One of the most hyped technologies of CES 2015 was Merdian’s MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). After sitting through thirty minutes of MQA talk by Meridian I remain unconvinced that MQA is a good thing. One reason is the demonstration put on by Merdian compared a 128 kbps MP3 file to a 1100 kbps MQA version, both from the master tapes. No matter the reason and justification for this demonstration, I still think it’s a bit disingenuous. Another reason I remain unconvinced is that, I believe, MQA is NOT lossless. Meridian claims MQA is lossless, but I believe it only claims audibly lossless, not lossless in the normal use of the term. I checked with a couple engineers at the show and each confirmed MQA wasn’t lossless in the traditional sense of the word. I think there will be many discussions to come about MQA.

Also in the Meridian room I received a demonstration of the next generation Sooloos software. I’m not a liberty to discuss what I saw and what I was told, but I can say it was absolutely awesome.