Lenbrook's MQA: The Next Generation - QRONO, FOQUS, and other AQWARD things. And listening impressions from the non-audiophile press.

Happy new year, audiophiles!

Other than a quick comment here and there in 2024, I'm glad that I didn't spend much time on MQA-focused material. The last we talked at length about MQA was over a year ago in December 2023 with the final sale of MQA to Lenbrook at the bargain basement sale price. My, how time flies! As much as I would love to never think/write about MQA again, this thing won't disappear. 🧟

So I figured at the start of 2025, since there could be some MQA-related stuff later this year with possible new product announcements and such, let's anticipate a bit and consider the developments in this continuing saga.

The name "MQA" persists as part of Lenbrook's "MQA Labs" as the name MQA Ltd. has been re-registered to a food sales agent in the UK. Through 2024, we've been seeing the word "QRONO" hitting the news a few times already. In late 2024, there have been more articles in the audiophile press such as this in The Absolute Sound, and What Hi-Fi?. So, let's talk about what this seems to be about and what they're trying to do.

Before we get to the meat of this article, I want to wish MQA a belated 10th birthday. It was on December 4, 2014 that Meridian held their coming-out party for MQA:

Meridian bought obtained the endorsement of the audio press presumably around the time of that party - good words and support such as from Robert Harley in this article came right after that and then the rest of the mostly uninformed mainstream audiophile press followed.

10 years on is a long time in digital technology. Maybe it's like dog years, every year could be like 7 years in the life of tech, which would make MQA 70 tech-years old by now - past retirement. Clearly, the market has moved well beyond what MQA provided as a way to reduce streaming bitrate despite its idealistic "sound of the studio", pseudo-hi-res pretensions. Watching that video again reminds us of the lengths of marketing hype that manufacturers go through to sway consumers and artificially create positive sentiment even if they've known all along that the product objectively would never amount to much for sound quality. (They knew how useless this was hence never offering A/B listening tests to the public at audio shows.)

To hear Mike Jbara say in the video "in terms of impacting audio quality, it may be one of the most important things that has happened since the introduction of the stereo album" with a straight face accompanied by epic hype music in the background! 🤣 I cannot help but question just how much the man actually understood how this "technology" worked. If he did actually understand the technology, I guess every man has a price when asked to basically lie as part of the job. While most of the other names appear to no longer be associated with MQA and spinoffs, I believe Mr. Jbara is still hanging around at MQA Labs.

A "rose" by any other name...

With the sale of MQA and its intellectual properties in late 2023, it's no surprise that Lenbrook (parent of Bluesound, NAD, PSB, Dali) would be trying to make some money back. As I mentioned back in September 2023, I think the negative connotation of the "MQA" name among audiophiles is a hindrance and there's need to rebrand this with another moniker. However, with the logo and MQA letters on the front of many DACs and other playback devices, they're probably cautious about throwing out the name completely.

Since some rebranding still needs to be done, I guess the strategy from Lenbrook is to go with the "QRONO" name. Based on the press release in late 2014, a number of products are being introduced under this naming umbrella:

QRONO d2a - claims to "get the best audio performance out of every DAC", "rectify problems with digital audio timing that often occur when filters are used to convert digital sound between digital and analogue formats, making audio more natural and lifelike while reducing listener fatigue", "employs a more 'bespoke' approach to signal filters", because they claim traditional DACs have "unnecessarily aggressive" filters, and "Qrono filters are optimised for the musical spectrum of each input sample rate, preserving the original musicality as a result".

Clearly these are big claims and we've heard comments like these in old MQA literature, haven't we?

In other words, QRONO d2a probably is just a reformulated filtering scheme like the original MQA with its collection of low quality filters that replace the "unnecessarily aggressive" (their belief, but likely technically superior) filters in your DAC. Unless there is some evidence that this makes a beneficial and audible, difference, aren't we all quite familiar with digital filters these days? Is this in any way exciting any more in 2025?

Recently (December 13, 2024), they released this StereoNet article with a couple of graphs:

As you can see, I've added a few annotations. First, notice that the X-axis is in microseconds. So the 48kHz graph is only 1ms in length (about the speed of sound traveling 1 foot) and the 192kHz graph is only 0.25ms. We're not talking long lengths of time here even if you're impressed by the dramatic difference between the red and green graphs. Second, notice that the Y-axis is measured in dB amplitude - logarithmic scale, so even low-level signals like -50dB (0.3%) looks large. 

What they're showing is not surprising and just another way to graph an impulse response. They're just showing us the result of one of the weak minimum phase MQA upsampling filters that we've known about for years. Just because the post-ringing is shorter than their red "DAC oversampling" comparator at 48kHz is absolutely nothing to get excited about. As discussed years ago, the impulse response is an "illegal" signal anyways and properly bandwidth limited music signals do not show this ringing that they want us to pay attention to (and be worried about). When something is being hyped, it's important to consider what they've purposely avoided showing us. In this instance, notice that we don't have a frequency response graph to compare the two filters; a frequency response graph would have shown us that the "DAC oversampling" filter has a steeper high-frequency attenuation which will at most minimally roll off before 20kHz compared to the usual MQA options with their earlier roll-off before 20kHz and ultrasonic imaging distortions beyond Nyquist (you can see some of these graphs here).

The 192kHz graph is basically showing us that the MQA QRONO filter is basically NOS at the higher samplerate. The response from audiophiles and music lovers should be a collective yawn.

They're basically treating audiophiles as newbies - as if we haven't already played with filter settings for years now and think they can make this all look amazing?! Ooooh... Ahhh... Look at the difference between those red and green lines! 🤣

Notice that the QRONO graphs are just new versions of this graph from Sound-on-Sound's 2016 article on the original MQA:

The difference is that the red comparison non-MQA DAC filter is linear phase with symmetrical pre-echoing in the impulse response. Not impressive in 2016, and there's certainly nothing amazing about any of this now in 2025!

Addendum: January 5, 2025
Thanks to those who sent me the link to the recent SoundStage! article on the interview with Mike Jbara from Jan. 2. In it, we actually see the usual impulse response graphs of the waveform across time:

As surmised above, we're just looking at a relatively weak, slow-roll, minimum phase filter at 48kHz and possibly NOS (or linear interpolation like old-skool Windows 10!) at 192kHz. At least the 48kHz impulse has the form of a normal sinc function and possibly a stronger filter than the old MQA settings. 

Still would be interesting to see the frequency response and imaging distortion characteristics especially from that 48kHz setting. That will give us a better look at the accuracy of the low-pass filtering.

QRONO dsd - which "set(s) a new standard in DSD-to-PCM converters", supposedly this "exceeds the best analogue systems". Gee, that's awesome! 😮 But seriously guys, digital sound capabilities have exceeded analogue (especially vinyl) for decades already.

In other words, QRONO dsd is some form of DSD-to-PCM (1-bit pulse density modulation to multibit) conversion which they claim is better that what others have been doing for years. Roon has a converter. JRiver has a converter. Foobar has a converter. Weiss Saracon is excellent. The resolution these converters achieve are well in the hi-res domain and I've written about these since the early years of this blog (see here, here). So what does QRONO think they're bringing to the table all these years later?

Without any demonstrated benefits, these QRONO features just seem to be a couple of labels created so they can market Lenbrook's new Bluesound Node Icon device perhaps. As with MQA's launch party in late 2014, this looks like a similar attempt to create buzz. Unless demonstrated as beneficial, this stuff is just even more silly now, and far from "revolutionary" - an idea they still desire to perpetuate!

Since I avoided writing about MQA in 2024, I also didn't write about the announcement in mid-2024 of some other "features" (announcements reported here, and here):

AIRIA - yet another renaming of MQA's SCL-6/MQAir adaptive bitrate codec. Discussed previously. I believe we're still waiting for the headphones which were supposed to be released in 2024. We'll have to see whether this competes well with the typical Bluetooth codecs like aptX, LDAC, even AAC. Technically it should and we should be able to see it in measurements. We will have to wait for actual listening tests for how significant audible differences might be (based on prior understanding, unlikely audible benefits). It could be interesting for higher bitrate wireless codecs to transmit multichannel content though.

More importantly, at what price point are they going to sell the headphones and what players will use MQAir/AIRIA? Unless we have Apple and the major Android smart phone makers like Samsung incorporate it, it's hard to imagine much of a demand.

In any event, the main determinant of sound quality would be the headphones themselves rather than a fancy high bitrate codec. After all these years, how many Bluetooth stereo headphone listeners are demanding aptX Lossless even, never mind this brand new codec? 

FOQUS - "Represents an innovative approach for analogue to digital conversion". I assume this is the encoding portion of the MQA-like codec +/- some kind of DSP that supposedly cleans up the data from an ADC. Regardless, this is for studios rather than consumers. I'm curious to see if 2L's Morten Lindberg continues to champion this stuff as he had during the MQA/Bob Stuart years. Please man, just walk away. 🫣

Seriously Lenbrook/QRONO/MQA, there's nothing new here that could make audiophiles excited. If you're planning on spending much money on advertising this stuff, I would humbly suggest not wasting it, especially through the traditional audiophile press mouthpieces like TAS or Stereophile, and instead putting the money into designing better products that can actually improve sound quality, or maybe better just pass the savings on to consumers. There is nothing to be gained by continuing down this path of using a decoder that just switches between poor digital filter settings. In 2025, we don't need any lossy bitrate compression (is MQA's origami even a part of QRONO?). There is no meaningful DRM angle to entice the music copyright holders. Heck, I think hi-res audio is barely interesting for audiophiles anymore and certainly not novel (HRA discussions, also here, post-hi-res audio).

Then there is the supposed Lenbrook HDtracks music streaming service:

Bring it on if you think this is going to be successful since there's nothing wrong with offering audiophiles another option. "Lenbrook and HDTracks intend to launch their new streaming service with all three major labels on board in Q4 of this year." Yet not a peep since June and we're now in Q1 2025.

Good luck Lenbrook with the streaming service if this comes to fruition. I suspect even more luck would be needed with the AQWARD naming scheme based on the MQA model of opacity and hype behind what these "technologies" are actually doing.

As we pass the 10-year anniversary of the MQA announcement, it will also be about 10 years since I first wrote about MQA along side Dolby Atmos back then. While it's good to see multichannel/Atmos evolving over the last decade (see here, here, and here), I think it's also good that audiophile consumers have generally seen MQA for what it is, an unnecessary distraction that unmasked the "yes-men" in the traditional audiophile press, was basically a waste of time and money for Meridian, then MQA Ltd. and more than likely, now Lenbrook.

With any luck, maybe we'll see MQA/QRONO just completely fade away.

[With CES2025 this coming week, word on the street is that we might get a peek at the ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless PWB headphones powered by SPARK Microsystems transceivers? Presumably, the AIRIA adaptive bitrate codec should be able to take advantage of the higher wireless transfer speed. Looks like there's a partnership between SPARK and Lenbrook. Again, the big question is price and whether the headphones simply sound good regardless of codec used!]

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Listening impressions from those not deep into expensive audiophile gear, culture and the faith...

To end, kudos to Fstoppers (photography channel) for the work involved in this video listening to speakers and amplifiers at various reasonable price points:

In single-blinded listening using immediate A/B switching, it was no surprise that he, his wife, and business partner were not able to tell a difference between amplifiers like his cheapest Sony receiver (presumably Class A/B, <US$200) compared to the Wiim Amp Pro (TI TPA3255, chip Class D, $400) or the Cambridge CXA81 Mk II (Class A/B, $1200). I trust that by now, audiophiles know that amplifier effects are usually subtle unless the device intentionally isn't aiming for high-fidelity quality.

[Gee how novel that blinded "honesty controls" are being used. When was the last time you saw this among the audiophile press or YouTubers who claim to hear big differences? And how novel that his wife isn't hearing the big difference from the other room or while fixing something in the kitchen! 🤔]

As for the bookshelf speakers (KEF, Klipsch, Polk, ELAC from <$200 to $1000), yeah, speaker placements make a big different. I see that the listening was done near-field, so maybe there could be more difference with far-field set-ups due to speaker off-axis radiation patterns in the room. Nonetheless, yeah, I think magazine and YouTube reviewers (eg. Steve Guttenberg, Andrew Robinson, etc.) who talk about "amazing" sounding speakers correlating sound quality typically with higher price tags have been hyping. Absolutely, using EQ helps especially with that strong room resonance he showed in the video.

[A missed opportunity here is not including listening impressions of tube amps. I wonder if the higher distortion and likely lower damping factor would have swayed his preference.

Also, given his results, imagine how meaningless/insane it would be if audiophiles were to ask him to try listening to the difference between speaker cables or interconnects! 🤣]

What he's saying is IMO consistent with measurements, and what is suggested by the science. Amplifiers really don't make that much difference (including between modern Class D chip amps like the TI TPA3255 and more expensive Class A/B) assuming of course we're within the power requirements to drive the speakers and reasonable impedance matching. Speakers do make a difference, but room and positioning are hugely important and DSP (EQ) can improve things. I don't think most audiophiles would be impressed by the lack of precision with that Wiim phone app as measurement mic though, so the inconsistencies he reported with that device is to be expected.

"I'm just not hearing significant differences that justify these incredible price swings" (16:30). Of course not. The principle of "Good Enough" as previously discussed always reaches a threshold for each of us and I don't believe the Golden Ears (be careful about the declarations of the older ones) are truly anything special compared to anyone else who has protected their hearing through life. Yes, make sure to optimize speaker positioning in your room, add a subwoofer for more authoritative bass. Then consider adding some finishing touches like high quality DSP (Dirac Live, Acourate, Audiolense for example).

The skill, perhaps art, of getting these steps done optimally for one's listening space and to one's taste is I suppose the "magic" people talk about. And that magic takes time, and cannot be bought by just throwing money at the "problem" as most audiophile magazines, subjective reviewers, and audiophile pundits seem to want us to believe.

Audiophiles, instead of putting faith into the opinions of audio reviewers who make a living on promoting stuff, we need to make sure we check out videos like these once awhile to recalibrate expectations. Do "normal" people perceive what they read or hear in audiophile reviews? If the answer is consistently "no" when it comes to meeting expectations and they might be feeling disappointed, then need we wonder why audiophilia (especially the expensive "high end") might not be a growing hobby and most of the guys at audio shows seem to be of the older demographic?

Unlike audiophile reviewers who need a pay cheque based on promoting products, as audiophile consumers, our job is simply to satisfy the pleasure we gain in listening to our music. Be aware of honest companies we want to do business with. Encourage honest reviewers who don't need to run a "business" acting as the advertising arm of companies. I think it's good as hobbyists to be reminded of this as we enter the second quarter of the 21st Century. As the hobby evolves, it does not have to be what it has been.

With that, I want to wish you a happy 2025, friends. Hope you're having a great start to the New Year! Greetings from Arizona.

Pizzeria Bianco: Rosa, Wiseguy, and Sonny Boy pizzas. Impressive pies!

Devil's Bridge

Phenomenal for hikers! Here's a shot from Cathedral Rock Trail. Some paths clearly not for the faint of heart. 😟

A view from the garden shed...

Red rocks at sunset.

Bonus shots: A sign about Sedona's vortices - seems a little subjective. 🤔 Quite a bit of New Age and some UFO stuff here (blurred to protect the innocent). And that teal-colored McDonald's logo as bright yellow is not allowed as a local bylaw.

For those who enjoy some family-friendly pop, here's "Beyond" from Moana 2 - make sure to turn on the subwoofer(s) for this end credit version!