Some interesting chatter over on CA Forum, especially some comments by CA Forum owner, Chris. He’s a pretty straight shooter and I don’t think he’d make these comments unless he really has heard something from a credible source.
It’s still gossip at the end of the day but maybe with a splash of credibility? Maybe, maybe not.
Read for yourself at the links below but to me it reads like he’s heard whispers that there is a rather large and wealthy company planning to give MQA to it’s customer base of 10’s of millions (!!), apparently at no extra charge.
Spotify? Amazon? Google? Samsung? Can’t imagine it’s Apple !?
Interesting that Newest Rumors show nothing in the last 8 months. MQA is supposed to be a fast developing project yet nothing new this year. Am I just ignorant of where to go for NEW news?
I guessed it ran off stream… No new announcement on manufacturers and streaming providers on CES 2019. Sounds like Qobuz lossless Hi-Res streaming got everyone too excited?
There are still new MQA capable products coming to market, and MQA available even on Qobuz so I don’t think it is in terminal decline just yet. Let’s see how the Qobuz launch in the US goes.
MQA appeared on some selected 2L catalogs which is brought up to the attention in another thread. Roon is aware of the issue. I’m sure Qobuz is working with the affected albums with 2L. Qobuz stands by its clause that they only provide lossless Hi-Res streaming.
MQA is essentially ‘stagnant’ since middle of 2017 and have gone quiet since then. MQA has been around for 4 years now and none of streaming partners are supporting it other than Tidal. The confusion is due to bad marketing and claims not technically justifiable.
There may be an issue here, because MQA is still a FLAC file, regardless of the way it is to be processed down stream. Any provider could choose to supply their files in MQA encoded form and the only issue for Qobuz is how they declare them. High Res equivalents, CD equivalent or somewhere below CD because they are lossy. And the problem here is that historically, format wars prove a couple of things. The “best” format doesn’t always win. And throwing your weight firmly behind one can be messy if you’ve backed the loser. So Qobuz need to tread carefully here because I don’t think they see MQA as the biggest differentiator between them and Tidal. Their stance on it won’t win or lose the day. Neutrality might be their better option.
Qobuz has made a public statement that the 2L MQA will stay but they will fix things on their end so it’s clearly labelled. Mans has also offered Qobuz use of his scanner which will tell them if they are getting MQA, not sure if they are going to use it to prevent this in the future.
The, you will always have choice argument is starting to crumble.
It is hardly crumbling, but it does illustrate the issue here. Qobuz’s only recourse is to label the file correctly. They can’t actually dictate what encoding is used by their provider. They can dictate the wrapper as MF kindly pointed out above. But if the labels chose MQA, or some rival encryption should it emerge, they would have to go with it. They can choose not to adopt the first stage unfold like Tidal do, but they cannot actually refuse to supply MQA encoded files. And I think that was demonstrated when another provider had a very public climb down after slagging MQA off a while back.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
#25
Well, if your favorite artists were only on the 2L label, that would be crumbling.
I think the anti-MQA folks have their place in this dialog, and an important one. Look at it like this: if there never were labor unions, people would be working 16 hours a day in a coal mine for little pay; if management did not have leverage, labor costs would skyrocket. The point being, it takes both sides to reach a balance.
MQA carries the danger of a lot of equipment being incompatible with its end-to-end scheme. Labels need to hear that not everyone will just buy into that.
