoders. 

 

It is also obvious that for MQA Ltd to succeed it will need revenue. Do you see any places revenue will come from in 2017?

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37 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

So are you going to ditch your iPhone for an LG V30 next month? It is rumored to have MQA in the hardware. But as I have noted from MQA Ltd financial statements software decoding on phones will cannibalize revenues from hardware decoders. 

 

It is also obvious that for MQA Ltd to succeed it will need revenue. Do you see any places revenue will come from in 2017?

 

Software I expect will do the first unfold as Tidal does now whereas hardware does the full unfold.

I doubt very much that sales impact on full decoders is an issue.  Wider availability of MQA will do a heck of of a lot more for sales of full Dacs and would be welcomed.

2017 is more than half over.  

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44 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

So are you going to ditch your iPhone for an LG V30 next month? It is rumored to have MQA in the hardware. But as I have noted from MQA Ltd financial statements software decoding on phones will cannibalize revenues from hardware decoders. 

 

It is also obvious that for MQA Ltd to succeed it will need revenue. Do you see any places revenue will come from in 2017?

I've noticed you mention this MQA LTD financial statements more than once .  Please provide a link as I would like to read what you have noted.  Sounds interesting as far as smartphones and full software coding go.

The Truth Is Out There

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38 minutes ago, mav52 said:

I've noticed you mention this MQA LTD financial statements more than once .  Please provide a link as I would like to read what you have noted.  Sounds interesting as far as smartphones and full software coding go.

 

Google beta companies house 

then search MQA Limited Group then scroll to Group of Companies Accounts

This is the British reporting site for private and public companies. You will find it in the Strategic Report under risks.

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53 minutes ago, DarwinOSX said:

 

Software I expect will do the first unfold as Tidal does now whereas hardware does the full unfold.

I doubt very much that sales impact on full decoders is an issue.  Wider availability of MQA will do a heck of of a lot more for sales of full Dacs and would be welcomed.

2017 is more than half over.  

 

You may doubt it the Board of Directors of MQA Limited does not. How is there going to be wider availability MQA music? What are you assuming that is not currently licensed to happen? 

 

 

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18 hours ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

Hi Thomas,

 

Yes, one of my favorite artists is Sam Phillips (not Elvis's producer, but a female singer songwriter). She won a Grammy and then faded to obscurity. Her online shop sells things all the way up to 96/24 FLAC files - I think mostly because I helped sway Michael Hobson of Classic Records (another Sam Phillips fan) to re-issue her popular albums in high-res digital. But a lot of her offerings are unfortunately only in MP3. Still she's a fantastic artist and when selling semi-direct (there is some sort of fulfillment house in the middle), she probably makes enough money on music sales to stay alive. I think she still does live shows (I've only seen her once), but largely only in the LA area.

 

Clearly the times they are a changin' and the old ways don't work well in the new world. Cheers!
Charles Hansen

 

My first thought was your friend and ex business partner Neil Young with his store https://neilyoung.warnerbrosrecords.com/music-2/hd-digital.html

following his promise and philosophy to sell plain HiRes music and CD quality for the same price. 

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2 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

 

My first thought was your friend and ex business partner Neil Young with his store https://neilyoung.warnerbrosrecords.com/music-2/hd-digital.html

following his promise and philosophy to sell plain HiRes music and CD quality for the same price. 

 

That's ok yodo, Neil is going to start a music streaming company http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-preps-new-high-quality-streaming-service-xstream-w478281

The Truth Is Out There

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23 minutes ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

Hi Thomas,

 

The store you linked is Warner Brother's store, not Neil Young's. There are other stores for other Warner Brother's artists as well. Neil Young's store was Pono Music, which was shut down when Apple purchased the digital file vendor, Omnifone. Omnifone was immediately shut down and all employees fired. Apple fan-boys say that Apple wanted some key patents that Omnifone owned. Neil Young fan boys suspect the whole thing was a cheap ($11 million) way for Apple to kill off the only other company in the world that supplied all 3 components required for a successful music enterprise - players, downloads, and desktop player software.

 

Pono only sold downloads in the highest available resolution. They had a "Pono Promise" that if any album purchased from Pono were released in a higher resolution that they customer would receive it for free. I don't think that ever happened, however - not because of Pono but because the labels didn't release any new versions of existing albums during Pono's lifetime.

 

Neil's position was that all music should be the same price, regardless of resolution. I don't think the record labels felt the same - if there were any justification for making more money, they didn't want to leave any of it on the table.

 

Cheers,

Charles Hansen

 

 I seriously doubt Apple felt that Pono was any kind of threat. It was bound to implode anyway.

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5 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

You may doubt it the Board of Directors of MQA Limited does not. How is there going to be wider availability MQA music? What are you assuming that is not currently licensed to happen? 

 

 

 

 

I have no no idea why you are asking me. The three major studios have signed on to MQA and maybe they will make something of it and maybe they won't. Who knows. 

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Hi Charlie,

 

anyway if it is a primarily a WB  or NY store, it is currently the cheapest way to buy NY records in HiRes. I know all the history, I was a Kickstarter backer for the PonoPlayer and we already had some inspiring talks in the Pono community.

 

I'm not really a NY fan boy, in fact, I bought the player because it's circuits has been designed by Ayre. I don't think it was Apples objective to prevent a new competitor. I would rather call it a collateral damage and the reason of failure had been primarily the financial effects of the PonoPromise, missing financial strength and several other management issues.

 

Anyway, the basic approach of Neil Young is correct, IMHO. The very most albums today are produced in 24/96 or even better resolutions and from a cost perspective it would be best to sell the HiRes masters originally to the customers. DR shaping to "Mastered for iTunes" and downsampling to redbook standard are additional costs but in fact, selling an original master in an open format like FLAC means to sell it finally. A "No Go" for the marketing guys. For this reason they are very happy to have an alternative like MQA and for the time beeing until this will be the standard, they put us off with 24/44.1 or /48 downgrades in best case. 

 

Cheers,

Thomas

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4 hours ago, Charles Hansen said:

 

Hi Thomas,

 

The store you linked is Warner Brother's store, not Neil Young's. There are other stores for other Warner Brother's artists as well. Neil Young's store was Pono Music, which was shut down when Apple purchased the digital file vendor, Omnifone. Omnifone was immediately shut down and all employees fired. Apple fan-boys say that Apple wanted some key patents that Omnifone owned. Neil Young fan boys suspect the whole thing was a cheap ($11 million) way for Apple to kill off the only other company in the world that supplied all 3 components required for a successful music enterprise - players, downloads, and desktop player software.

 

Pono only sold downloads in the highest available resolution. They had a "Pono Promise" that if any album purchased from Pono were released in a higher resolution that they customer would receive it for free. I don't think that ever happened, however - not because of Pono but because the labels didn't release any new versions of existing albums during Pono's lifetime.

 

Neil's position was that all music should be the same price, regardless of resolution. I don't think the record labels felt the same - if there were any justification for making more money, they didn't want to leave any of it on the table.

 

Cheers,

Charles Hansen

I and some others actually did get free upgrades to higher resolution versions of some albums when they became available.

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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3 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

Hi Charlie,

 

anyway if it is a primarily a WB  or NY store, it is currently the cheapest way to buy NY records in HiRes. I know all the history, I was a Kickstarter backer for the PonoPlayer and we already had some inspiring talks in the Pono community.

 

I'm not really a NY fan boy, in fact, I bought the player because it's circuits has been designed by Ayre. I don't think it was Apples objective to prevent a new competitor. I would rather call it a collateral damage and the reason of failure had been primarily the financial effects of the PonoPromise, missing financial strength and several other management issues.

 

Anyway, the basic approach of Neil Young is correct, IMHO. The very most albums today are produced in 24/96 or even better resolutions and from a cost perspective it would be best to sell the HiRes masters originally to the customers. DR shaping to "Mastered for iTunes" and downsampling to redbook standard are additional costs but in fact, selling an original master in an open format like FLAC means to sell it finally. A "No Go" for the marketing guys. For this reason they are very happy to have an alternative like MQA and for the time beeing until this will be the standard, they put us off with 24/44.1 or /48 downgrades in best case. 

 

Cheers,

Thomas

I think if you check you will find most albums are made in 24.44.1 or 48 and not higher resolutions.

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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5 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

Hi Charlie,

 

anyway if it is a primarily a WB  or NY store, it is currently the cheapest way to buy NY records in HiRes. I know all the history, I was a Kickstarter backer for the PonoPlayer and we already had some inspiring talks in the Pono community.

 

I'm not really a NY fan boy, in fact, I bought the player because it's circuits has been designed by Ayre. I don't think it was Apples objective to prevent a new competitor. I would rather call it a collateral damage and the reason of failure had been primarily the financial effects of the PonoPromise, missing financial strength and several other management issues.

 

Anyway, the basic approach of Neil Young is correct, IMHO. The very most albums today are produced in 24/96 or even better resolutions and from a cost perspective it would be best to sell the HiRes masters originally to the customers. DR shaping to "Mastered for iTunes" and downsampling to redbook standard are additional costs but in fact, selling an original master in an open format like FLAC means to sell it finally. A "No Go" for the marketing guys. For this reason they are very happy to have an alternative like MQA and for the time beeing until this will be the standard, they put us off with 24/44.1 or /48 downgrades in best case. 

 

Cheers,

Thomas

 

Hi Thomas,

 

So you must be that Thomas! Good to hear from you. Everybody has a different perspective, but I think the main reason that Pono failed is because they didn't realize (as Apple does), that there is more money to be made in hardware than in selling software. I also don't think they understood that all digital sounded better or the Pono Player. There were a lot of people at Pono that thought it was all about the "high-res" files and that any player (from a $129 Fiio on up) could let you hear how much "better" high-res files sounded. (sigh)

I know they had to pay the labels extra for the "Pono Promise" but if there were only one or two free upgrades, it couldn't have cost them too much money - not enough to sink an otherwise well-run ship. YMMV.

 

Cheers,

Charles Hansen

Charles Hansen

Dumb Analog Hardware Engineer
Former Transducer Designer

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2 hours ago, firedog said:

I and some others actually did get free upgrades to higher resolution versions of some albums when they became available.

 

Hi Freedog,

 

That's great to hear! It was a good deal and it made sense to the consumer, but I was out of touch for a long time and didn't know that any had actually been upgraded.

 

Cheers,

Charles Hansen

Charles Hansen

Dumb Analog Hardware Engineer
Former Transducer Designer

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8 hours ago, firedog said:

I and some others actually did get free upgrades to higher resolution versions of some albums when they became available.

 

Yup, me too.

 

I think Charles’ point about “an otherwise well run company” is a good one.

 

The other bug for me was that the PC software they tried to incorporate into the Pono ecosystem wasn’t terribly intuitive for me to use.  Just a regular download and dragging and dropping was much simpler for adding music.

One never knows, do one? - Fats Waller

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Einstein

Computer, Audirvana -> optical Ethernet to Fitlet3 -> Fibbr Alpha Optical USB -> iFi NEO iDSD DAC -> Apollon Audio 1ET400A Mini (Purifi based) -> Vandersteen 3A Signature.

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2 hours ago, mcgillroy said:

Can anybody explain me the economic or other rationale of Stereophiles MQA unconditional endorsement?! Today another DAC review is up that sings the song of MQAs qualities.

 

More importantly even goes so far as to hit competing vendors for not including MQA:

 

"If you were contemplating the purchase of a new DAC, why would you not want it to include MQA processing?"

 

and

 

"Schiit's reference DAC would be my reference DAC—if only it had MQA"

 

etc, etc.

 

Audio reviews are audio reviews but this level of ignoring the wider discussion and including specific vitriol is astonishing. Why?!

 

For what it's worth, many Stereophile writers (including editor John Atkinson) actually engage with the general public on questions like these at:

 

https://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/etv.mpl?forum=critics

 

Might be worth asking him directly there.

Charles Hansen

Dumb Analog Hardware Engineer
Former Transducer Designer

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