MQA files for bankruptcy protection

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by elwappo99, Apr 7, 2023.

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Will you hold onto your unobtanium MQA gear once MQA is discontinued?

  1. Yes, in time people will appreciate the brilliance of MQA

    10 vote(s)
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  2. No, hifi audio peaked at the 1920s Victrola

    80 vote(s)
    88.9%
  1. elwappo99

    elwappo99 Friend

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    "Earlier this week MQA filed paperwork with the UK courts for the Appointment of Administrators. This is the British equivalent of filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under United States law. There is a twist to this though as MQA may be able to survive and re-emerge but will likely have to sell off SCL6 (formerly MQAir) to do so."

    https://www.ecoustics.com/news/mqa-bankruptcy/
    https://www.whathifi.com/news/mqa-is-going-into-administration


    I will wait with bated breath for Schiit to come out with an official apology
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  2. Gazny

    Gazny MOT: ETA Audio

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    Will someone buy mqa for the wireless compression algorithm?
     
  3. Beefy

    Beefy Friend

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    As a Tidal user, I'm a teeny worried about how this might affect the service. But if MQA goes away entirely, it will likely be a net benefit. Just give us everything in true lossless - bandwidth is just not a limiting factor for music applications.
     
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  4. GoldenOne

    GoldenOne Friend

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    Good riddance
     
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  5. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    And the boomers will find another format to rebuy Brothers in Arms for the 20th time.
     
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  6. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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  7. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Mr BS will remain true to his name.
     
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  8. Entropy

    Entropy Facebook Friend

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    Just missed april fools...
     
  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Why?

    There are already LDAC and aptX Adaptive. Maybe a few others. All of these are much more suited for Bluetooth since they were designed for it, i.e. can fall back to lower bitrates given quality of wireless transmission.

    MQA is just audiophool voodoo trying to solve a problem that didn't need solving. Think of MQA as the audio equivalent of JPG, except instead of reducing file sizes to 20:1 to 10:1 with little to no loss in perceivable quality, it's more like 2:1 to 1.5:1 when compared to lossless FLAC. MQA poorly solves a problem that doesn't need solving in the modern era of 4G/5G and 50-200Mbps home connections.

    If I had money, I'd buy it to expose it. As a warning to hustlers and consumers. I don't ever want to see a f'ing see a MQA logo on another piece of gear in my life.

    MQA just smelled really bad from the start. It seemed like a lot of insiders, from the old geezer audio magazine reviewer to Amir and his ASR insiders (all what would seem to be pretty smart people) had financial interests in it. (Note @GoldenOne was kicked off ASR for daring question Amir about his support for MQA).
     
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    Last edited: Apr 7, 2023
  10. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    MQA was a blight on audio.
     
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  11. Woland

    Woland Friend

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    There's a lot of unjustified speculation about Mqa formats disappearing soon because the Mqa company is in trouble. Mqa the company has always been close to insolvency, and kept alive by speculative capital. The latest development is not a surprise. In liquidation, there will be efforts to sell the technology. It is less likely that the development staff will find a new home.

    I'm thinking through the logic for Tidal as the main user of Mqa...

    Around 5 million subscribers is a common guesstimate for the Tidal user base.

    Say 10% pay for the top tier to access Mqa content. That would be around 0.5 million x $10 per month, or $5M per month in revenue from the top tier who get the Mqa light on their DAC.

    The cost for Tidal to buy the Mqa tech including patents might be a few million. That's such an easy option I can't see Tidal refusing. It would mean minimal short term disruption to their business and an asset that can be depreciated over years, so no short term hit to finnancial reporting.

    If Tidal let Mqa disappear, suddenly they have to worry about support for their Mqa encoded music databases and loss of revenue from their top tier customers walking away. That means millions in tech spend to rework systems + big fall in revenue, and a dreadful looking financial report. The executive team would look awful. And the Mqa replacement would be a massive distraction from their own efforts to expand / stay afloat.

    So the next step seems likely to be a Tidal acquisition of Mqa or someone else stepping up to buy the intellectual property and support Tidal. It's hard to see any other Mqa customers on the horizon, at least until the tech has a secure new home.
     
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    Last edited: Apr 7, 2023
  12. Greg121986

    Greg121986 Almost "Made"

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    MQA can get shit on. If MQA goes away I would consider going from Qobuz back to Tidal because Tidal seems to have a better library. I explicitly avoided Tidal because of their adoption of MQA so I think this could be a good thing for Tidal.
     
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  13. Peti

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    Rust in peace, MQA!
     
  14. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Same here, but I've got to wonder how much MQA-dependency is now baked into the Tidal backend.
     
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  15. nishan99

    nishan99 Friend

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    Rest in piss!
     
  16. netforce

    netforce MOT: Headphones.com

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    Tidal made its bed with MQA, Tidal can probably survive for a while without MQA but the opposite can't be said for MQA who is pretty reliant on Tidal to keep them relevant. The ecoustics article is nice in how it was detailing that Richemont held a 24% and he resigned his seat last month. Article also suggests maybe Tidal/Block Inc could buy up MQA but who knows if Block Inc wants to buy a shady company like MQA since the Cash App side of Block Inc was just accused of inflating its numbers/helping in illegal activities:
    https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/

    MQA for years on my end from my time at Questyle/TSAV/Headphones.com has been interesting. Seemed like there were always people that wanted MQA but didn't know really what MQA even did. Realistically speaking, MQA is complicated and one probably has to be rather invested in audio to really actually care about MQA. Most folks will probably buy into the market that "MQA is better"

    So many companies ended up adopting MQA that it felt basically like a checkbox especially if you were making a portable product, does it work with MQA.

    From that RMAF panel years back to their response to Golden's video, MQA hadn't acted in good faith arguments about its product, they weren't transparent, and they honestly just seemed like bullies. Talking with some partners, they did also seem at least a little jubilant at the MQA news from the past few days.
     
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  17. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    They’re selling a perceptual lossy encoder and tried to market it as BETTER than hi-res. They always knew it was bullshit. If they had been upfront and said yes it’s lossy but it’s far more advanced than MP3 or AAC and it’s great for situations where bandwidth or storage space is limited, I think they would have found a place in the market for it. It would be a niche but it would be an honest niche.

    Instead they claimed they had proprietary algorithms that better reconstructed the music than redbook or hi-res and it was just obviously such bullshit. All honest attempts to investigate were met with mafia-like tactics. Everyone involved in pushing MQA can go f**k themselves.
     
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  18. rfernand

    rfernand Almost "Made"

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    2L records and such demos sounded pretty interesting to me on a meridian explorer^2 and a pro ject - but I had no way to A/B with, say, a FLAC and Yggdrasil. Some of my audiophile friends could tell them apart and MQA files sounded worse to them. Records I know very well sounded (to me) as if you had the ol’ “LOUDNESS” switch on - but then again, impossible to A/B test for me.

    The licensing, overhead, and odd options on catalog seems to have made the business insolvent. I think it’s fair to say that we still don’t know for sure what MQA actually does, and whether that truly translates to improved enjoyment. Seems the burden of repurchasing stuff and having a dedicated new set of gear was just too much to ask for most of us.

    If there is a good idea in the tech, may it emerge in the future as a implementable improvement for the good of all Kree…. :piratemug:
     
  19. haywood

    haywood Friend

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    MQA was a waste of everybody’s time. It may have made some sense when bandwidth was scarce but people stream 4k movies now. What we need isn’t a better audio format but a better way of discovering and curating the kajillion audio tracks available from the streaming services.
     
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  20. Hrodulf

    Hrodulf Prohibited from acting as an MOT until year 2050

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    I know a few DSP engineers who have told me that the method behind MQA's filtering is interesting, however, the marketing guy in me has always known that the actual money printer behind MQA was DRM. File format-based sound improvements are like the bottom tier in audibility.

    Another BT audio codec is the last thing the industry needs. It's a circus as it is now.
     
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