MQA is Vaporware

[Fair Hedon]

6 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Sigh, more personal attacks.  Do you not know how to debate without constant attacks on my character?

Just facts.

 

You are clearly uninformed. You were corrected here numerous times for posting incorrect information.

 

You went to another forum to malign this forum. You attacked the credibility of the membership.

[mansr]

7 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

How can a new music format attract customers at scale if they don't offer mobile access?

Wrong question. If MQA solved a genuine problem it wouldn't need to "attract" customers. Your phrasing betrays your real loyalties.

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 minute ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Except that doesn't hold true either as some of these guys with a low opinion of CA are MQA skeptics.

 

Name one.

[Fair Hedon]

2 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Smartphones are the trojan horse here.  Sell the catalog depth and convenience to gain customers then MQA goes along for the ride.  This is the point I made in my article.  

 

Hirez interest is small which is why you can't go the other way by building a SACD or DVD-Audio disc then trying to gain consumer attention.

 

MQA and the labels are betting, and I think rightly so, that the best way to attract customer is through convenience.  My guess is a strong manager at Universal may not know how many "hirez" subscriptions he will sell nor will he care as long as he gets enough annuity income via monthly subscriptions.

Do your Rose Coloured Glasses have a large MQA logo on them?

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Smartphones are the trojan horse here.

Now tell me, how did the people of Troy feel about said horse?

[Lee Scoggins]

9 minutes ago, Fair Hedon said:

You went to another forum to malign this forum. You attacked the credibility of the membership.

 

So what?  This is just accurate reporting. CA is a hostile community to many.  Perhaps Chris thinks this brings out a more lively debate but the side effect of the hostility is that it scares off many experienced people.

 

You and others have attacked my character without knowing me or my intentions.  I don't see value in responding any more to your posts.

[Mordikai]

11 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Hey, I'm just reporting what I heard from fellow journalist and audio enthusiasts about CA.  I am accurately reporting the reputation of CA among many.

You really should stop calling yourself a journalist. What investigations/research have you carried out on MQA and the technology it uses? Have you sought out people who have knowledge and are respected and have issues with MQA? Have you researched and addressed the issues they have with MQA? Just repeating talking points is not journalism. Defending MQA on forums is not journalism. Dismissing all issues people have is not journalism. Being a journalist requires a certain amount of skepticism, and an inquiring mind. I would say you are a reporter for the audio industry and should say as much.

[Lee Scoggins]

14 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

 

Definitely a large stretch.  I subscribe to Apple Music for phone use, it's all I need for my bluetooth headphones when walking around.

 

I started off writing for Headphone Guru which I helped a friend start.  I know from that experience that there is a growing interest in non-audiophiles listening to better quality files.  Although I suppose that if people listen to Tidal HiFi then at some point they really are audiophiles.

[Lee Scoggins]

3 minutes ago, Mordikai said:

You really should stop calling yourself a journalist. What investigations/research have you carried out on MQA and the technology it uses? Have you sought out people who have knowledge and are respected and have issues with MQA? Have you researched and addressed the issues they have with MQA? Just repeating talking points is not journalism. Defending MQA on forums is not journalism. Dismissing all issues people have is not journalism. Being a journalist requires a certain amount of skepticism, and an inquiring mind. I would say you are a reporter for the audio industry and should say as much.

 

I am talking to both sides of the MQA debate for my second article.

 

Also, I am not defending MQA, so far I am defending the business model.

[Mordikai]

2 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

 

Also, I am not defending MQA, so far I am defending the business model.

Why?

[Mordikai]

This place does not give anybody a lot of slack. I would not be on here defending anything I was not personally involved with or was really passionate about. I can't imagine how either would apply to MQA's business model.

[Samuel T Cogley]

Just now, Lee Scoggins said:

 

I am talking to both sides of the MQA debate for my second article.

 

Also, I am not defending MQA, so far I am defending the business model.

 

No, you're brazenly marketing for them here.

 

Like I said up thread, I already know what that second article will say.  You will acknowledge the existence of skeptics, and summarily dismiss them because "people you know" told you that they can be safely ignored.  It might be fun to have a Lee Scoggins bingo game to see how many name drops appear in that next article.

 

Your little rant against @Archimago at Hoffman is a preview of your "objective" take on the skeptics.

[james45974]

17 minutes ago, Lee Scoggins said:

Also, I am not defending MQA, so far I am defending the business model.

Defending putting one over on the consumer by hawking a questionable product is not what I would want to defend.

 

There should be more pointed questions to those manufacturers who have incorporated MQA in their product line, make them defend themselves also, don't leave it only to MQA to defend their product

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Also, I am not defending MQA, so far I am defending the business model.

 

This is right.  Myself and many others noted 2, 3 years ago that a DRM takeover of our audio digital ecosystems would happen like this:

 

Customer:               I like this phone, it says it has MQA, what is that?

Verizon rep:            You need it for music

Customer:              Why?

Verizon rep:           You just do, let me show you how the camera works...

 

Of course, if you were a "journalist" you would be discussing the pros and cons of a business model from the perspective of those whom you ostensibly write for - consumers such as those who will be purchasing these phones.  Thus, you would note:

 

1)  Phones don't have "hi res" playback DACs, amps, or earbuds/HP's, thus "hi res" is of no benefit to them - 99.99% they are intentionally using lossy compression.

2)  MQA is not "hi res", it is a lossy encoding that is at best more or less equivalent to CD, even if the consumer were actually were interested in such quality, which they are not.

3)  MQA is thus a way to get more $revenue$ from you for no added value - you will be playing it through compressed Blue Tooth in any case, or ripping it to AAC, etc. etc.

4) MQA is DRM and you as a consumer pay for that through loss of choice and also by subsidizing yet another middle man

 

But your not interested in consumers, your interested in selling something.  "Consumer is King" is just MBA speak for consumer is a unit of manipulation.  Your an industry insider writing for industry insiders who are trying to hoodwink consumers into choosing MQA mostly through ignorance, partly through limitation of choice, etc.  

 

 

[JoeWhip]

While I have issues with the whole idea of MQA, I do find the overall antagonism of the debate to be off putting. We could do with. A bit more civility. With that said, I have to Ask Lee, is not defending the MQA business model the same thing as defending MQA. Cheers.

[firedog]

Lee Scoggins quote:

Quote

The sense I get is that Bob Stuart has created something clever here and the armchair engineers on CA can't keep up with his math.

 

But Lee, why should anyone care about your "sense"? There's something called facts, something called analysis, and something called math. What you seem to be saying is that YOU don't understand the math, so you are depending on what Bob Stuart tells you.

Well excuse my skepticism, the person in the world with the biggest financial interest in the success of MQA is Bob Stuart. 

But somehow you seem to think we should all blindly accept what he says.

[Fair Hedon]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

So what?  This is just accurate reporting. CA is a hostile community to many.  Perhaps Chris thinks this brings out a more lively debate but the side effect of the hostility is that it scares off many experienced people.

 

You and others have attacked my character without knowing me or my intentions.  I don't see value in responding any more to your posts.

And it is accurate reporting to say that you are one of the least knowledgeable posters here on MQA, in fact you had to be corrected numerous times, and yet you position your self as an authority with a series of "articles". Clearly you have done little research except talk to pro MQA operatives with financial motives.

 

It is also accurate reporting to state that your position is anything but neutral. It is also accurate to say that you are tone deaf.

 

You ignore factual corrections, rand epeat the same far fetched drivel

 

You complain about being flogged here but yet here you still are.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

I am talking to both sides of the MQA debate for my second article.

 

Again, pointless. No one needs a "journalistic narrative" of both sides of the MQA debate. We need facts and analysis. You seem not to have the tools and understanding necessary to evaluate the arguments of "both sides". So sorry, you shouldn't be writing the article.

[Fair Hedon]

2 hours ago, Mordikai said:

Why?

Exactly. A business model that locks consumers into a closed system, extorts fees from DAC makers and labels, and provides no sonic benefit, in fact it degrades the sound. Sounds like a great "plan" to me.

[firedog]

2 hours ago, Lee Scoggins said:

 

Smartphones are the trojan horse here.  Sell the catalog depth and convenience to gain customers then MQA goes along for the ride.  This is the point I made in my article.  

 

Hirez interest is small which is why you can't go the other way by building a SACD or DVD-Audio disc then trying to gain consumer attention.

 

MQA and the labels are betting, and I think rightly so, that the best way to attract customer is through convenience.  My guess is a strong manager at Universal may not know how many "hirez" subscriptions he will sell nor will he care as long as he gets enough annuity income via monthly subscriptions.

 

Again you miss the big picture.  All of that selling of catalog depth thru streaming hi-res can be done without MQA. Everything you claim MQA will be doing with streaming can be done in hires without the MQA format. 

Since that is true, the obvious questions (which you never seem to ask yourself) are: what is MQA for? Why are labels adopting it?  How are they planning to make money from it in a way they couldn't by just releasing standard hi-res for streaming?

[crenca]

4 minutes ago, firedog said:

 

Again, pointless. No one needs a "journalistic narrative" of both sides of the MQA debate. We need facts and analysis. You seem not to have the tools and understanding necessary to evaluate the arguments of "both sides". So sorry, you shouldn't be writing the article.

 

No, but then he is a trade writer - he exists and make a $living$ by ginning up copy, coverage, etc. that the industry needs.  What the industry wants is exactly what he is going to deliver a "narrative" (let's not call it "journalistic" because it is not) that is simply designed to get MQA out and discussed and known.  Consumers beware...

[crenca]

1 minute ago, firedog said:

 

Again you miss the big picture.  All of that selling of catalog depth thru streaming hi-res can be done without MQA. Everything you claim MQA will be doing with streaming can be done in hires without the MQA format. 

Since that is true, the obvious questions (which you never seem to ask yourself) are: what is MQA for? Why are labels adopting it?  How are they planning to make money from it in a way they couldn't by just releasing standard hi-res for streaming?

 

No, he is not missing the big picture of the facts you note - his goal is to obfuscate these facts because he writes to sell something (mostly clicks and coverage) and not actually report on the pros and cons...

[Dr Tone]

57 minutes ago, firedog said:

What you seem to be saying is that YOU don't understand the math, so you are depending on what Bob Stuart tells you.

 

To reduce some typing let's reference Bob by his initials from this point on.

[Shadders]

Has Lee gone home ?

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

No, he is not missing the big picture of the facts you note - his goal is to obfuscate these facts because he writes to sell something (mostly clicks and coverage) and not actually report on the pros and cons...

 

He also writes to make important friends whose names he can then write about.