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The audio industry is filled with people who will tell you what you should like based upon what they know sounds best. In general, there may not be anything wrong with this. After all, isn’t that, aside from the entertainment value, why we read audiophile magazines? But, there are many areas where disagreements between what you hear and what you are told you should be hearing may naturally arise and discussions can become heated when someone is trying to sell you their product.

Do you prefer the sound of files altered by MQA? If so, you shouldn’t let anyone convince you that MQA isn’t all it’s cracked up to be even if critical analysis of the technology and MQA’s revision of their marketing seems to indicate, to some degree, that may be true. But, until new digital recordings are graded on the amount of “blurring” they contain, and there’s a data-backed analysis of what blurring is and how it’s measured, skepticism may remain.

What might be nice for the audiophile consumer is if there were a rational discussion that addressed the points brought up in these videos. Instead, the response from the industry has been dialogue that resembles something much closer to a political disagreement, and we all know, if you think the 2020 election was stolen, no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise. GoldenSound (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0oW8D5z_IiFc7w46JJEuA) recently uploaded the following videos detailing their analysis of MQA. I listened to this second (below) YouTube talk all the way through after seeing a link for it in Roon’s regular ([Roon Labs Community] Summary) emailing.




Will MQA and its music industry backing weather this storm of critical analysis? And is this likely to be the last criticism we hear? There was certainly a fair amount of squaking at the beginning of MQA’s introduction, though most of it seemed to be successfully shouted down or ignored, all the while costs to the consumer increased to cover MQAs implementation in a wide array of products and audiophile magazines sold more copy defending and debating the criticisms of MQA. Just remember, you’re being entertained.