MQA Declares Bankruptcy

At its most basic level MQA is software upscaling at the first "unfold" and additional hardware (if present) upscaling filter at the second "unfold". I think it’d be more dynamic if it was actually upscaling everything to a super high bit rate (like a chord m scaler). In its current form, it’s just managing the upscaling if the content is available from the publisher at the native high sampling rates. There’s just not much native content in the super high sample rates.

I don’t listen to Tidal or even have a MQA device, but conceptually it makes sense for recreating atmospheric transients in music. The actual resulting sound of their upscaling filters is what really should be questioned and to date, I’ve not seen any qualitative A/B listening test among MQA’s upscaling filter and other software (HQplayer, PGGB, etc) and hardware upscaling (Chord M Scaler) solutions.

Where they get hammered is from their business practices. Namely, downsampling content which was originally a native higher bitrate than the tier the customer paid for—in essence, giving the customer what they paid for. As they sell tiered plans that makes sense, but for the audiophile, the main consumers of the hi-res music, it breaks the cardinal law of "do no harm" to the music.

Ironically, the audiophile (who has bought in to the concept) would likely go for the high tier plan and have the hardware decoder, thus making it a moot point.

@OP and Tuenefuldude - regarding MQA's financial situation...

MQA is essentially a software company whose success is dependent on licencing its technology to third parties, whether they be streaming services or hardware manufacturers.

MQA has had significant ongoing costs in software development, and remuneration of its staff, incuding its executive directors.

The key difficulty for MQA is that demand for high resolution streaming is in itself a niche and MQA faces a fundamental strategic difficulty in promoting a product whose attractiveness is essentially premised on the need to conserve bandwidth.

As such, the technology is being eclipsed by the easy availability of fast broadband connections and with 5g mobile telecommunications.

MQA's difficulties, I believe, are less to do with the general economic situation than with the fact that it's technology is becoming obsolete.

@yoyoyaya Sounds like you are correct.

Would be interesting to hear people's thoughts around here, on how our current economic situation has and is affecting companies involved in providing both the equipment and the (streaming) services that are so intimately tied to our hobby.

The MQA lossy standard reeked with control motivation from the very beginning. While they amped up some selective recordings pleasing some, on the whole it was considered a product for control more than improvement in sound. 

Good riddance. This should help Qobuz which is also good news. 

@tunefuldude. I think one way in which tighter economic circumstances would have impacted on MQA relates to the fact that hardware manufacturers are less likely to be buying licences for a technology that appears to be losing traction.