My new article series on MQA.

Personally I would have said, thirty dollars is a rip-off and the format is a newer version of DRM. Where are my uncompressed high resolution files, I don't need a "special" DAC? Why are they thirty damn dollars when that is the price for not only a high quality stereo mix but also a multichannel mix on the same SACD?

 

also: "the rent is too damn high!"

 

The more I read, the more I believe that, AT BEST, MQA is a very small carrot dangled from very long (and very heavy) stick.

I'm glad my ears are old. Don't need to keep chasing the carrot.

Kudos to Archimago and Agitater.

 

If Tidal collapses then MQA is over.

Should any other streaming services decide to offer high resolution lossless then I think they can claim a clear competitive advantage.

In the meantime, I am continuing to purchase true high resolution downloads.

I will never buy into proprietary formats.

 

Qobuz streams full 24/192 without being taken hostage by MQA.

 

Indeed, there is no reason for MQA.

 

no, none at all.

 

Not a lot of subscribers though

 

that is certainly a different topic. and do you have a source you can cite for their subscriber numbers?

 

I do not - but you know that the numbers are small, don't you?

 

i am sure they are not huge...but you posted as if you had hard numbers. the hirez streaming service only launched a few months ago.

 

Millions of (pending fake high res) tracks, thousands of subscribers. Tidal has not released any info to confirm one way or another. Maybe the OP can shed some light on this given his insight on the industry.

 

If Archimago was full of s**t then the honest, open and transparent methodologies and results that you can see in his blog would have been shot down many years ago... we can only dream that Bob would be as honest, open and transparent as Archimago.

Whether Archimago has a PHD or not is not relevant.. some of the biggest dick heads I have ever meet had PHD's.

So lets assume that Archimago has no formal qualifications, he is however like the guy with no formal training that builds a competitive race car from scratch or makes the most exact/detailed model trains or boats.

There are some people that have a natural talent and skill that never was leveraged in a career but that doesnt demise their skill or in Archimago's case, insights into digital technology.


Peter

 

You guys who ask tough questions can be knights in shining armor for those of us who have no technical education. Your arguments were vastly more convincing than those of the sales dept. Thank you and keep on keeping it real!

 

My guess is that the reason other services do not offer hi-res streaming is that the labels will not let them.

I've been out of the business for nearly a dozen years so all I can do is watch and guess at the labels motives based on past behavior. From what I've seen recently, nothing has changed in 20 years. There was a now defunct retailer that tried to get music streaming and downloads into B&M stores about 15 years ago. The labels squashed it. After a few years of negotiating with the labels they agreed on some half arsed method of file downloading in a store. The labels required the store put the songs on a CD. The store wanted to put the songs directly onto people's devices, iPod, iRiver, whatever. The labels did not want files moved around.

Remember the look of music stores 15 years ago? Isles and isles of CDs in racks. A store had designed a store within a store as an area with cushioned bench seating, set facing each other in a cordoned off area with fun bright colors and lighting within the store. Every few feet along the bench was a screen and a set of headphones. A customer could scroll through music while listening to it, select the songs they wanted and buy them. Kind of like how the internet works now in your home.

I pictured these download stores within a store adding a coffee shop, like Barns & Noble did a while back. Imagine if 10 years ago you could have sat in a store with a fancy coffee surfing and listening to music and buying files as you drank your coffee. By the time the retailer got the concept into a store for a test run the writing was on the wall for B&M music retailers. The internet took over sales. Imagine if the labels hadn't spent years trying to kill this idea. If the labels would have been innovators instead of road blocks.

Stores wanted to sell files a long time ago. The internet forced the labels into it and I can assure you that the labels do not like it. MQA may be seen by the labels as a way to regain control of the situation.

Honestly, I don't know if there is another industry with so much history of combativeness with their customers. It's like the label's job is to sit in the middle to squeeze the artists as much as possible while at the same time picking non-stop fights with their customers.

 

"My guess is that the reason other services do not offer hi-res streaming is that the labels will not let them."

Close...but no cigar..the reason is virtually zero demand from the market.

 

That too.

 

+1

I would go a little further and suggest that the major labels loathe their customers. The music purchasing public is quite fickle, and today's superstar is often tomorrow's state fair headline act. Also, the music industry attracts sociopaths more than other areas of entertainment (which typically attracts more sociopaths than non-entertainment segments).

In pop music especially, the major labels still try to manufacture popularity instead of it happening organically. Sure, youtube made some stars, but once they get a major label contract (surely the goal of the vast majority of "undiscovered" artists), the pressure is on to make the music fit into the flavor of the day.

Before people started ripping CDs, the major labels were almost printing their own money in the form of CDs. I know I purchased CD versions of LPs that I owned. Then thanks to DCC and MFSL, I was buying (again) titles I already had on CD. No doubt the major labels loved that.

In 2010, when John Mellencamp opined, "the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb", he was lamenting the end of those "printing money" days. The ability to extract digital files from audio CDs is the underlying technical breakthrough that drove all the innovation since. The internet was just the distribution method. MQA has been sold to the majors as a way to finally take back control of the distribution channel. Spencer Chrislu of MQA stated this explicitly:

Note the language, "giving away". This is intended to generate fear at the record labels. MQA is being quietly marketed to the labels as DRM.

Between MQA and audible watermarking of UMG content on Tidal and other streaming services, my opinion is that the bloom is already off the lossless streaming rose. I'm glad I've resisted the temptation to unload my increasingly unwieldy CD collection in favor of streaming. The major labels are tightening the screws, and will continue to do so. Unlike the OP, I don't believe the "Customer is King". Never was, never will be. Social media has created an illusion (for some) that consumers hold some sway with corporations. That's just wishful thinking and narcissism IMHO.

 

At work I'm the only one who listen to music online. There are perhaps less than 10 who listen to music at work and they all think that keeping their music on an SD card or straight on in the device memory is wickedly brilliant.

When I'm questioned about my relatively huge HD380 Pro headphones, everybody assume that it's for watching YouTube and when I say it's for music they are just assuming that I meant watching music video clips on YouTube, except for one who knew that it's also possible to listen to radio stations on-line (128kbps AAC or MP3 stream, yeepee!!).

There are about 250 employees, so assuming that they represent a fairly average cross section of the population that might be targeted by paid online music streaming services, it just show how disconnected from reality is the idea of streaming music and particularly the MQA variant.

So perhaps the solution is have Bob film video clips featuring the MQA team rapping and dancing and stream it on YouTube, at least that might get a chance of being viewed by a larger audience and he will get feedback on the audio quality from people who are not embittered like us.

 

One only has to be reminded of the industry reaction to recording your records on cassettes or the RIA reaction to DAT to understand that it's an industry that regards its customers as nothing more than potential thieves, criminals who need to be watched and deprived of any occasion, temptation or means to perform the heinous crime of listening to their own music when, how and where they want to.

 

Does a lack of file provenance (and associated choice) put folks off investing high-res streaming?

Or would it for any Medium-res Quality Assured streaming too?

 

Yes it does and it's basically why I quit Tidal premium service. Medium-res streaming not as much as I use it as a tool to find new music for purchase only.

 

And used DRM in an attempt to deprive us of our right to make legal backups. I will not support yet another scheme to feed us a turd and tell us that it is steak........

 

I don't necessarily disagree with the gist of your post, but as regards this: Is there anything fundamentally incorrect in Chrislu's statement?

 

Yes, it is smug, self serving drivel.

24 bit downloads have no market out side of audiophiles.

Audiophile boutique releases have been always white gloved and and advertised as as close to the master as possible.

SACDs are them selves duplicates of the DSD master. Same with DVD-A when they were around in 24/96 and 24/192.
Today Blue-Rays in reissue box sets all have 24/96 and 24/192 master files included.

So ....