Ugh.
Apparently, David Chesky is involved. His friend (business partner?) Steve Guttenberg posted a video two years ago touting that Chesky "reinvents the sound of audiophile recordings."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA3uNsqTc_sThe processed files sound pretty bad on a decent system. It seems like some sort of bass boost/reverb scheme to make things more lively on low-fidelity systems.
Combining that with MQA's proven lossy compression format (see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRjsu9-Vznc ) and an in-house low-fidelity Bluetooth-like wireless system (AIRIA) and it sounds like they are all drooling over the chance to fool people into getting locked in to a proprietary ecosystem.
The basic MQA business model is replicated: concoct a closed standard to compete with open standards and herd the masses into your walled garden where you can fleece them with layers of a) fees for hardware manufacturers to license the system; b) fees for a new streaming service that uses the system; c) repurchase of music from HDTracks (the Chesky connection); and d) fees on the backend for music publishers who want to encode to the format.
From the article: "As MQA Labs is part of Lenbrook, a group that includes the hi-fi and home theater brands Bluesound and NAD, hardware announcements shouldn't be too long in arriving. It has previously indicated that it expects to have multiple partnerships up and running by 2025."
So, this will be pushed via Bluesound and NAD at the outset.
