MQA gathers momentum with Universal and Warner backing it.

But if it sounds worse than HD that hasn't been through the MQA compression process, as it may do, at least in a decent sustem, given the artefacts arising from the decoding, why is anyone interested? And the argument about streaming bandwidth is hardly widely persuasive for the consumer, as it will only be significant for the small proportion who live somewhere with borderline bandwidth such that streaming of high res is only just not possible, as if much poorer then the MQA packaged file wouldn't be streamable. Quite a bit of discussion on this on the other MQA threads.

in reality the benefit is to the streaming services, and possibly in due course download services if/when that is how they choose to supply, because it could, halve their bandwidth, and they will be paying directly for the bandwidth they use.

According to their Facebook page, High Res Audio are to stop their endorsement and supply of MQA material. Interesting. Copied directly from their FB feed... 

"Breaking News: HIGHRESAUDIO to stop offering MQA. Proprietary system solutions and licensing models aren't what customers want. MQA is NOT lossless, the original signal is never recovered, estimate to recover at most 17bits (reduces the sampling rate), reduces the frequency range, SNR reduced by 3bit, aliasing with artifacts at 18kHz. MQA encoding filters manipulate drastically the original source. No analysis tools are available to verify the encoded MQA content. Therefore no quality control is possible. highresaudio.com stands for offering purity, original mastering source, none manipulated, tweaked or up-sampled content and codecs that are widely supported and offer use of freedom."

"We hope that MQA will adjust all the above issues. We are truly disappointed, the way MQA has progressed in the past year. We have been mislead and blinded by trust and promises."

I have had an understanding of the pros and cons of MQA for the last 18 months. I find it surprising that it's taken until now for hiresaudio to figure out how MQA works.

The statement is very strong. They must be burning bridges. I wonder if there is more to this story than finding out MQA is a lossy format in which compromises have been made.

Hi Yetizone,

That is really interesting about HIRESAUDIO's decision , so I'm assuming they are going to remove their MQA albums from their site. 

Why do you think Universal have joined Warner with their support?

Best 

John 

Yetizone posted:

According to their Facebook page, High Res Audio are to stop their endorsement and supply of MQA material. Interesting. Copied directly from their FB feed... 

"Breaking News: HIGHRESAUDIO to stop offering MQA......

....."We hope that MQA will adjust all the above issues. We are truly disappointed, the way MQA has progressed in the past year. We have been mislead and blinded by trust and promises."

Interesting, as you say. I couldn't find this on their FB page though.

HIRESAUDIO have just confirmed they will be removing all MQA content on 1.3.17, in response to an email I sent them.

Mmm? The post has been removed from their site, Not sure why, but as Gregw states their stance seemed forthright and perhaps a more diplomatic press release is being prepared for the confirmation received by John Gorodecky.

Yetizone posted:

Mmm? The post has been removed from their site, Not sure why, but as Gregw states their stance seemed forthright and perhaps a more diplomatic press release is being prepared for the confirmation received by John Gorodecky.

I did think the last paragraph was rather strong!

The reason that HIRESAUDIO is dropping MQA could also be commercial as Tidal is streaming MQA masters, which will affect the numbers of albums purchased for download.

i dont believe the alias artefacts are just at 18kHz either... however I suspect there is more to it than meets the eye.. it feels like  some some sort of corporate spat  - but  interesting observations - and certainly the observation that the reconstructed MQA 'master' is not as pure and original as the marketeers would perhaps have us believe is one I subscribe too..

.....and then loses momentum, as we everyone realizes (can't believe I had to use a 'z' there, the spell checker on this forum is retarded) we don't need, or want it. 

Have any of you actually heard MQA end to end? I have Tidal and have listened to some of the MQA recordings but have no way currently of decoding the folded content. Am pretty sure HIRESAUDIO probably have licensing and disclosure issues with MQA. Why would they sell or advocate something they do not know and cannot prove fulfils the raison d'être of their business? Tidal appear to be running late with their MQA unwrapper (new technical term) so am reserving judgment. 

Yetizone posted:

According to their Facebook page, High Res Audio are to stop their endorsement and supply of MQA material. Interesting. Copied directly from their FB feed... 

"Breaking News: HIGHRESAUDIO to stop offering MQA. Proprietary system solutions and licensing models aren't what customers want. MQA is NOT lossless, the original signal is never recovered, estimate to recover at most 17bits (reduces the sampling rate), reduces the frequency range, SNR reduced by 3bit, aliasing with artifacts at 18kHz. MQA encoding filters manipulate drastically the original source. No analysis tools are available to verify the encoded MQA content. Therefore no quality control is possible. highresaudio.com stands for offering purity, original mastering source, none manipulated, tweaked or up-sampled content and codecs that are widely supported and offer use of freedom."

"We hope that MQA will adjust all the above issues. We are truly disappointed, the way MQA has progressed in the past year. We have been mislead and blinded by trust and promises."

Apparently that Facebook link was a fake/not working. And the HighResAudio website has no such notice - with 9 days to go one would imagine they'd warn everyone.

https://www.highresaudio.com/en

I've sent them an email too to confirm.

So it's confirmed then - yes HighResAudio are giving MQA the boot from March.

What does everybody make of HiResAudio's decision, they have decided the formatt is flawed or it's a commercial decision. I realise this is entirely speculation, I'm just curious. 

Personally, I imagine they might have been prepared to 'overlook' technical imperfections if it made good commercial sense for them.  I suspect there's something unfavourable about the deal, and the highlighted flaws are being blamed to a greater extent than is perhaps reasonable.

Not that I have any particular issue with that, as long the statements made are true, which I believe they are.  I voiced similar concerns having read up on how MQA worked, many months ago now, and at the time forum members seemed quite enthusiastic about the format, and I was pretty much shot down for suggesting that technically it was a lossy format.  Now I'm open minded has to big a deal that may be, or not be, when it comes to the final replay, but I don't like the whole set up.  Also, it seems to solve a problem it doesn't need to.  We have studio masters in 24bit already, and can stream them from Qobuz for example.  I see no need for MQA,

I suspect their reasons were commercial - like 2L, their MQA prices were about a quid higher than the conventional highest resolution files. Maybe they've been absorbing the additional costs partially and now no longer willing to?