MQA is Vaporware

[Brinkman Ship]

8 minutes ago, beetlemania said:

 

Could you direct me to a link? I was only able to find this in regards to the Mytek:

which is plenty bad but nothing quite to the level you describe.

 

Meanwhile, I have to admit there is less and less reason to continue subscribing to Stereophile. Perhaps ironically, JA is the biggest reason I continue to read it (well, also Robert Baird and the music reviews). Fremer mostly listens to the price tag - the latest review of the Ypsilon amp being a great example ($93K!!! In the measurements, JA wrote that he could not recommend it, especially given the price, but - surprise - it's recommended as Class A in the very same issue). I ignore his column and reviews. Dudley is a good writer but his column rarely interests me and his taste in music reproduction doesn't well match my own. The newer writers, including Reichert, seem to have dubious listening skills and credibility.

And on another note, I have never read such still born piffle. No comparisons, no hirez PCM.

 

The fact that a magazine would let such a boob review an expensive DAC strictly with Redbook CD (oh, and an MQA CD!!) is another reason it does not even qualify as toilet paper.

[Brinkman Ship]

1 minute ago, beetlemania said:

 

lol, I typed "schitt" into my search bar instead of "schiit"

 

Thanks. Yeah, shame on Reichert.

and to put it into perspective...in just a few months, the amazing Yggy DAC which Reichert fully endorsed as a reference, becomes obsolete because of the magic of MQA...and his exposure to MQA came in to form of an "MQA CD"...

 

no Tidal sub, no hire rez comparisons..shameful capitulation to Atkinson and Stuart.

[Brinkman Ship]

28 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Watch the personal attacks.

with all respect...i was laying hypothetical possibilities...and i stated what i believed to be the correct choice, which was not an attack at all.

[Brinkman Ship]

I thought "bandwidth" was a huge issue and streaming 24 bit FLAC was so complicated...uhh..guess not.

 

So MQA has no basis on the

 

-bandwidth claim

-authentication claim

-lossless claim

-deblurring claim

 

What exactly are we left with?

 

[Brinkman Ship]

2 hours ago, beetlemania said:

 

JA inelegantly fumbling for the escape hatch?

BS' wife wondering what happened to the money?

Untold gazillion MQA posts, mostly on CA?

Well then, sounds good to me!

[Brinkman Ship]

MQA Live?..I needed a good laugh today..thanks guys.

 

[Brinkman Ship]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

On the off chance this gets deleted on Stereophile.

 

Let there be dark

 

I’m sorry Paul (Miller) there will be no synergy or place to leverage these brands. All this acquisition did was create your own echo chamber.

 

Keith (Pray) in a similar vein this group will have no global power or breadth. The companies are too small. Let’s review 2016 publically available information, AVTech Media Ltd reports as a small company as do its owners Mytime Media Ltd and Miller Audio Research Ltd. Mytime Media Ltd is owned by Mytime Media Group a small company. Mytime Media Group Ltd is owned by Mytime Media Holding Ltd a small company. Mytime Media Holding Ltd is a small company owned by two individuals and venture capital company.

 

The simple fact is the Home Tech Network did not fit the demographics of The Entertainment Network or their joint venture partner Discovery.

In your opinion, what do you see happening..consolidation.? personnel shake ups?

 

Properties being folded?

[Brinkman Ship]

9 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I see some consolidation and personnel are duplicated. But this tells me how small a footprint Stereophile has. 

Total guess on my part, but the fact TEN was so willing to dump these properties may indicate they were not exactly over performing. I could be wrong. If Miller got a great deal, he may be able to make something of it after trimming the fat.

[Brinkman Ship]

12 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

They are out of the TEN demo. In general you leave stuff alone if it performing but everything else TEN does can be tired together except home tech. 

..well then maybe the MQA play was a desperate attempt to pad revenue prior to the acquisition...again. disclaimer, just a guess on my part.

[Brinkman Ship]

2 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Or an attempt to drive up views and be controversial to keep from being sold off. 

Could be..but that would assume that Atkinson did not want the sale...maybe he did, seeing Miller's group as more desirable owners.

 

I wonder how long the deal was in the works..

[Brinkman Ship]

2 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

I would think TEN was looking to get rid of the audio and camera  stuff since they signed the joint venture with Discovery.  I don't know about what John Atkinson is thinking but now he is second fiddle to Paul Miller. 

Well that won't be any thing new..he has been second fiddle to his publisher and owners all this time anyway. The only way he would be head honcho is if he acquired the properties himself.

[Brinkman Ship]

1 hour ago, Hugo9000 said:

Choosing that recent "As We See It" was an editorial decision, you commented that the writers were informed only hours before the public announcement.  

 

As far as illogical thinking goes, there is nothing in my brief post to suggest the possibility of influence on things that have already occurred.  lol

 

The only shift was in choosing that last piece, and publishing the accompanying letters, as far as I'm aware.  No writers at S-phile have changed positions on MQA, have they?

 

I would say that It's illogical to think that the EDITOR of a publication would find out with no notice.  Unless he is not respected at all by any of the responsible parties to the sale.

Agree. It would be impossible to believe the editor did not have  a good amount of advance notice...

[Brinkman Ship]

When and if the Editor knew about the deal is takes a back seat to the fact he must have known TEN was not thrilled with the performance of these properties.  My theory is the MQA play was a desperate strategy to improve the outcome of what ever TEN decided.

[Brinkman Ship]

Atkinson made this statement at AA:

 

"I have been assured that I can continue to produce Stereophile as I think 
appropriate. No changes in Stereophile's content, policies and strategies 
are planned."

 

As a professional investor, I have seen statements like these a thousand times from delusional managers..then the bloodletting begins. Incredible to think that someone can be that out of touch...doing things as they have been done previously is exactly what made their numbers suck. A small acquiring entity acquires precisely because they want to do things their way, not to be silent partners.  The new bosses are NOT going to say, keeping doing what you are doing...keep sucking.

 

 

[Brinkman Ship]

25 minutes ago, rando said:

Honestly I don't think there has ever been a period I was less interested in gossiping about Stereophile.  That includes the long years before I knew of its existence.  

 

With the exception of ML, who at this point would take anything from anyone here as an attack, wishing all of you the best of luck with your new managers and purse string holders.  Nobody else has shown the lack of self interest or politeness that used to be prevalent in society by doing so.   

 

@Kal Rubinson  @John_Atkinson

 

Let Karma take it's course. I wish NONE of them well business wise, with the exception of Art Dudley, who stayed completely out of the MQA fray. They worked against the interests of their readers and consumers, so let consumers have the last laugh.

[Brinkman Ship]

3 hours ago, crenca said:

 

As a person who continually stumps for the https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38747-the-audiophile-consumer-and-technical-union/, I understand this sentiment but I think it is important to remember that Stereophile, TAS, etc. are but cogs in the wheel of the much larger "Audiophile culture".  Stereophile dies a (deserved) death (not that MQA backlash is going to cause this), another audiophile weed just pops up in its place rather quickly.  Rt66indierock is right with the strategy of "moving them out of the way" - which means (at least to me) reveal their incompetence and agenda and have a real discussion about MQA.

 

 

Nicely worded post.

 

Not sure I agree that MQA has had nothing to do with Stereiohile's downfall..although I will say the editor and some of it's staff being out of touch in general is a huge factor.  Also not sure I agree that anything will replace Stereophile if by some chance it is folded (I don't think it will be) because it has been around so long, and by attrition, survived with only one other USA based hard copy publication. We shall see.

[Brinkman Ship]

4 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Art Dudley is my ace in the hole. As editor of The Absolute Sound it went broke (with a lot of assistance from Harry Pear of course) then he started Listener Magazine and it went broke in 2002.  He is deputy editor of Stereophile now. I'm for just letting history take its course.

art dudley is so out of touch, he is not really capable of doing much damage...he plods along in his make believe world (it is still 1962) and he is outsider pseudo intellectual persona makes him a love him or hate him writer. He would not even give MQA 2 seconds of his time in my opinion

[Brinkman Ship]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

Yes, iFi posted exactly what I quoted.

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38962-ifi-audio-mqa-all-across-the-board-its-here/?do=findComment&comment=801617

 

And iFi also claims non-MQA playback is unaffected ... except that we lose DSD512 on the micro iDSD with the MQA renderer firmware 5.3 ... which to me is the most important feature of the device.  So I will simply stay on firmware 5.2 and keep DSD512 because I really don't care about getting MQA support.  

Having owned several iFI products, I will never give them a dollar more. They will be on my do not buy list because it is clear they are a marketing driven company, and not a technology driven one. I was reaching end game with them anyway with their shitty QC and stupid buzzword friendly useless features. To bad, the Nano was a nice product.

[Brinkman Ship]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

Circling back to @Brinkman Ship comments and what I am saying about fundamental distrust by (some) consumers around MQA, we now have a split in our Audiophile DAC world (though not the more general consumer DAC world because there is little momentum on the hardware/DAC side of things that I can see) between MQA DAC's and "legacy DAC's" as Bob S calls them.  Fact is MQA has successfully bamboozled convinced some rather prominent audiophile DAC manufacturers (across the price spectrum) to turn their DAC's sound into an MQA product.  All these manufacturers are blaming their customers for this, and this part is true to a certain extent in that MQA was very smartly marketed inside Audiophiledom.

 

This split is more significant than previous ones (such as the DSD vs non DSD support among DACs) because of what MQA is.  I won't say I will never purchase an MQA DAC, but it is most certainly the largest con in my pro vs con list.  Currently I use an iDAC2 when I travel or need a quick setup, but now that iFi is a wholly owned subsidiary of MQA when it comes to sound quality, I see a Chord Mojo (or similar) in my future when the iDAC2 poops out or I am forced into a firmware update for whatever reason...

Well summarized. 

 

As I said in my post, this was just last straw. I found their products to be rather middling in build quality, and they have too many products that chase buzzwords feature wise, and they have too many over lapping products.

 

I am entitled to vote with my shekels..I am not going to subsidize absurd amounts of wasted money and time so they can be part of the MQA club.

[Brinkman Ship]

4 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Interesting.  Some rather straight talk about MQA without coming out an saying "its not worth it"  (except they do at the end, but not in a "never ever" sort of way  ).

 

Just a quibble, but they do not get dithering right do they (i.e. it is not "filtered out")?

 

What is KEF's market share/position vis-a-vis the home "installation" market?  I ask because of the pattern.  The closer you are as a company (in terms of who your customers are) to Audiophiledom, the more likely you are implement MQA.  I am thinking of the likes of dCS, Mytek, and PS Audio (even though the did it reluctantly).  The likes of Benchmark (whose foundation is in the pro audio world right?), Schiit (the v"

 

alue oriented, objectivist leaning HP crowd), and such tend to honestly point out drawbacks of MQA.  Linn might be an anomaly, but then they run a real record label as well.

 

I think of KEF as an "audiophile" company, but maybe their position in the wider "installation" market gives them a bit of perspective??

"MQA Is Not A File Format:

 

MQA is a codec that is carried by ALAC and FLAC containers allowing playback of MQA-encoded music on non-MQA licensed hardware players."

 

Finally, a reputable company states the obvious. This debunks one of the biggest lies the magazines have been excreting.

[Brinkman Ship]

32 minutes ago, jhwalker said:

 

Sorry, not following.  This has been the description of MQA since (literally) Day One.

Not by Stereophile and TAS and their lemmings.

[Brinkman Ship]

In the May issue of Stereophile:

 

"...a smartphone that offers both hi-rez and MQA playback..

 

Speaking of MQA, Jim Austin continues his series of articles examining aspects of thoi controversial codec" (typo on website)

https://www.stereophile.com/content/hitting-newsstands-mailboxes-week-our-may-issue#wD51QTX0iIusSLjT.99

[Brinkman Ship]

4 minutes ago, labjr said:

Seems like they're just doing one MQA article after another because it generates traffic on their site.

 

Also an article by Bill Leebens who worked briefly for Light Harmonic until he realized being involved in a ponzi scheme wasn't good for his career.

agree...and also a lame attempt at some clawback to regain some shred of credibility.

 

LH? Why are those people not in jail? Probably to the legal protections built into the crowdfunding fine print.

[Brinkman Ship]

2 minutes ago, firedog said:

Basically, with crowdfunding ALL the risk is on the consumer. You are not investing in the company, you are speculating that the company is honest and will also succeed in producing the product. If either isn't true, you lose your money. That's what you agree to.

 

I put a very small amount ($25 ) into a gadget. After a few months it became clear the principals were crooks and had no intention of actually making or shipping a product. This was at indiegogo. After about 2 years of complaints from those of us who had been ripped off, they closed the product to further "investment" by consumers.

That was the extent of what they were willing and able to do. Indiegogo got their cut, and they were safe and legally protected. 

Yes, it is clear that they make sure the risks are all noted in the fine print, and of course, this has been exploited by scumbags pretending to be actual designers, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs.

 

To be fair I have crowd funded a few low ticket items and a bunch of CDs, and I took delivery of every one of them.

[Brinkman Ship]

1 minute ago, labjr said:

Everyone knows what crowd-funding is supposed to be.

 

However,  LH and company purposely misused the platform to take people's money and deprive them of any recourse. And  even deliberately switched to indiegogo because your money is taken collected at the time of the pledge.  

I think carnival barker Gavin Fish deserves to be nailed to the wall as well...he was the mouthpiece.

Larry Ho should be in handcuffs.