What news in 2023 struck you?


Gang,

It seems the audio press seems to have no end of press releases to hype, but I'm curious looking back for the year what news regarding the audio industry has most struck you?

For instance, the sale of ARC, and Roon, and B&W (or was that last year) seemed pretty significant.  Class D amps with GaN transistors created a lot of buzz and claims of Class D finally reaching it's promised potential.  Textreme drivers have appeared here and there, as has the Purifi woofer...

I also recall a Monitor Audio prototype that struck me as really innovative. 

What else has stuck in your mind longer than ten minutes this year?

erik_squires

How about this one. "Unbelievable amount of hate towards MQA by people who don't use it and were never forced to do so...even after it was abandoned ". Maybe that ridiculously stupid trend will last into 2024.

I always thought the "hate" towards MQA, was related to the perception that they wanted everything to become MQA only, and force all to listen to and pay for MQA...

Let’s look at this logically. There has never been a better time to be an audiophile. Electrostatic speakers, horn speakers, open baffle, etc. One can stream high definition files, Flac, MQA, and add the best DAC you can afford. CD’s are still with us and so are high quality transports. Vinyl is still here and a tremendous variety of turntables. Reel to reel, still with us. One can have class a, a/b, class d or tube amps. You can have a hybrid amp. Heck even cassettes are coming back as well as console stereos. No one ever got so upset about ipod sound and mp3 sound like they had with MQA. MQA was never going to replace all recorded music, that’s just ridiculous. I listened to some MQA albums that sounded great and some sounded terrible. Mostly it was the original recording that made the most difference in the quality of the sound. Cmon think about it... MQA was not something anyone need to get their panties bunched up about.