After the dinner and the speechifying, and my roast of Chad Kassem, founder of Analogue Productions, Acoustic Sounds, Quality Record Pressing, and Blue Heaven Studios. came the show's 23 Alfie awards, in three categories—Best Personal Electronics, Best Speakers, and Best Electronics—the winners selected by teams of judges led by Roger Skoff, founder of XLO Electric Co., Inc., and VP at Large of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society; Chuck Bruce, VP of Public Relations for LAAS; John G. Williams, VP of Hospitality for LAAS; and Mary Cardas, VP Gala producer for LAAS. Joining them were EveAnna Manley, of Manley Labs, and Part-Time Audiophile contributor Lee Scoggins.

Recipient of an "Alfie" award, Vandersteen's System Nine was also John Atkinson's best sound at the 2017 LAAS. (Photo: John Atkinson)

A few well-deserved Alfies went to such usual suspects as Wilson Audio Specialties (for the Alexx speaker), Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems (for the Progression preamplifier), Vandersteen Audio (for the System Nine, which adds a pair of Sub Nine subwoofers to the Vandersteen Model Seven II speakers and HPA amplifiers), as well as bigger players such as Sony and AudioQuest. But what the ceremony lacked in drama was more than made up for by diversity of products and manufacturers, many of the awards going to newer, smaller companies—eg, Starke Sound, Ryan Speakers, Vinnie Rossi, Vanatoo, and EchoBox. Hopefully, next year's awards dinner will feature better stagecraft: musical intro and outro cues, envelope opening, nip slippage. . .

Although it wasn't in the script, at the end of the evening Bob Levi asked me to make some closing remarks, so I took the stage and began "streaming" about the audio industry, about LAAS, and about what an amazing time this is for audio, particularly on the software side. I talked about how, for first time ever, you can now get music recorded at the highest sound quality, in whatever format you prefer. Still want CDs? You can have them. Vinyl? There's more worth buying than any one person can ever consume. Reel-to-reel tape? The offerings are still small, but will only grow as labels drop their fear of bootlegs and open their vaults—after all, they're happy to sell 24-bit/192kHz files, which are far more easily copied and distributed than are reel-to-reel tapes. You can even get some new music on cassette. Light poles and car bumpers festooned with 1/8" tape may make a comeback!

High-resolution PCM and DSD downloads and MQA streams provide master sound quality at the push of a few buttons. Who could have imagined this 10 or 15 years ago, when it seemed the world was downrezzing to MP3 quality and enjoying it, because it was "indistinguishable" from Red Book CD?

For some, a generation or two of headphone-crazy young people consuming dumbed-down MP3s on iPods and smartphones seemed to spell the end of high-performance audio. The week Stereophile featured an iPod on the cover, I was thrown out of a well-known New York City audio salon. "Get out!" the owner yelled at me. "I don't sell iPods! I don't want you in here!"

Others, though, sensed an opening. They began producing better headphones and headphone amplifiers, some of them tubed, and as exotic and high-performance as anything built to drive loudspeakers. Grado Labs hit the jackpot. When cartridge manufacturing seemed about to bite the dust for good, Joe Grado and his nephew John Grado moved into headphones, probably never imagining that they'd tap into a key trend in Millennial-generation consumer electronics—nor could they have imagined that the cartridge business would again become a growth industry.

Portable music players followed that could store what most consumers would consider an entire music library of hi-rez files. The built-in audience for such products had to simply plug in and listen. And guess what—they show up at shows like AXPONA, LAAS, and the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, driving down the age demographic to well below grandpa level.

Easy access means that younger people finally get to hear what we knew to be true, and that they'd been told was audiophile foolery. Headphones and LPs became the gateway drugs to high-performance home audio.

MQA's Bob Stuart performed MQA-vs-MQA comparisons in one of the Sunny Components rooms at the 2017 LAAS. (Photo: John Atkinson)

MQA at LAAS At LAAS, MQA Ltd.'s Bob Stuart gave convincing demonstrations of MQA vs non–MQA-encoded files, as well as MQA's hi-rez "unpacking" capabilities, in one of the Sunny Components rooms, using Wilson Alexx speakers driven by T+A electronics (footnote 1). MQA-encoded files go through a careful preview process in the mastering studio that sonically optimizes them for various playback situations (no decoding, MQA Core, or Full Decode), with appropriate filters correcting "de-ringing."

Fortunately, the differences in sound spoke louder than did Stuart, who tended to get tangled in his own thoughts. I was told that Stuart's seminar, which I didn't attend, was far more effective at explaining MQA, while the in-room demos were far more effective at demonstrating it, less so at explaining it.

Rick Rubin (far right) and Michael Fremer (second right) audition MQA and non-MQA versions of Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen." (Photo: Peter McGrath)

At the demo, which I attended with record producer Rick Rubin, founder of American Recordings, Stuart's opening remarks assumed that the audience was well aware of what MQA was, which I think was not the case. If that describes you as well, see Stuart's Q&A on the subject. In any case, for lovers of LPs and haters of CDs such as I, what Stuart says and plays in his demos totally vindicates our long-held, often ridiculed contention that, spatially, CD sound produces no there there, and is therefore unlistenable. MQA-encoded "Red Book" CDs can contain hi-rez (24/192 and higher) files that can be "unpacked" by an MQA decoder.

As Stuart writes in his Stereophile piece, "Temporal acuity manifests a survival characteristic, one with origins that must reach back to much earlier in the mammalian timeline than the emergence of Homo sapiens."

I've long contended that, for whatever reason or reasons, CD sound makes people not want to listen to recorded music to the exclusion of all else—the way it was done by entire generations in the vinyl-rich 1960s and '70s. It's why listening to music became a background activity, something to do while doing something else: driving, working out, or whatever.

While CD apologists blamed the disconnect on too many choices of entertainment, including video games and home theater, I and others remained convinced that it was CD sound itself that produced a brain alarm that screamed to the subconscious "Get out of here and do something else! I've lost track of time and space! I don't know where the tiger's coming from!" Or, in my case, "Put on an LP and turn off that digital crap, you knucklehead!"

Footnote 1: You can find John Atkinson's and Jason Victor Serinus's reactions to these comparisons here.

Log in or register to post comments COMMENTS Thanks for the Memories Submitted by rt66indierock on September 6, 2022 - 2:23pm Bob Stuart making a poor impression at his seminar. Meeting him afterward and asking him questions he couldn’t answer. Herding MQA supporters into the Wilson room. Spreading information by telling people John Atkinson doesn’t want you to know this. All while acting as the perfect host to attendees and vendors as member of the LAOCAS. Good times thanks. Log in or register to post comments Interesting reading this in 2022... Submitted by Archimago on September 6, 2022 - 5:31pm Interesting reviewing this 2017 article from the vantage point in 2022! I doubt these days there will be many people defending MQA and its claimed time-domain performance. "Hi-rez MQA" of course would not "kill" vinyl - in the 24-bit form, it barely has benefits over plain 'ol CD. Funny though that Fremer in one breath would say "CD sound produces no there there, and is therefore unlistenable" and then in the next breath parrots the idea that "MQA-encoded "Red Book" CDs can contain hi-rez (24/192 and higher)" as if there's any truth in that; obvious example of how he doesn't understand the basics of the technology and the impossibility of these claims! Anyhow... Kudos to Rick Rubin for recognizing "Yet to Rubin's ears, the MQA version sounded "processed" in some way" - indeed, fooling around with bit-depth reduction and using questionably "leaky", low quality filters as MQA did (its "rendering" process) will do this sort of thing to music reproduction. For a man who claims he can easily identify the reduction in resolution on a CD, it would have been nice if Fremer himself could have detected these anomalies on MQA to really prove that he possesses some "golden ears". Good luck at TAS and Tracking Angle. Log in or register to post comments There is Truth to That Submitted by Michael Fremer on September 7, 2022 - 2:04pm MQA CDs can unpack 192/24 so good luck to you! No one has “golden ears” nor have I ever claimed them. You are both disagreeable and ignorant. Log in or register to post comments Except, no it can't Submitted by Rinky Dink on September 9, 2022 - 10:19am MQA CANNOT, and NEVER has been capable of 192 kHz resolution. ANYTHING over 96 kHz is UPSAMPLED. Educate your self. Your total cluelessness about digital is amusing. Log in or register to post comments Really? Submitted by DH on September 9, 2022 - 11:41am You haven't figured this out yet Michael? MQA encoding, by definition and design, discards anything above 24/96 (48Khz frequency) and encodes it in a compressed lossy format essentially equivalent to 17/96. The unpacking to so called 24/192 is simply upsampling of the 17/96 to 24/192. Sorry, the ignorance here is yours. Try to actually check the facts instead of reading misleading MQA marketing speak and assuming it's true. Log in or register to post comments Stereophile: your two most popular writers don't even work here Submitted by teched58 on September 9, 2022 - 7:03am So this is where we are in the beginning of the fall season: Your two most popular writers, highlighted on the front page of this site, don't even work here anymore. I'm referring to this old Fremer piece (he has left and gone to TAS and "coming summer 2022" tracking angle) and John Atkinson, who is former EIC and now technical editor, which I would guess is a freelance position as opposed to FTE. Engagement on these old articles seems to be better than on much of your new stuff, which means I guess that you can run all old stuff from now on and save on your edit budget. The way you guys are going, you may wake up one day and see you only have two commenters left: sharp, verbose "beweiving in wistening" Jack L and cranky, pointlessly nasty (since you guys don't seem to have the money to fix this mess) me. Log in or register to post comments

Bob Stuart making a poor impression at his seminar. Meeting him afterward and asking him questions he couldn’t answer. Herding MQA supporters into the Wilson room. Spreading information by telling people John Atkinson doesn’t want you to know this.

All while acting as the perfect host to attendees and vendors as member of the LAOCAS.

Interesting reviewing this 2017 article from the vantage point in 2022!

I doubt these days there will be many people defending MQA and its claimed time-domain performance. "Hi-rez MQA" of course would not "kill" vinyl - in the 24-bit form, it barely has benefits over plain 'ol CD.

Funny though that Fremer in one breath would say "CD sound produces no there there, and is therefore unlistenable" and then in the next breath parrots the idea that "MQA-encoded "Red Book" CDs can contain hi-rez (24/192 and higher)" as if there's any truth in that; obvious example of how he doesn't understand the basics of the technology and the impossibility of these claims!

Anyhow... Kudos to Rick Rubin for recognizing "Yet to Rubin's ears, the MQA version sounded "processed" in some way" - indeed, fooling around with bit-depth reduction and using questionably "leaky", low quality filters as MQA did (its "rendering" process) will do this sort of thing to music reproduction. For a man who claims he can easily identify the reduction in resolution on a CD, it would have been nice if Fremer himself could have detected these anomalies on MQA to really prove that he possesses some "golden ears".

Good luck at TAS and Tracking Angle.

MQA CDs can unpack 192/24 so good luck to you! No one has “golden ears” nor have I ever claimed them. You are both disagreeable and ignorant.

MQA CANNOT, and NEVER has been capable of 192 kHz resolution.

ANYTHING over 96 kHz is UPSAMPLED.

Educate your self. Your total cluelessness about digital is amusing.

You haven't figured this out yet Michael? MQA encoding, by definition and design, discards anything above 24/96 (48Khz frequency) and encodes it in a compressed lossy format essentially equivalent to 17/96. The unpacking to so called 24/192 is simply upsampling of the 17/96 to 24/192. Sorry, the ignorance here is yours. Try to actually check the facts instead of reading misleading MQA marketing speak and assuming it's true.

So this is where we are in the beginning of the fall season: Your two most popular writers, highlighted on the front page of this site, don't even work here anymore. I'm referring to this old Fremer piece (he has left and gone to TAS and "coming summer 2022" tracking angle) and John Atkinson, who is former EIC and now technical editor, which I would guess is a freelance position as opposed to FTE.

Engagement on these old articles seems to be better than on much of your new stuff, which means I guess that you can run all old stuff from now on and save on your edit budget.

The way you guys are going, you may wake up one day and see you only have two commenters left: sharp, verbose "beweiving in wistening" Jack L and cranky, pointlessly nasty (since you guys don't seem to have the money to fix this mess) me.