MQA entering administration [Closed - Roon doesn't condone flame wars on Community]

Chapter 11 - Bankruptcy Basics

This chapter of the Bankruptcy Code generally provides for reorganization, usually involving a corporation or partnership. A chapter 11 debtor usually proposes a plan of reorganization to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time. People in business or individuals can also seek relief in chapter 11.

Similar in concept, needing a lifeline or bailout.

No I had some great experiences with Tidal master’s early on and was genuinely happy with the output quality through MQA capable devices.

I was seriously put off by the marketing side of thing’s and the overly strong messaging that they used (and denial responses to negative articles). That lost me as a customer at that point

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Yeah but it’s an attempt to keep the company afloat, sold, agreeing on a plan with debtors, etc., instead of liquidating/dissolving it.

I.e. the demise of the format is not necessarily around the corner

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Yes, it’s referred to as reorganization in the states. It’s going to be interesting to see if some group will jump in to help.

Tidal as a part of Block (SQ) isn’t exactly doing stellar business either. Warner Music?

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This just in:

MQA’s main financial backer is seeking an exit. In order to be in the best position to pursue market opportunities and expedite this process, the company has undergone a restructuring initiative, which includes entering into administration and is comparable to Chapter 11 in the US.

from: MQA is going into administration | What Hi-Fi?

Let’s keep on topic here, which is MQA possible financial troubles.
And not is MQA good, bad, evil etc.
That’s a surefire recipe to getting the thread closed!
Thank you.

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If MQA goes bankrupt where does that leave Tidal? As they have invested into MQA. From what I have been gathering Tidal isn’t doing that great financially themselves either.

Hey Michael, I though AP2 was lossless up to 24/48

But

However, the news isn’t so good with regards to using AirPlay 2 to send lossless Apple Music streams. Apple Music’s Lossless streams supposedly convert from ALAC (Apple’s lossless codec) into AAC (Apple’s lossy codec) at a pretty lowly 256kbps when transmitted over AirPlay – and therefore not losslessly.

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AirPlay isn’t a codec, and it isn’t just wireless.

AirPlay 2 is only lossy via Apple Music I believe other services are still lossless up to 44.1.

Is this the thing where only Apple device can transmit it and it’s all closed and proprietary :flushed:
(So unlike modern Apple)

It was and the original name for SCL6 was MQAir but they recently changed it. Looks like they’re going to strip themselves from MQA and focus on this new bluetooth compression.

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I thought I had read that a few weeks ago.
It’s already a fairly crowded market with AptX owned by Qualcomm (If I remember that correctly) and Sony having contributed LDAC to the Linux kernel and SBD and AAC already being in almost everything.

It is hard to see a large market for it, but competition is good (if there really is any with Apple and Qualcomm owning so much of the market between them)

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Tidal can probably just flip a switch and disable MQA.

No they just seem to have limited Apple Music to aac over AirPlay for some reason if it’s streaming from them but apparently it’s lossless 44.1 for downloaded content on the device an odd choice but that’s how it is. All other apps will send lossless.

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Just proofs that the whole MQA master studio stuff was a scam to begin with.

Just a shame since we have all these new DAC chips now like the AKM4499EX and ESS3039pro that wasted resources to support mqa.

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Sometimes they are a planned pre-pack Administration. Not in this case. The press release is the ultimate in spin. “Everything is great except we’re bust.” Last year they were given until end of March 2023 to get their act together, clearly nothing has changed, so no more money. Enormous losses (£40m), almost trivial revenues (£600k) and IP that has long been viewed as a DRM scam.

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Plenty of companies saw MQA as a scam and did not implement it, like Devialet and Linn. I’ve been hifi streaming for ages and never bothered with MQA or ever had MQA capability. I only ever saw it as a DRM scam.

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Not a fan, but we will see. Crazy deals have happened before in history

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It seems like the writing is on the wall for MQA certainly if they don’t find a buyer/investors, but even if they do, how can their business model be sustainable? I don’t think it ever was.

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