Hear, hear! I may not have a dog in this fight but I’m always up for a good bit of contrarianism! 
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The manufacturer is free to offer Mqa or not.
So you don’t have to ride this bandwagon if you don’t have to.
I don’t have to choose Tidal as my streaming provider to give my product the main attention.
If the manufacturers are so stupid about it, then I’m sorry.
And yes, everyone should be free to choose and stay with Tidal and everyone should have the option to add Mqa to their subscription or not.
I don’t need it, at least not at the moment.
But still you think about switching again?
At the moment, the app on my iPad goes haywire when I’m on the go with Tidal and just crashes, which is annoying.
Reason enough to switch?
That was not a very complete argument offered up by Hans, IMO. I’m only slightly more familiar with GoldenSound’s work and have no strong leanings for or against either individual. As someone who has lots of training on constructing scientific arguments, GoldenSound’s argument was less bad - at least in terms of description of goals and methods. Hans completely sidestepped the issues of MQA reps shouting down dissenters, shrugged his shoulders at MQA not providing anyway to confirm their claims, and really didn’t mention anything about the behavior of the people associated with MQA. His argument was simply “MQA sounds good to my ears and Bob Stuart did good things in the past.”
The “MQA sounds good to my ears” part just is what it is. And I agree with Hans here. If MQA sounds good to you and helps you enjoy music, great, use it.
The “Bob Stuart did good things in the past” logic troubles me. In science and engineering, having done good things in the past is worthy of respect, but it does not and should not elevate one to the point where they are no longer accountable to the rigors of science and engineering. Those rigors include making sure that the claims/products still holds up on their own merits at the time(s) they are used and not that the claims/product are being bouyed by deference to past successes.
We also must remember that Bob Stuart sold MQA. Thus, MQA’s behavior is now not a Bob Stuart thing - I think…there might be a deal where he has some level of control, but by-in-large he’s no longer pulling the strings.
Some of Tidal’s popularity has to do with inertia, I think. Tidal is actually younger than Qobuz but had better luck and/or better business direction in its early days allowing it to be the dominant (only) lossless streaming provider for enough time that it set the standard for the market. Particularly in the US, Qobuz is much newer, and AmazonHD newer still. Tidal still benefits from being top dog for a few important early years. Things may really get a shakeup on this once Spotify offers a lossless tier. Then there will be a 5-way competition in Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon, Spotify, and Deezer.
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And maybe Apple.
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Wouldn’t surprise me. If there’s a pie they can get a slice of, they’ll do it.
And then…there will be a collapsing of competitors. It’s usually how it goes. In the early days of a new product/service category you get lots of companies and competitors. Then, a combination of failures and consolidations happen leaving the market with 2 or 3 main competitors. Unfortunately, Apple and Amazon have a huge advantage there seeing as how they’re basically trillion-dollar companies.
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While all the big guys are 
v’s 
I can see Sony secretly reinventing the Cassette Walkman 
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Complete avoidance by Hans there… a lot of theory and scientific papers writen hence MQA is beyond reproach? That was the extent of it. He didn’t address a single of the substantive issues.
Mainly the WHY would Tidal make 16/44 content available ONLY in MQA? Since he’s not addressing the technical question he’s also not answering the business question when clearly there is no need to force MQA on existing 16/44 content.
In the end, people don’t like their beliefs being challenged and will rather double down than admit their beliefs may be wrong. Because they’re personally vested in those beliefs.
His argument around MQA is that he liked the sound of the MQA render in his Myteck Brooklyn until recently. And then has the bizarre cognitive dissonance to say that high end DACs like the Mola Mola and Denafrips sound better. But doesn’t even wonder why or goes out of his way to stream an MQA file versus a high res file which I’m sure he could have easily chosen to do if he wanted to.
Swing and a miss for Hans (Dry Toast) Beekhyzen
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I can answer that question.
Because it should be almost equivalent to lossless 44/16.
The discussions I’ve seen suggest that MQA encodes all the extra data below bit 15 and it dithers the bottom bit to get back most of the bit it loses over 44/16. The quote I saw was equivalent to 15.97 bits lossless.
Having said that a DAC or Player would have to zero out the bottom 8 bits to not end up with pollution from the MQA encoding and I have no idea if they do that, but as the marketing says this is supposed to be below the noise floor.
I also suspect that the licensees do the encoding, and provide the encoded masters to Tidal, so they likely do not have the none MQA original.
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Agreed and hence, there is no audio benefit reason to do it, so we’re left with business reasons.
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This was my take away as well. Hans made no effort to analyze or address any specific points made by Goldensound. At the end of the day all he wound up saying was that he met the inventor back in 2016 and that they had made good audio stuff in the past. Regardless of how one views MQA as a sound format is irrelevant because its a completely subjective opinion. The real issue none of the pro MQA videos seem to address is the fact that the companies actions and influences are what most people are criticizing. Too bad Hans decided to put out a non starter instead of a genuine effort to provide an objective counterpoint.
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lol. I haven’t kept up with this drama. People flipping out over codecs.
I buy lossless music 16 & 24 bit usually on Bandcamp and Qobuz and rip my own FLAC files and listen through Dopamine.
I do not subscribe to any streaming service but have subscribed to Amazon HD in the past which seemed OK. If I’m going to take my time to listen to something, I like to have personal control over the quality of the playback.
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That seems to be what a majority of us do. I think the real problem is for people who cant afford to do that or would rather subscribe to a streaming service due to storage limitations or personal preference. Im a huge proponent of using streaming services, and find myself discovering a majority of new artists and albums this way. Considering that MQA is perceived and for the most part proven to be an irrelevant tax on most hardware, it is hard not to view it as parasitic in nature. I’d rather have more options than being forced into use something minutely worse in quality for an increased price when compared to the formats already in the space.
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If a hardware company said it’s doing something and tests proved it wasn’t. The entire audio community would tar and feather them.
This isn’t an argument for or against MQA, it’s a choice a company is making that is doing two things. 1) misrepresenting and then obfuscating the technology 2) Purposely making it so you as a subscriber can’t get away from that technology (they used to give you a choice of MQA or not, for albums. Now they don’t. Now EVERYTHING is MQA and not labeled as such in their client.
How it sounds, (better/worse) is irrelevant.
I stream only to discover new music or search for old obscure stuff that I’m not likely to buy. So 95% of the music I listen to I’ve either bought or ripped.
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right on ! fight the power ! Next we should be going after the downloads and crappy master/remasters.
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Doubt anyone would argue against this on YouTube. But then again, never know. lol
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Dont think theres enough militants to demand the music industry deal high grade product. Im with you streaming is ad free radio.
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We are not our beliefs, and so often the only push back against an argument is to defend our beliefs instead of actually looking to learn or grow or… gasp, accept that perhaps there are other beliefs out there some, maybe more right than ours. lol
This comment from Has says it all. He gets dogpiled on hilariously though.
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The real winner in this debate is GoldenSound. He got the audiophile community talking. I wish he would have explained his methods a bit more in his video, but he definitely got the word out. Good on him.
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This has been my favorite video so far on the subject from a manufacturer standpoint.
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Guess if you want to hear what the artist intended all use need is youtube. think im more concerned what the recording guy sold the suppliers to play on my system.
You got this 2020 lambo and filling it at the gas in go. The compontent manufacturers should add a knock sensor to the DACs so we know its bad gas not bad gear.
Figured what, “MQA is trearing us apart lisa” funny. 
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