Next Stage of Business Expansion for MQA with Mike Jbara as CEO

Music technology specialist MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), the music technology company founded by Bob Stuart, announced that it has hired music executive Mike Jbara as CEO. Jbara joins MQA from Warner Music Group, where he has held roles for 20 years, from president and CEO of WEA Corp, to president of Warner’s Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) and, most recently, as EVP of Technology and Business Process. In addition to day-to-day leadership responsibility, Jbara will sit on the Board of MQA Ltd.

NAD Electronics announced that MQA music will be supported on select BluOS-enabled NAD components, including its recently expanded Master Series. The Latest BluOS firmware will power select high performance NAD models with MQA for studio quality music streams in the home. On the announcement, the company says: “NAD is proud to partner with MQA to introduce high-end audio consumers to this revolutionary end-to-end technology that captures and delivers master quality audio in a file that’s small enough to stream or download.”

UNAMAS, the Japanese hi-res music label run by award-winning recording engineer, Mick Sawaguchi, has selected ten albums from their catalogue for encoding in MQA. The recordings, ranging from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” performed by the Unamas String Quintet, to Hiroshi Fukamizu’s “Everything for Drums”, will be available from July 15 on music download service, e-onkyo music, priced at ¥3.000 ($29 / £19) each.

Meridian Audio announced its new Ultra Digital to Analogue Converter, with considerable connectivity options, user features and format support. The Meridian Ultra is a 384kHz/24-bit dedicated DAC capable of playing virtually any recording format including DXD, DSD64 and DSD128 (DoP), and MQA. It incorporates Dual Mono DAC cards, DSP filter options, upsampling and apodizing. The world’s first public showing of the Meridian Ultra DAC will take place at the 2016 T.H.E. Show Newport, June 3-5.

Music streaming is officially going high resolution. The industry’s official logo mark for Hi-Res MUSIC – previously applicable primarily to high-quality digital download services – will soon be available for adoption by music streaming services as well, according to an announcement from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and its member companies Universal, Sony, and Warner, in cooperation with the Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing, the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), and DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.

This month, learn more on how Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) end-to-end technology is redefining the source for music. We interview Electro-Harmonix tube engineer Alan Otto, and Eminence’s Rob Gault and include a report on the CanJam SoCal 2016 show. We also discuss acoustic metamaterials, how audio cables affect the sound we hear, review the Dayton Audio OmniMic V2 acoustic measurement system, and feature a DIY project of an ecological power supply for power amplifiers.

This year’s High End show in Munich was a decisive moment for Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), the technology and the UK-based private company. Adopted by an increasing number of hardware and content partners, the revolutionary end-to-end technology that delivers master quality audio in a file that’s small enough to stream or download is now closer to become mainstream following the announcement that Warner Music Group and MQA have entered a long-term licensing deal.

Following the recent announcement by Meridian Audio of a firmware update enabling MQA playback in its own range of products, Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) is now also playable directly on the Pioneer XDP-100R and Onkyo DP-X1 portable devices. MQA-encoded music content is finally available for first adopters to download and hear on their own devices.

Here is the full show report from the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2015, which Oliver Masciarotte found to be less crowded, different, upbeat, and certainly younger. He returned so impressed with what he saw and heard that it took him 9 pages just to compile the highlights and impressions! Full article now available online.

Returning from ALMA International Symposium & Expo (AISE) and CES 2016 show in Las Vegas - both extremely enlightening and motivating - we felt motivated to write about high-resolution audio (again). HRA was the main theme chosen for AISE 2016 – “Hi Res Audio: A Bridge To Build Or A Bridge Too Far?” – debated in all possible perspectives in an insightful and constructive manner.