Lenbrook acquires MQA making the future of MQA encoding and its compatible hardware look more positive. The acquisition by the Canadian company adds to its portfolio of patents and intellectual property which feature in its NAD, Bluesound and PSB Speakers products.
Gordon Simmonds, Chief Executive Officer of Lenbrook said, “Lenbrook’s vision is of a thriving hi-fi industry where technologies that promote both consumer choice and the pursuit of the highest sound quality are deserving of investment and nurture. We view this acquisition as an opportunity to ensure the technologies developed by the scientists and engineers at MQA continue to serve the industry’s interests rather than be confined to any single brand or company.”
In their announcement of the acquisition, they maintain MQA was ‘Founded from the insights and support of record industry executives, recording artists, and audio engineering experts, MQA sought to provide creators with the means to efficiently preserve the detail and nuance of their works in high resolution recorded formats, which at the time pushed directly against the trend toward heavily compressed music.’
At the time of going into administration, MQA had amassed over 120 licensees and several content partnerships, so Lenbrook’s primary objective in this acquisition is to provide certainty for business and technical developments that were underway prior to MQA’s administration. Lenbrook has retained a core group of engineers, developers and sales and marketing personnel but no details of any redundancies have been made public.
MQA encoding and its recently announced SCL6 wireless codec are likely to continue to divide opinion among audiophiles but with the backing of Lenbrook their future looks assured for the time being.
