Maybe, but I have serious doubts about that. In my 50+ years of trying to achieve what my ears would call perfect sound, I have come across many that, although they should, are ignorant of some of the most basics. This past week, I was online with Apple Music support, and the support guy had no idea what a DAC was. I had to explain it to him, and even after I did, I’m not sure he understood. And later, when I said that I had restarted the DAC in case that might solve the problem, he asked “what does that mean”. God, I hope you never have to use AM support!!
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There is no doubt that the hobby has become complicated if we make it that way, but someone in tech support should be up on every aspect of computers include audio in all formats, gear, NAS, and streaming. I also feel that if one is interested there is not much you can’t learn either on the internet or from those who share their knowledge on YouTube like Paul does.
As a former Math teacher I could not believe how many of my high school students were so deficient in basic math skills and could not make change from a a $5 bill in their head. I am so glad that at nearly 74 I grew up in an age without computers or calculators.
I have friends my age who are the same way and I have to help them get even the most basic audio system set up. I had a friend who I did recording for who finally admitted that he thought my recordings I did for him with him singing and playing the guitar were no quite what he wanted. I asked him what he listened on…a Bose Wave Radio with his hearing aids. Yikes.
He now has a nice little system with some Elac speakers with 6" woofers. He could afford more, but getting him to spend $399 was harder than I thought it should be. He wrote me today and thanked me and said his wife really like those speakers and they are listening to more music than ever. I told him to take out those cheap hearing aids when listening to music. He can recondition his hearing to some degree to realize what real sounds like. Without them he can hear real and then compare that to recorded. His hearing aids just boosted the HF too much and he said sounded tinny.
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The slide rule was our calculator. Guess you fondly remember those air raid drills, too. I never understood back then how a desk was going to help protect me from a bomb. It wasn’t until later I realized it was to protect from a roof collapsing.
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It is one of my favorite things in the kids movie, The Iron Giant. Stop, drop, and roll. Everyone should watch two movies: The China Syndrome with the late Jack Lemmon, and The Day After with the late Jason Robards. I want to be the first to go, not the last survivor.
Part 2: of MQA got some splainin to do
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I do not think MQA wants the truth to be known, and that they are afraid of what independent testing would reveal.
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Bob: “You don’t know anything. We’re magical. Just trust me!” 
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The truth is when we go to a concert we don’t have MQA in our ears, just the live music. Most of my concert attendance in the past was “acoustic”, not based on some sound system.
The less done to the music, we are all better off. There are just too many hands in the soup now days. Of course much of this either pitch correction for someone who can’t sing, or to just make it the loudest on the planet.
It is sad what is done to music these days.
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You gotta give it to MQA marketing. They can bamboozle an entire end to end industry chain into a dubious technology and have hordes of consumers singing their praise and perpetuating their unsubstantiated claims.
Just the other day, I read someone ask how to disable MQA from Tidal and another person respond with incredulity as to why they would even want that claiming MQA is better than lossless. What?
There’s probably a case for a class action here if end users realize they’ve spent more on licensing tech that doesn’t do what was claimed. False advertising can have the consumer protection agencies up in arms if enough people complain.
Who gets wrapped up in this if the entire industry is involved?
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Hadn’t thought of the class-action angle. Sooner or later some legal beagle might want a new Ferrari and connect the dots . . .
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a lot of folks kinda want to be bamboozled by such stuff…
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Believe, just believe (in something and it really matters not what it is).
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“MQA…Better than live!” will be their new slogan heading into the holiday season.
If it’s sorcery, I’m not interested at all in MQA, then It fooled some big deal people like Robert Harley of Absolute Sound.
The point where I turned from being ambivalent to negative on it was when Tidal began pulling the non-mqa versions. Good riddance Tidal, Qobuz has grown their catalog.
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Indeed. I have kept both services for the time being to be able to cross-check the depth of their catalogs. When I search for something in particular, I’ve been going to Qobuz first, and then to Tidal if I can’t find it on Qobuz.
Based on this purely anecdotal experience, I find that I very, very rarely find myself turning to Tidal to find something that is not on Qobuz. In most cases, if it isn’t on Qobuz, it isn’t on Tidal, either. Which probably has mostly to do with the rights management by the artist or whomever.
Plus, with Qobuz you can buy downloads for very reasonable prices - often in hi-res formats.
I heard a “with and without” demo put on by MQA using a half-million $$ system in a reasonably treated room. Even with MQA totally controlling the demonstration the difference I heard was inconsequential. Given the SQ of the system, the tracks sounded pretty spectacular with and without. Brad’s “maybe you’ll get it” HDMI cable produced differences that were much bigger. Ergo, I don’t need MQA. For my ears, there is no value add.
At best, MQA reminds me of one of those Rube Goldberg inventions that uses a complicated approach to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
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This is just one small example of how those who tell the stories, or control the narrative, control perception, and the minds of others. It’s a fascinating topic.
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Except MQA did not control the narrative or control perception. They merely introduced their product with clever marketing.
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They attempted to control the narrative through censorship, as presented in the above GoldSound video. All the music he published on Tidal to prove how troublesome MQA is, was removed. Not to mention, Tidal also reached out to his publisher and tried to have all his content blocked and removed. I’d say they most definitely tried to control the narrative.
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MQA’s marketing has always been deceptive and Bob Stuart regularly complained about negative comments posted by others.
It appears Tidal is the issue. What is the relationship between MQA and Tidal?
I do not find MQA’s refusal to provide the source code or to allow others to run their own tests as censorship or controlling the narrative. This is their right.
Similarly, MQA has been extensively discussed in every audiophile magazine and website on the planet - no control or censorship here.
But it certainly appears Tidal is playing games to protect its positioning as an MQA streaming source.
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