I published music on Tidal to test MQA - MQA Deep Dive

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 minutes ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

MQA levies a $.10 fee on all MQA-CDs sold

I wish more manufacturers would publicly leak how much MQA costs their customers. The licensing charge to hardware mfgs is vastly different depending on who you are. Some pay nothing, some pay much more than nothing. It’s not my information to leak so I won’t. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, garrardguy60 said:

 

I belong to a number of sites and read a number of sites. I find useful information on many sites. Sometimes you have to pick through the loads of manure to find the seed.

I used to come to Audiophile Style, when it was Computer Audiophile, to read the posts. However, Chris's understandable and defensible desire to grow his site resulted in a business decision wherein he politely suggested that many of the objectivists who came to the site for its excellent MQA coverage should post in a newly created special section and if that was not to their liking they might want to take their anti-cable and general anti-woo orientation elsewhere. Therefore Audiophile Style is less useful to me than it was when it welcomed me with open arms.

 

It is true that, notwithstanding the request to leave the site -- for oldsters, this sounds like what Felix's wife told him during the title sequence on the old "The Odd Couple" TV series, adding that he must never return, an edict I have obviously violated! -- Chris seems to be a friendly person who is invariably polite (i.e, he has a high boiling point before he can't take it anymore! ). 

 

OTOH, over at another site, a guy named Amir can on occasion be dismissive, abrupt, and arrogant. Is it shocking to anyone that an ex-Microsoft vice president behaves like this? Personally, I suspect Amir is MUCH better behaved at ASR than he was at MS.

 

SO NOW I WILL lose the ironic distance and get to my point: The online audiophile world is not as black and white as I and probably many others thought it was. A site can have bad points and good points. Indeed, all the popular audio sites have both pluses and minuses at the same time

 

Sure, I felt hurt that Chris kicked us out, but now a year later my position is that I can't take away that Chris has the first, most comprehensive and still best MQA thread, and an honest passion for audio that comes from the user (as opposed to vendor) side, which is rare for a site that takes ads. I guess I mean to say that Chris seems to have successfully threaded the very tiny needle in terms being supported by ads while still serving readers.

 

It is CLEAR that he does this better than legacy vehicles like Stereophile and TAS. He's also light years ahead of Darko and Guttenberg, who basically provide what's called advertorial content.

 

By the same token, Amir has successfully tapped into a market opening for measurements. BTW, I personally believe that it was Archimago who ramped up interest in deep dive measurements (this era's answer to the Julian Hirsch measurement of yore) with the pioneering content he has written since 2012.

 

Anyway, I don't have anything prescriptive to add; it just seems like we've entered an era where no single site can serve all the different audiophile factions, so maybe it's Rodney King time and we all need to learn to get along a little better...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sites are just like the people who found / run them. We all have our issues, pros, cons, etc... 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, RichardSF said:

 

To clarify, GoldenOne's thread was locked, but GoldenOne did not actually get banned from the ASR forum.

 

The moderator wrote that new threads about MQA may be opened, and he himself opened a new thread about Tidal's mid tier and MQA. But then he locked his own thread just a few days later! It sends a message that open discussion about MQA isn't welcome on ASR. You can sense that members are being careful and self-censoring themselves.

He was banned. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, RichardSF said:

Okay, then my bad. I've seen other members banned (like March Audio) and their profiles disappear, but GoldenOne's profile still shows him as Active Member.

I saw a screenshot. Perhaps he was reinstated. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

If MQA Ltd really believed in its product, it wouldn't have mandated that customers of hardware and software companies not have a choice. Ever wonder why MQA can't just be a paid for hardware add-on or a paid for software add-on for products like Audirvana?

 

If MQA Ltd really believed in its product, it wouldn't have needed to lock the major labels into an agreement that said the labels must convert their entire catalogs to MQA. 

 

There's a long history of removing choice on MQA Ltd's part. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, taipan254 said:

MQA has ZERO incentive to let consumers make up their own mind. They want to force users to play in their wholly-owned ecosystem

I’ve been saying that for years. We agree.