Brantome
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Just when you think you’re out, they keep pulling you back in 
MQA now in administration
- Thread starter Mike in NY
- Start date
Mike in NY
Major Contributor
The Administrator's 2 November progress report to the High Court revealed the price paid in full by Lenbrook for MQA's IP, trade name, and plant assets was a paltry £100,000, with £30,000 of that total set aside to satisfy a patent claim and ensure good title was passed to the purchaser:
After tens of millions of pounds invested since 2014, that is a rather pathetic ending for MQA's investors. The company will dissolve after a small distribution is made to the largest secured creditor, and unsecured creditors get zilch.
After tens of millions of pounds invested since 2014, that is a rather pathetic ending for MQA's investors. The company will dissolve after a small distribution is made to the largest secured creditor, and unsecured creditors get zilch.
Mike in NY
Major Contributor
Nope, they are abandoning it. It will be a very neat trick if Lenbrook (or anyone) were able to reverse that.
irellevent
True, TIDAL is irrelevant by market share and losing tons of money every quarter. Perhaps this marked turn away from MQA in realization that it was never the revenue differentiator they hoped it would be will now help save them.
The trade press BS campaign about MQA superiority needs to be taken with a grain of salt, don't convince yourself that is the true story because it is and always was a complete fantasy designed to impose licensing fees on the consumer, sell hardware (and magazine ads), and get people to sign up for Trojan Horse DRM.
Mike in NY
Major Contributor
It will be if they don't find a new streaming service partner, or resurrect the relationship with TIDAL.
MQA's IP and assets were purchased in mid-September by Lenbrook (owner of Bluesound, NAD, PSB, etc...) at the fire sale price shown above. Some have suggested this was done simply to protect an existing Lenbrook investment/sunken costs in two nearly ready for market products, a PSB headphone developed in collaboration with Sonical, and a forthcoming wireless powered speaker that is rumored to use the SCL6 ultra wideband technology.
Many also think the only bit that will survive in some form is SCL6, which does not require the use of an MQA encoded stream though it does support it, but if there is no streaming partner in the future then there would be no encoded content anyway.
Perhaps a Warner Music or even a consortium of record labels will rescue TIDAL who are also in dire financial straits, if so there could be more albums encoded in MQA in the future, though that seems far fetched given what a dismal failure MQA has been already, losing tens of millions of pounds and failing to produce any appreciable market share/differentiation from their competitors for TIDAL. It seems unlikely that anyone will sink money into it ever again.
Mike in NY
Major Contributor
There are so many hints on SLC6 that I guess it is all about that. The next "far superior" cow will be driven through the village
At £19,999 Lenbrook doesn't have very much into it, and I doubt they can make a strong case for further development/investment even in SCL6, unless they can resubmit an application to the Bluetooth SIG and gain acceptance there. Bluetooth is at this point ubiquitous in the wireless realm, I have a hard time imagining SCL6 ever supplanting it in any way, so unless SCL6 can become a part of the Bluetooth specification, it too will likely just fade away.
All this wireless BT things are, to repeat this word
, not relevant for me personally. It was my first impression when reading about the Lenbrook acquisition in September. So much nebulos nothing, the only often and concrete mentioned issue was SLC6. As a non-shareholder I am very relaxed. Reading the MQA side then it was in my opinion the next impertinence to list EISA awards from companies "partnered". All of this gear has got the award not for, but despite MQA.
During the time when internet was on its infancy and low speed mqa make sense where you stream a music on small size. Given the time have passed that internet speed have matured and improved its speed so in this day and age it don’t make sense anymore. It’s a music that was compress to reduce its size much like zip and then decompress for playback. I don’t see an advantage using mqa since you need a chip or software to do the unfolding. Flac is universal standard that every streamer services need to use. Anyway, I did comparison by converting CD music into wav and flac and to my surprise this is just my ear and not measuring device that wav sound a bit better despite being both loseless, It maybe just placebo effect or just in my head as there should be no difference.
dangermouse
Major Contributor
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- Jul 25, 2023
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Hopefully.
WiimNoob
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Theres alot of hardware; IFI, Wiim, Fiio, etc that are/were invested in the technology....now those options will be useless unless in some form its continued. I never subscribed to it so never heard any differences but my ears are not young.
Isn't it all about feeling good when listening to music? And feeling even better with HiFi one likes? And feeling even more better when owning high quality gear? Who has to judge when I prefer the sound of vinyl more than the sound of CDs and the sound of CDs more than the sound of every streaming service?
Vinyl sounds different. Yes.
CD should sound the same as a FLAC stream so if there is a difference it’s hardware related or bias.
I insist in bias!
And of course hardware related things. Every part of the chains "do something". And also the streaming services will "do something" with their hardware.
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That's true but it's also a case that can be easily verified.I insist in bias!
Given the same edition and release of a song, possibly one natively studio mastered at 44,1 16bit, it's possible to extract and compare the file contents from CD with any streaming or download services, just before the same DAC process.
It should clarify any doubt about bias or what the streamer services decided to do, but only in that specific case, not generally, since nobody guarantees that producers act always the same way... Otherwise, what could we possibly discuss about?
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As I wrote many times before FOR ME all this resolution discussions are obsolete. My experienced but older ears together with my stuff never were able to find any listenable difference between everything ABOVE mp3, ogg and so on. For my "needs" Red Book is still the target with digital music. YMMV.
My personal issues with MQA and related to that with Tidal are only about misleading people. Confess that in the beginning of MQA there were times I was fascinated by the purple idiot light, but that changed latest with Golden Sound (no fan, but this was too apparent.)
before FOR ME all this resolution discussions are obsolete. My experienced but older ears together with my stuff never were able to find any listenable difference between everything ABOVE mp3, ogg and so on. For my "needs" Red Book is still the target with digital music. YMMV.My personal issues with MQA and related to that with Tidal are only about misleading people. Confess that in the beginning of MQA there were times I was fascinated by the purple idiot light, but that changed latest with Golden Sound (no fan, but this was too apparent.)