It looks like they’re trying to bury the fact that they’re not following their own stated MQA process with a lot of technical mumbo jumbo. Hans even worked up enough spine to respond to his commentators with what amounts to, what could I do, I don’t have the technical aspects. An embarrassing response as all he did in his video was to throw accolades at MQA without…
Addressing the fact (IMO the most glaring issue) that they MQA group is saying they do one thing but in practice are NOT doing that one thing. That is, get the master from the artist and then get approval from the artist. That’s a deceptive business practice. Hans, conveniently overlooks it.
I have never heard an MQA encoded song, but really have no desire anymore solely based on their shady business practices and muscling over of other businesses and audio sites. If a product supports MQA I’m not going to avoid it, unless it only supports MQA format, then I’ll be happy to find something else that fits my needs.
Tin foil hat time. Could MQA have been built on a lie? something along the lines of:
MQA engineers: This file isnt lossless, will never be lossless. Please dont make these claims as they will never be true and this will be very apparent under a peer review.
MQA Businessmen: Then we will keep this between us and make it impossible to inspect. Lets call it a trade secret and exclusive to MQA. Lets make a patent claiming a brand new made up ‘lossless like’ term.
MQA Engineer: But …
MQA Businessmen: Shhhhhh… NDA… Lawsuit… ruin your life…
MQA Engineer: …
MQA Businessmen: Its only a little lie. By the time anyone finds out we will be so big and integrated in the music industry that it will be next to impossible for it to matter.
GoldenSound: So about that ‘little lie’…
MQA HEADQUARTERS
MQA Businessmen: Quick change all the public information to scrub any mention of lossless!! Nothing on the internet lasts forever!!
I am not sure there is going to be one. Unless they are finally going to be transparent, there isn’t much left for them to say except more lying… errr, marketing double talk.
As long as there is still a choice, I personally don’t care about MQA. I can simply ignore it. The real concern for me is if that choice starts getting taken away.
MQA should go fully transparent and release the full details of their process for examination by unconnected third parties for proper verification of their previous claims. If they are indeed innocent, this would be an easy way to prove it. But somehow, based on the actions of MQA thus far, I doubt they will ever take this course.
The only other course of action is to file Class action lawsuits against MQA on behalf of the artists and anyone who has paid MQA any fees for any of their products or services.
Currently it appears that MQA is only making moves to obscure and cover their previous bad action as much as possible.
This move by MQA is fairly suspicious, if they had not made moves to change their marketing material, and all references around the internet to their marketing, then that would be a different story. But they have made those moves, and are continuing to do so. This appears an attempt to purposefully muddy the waters to salvage the situation, which they would not do if they were entirely without fault.
Watching MQA’s reaction to this, it feels like watching the actions of someone who has been accused of doing something bad, and then they proceed to go empty out their entire house and suddenly take massive piles of documents to be burned. Why would a company that is without any fault do this sort of thing? I am reminded of the Enron scandal years ago and their attempts to clean their files before they could be audited…
It appears fairly clear to me that MQA has defrauded the audio community through false claims about exactly what their service is and what it does. The best way to stop this is through legal action.
Complete transparency can be achieved through discovery in the legal process which would force MQA to reveal their full process for examination during the trial.
If MQA is indeed at fault, then discovery and a proper trial would help determine if this is the case. If they are guilty of defrauding the audio and artist community, then MQA should be forced to refund all parties who have used their service or ever paid MQA for their ‘allegedly’ falsely marketed process.
In the meantime, based entirely on MQA’s current actions in response to this issue, I intend to avoid all MQA files and services, and will advise any companies I deal with to do the same.
To any companies out there who may read this, there is a very simple way to avoid this sort of thing. Don’t lie to your customers.
Huh, MQA. I haven’t thought much about that crap in quite a while now. But yeah, I basically agree with this. Personally, I think MQA is complete bullshit and do not support it in any way, shape or form. I don’t even want the feature to be in my gear.
But that is just me. There are those that like it and use it. Far be it for me to tell someone how they can enjoy their music. I sometimes wonder just how many people use MQA and what its future trajectory looks like.
Well we know the absolute mess of a debate that occurs when you bring up technology like this but the pretty predictable (in my opinion of observing tech) happened MQA ltd, the company behind MQA, is going into administration
Schiit Audio’s prediction on what happened to the technology has been fulfilled
Honestly I always felt as though it was another way to try and squeeze money out of royalties. All the people that I know that work at Warner Bros Record and Sony Music always told me in private conversations how confused they were about the technology and what its purpose was. They also found it interesting when they asked the company about how the technology worked they failed to provide technical papers on what the hell was happening to their mixes… Either way they always found it a pain to work with.
Now what will happen to the technology in the future, honestly think somebody is going to buy the IP and try to milk the thing further. The company behind it has always been a money pump by investors so I would be very surprised if it just was dropped forever.
Good question. Frankly I would not mind if it just went away. I’m tired of the whole debate to be honest. I personally will never use it and will not buy gear that has the shit in it. But I suspect you are right, this crap will probably die a slow, agonizing death.
