What was your biggest obstacle to purchasing audio gear?

[Kingsrule]

Not many (great) dealers left in Upstate. I guess The Speaker Shop (Buffalo) might be the only one. Back in the late 70's thru the 90's there were several in each city from Buffalo to Albany.
Being able to have access to a great dealer is a big issue without an overnight drive or plane trip.

Another bigger obstacle for me is is the availability of the gear I want to buy....waiting is a big factor for me.

 

[Steve Williams]

Not many (great) dealers left in Upstate. I guess The Speaker Shop (Buffalo) might be the only one. Back in the late 70's thru the 90's there were several in each city from Buffalo to Albany.
Being able to have access to a great dealer is a big issue without an overnight drive or plane trip.

Another bigger obstacle for me is is the availability of the gear I want to buy....waiting is a big factor for me.

The supply chain ( or lack thereof) has crippled manufacturers all over the world. I feel your pain

 

[MarkusBarkus]

The Speaker Shop (Buffalo) might be the only one

...awesome guys! And actual "hi-end" offerings.

 

[Rt66indierock]

MQA is doing really, really well. I think you are going to have a tough year as more announcements come out.

Peter McGrath was here yesterday playing more of his wonderful classical recordings. We compared the before and after of MQA encoding and there was a noticeable improvement with the MQA version.

Lee, MQA Ltd has been making announcements since 2015 and their financial condition has only gotten steadily worse. MQA can make as many announcements as they want but it changes very little. MQA’s market share in streaming is so small it’s getting hard to compute. It is not even worth trying to compute MQA’s market share in downloads and CDs.

As for appealing to authority by saying Peter McGrath likes it. Readers should know there has been a thought exam in high-end audio since late 2016. Do you think MQA sounds better? If the answer is yes, you failed.

 

[Lee]

Lee, MQA Ltd has been making announcements since 2015 and their financial condition has only gotten steadily worse. MQA can make as many announcements as they want but it changes very little. MQA’s market share in streaming is so small it’s getting hard to compute. It is not even worth trying to compute MQA’s market share in downloads and CDs.

As for appealing to authority by saying Peter McGrath likes it. Readers should know there has been a thought exam in high-end audio since late 2016. Do you think MQA sounds better? If the answer is yes, you failed.

You don’t really understand that MQA is a technology company working on a wide variety of projects. They do R&D, invent something and then license it. Pretty soon we should see some profits.

It’s not just Peter, it is my own critical listening of his files. The MQA encoding makes a significant improvement in the sound of his recordings. I spent two days doing A/Bs with Peter.

 

[Karmacoma]

My wife

 

[heihei]

Biggest challenge here in the UK is finding a dealer that has more than one product at a certain price point once you move into high-end gear.
And when you do find one, them accepting that you might want to try something outside of their portfolio.

 

[Rt66indierock]

You don’t really understand that MQA is a technology company working on a wide variety of projects. They do R&D, invent something and then license it. Pretty soon we should see some profits.

It’s not just Peter, it is my own critical listening of his files. The MQA encoding makes a significant improvement in the sound of his recordings. I spent two days doing A/Bs with Peter.

In a technology company you should be developing new technologies and products because when your first product fails in the market it is nice to have story to tell your investors, so they continue to throw good money after bad. Lee, it has been twenty years since Bob Stuart showed an operating profit at Meridian. He was in his fifties does he even remember how to make money?

Lee if you and Peter McGrath spent two days A/B testing MQA files you wasted your time. It doesn’t matter that you found a significant improvement in the MQA files it just means you failed the test worse than say Andy Quint did when he said he found a slight improvement. But all of you still failed the test. I can recommend some activities that are a better use of time of your time and may help you manage NextScreen better.

 

[Lee]

In a technology company you should be developing new technologies and products because when your first product fails in the market it is nice to have story to tell your investors, so they continue to throw good money after bad. Lee, it has been twenty years since Bob Stuart showed an operating profit at Meridian. He was in his fifties does he even remember how to make money?

Lee if you and Peter McGrath spent two days A/B testing MQA files you wasted your time. It doesn’t matter that you found a significant improvement in the MQA files it just means you failed the test worse than say Andy Quint did when he said he found a slight improvement. But all of you still failed the test. I can recommend some activities that are a better use of time of your time and may help you manage NextScreen better.

If MQA is such a failure, why do sophisticated investors keep investing in it?

If people like myself and Peter McGrath who both have strong critical listening skills and a recording background (especially strong in Peter’s case) believe that there are clear benefits to MQA encoding, why should readers of this thread think our opinions are invalid?

 

[Rt66indierock]

If MQA is such a failure, why do sophisticated investors keep investing in it?

If people like myself and Peter McGrath who both have strong critical listening skills and a recording background (especially strong in Peter’s case) believe that there are clear benefits to MQA encoding, why should readers of this thread think our opinions are invalid?

In the VC world people call the folks who invest in companies like MQA Ltd “tourists”. Bob Stuart tells a fantastic story and FOMO (fear of missing out) kicks in. He would have been politely shown the door by Venture Capitalists on the West Coast. Either MQA Ltd’ s investors didn’t do their due diligence, or they bought a story too good to be true. Either way not sophisticated investors.

Ok let’s start with Peter McGrath. He makes a recording, then has it processed by MQA and likes it better. He could do the same thing on a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) so why doesn’t he? What he likes is just DSP to the listener. So, I think it is fair question his expertise.

Lee, in your case you have too good a background in consulting to have not figured this out. It must be more than just your preference for the format. So, you must get something else out all the promotion of MQA you have done over the years.