ARC > Now MQA entering administration

[amey01]

Now we might be upset about ARC, but her is some more news. Discuss.


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

 

[R.I.P]

Now we might be upset about ARC, but her is some more news. Discuss.


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

MQA is a recording format/technique/procedure. Only offers the promise of great music recording sonics. Provided the studio sound engineer has done his job well.

Just like format PCM or DSD there will be recordings with great sonics and average sonics. Recording with above average sonics will enhance music listening pleasure. The same is true for PCM and DSD format.

PCM and DSD are older formats and well established in the sense of number of music recordings. If MQA was a day versus night change from past formats. Then perhaps the license offering company would not be in financial trouble. And a plethora of digital to analogue converters, disc players, music recordings would be built to allow MQA expression. Since this format would automatically fulfill for audiophiles their need for excellent or day versus night music recording sonics.

Half the population gender wise does not care about the quality of recording. In the other half few are true audiophiles who would go to great length to acquire truly great recordings for their expensive truly outstanding music systems.

Most people are not blessed like fox, cat or dog to hear well enough to appreciate the difference. Even if this minority have the human ability to appreciate then perhaps MQA music hardware and other hardware cost, required to extract the full potential of MQA, may be prohibitive for audiophiles.

I have not heard music recorded in MQA format. However, I have listened to Thriller by Michael Jackson in DSD format. DSD or otherwise the studio engineer done a great job producing this album. DSD sounds better than CD recording. The more synergistic the system and true high end the more truly outstanding sonics extracted from MQA music media.

From a financial perspective owner has recovered research and development costs, operating costs and earned profit. Now wants to sell or exit business and invest in a new higher NPV project.

 

[Robert D]

MQA is a recording format/technique/procedure. Only offers the promise of great music recording sonics. Provided the studio sound engineer has done his job well.

Just like format PCM or DSD there will be recordings with great sonics and average sonics. Recording with above average sonics will enhance music listening pleasure. The same is true for PCM and DSD format.

PCM and DSD are older formats and well established in the sense of number of music recordings. If MQA was a day versus night change from past formats. Then perhaps the license offering company would not be in financial trouble. And a plethora of digital to analogue converters, disc players, music recordings would be built to allow MQA expression. Since this format would automatically fulfill in audiophiles need for excellent or day versus night music recording.

Half the population gender wise does not care about the quality of recording. In the other half few are true audiophiles who would go to great length to acquire truly great recordings for their expensive truly outstanding music systems.

Most people are not blessed like fox, cat or dog to hear well enough to appreciate the difference. Even if this minority have the human ability to appreciate perhaps the MQA and other music hardware cost to get the full measure of MQA would be prohibitive for them.

I have not heard music recorded in MQA format. I have listened to Thriller by Michael Jackson in DSD format. DSD or otherwise the studio engineer done a great job producing this album. DSD sounds better than CD recording. The more synergistic the system and true high end the more truly outstanding sonics be able to extract from MQA format.

From a financial perspective owner has recovered research and development costs, operating costs and earned profit. Now wants to sell or exit business and invest in a new higher NPV project.

I agree, that how the original recording was done is probably the most important factor, followed by how it was mastered. Ive listened to some remastered recordings that sounded terrible, and reverting to the older recording sounded better. There have been a few MQA recordings like that, where an older FLAC sounded better, but overall for me the MQA seems to sound better.

 

[JonFo]

MQA addressed some interesting temporal issues and is good tech; unfortunately, how it was rolled out led to misunderstandings and skepticism, which led to low adoption.
I hope someone picks up the pieces and continues running with it.

 

[Fidji99]

MQA addressed some interesting temporal issues and is good tech; unfortunately, how it was rolled out led to misunderstandings and skepticism, which led to low adoption.j
I hope someone picks up the pieces and continues running with it.

to me MQA was a solution to problem that never really existed.

 

[DanR]

Couldn’t agree with fidji99 more, and we arent the only ones. Now I’m biased with Benchmark Media equipment I like their stuff a lot and use a DAC3 fed from my Node2i. But Benchmark made this call 7 years ago. Take from it what you will.
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/163302855-is-mqa-doa

 

[Fidji99]

There were couple of discussions e.g. on ASR, that got emotional at some point. As this is British company you can find the accounts.
Yearly revenues around 0.5M-0.74M and yearly loss of more than 4M, Clearly not sustainable biz model and license fees were not that big, even when there was an impression, that every DAC is sold with MQA capability. Tidal had obviously free-ride.

 

[Leporello]

MQA is a recording format/technique/procedure. Only offers the promise of great music recording sonics. Provided the studio sound engineer has done his job well.

Just like format PCM or DSD there will be recordings with great sonics and average sonics. Recording with above average sonics will enhance music listening pleasure. The same is true for PCM and DSD format.

PCM and DSD are older formats and well established in the sense of number of music recordings. If MQA was a day versus night change from past formats. Then perhaps the license offering company would not be in financial trouble. And a plethora of digital to analogue converters, disc players, music recordings would be built to allow MQA expression. Since this format would automatically fulfill for audiophiles their need for excellent or day versus night music recording sonics.

Half the population gender wise does not care about the quality of recording. In the other half few are true audiophiles who would go to great length to acquire truly great recordings for their expensive truly outstanding music systems.

Most people are not blessed like fox, cat or dog to hear well enough to appreciate the difference. Even if this minority have the human ability to appreciate then perhaps MQA music hardware and other hardware cost, required to extract the full potential of MQA, may be prohibitive for audiophiles.

I have not heard music recorded in MQA format. However, I have listened to Thriller by Michael Jackson in DSD format. DSD or otherwise the studio engineer done a great job producing this album. DSD sounds better than CD recording. The more synergistic the system and true high end the more truly outstanding sonics extracted from MQA music media.

From a financial perspective owner has recovered research and development costs, operating costs and earned profit. Now wants to sell or exit business and invest in a new higher NPV project.

MQA isn't simply another digital encoding format like PCM or DSD. It incorporates lossy compression and digital rights management, even though its makers deny both. Here's an article from a few years ago by Stereophile's Jim Austin:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-contextualized
It's certainly a problem that the "crown jewels" of high resolution master-quality recordings are universally accessable and copyable, for all who would enjoy and appreciate them. Musicians, in particular, are being squeezed by the current distribution paradigms. Whether universal use of MQA for all commercial recordings will solve it appears to be a moot point, since it's not looking like that's about to happen any time soon.