Article: MQA: A Review of controversies, concerns, and cautions

[Samuel T Cogley]

Thank you @Archimago for this well written and extremely informative article.  This one is so heavy on information and footnotes, it will take the audiophile community some time to read and digest it.

[Samuel T Cogley]

18 minutes ago, realhifi said:

“Ultimately, remember that the music industry can be wrong, audiophile magazines can be wrong, as an individual, I can be wrong (and my wife says I often am!). But the consumer is always right – which is exactly why “we” call the shots. Let’s see how this goes...”

 

Absolutely correct. “We” call the shots with our pocketbooks. Always have and no different here. It will succeed or fail on that premise. 

 

While I certainly wish "the consumer is always right", practical examples of consumer power are not as plentiful as this dogma would suggest.  Monopolies, oligopolies, and mostly unchecked corporate power have been steadily chipping away at the consumer's once formidable "power of the pocketbook".  The same record labels that scoff at audiophiles as insufficiently numerous to appreciably affect sales figures have all invested in MQA.  That single fact speaks volumes about what the labels believe MQA represents.  And because the labels are an oligopoly, consumers have no power to dissuade them from the folly of MQA.

 

IMHO, believing otherwise is demonstrably naive based on the well documented predation of the record labels and their seeming contempt for consumers of their product.

[Samuel T Cogley]

23 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

The labels haven't  invested a significant amount of money in MQA. How many times do I have repeat it?

 

Any idea of how much?  Just trying to divine the threshold of "significant" investment.

[Samuel T Cogley]

35 minutes ago, mitchco said:

 

@Samuel T Cogley re: the consumer is always right - perhaps audio enthusiasts need to take a page out of the gamer enthusiasts playbook who used social media to boycott the sales of Battlefront 2. Seemed to be very effective.

 

 

Unlike the situation with the record companies, Electronic Arts is singularly evil when it comes to business practices.  They are consistently near or at the top of the list of most hated companies year after year.

 

Especially because streaming providers are at the front of consumer's music consumption experience, record companies gain some measure of insulation from consumer wrath.  Witness not only UMG's copious use of audible watermarking in their streaming content, but also how utterly powerless streaming providers are to do anything about it.  UMG hasn't even acknowledged they're doing it.  I can't see how any boycott or any other consumer action could be effective there.  UMG has no accountability to their consumers, period.

 

Gaming resonates with a multitude perhaps orders of magnitudes larger than music consumers.  While I agree that EA was shamed into scraping their over-the-top greed with Battlefront 2, I don't see how this could apply to the record labels.

[Samuel T Cogley]

5 hours ago, Chiger Yelam said:

It always worries me when I see rhetorical tricks being used to enhance an argument. I see no reason to mistrust the audiophile press on this issue as it is their job to give informed and unbiased reviews and there are clear attempts in this article to undermine trust in these reviews. Claiming that past or previous links to the industry in someway mean that they are incapable of doing their current jobs professionally strike me as a stretch. As to whether they "push" (author's quotes) MQA, well only in so much as they "push" any other product they give a good review to. Additionally just because the author has no industry affiliations does not make him/her somehow more trustworthy or unbiased; personally I trust someone more if they make their name and resume known rather than hiding behind anonymity.

If the author is entirely happy with the recent state of computer audio playback then fine, many of us are not and welcome innovative solutions which offer greater choice. This is my main objection to this article. If I want higher resolution sound and am sensible enough to ask my local HiFi retailer to audition new equipment (and can be trusted to make up my own mind) before I buy then what is the problem? The "internet blind test" put forward as evidence by our author is an insult to our intelligence.

I don't see MQA taking a monopoly position here, legacy codec will still be available and alternative improved products may emerge. If MQA and like minded innovators are undermined and ultimately fail then I fear we will be left with genuinely inferior products.

 

Welcome to the forum!  It seems you signed up just to post this.  I see this derisive post as a positive development in the MQA wars.  It seems MQA and their supporters are beginning to take their critics seriously.  This post not only defends MQA, but the Professional Audiophile Pundit establishment as well.  And those pundits stand to lose much credibility as more becomes known about MQA's and the record label's true intentions.