ORT,

100% true and I will tell you that the people at Lenbrook are a rather conservative and down the line group of people. They do not make decisions quickly and have never been known to jump first.

NAD, is one of the most conservative brands on the planet. Not driven by ego or rash business decisions. They take their time developing products and are very tight with their R&D funds. They care about sound quality, solid engineering, and value. Not gimmicks.

The MQA thing took me by surprise.

Ian

“Pay no attention to that twitching tail in front of the curtain”…

ORT

ORT,

I feel like MQA will be gone sooner rather than later.

IW

“My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention.”

To which I add these. And yup. They are mine.
“Those who claim there is no soul are the first to sell theirs.”

This happens to people their companies. Nothing is mutually exclusive. I loathe MQA. Enough ramblin’.

D’ORTagnan

Can I get a kinda-sorta ibid?

Alas that in the real world we all live in, trust is often a one way avenue. All the same, be certain to look both ways before you cross because sometimes companies are like people. They take a wrong turn and go against traffic.

This does not mean they didn’t mean well but neither does it mean they aren’t aware of what they are doing.

And in truth, so do we all.

D’ORTagnan

The number of people who can decode an MQA file was probably never over 300,000 and is now less because Roon no longer automatically decodes MQA files and Tidal is switching to FLAC.

Tidal has laid off 40 people and according to a Resident Advisor source the company is making a clear shift from “being music-centric to product-centric–pushing tech initiatives instead of anything related to music, labels, distributors or artists.” How good this source is unknown, but this would make sense considering Tidal has had virtually no growth since 2020. Tidal will need to show $54 million of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 or they will show a loss of revenue from the prior year.

What doesn’t make sense to me is for Lynbrook to create a streaming service with MQA. High-resolution streaming has not shown that it can attract enough customers to make it worthwhile with Tidal’s numbers, Qobuz’s small numbers and no one talking about how successful high-resolution streaming was at either Apple or Amazon. You must consider that the market may be saturated and there is no room for more growth.

What looked like a relatively risk free acquisition of MQA and SCL 6 now looks a lot riskier.

Peter Griffin was correct-o-mundo!

That’s odd, I thought it would be big news. There seems to be an absence of a certain scatomusicalifragilisticalogical piece. A head line regarding the Ass awareness of a certain Pink Flamingo’s singing anus variety. Have you not heard? It was my understanding that everyone had heard. Oh..there it is

A well a don’t you know about the turd?
Well, everybody knows that the turd is the word!
A well a turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, t-turd’s the word

[Chorus]
A well a everybody’s heard about the turd
Turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word
A well a turd, turd, turd, t-turd’s the word

It is difficult to understand how some people can just love turds but that seems to be but one of the maladies that strikes frAudiophiles.
MQA. Green Marker Pens. Strategically placed M&Ms, ad nauseam ad infinitum.

Music the way the farteest intended you to hear it. Easy. Buy a hard copy of the recording and listen to it in your home. Buy a ticket to a live performance. MQA is not a natural part of any music. It is the crappy product of a greedy group of humanoids. It is STOOOOPID.

ORTson Welles