Discuss recent MQA developments here

[danny (Danny Dulai)]

@woodford

I have not seen any of the bad faith arguments leveled against Atmos however. the proprietary nature is no different from MQA.

Here you go…

I said this back in Feb 2018 about Dolby:

Is Roon supporting MQA? What are the pros and cons of MQA?

@crenca, you make some really good points and I like where you took the thought exercise. The long-term effects of MQA success and what I call the “Dolby Innovation Paradox” must be considered here. There will be a serious problem if MQA becomes the Dolby of music audio, and innovation is stuck in the hands of a commercial entity that has no incentive to innovate. Mike Moffat & Jason Stoddard of Schiit state idea this well at about 9:49 into this video interview by John Darko. Let’s not get st…

…and I’m rearticulating what Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffat said back in Oct 2016.

I was trying to find my post, and I saw that @crenca explicitly calls out exactly what you are talking about here with the same video of the Schiit guys:

MQA Finale: Both Anti- and Pro- Forces Have Their Successes and Failure

The Dolby comparison with MQA is actually useful, as long one remembers it’s not a strict analogy. Mike Moffat of Schiit here explains in his over the top way: [Schiit Audio's Jason Stoddard & Mike Moffat October 2016 -- Darko.Audio] @John [Moderated] asks why “we” don’t complain of this particular monopoly and tax. Well we do, but this is the Roon community and this thread is about MQA. Monopolies are very hard to break within consumer markets, almost always requiring govern…

@Mikael_Ollars

I am curious whether Roon will drop the ability to decode any local MQA files. […]
Or does the license allow Roon to maintain the compatibility?

I’ve looked at the contract again briefly, and it looks like there is a grace period in the worst-case scenario. However, how the contract goes depends on what happens to the MQA intellectual property post-administration.

@Mikael_Ollars

For what it’s worth, i hope that manufacturers and the business learns from this, and perhaps stay away from non-open source codecs and formats going forward…

Maybe MQA will go open? I have no idea, but I can only hope.