Lenbrook Acquires MQA!

[Rt66indierock]

Time for an update. Lenbrook bought the MQA IP for $75k, The SCL6 IP for $25k and equipment for $25k.

I’ve questioned the expertise of every supporter since 2016. With these numbers I can now question the hearing ability of every person who ever said they liked MQA.

 

[Al M.]

Time for an update. Lenbrook bought the MQA IP for $75k, The SCL6 IP for $25k and equipment for $25k.

I’ve questioned the expertise of every supporter since 2016. With these numbers I can now question the hearing ability of every person who ever said they liked MQA.

LOL

 

[bryans]

Time for an update. Lenbrook bought the MQA IP for $75k, The SCL6 IP for $25k and equipment for $25k.

I’ve questioned the expertise of every supporter since 2016. With these numbers I can now question the hearing ability of every person who ever said they liked MQA.

Can you let me know why do you care if someone likes MQA? I never understood why it bothered people that someone likes things they don't.

Do you believe if someone likes MQA they cant hear? Or maybe you can hear better than them?

I have heard music in many different formats that sound good and bad. I've always said that if I don't like something I don't listen to it. If you don't like MQA music don't listen to it. There is so much music available that I'm sure you can find non MQA music to listen to.

 

[stehno]

Can you let me know why do you care if someone likes MQA? I never understood why it bothered people that someone likes things they don't.

Do you believe if someone likes MQA they cant hear? Or maybe you can hear better than them?

I have heard music in many different formats that sound good and bad. I've always said that if I don't like something I don't listen to it. If you don't like MQA music don't listen to it. There is so much music available that I'm sure you can find non MQA music to listen to.

I think you miss the point of MQA and what the format genuinely offered or did not offer. The format was released in later 2014 and all the buzz primarily spearheaded in the U.S. by two editors-in-chief claiming that performance-wise MQA was the equivalent to flying to Mars or perhaps cows were now jumping over the moon. So long as that little green light was on, we were guaranteed to hear exactly what the engineers heard in the studio. Apparently nothing else mattered - not even our equipment - so long as it was MQA and the little green light was on.

With that, many were convinced the MQA format was superior.

High-end audio is supposedly all about performance and MQA's intro to the market was all about performance. But once some started putting MQA under the microscope and questioning its performance many came back saying MQA's performance was inferior. What did MQA promoters do? They pushed back as hard as they could but near as I could tell eventually they quietly stepped back from the cows now jumping over the moon propaganda and then claimed other things just to keep the MQA train moving forward,

Why do people care or take offense when somebody promotes MQA as a performance contender? Because there was no truth to such MQA performance claims. But also because if you search the forums you'll probably see that there were perhaps an incaluculable number (think millions) of minutes and hours spent infighting for over 9 years now arguing the validity of MQA's existence and intentions. Not to mention that this is supposedly a performance-oriented industry where supposedly performance means everything.

MQA came this close to hood-winking the entire music industry with its inferior technology they promoted as superior - even equating it to experiencing the birth of a new planet (John Atkinson). Whatever the hell that means. Had MQA succeeded, I've no doubt those who consider performance paramount would have suffered most for decades to come.

Personally, I suspect MQA was nothing but a licensing scheme to generate much revenue and to introduce it they hedged their bets on the fact that the majority possess untrained ears and would just go along for the ride. All they needed were a couple of editors-in-chief of the most popular rags to say wonderful things and then MQA could tell the world that even the most discriminating ears in the music industry i.e. the high-end audio sector blessed it.

In the end, MQA did very little other than expose who's willing to sell out the industry the most and who lacks critical thinking skills and/or the ability to discern / interpret what they hear - which was sorely needed. So I'm guessing even the dark MQA cloud had a silver lining.

 

[Al M.]

I think you miss the point of MQA and what the format genuinely offered or did not offer. The format was released in later 2014 and all the buzz primarily spearheaded in the U.S. by two editors-in-chief claiming that performance-wise MQA was the equivalent to flying to Mars or perhaps cows were now jumping over the moon. So long as that little green light was on, we were guaranteed to hear exactly what the engineers heard in the studio. Apparently nothing else mattered - not even our equipment - so long as it was MQA and the little green light was on.

With that, many were convinced the MQA format was superior.

High-end audio is supposedly all about performance and MQA's intro to the market was all about performance. But once some started putting MQA under the microscope and questioning its performance many came back saying MQA's performance was inferior. What did MQA promoters do? They pushed back as hard as they could but near as I could tell eventually they quietly stepped back from the cows now jumping over the moon propaganda and then claimed other things just to keep the MQA train moving forward,

Why do people care or take offense when somebody promotes MQA as a performance contender? Because there was no truth to such MQA performance claims. But also because if you search the forums you'll probably see that there were perhaps an incaluculable number (think millions) of minutes and hours spent infighting for over 9 years now arguing the validity of MQA's existence and intentions. Not to mention that this is supposedly a performance-oriented industry where supposedly performance means everything.

MQA came this close to hood-winking the entire music industry with its inferior technology they promoted as superior - even equating it to experiencing the birth of a new planet (John Atkinson). Whatever the hell that means. Had MQA succeeded, I've no doubt those who consider performance paramount would have suffered most for decades to come.

Personally, I suspect MQA was nothing but a licensing scheme to generate much revenue and to introduce it they hedged their bets on the fact that the majority possess untrained ears and would just go along for the ride. All they needed were a couple of editors-in-chief of the most popular rags to say wonderful things and then MQA could tell the world that even the most discriminating ears in the music industry i.e. the high-end audio sector blessed it.

In the end, MQA did very little other than expose who's willing to sell out the industry the most and who lacks critical thinking skills and/or the ability to discern / interpret what they hear - which was sorely needed. So I'm guessing even the dark MQA cloud had a silver lining.

Excellent summary.

Good riddance, MQA. Glad you couldn't do more damage than you already did.

 

[Al M.]

I would add that I have lost some of the respect that I had for a number of high-profile manufacturers of digital gear who were willing to go along with MQA because "the customer wants it".

They could have simply declined out of principle, just like Linn, Schiit, Benchmark, Ayre and perhaps some others did. Didn't seem to hurt their business.

 

[bryans]

I think you miss the point of MQA and what the format genuinely offered or did not offer. The format was released in later 2014 and all the buzz primarily spearheaded in the U.S. by two editors-in-chief claiming that performance-wise MQA was the equivalent to flying to Mars or perhaps cows were now jumping over the moon. So long as that little green light was on, we were guaranteed to hear exactly what the engineers heard in the studio. Apparently nothing else mattered - not even our equipment - so long as it was MQA and the little green light was on.

With that, many were convinced the MQA format was superior.

High-end audio is supposedly all about performance and MQA's intro to the market was all about performance. But once some started putting MQA under the microscope and questioning its performance many came back saying MQA's performance was inferior. What did MQA promoters do? They pushed back as hard as they could but near as I could tell eventually they quietly stepped back from the cows now jumping over the moon propaganda and then claimed other things just to keep the MQA train moving forward,

Why do people care or take offense when somebody promotes MQA as a performance contender? Because there was no truth to such MQA performance claims. But also because if you search the forums you'll probably see that there were perhaps an incaluculable number (think millions) of minutes and hours spent infighting for over 9 years now arguing the validity of MQA's existence and intentions. Not to mention that this is supposedly a performance-oriented industry where supposedly performance means everything.

MQA came this close to hood-winking the entire music industry with its inferior technology they promoted as superior - even equating it to experiencing the birth of a new planet (John Atkinson). Whatever the hell that means. Had MQA succeeded, I've no doubt those who consider performance paramount would have suffered most for decades to come.

Personally, I suspect MQA was nothing but a licensing scheme to generate much revenue and to introduce it they hedged their bets on the fact that the majority possess untrained ears and would just go along for the ride. All they needed were a couple of editors-in-chief of the most popular rags to say wonderful things and then MQA could tell the world that even the most discriminating ears in the music industry i.e. the high-end audio sector blessed it.

In the end, MQA did very little other than expose who's willing to sell out the industry the most and who lacks critical thinking skills and/or the ability to discern / interpret what they hear - which was sorely needed. So I'm guessing even the dark MQA cloud had a silver lining.

No didn't miss the point. Even with your long explanation it still comes down to what a person likes. Saying people lack critical thinking skills is ridiculous.

 

[bryans]

I would add that I have lost some of the respect that I had for a number of high-profile manufacturers of digital gear who were willing to go along with MQA because "the customer wants it".

They could have simply declined out of principle, just like Linn, Schiit, Benchmark, Ayre and perhaps some others did. Didn't seem to hurt their business.

What business got hurt for including MQA as an offering? Why not let the customer decide? I have a DAC that supports MQA. If I want to listen to non-MQA music I simply don't play it. If I want to listen to MQA music my DAC supports it. How is that bad for the customer?

 

[stehno]

No didn't miss the point. Even with your long explanation it still comes down to what a person likes.

It seems you did miss the point. MQA never would have left the drawing board if Stuart's intent was to promote it as the inferior technology it is. They deceived many by convincing them it was superior and the power of suggestion was working for quite a few and still is for a trickle.

Besides that, companies lost much as many wanted nothing to do with MQA but the consumer was demanding it so many companies invested much into their designs and MQA licensing fees or risk going out of business. Now that the cat's outta the bag, those companies see no return on their investment. Additionally, consumers lost much as well.

Gotta' take my hat off to those few companies who stood their ground and would have nothing to do with MQA.

Saying people lack critical thinking skills is ridiculous.

Now that's funny.

 

[PYP]

@stehno Atkinson was correct:

 

[Rt66indierock]

Can you let me know why do you care if someone likes MQA? I never understood why it bothered people that someone likes things they don't.

Do you believe if someone likes MQA they cant hear? Or maybe you can hear better than them?

I have heard music in many different formats that sound good and bad. I've always said that if I don't like something I don't listen to it. If you don't like MQA music don't listen to it. There is so much music available that I'm sure you can find non MQA music to listen to.

Liking MQA defines the wrong side of the bell curve of audiophiles. The opponents of MQA are in a mode of holding the people who promoted it accountable for their attempt to manipulate the audio market. And if to convince the small number of audiophiles who still like MQA they are wrong we will kill off Tidal Music. I’ve already taken steps to achieve this goal.

Didn’t I say on this forum, if you can’t tell MQA is just DSP and a couple of tweaks that is your problem not mine. MQA is bad for artists, bad for consumers and doesn’t sound better on other forums and in person at audio shows. And too many places to name, MQA is a thought examination in high-end audio, you like it you failed.

Most formats are normally distributed. What you have always said doesn’t consider the politics, press and reviews that manipulate the high-end audio market.

 

[Rt66indierock]

Lynbrook is reorganizing their business activities to reflect that they have separate hardware divisions and a software division based on BluOS, MQA and Scl6. This makes sense to categorize these activities separately. I doubt the hardware teams wanted the development and operating costs of BluOS in their financial reporting. Adding MQA Ltd staff they brought over brought over as part of the deal to acquire MQA and SL6 assets would not fit well into their hardware divisions.

The number of people who can decode an MQA file was probably never over 300,000 and is now less because Roon no longer automatically decodes MQA files and Tidal is switching to FLAC.

Tidal has laid off 40 people and according to a Resident Advisor source the company is making a clear shift from "being music-centric to product-centric–pushing tech initiatives instead of anything related to music, labels, distributors or artists." The quality of this source is unknown, but this would make sense considering Tidal has had virtually no growth since 2020. Tidal will need to show $54 million of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 or they will show a loss of revenue from the prior year.

What doesn't make sense to me is for Lynbrook to create a streaming service with MQA. High-resolution streaming has not shown that it can attract enough customers to make it worthwhile with Tidal’s numbers, Qobuz’s small numbers and no one talking about how successful high-resolution streaming was at either Apple or Amazon. You must consider that the market may be saturated and there is no room for more growth.

What looked like a relatively risk-free acquisition of MQA and SCL 6 now looks a lot riskier.

 

[Rexp]

Given the majority of recordings on streaming services are garbage, I think there is a market for some sort of filter system that filters out the embedded digital distortion (as yet unmeasurable). Maybe Lenbrook have found a way to tweak MQA so that it does deliver better sound.

 

[Rt66indierock]

Given the majority of recordings on streaming services are garbage, I think there is a market for some sort of filter system that filters out the embedded digital distortion (as yet unmeasurable). Maybe Lenbrook have found a way to tweak MQA so that it does deliver better sound.

How are the same people going to tweak the encoding procedure?

 

[thedudeabides]

Oh my. Another "less filling, tastes great" discussion. Why can't folks simply tolerate and respect different opinions versus resorting to personal insults and innuendo. Beyond my pay grade.

 

[Rexp]

How are the same same people going to tweak the encoding procedure?

No idea but they have considerable digital expertise and the money to launch a new MQA streaming service.

 

[christoph]

No idea but they have considerable digital expertise and the money to launch a new MQA streaming service.

Why would anyone want that?

 

[Rexp]

Why would anyone want that?

Because the majority of music on streaming services is low quality due to poor recording/mastering.

 

[Rt66indierock]

Because the majority of music on streaming services is low quality due to poor recording/mastering.

If the only streaming formats were Ogg/Vorbis. 320k Mp3 and Apple 256K AAC 99+% of the paid subscribers would not care.

 

[treitz3]

If the only streaming formats were Ogg/Vorbis. <snip>

Come again?

Tom