Master Quality Authenticated

Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) is an audio codec using lossy compression and a form of file fingerprinting, intended for high fidelity digital audio internet streaming and file download. Launched in 2014 by Meridian Audio, it is now owned and licensed by MQA Ltd.

Announcement of MQA was made on 4 December 2014 at a launch held at The Shard in London, although the concepts underpinning the development had previously been the subject of a presentation to the Audio Engineering Society British Section (10 June 2014) and a paper (published 8 October 2014) presented at the Audio Engineering Society 137th Convention in Los Angeles, CA in October 2014.

MQA was demonstrated to visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2015. Several download/streaming services, playback system manufacturers and record labels have subsequently announced support for the technology, including Pioneer Corporation, Onkyo, Meridian Audio, 7digital, Norwegian label Lindberg Lyd (2L), Mytek and others, with Warner Music Group announcing the signing of a "long-term licensing deal" with MQA at the Munich High End show in May 2016.

In May 2016, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in cooperation with the Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing, the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), and DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, announced that services providing music encoded in MQA are eligible to carry the industry's official logo mark for "Hi-Res MUSIC".

MQA encoding is lossy; it hierarchically compresses the relatively little energy in the higher frequency bands into data streams that are embedded in the lower frequency bands using proprietary dithering techniques.

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