Just your opinion but stated as fact. We will never know if it was a “smart business decision” as that would depend on what said MQA badge would have done for sales. In this equation only perceived value and resultant sales figures matter, regardless if it is “needed”.
PS, the recent news doesn’t change that.
Have you read the Linn whitepaper about it? Doesn’t sound like they’re being too cheap about licensing; rather, they thought the whole thing through and came to the same conclusions as others who oppose MQA. It’s a power grab that solves nothing for consumers.
I don’t know Naim’s stance on it. For all we know they’ve been working on MQA integration all along, or they made to decision not to invest any resources, or something in between.
I read the so-called whitepaper a while back and don’t see it as a power grab so long as there is choice. You can stream 44/16, MQA or full fat 24/96 if you have the data. Supporting MQA doesn’t preclude any of the options, it just costs them extra for the little blue light.
We didn’t object to all DVDs using mpeg compression or Dolby Digital did we?
I never claimed that. Just that there is a correlation between the business model of smaller well-established brands and their non-support of MQA.
Newer brands like Bluesound and some famous Korean streamers nobody ever heard of before MQA stand in contrast. It is a more powerful selling feature for them because they can’t sell on brand recognition alone.
We do know actually because @Stevesky told us what Naim’s approach was some time ago. I could search for the post, but so could you, so I’ll leave you to do it if you are interested.
But if I remember correctly, put more briefly, Steve said he admired the technology, but they weren’t clear that it was needed or that there was a demand amongst Naim customers for it. So they were waiting to see how that developed. He said the new platform (ie NDX2 etc) had the capacity to support MQA if they wished.
I read that too David. So it came across to me as we can do it but not willing to pay for it because we are scared of anything proprietary.
Bryston has also said we will NEVER support a proprietary tech like MQA, HDCD, or SACD regardless of the sound quality and won’t even debate it. Seems like their minds were made up a long time ago for some reason.
But implementing MQA in hardware or software at the consumer end would have incurred a licensing fee and probably development costs. So you’d likely have ended up paying extra even if you never listened to MQA material.
Roger
True but minusculey so. NDX2 goes for close to $10,000. An entire Bluesound Node with MQA goes for $500.
I vaguely remember that, but I was referring more to Naim’s official stance. We still don’t know that Naim invested resources into it, other than @Stevesky pondering it publicly in the forum. Did he say they have done any work on implementing it? I imagine (or wouldn’t be surprised if) they have at least done some POCs internally.
Everyone who confuses correlation with causation eventually ends up dead. 
[ I did not make that up]
I think your trolling now…
btw - I do believe if they went with MQA it would have impacted their sales. Individuals like myself would have looked elsewhere for their audio gear.
I don’t know how you reckon that. All the new platform kit has lots of proprietary stuff in it from Apple, Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz and Google to name just a few.
I chose Qobuz over Tidal just because of MQA. If Naim had supported MQA, it would have made no difference to me at all.
Same. I had both TIDAL and Qobuz simultaneously while I decided which catalog I preferred. When TIDAL embraced MQA that made the decision for me to go with Qobuz. The added benefit is Qobuz subsequently cut their subscription price in half.
Agreed, so being unwilling to change some part of their DAC hardware (which they are eventually forced to due to obsolescence) is another factor besides licensing fees I suspect. Look it’s understandable, I am just saying this has more to do with their business model than sound quality.
I am trolling because I dare to question the mantra?
I’m actually agnostic on the issue. I just don’t think it’s because a company is so benevolent they only have our best interests at heart.
So long as it’s just software and handled in the streaming engine I suppose. Full MQA requires DAC hardware support and some companies are just not willing to go that far. Software should be determining hardware not the other way around.
The whole discussion reminds me of HDCD from 20-some years ago. It worked, but there was much resistance to the licensing fees and, ultimately, it was technologically superseded before it became ubiquitous. Nevertheless, I would still consider a good pre-loved cd-5XS with HDCD for my hundreds of encoded Grateful Dead cds.
The tech and the politics may be a little different but, from this music consumer’s perspective, the upshot seems more or less the same.
Just my $.03, etc., etc.
Hi @davidhendon,
Correct. Based on TIDAL had adopted the tech, we investigated in detail on getting it into the Naim platform. Tech wise not a problem as all our products contain a high powered DSP, but we more held off for business reasons. Primarily:
the business model of MQA Ltd. made no financial sense. Their business would need to sell about 1.5million licences a year to break even, and about 4 million licences to make a worthy profit. Unless they get adoption from a major company like Apple, Samsung etc those numbers are unfeasible from selling licences to specialist hifi manufacturers.
the system was solving a problem that was no longer a problem due to internet advances. Others like Qobuz & then Apple were proving full fat lossless can be done without this tech.
It was going to cost Naim around £100K to implement MQA as a rolling update, plus add cost to each product due to licensing. We felt we could invest in better features at the time.
Otherwise no bitterness or the like from the Naim side. MQA were fundamental to encourage large labels to release 24bit material, which is great for all.
Best wishes
Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.
Indeed, I suspect it’s no coincidence that Qobuz began releasing 24 bit material at around the same time that MQAs started to appear on Tidal, so if nothing else we can thank them for giving their own competition a winning formula.