eclectic

What a disingenuous post Mr Quint. You came to this thread and your arguments were comprehensively defeated. Colloquially, you were "torn a new one". Yes, some of the posters you encountered were robust in the counter arguments but to describe this as "a megaphone for an unwelcoming and xenophobic subculture" is frankly ridiculous. You still haven't grasped the reality of the current situation. Your role as a writer on TAS does not give you any extra kudos, any extra leeway to expect other posters to defer to your opinions. In fact your role makes anything you say less worthy of consideration or value. Your publication is damaged, severely damaged, and your credibility along with that of all of your colleagues has suffered a massive hit. As noted by previous posters here, you have a lot of reflection to undertake. Surely the best way for you to regain any semblance of credibility is to do what you should have done a long time ago. Publish balanced and objective analysis of MQA.

I think the departure of certain staff from Audiostream was inevitable. The last year has seen the editor openly attacking his own readers and potential customers of the companies that advertise in the TEN journals. The business reality is that this had to stop. It reminded me of the bad attitudes and superiority from staff that was very evident if you visited HiFi stores 20 or 30 years ago. Add the MQA debacle into the mix, with the consequent lack of trust for the magazines seen across almost all the forums. It's no surprise the new owners acted fast. I'm sure nobody wants to see people lose their jobs but I think those involved have played a part in bringing this on themselves. Sad but true..

Here's the man himself..

The Malaysians should sue.

That's true. Re: JA - The harder he tries, the worse he makes it for himself. Especially the "anonymity" argument. But I have to admit, he's a fighter.

He's been given an open invitation by Chris to answer the Archimago article. He has not yet done so, using the "Archimago Excuse" as a get out. He's run out of benefit of the doubt.

I asked John Atkinson, on this forum, whether he still stood by his comment that MQA was "the birth of a new world". He said, and I quote, "I have not yet read anything that would convince me to change my mind."

I suspect Stereophile (and Meridian) were viewing the development of MQA as a "paradigm shift" in how we listen to recorded music. JA's comments about " the birth of a new world" are particularly relevant. My guess is they recalled the massive change and the enormous business opportunities that the development and release of Redbook CD brought to the industry and were hoping for a new wave of consumer spending. Everyone going out to buy an MQA DAC or an MQA CD player, with models being produced at all levels in the hifi chain, from budget to the ultra high end. This would create plenty of new advertising for the magazines, a rise in sales as people bought copies for advice and licensing fees for MQA. To achieve this would mean there would need to be a gradual phasing out of Redbook, making MQA the de facto standard. They've done this before. Vinyl was effectively unavailable for decades to the average consumer.

@John_Atkinson do you still stand by this? Is it still the birth of a new world? Or is it just a still birth? In almost 40 years of attending audio press events, only rarely have I come away feeling that I was present at the birth of a new world. In March 1979, I visited the Philips Research Center in Eindhoven, Holland and heard a prototype of what was to be later called the Compact Disc. In the summer of 1982, I visited Ron Genereux and Bob Berkovitz at Acoustic Research's lab near Boston and heard a very early example of the application of DSP to the correction of room acoustic problems. And in early December, at Meridian's New York offices, I heard Bob Stuart describe the UK company's MQA technology, followed by a demonstration that blew my socks off.

I voted for number 3. I wish I could have voted for number 2 but there are some very large forums whose ethics are questionable in relation to sponsors and advertisers. Forums can easily go the same way as the legacy "mainstream" print magazines.

ML often uses phrases like "I do this for a living" or "I do this as my day job" to imply that "ordinary" forum members have no right to challenge anything he or his trade journal colleagues say.

Monster post. Have an upvote on me.

I suggest a change of title to "Lee Scoggins is vaporware". Where is he? I'm anxiously waiting for him to post details of his MQA "research". He promised he'd do that. To tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kind of lost track myself...

Also compliments to Mike Moffat and Jason Stoddard of Schiit. They have also opposed from the start, citing what has happened to innovation in AV when you have Dolby controlling things. Thanks to Archimago, Chris C, MansR , FredericV and all the other experts who have discovered the truth about MQA and brought it to our attention.

Did I say I didn't want the product? I have the product and it's great. The discussion was about how Sooloos came to be bought/acquired by Meridian. You're right about that though - it's no longer relevant.