From Lucey's interview (JT's link above).....
[That little blue LED on MQA-DACs must have worked some pseudo-magic...a masterpiece of marketing and brainwashing imo. On comes the blue LED, and MQA-philes ejaculate. "Authentic!". LOL].
Brian Lucey:
"When I first heard about MQA I wondered why would anyone bother with such a concept, as streaming the full file is only going to get easier over time, and the reduction of data with MQA is minimal . Let’s just sell the 24 bit files at the mastering session sample rate, not higher and not lower, and call it a day? Too easy perhaps for the creativity of modern commerce.
My initial info on MQA (the claims of less data with no loss, and that it was correcting PCM) led me quickly to be skeptical about the intentions behind the initiative, especially given that video streaming money has dried up. It’s logical corporate think to move into controlling the global audio stream. However I’m always open minded and am not a crusty cynic like some, so I gave it an open minded listen. Not bad, not great was my impression. It’s definitely a lossy codec, that was clear. And like Mastered for iTunes or any reduction scheme the losses are in critically important areas. Where as mastered for iTunes is harmonically cold and loses some low volume/low end information, actually altering the groove to make everything sound like a nerdy white wedding band, MQA brightens the high-mids in the Mid section while thinning the low-mids on the Sides. There’s also some harmonic distortion which some people could find pleasing, If I want that distortion in the master I would’ve put it there in the first place. The results of MQA I would call fatal to the source material even as they are very subtle.
A real negative is the millions of dollars in DA stock that is being made obsolete with their cynical end run on proper vetting. MQA has been targeting the weakest players in our world, the audiophiles. And they’re targeting those most dependent on pimping new tech, the audiophile press. Meanwhile, one sided presentations at trade shows leave no time for deep Q and A and any real discussion panels are eschewed by MQA. The most excitement about MQA seems to be from perfectionist consumers who want that blue LED and sense of authentication, pressuring DA makers to send that licensing money to MQA and catch up with a demand invented by MQA. A cynical marketing scheme to be kind about it. Or as Mike Jbara told me in a written exchange, “As a team of engineers and a company, we have a POV behind our tools and that is what we talk about.”
I’m most concerned about the bogus claims that MQA is fixing approved masters. Not possible, and a rude assertion to trillions of hours of hard work by teams of people making records for decades. Pure marketing hyperbole. Nothing in audio is perfect, there is no Original Sin, and there is no going back to the place of ideal perfection. Ultimately there is no free lunch in digital, and music production is about a constant flow forward … shaping distortions and how they play with frequency balance and transients. When a record is first tracked, then rough mixed, mixed, revised, mastered, revised in mastering and finally approved … there is no fixing it. Anything that changes violates 5-20 people who have all signed off. Distortion artifacts are musically incorporated in to all music production, there is no perfection in music. That way of thinking is bogus and anti music. Music is flawed and that’s a good thing, it’s the humanity. Perfection has no place in music production, it’s a dangerous myth. MQA has no future in the world of serious engineers in my view, it’s a corporate money scheme at this point. Yet we will see how it turns out, most people are lazy and greed goes a long way on it’s own power".
