MQA relaunched as MQA Labs by Lenbrook Media Group (LMG) is focussing on a suite of products that bring audio processing enhancements across the music supply chain. AIRIA by MQA Labs formerly branded as MQair is claimed to deliver high resolution audio while seamlessly scaling from full lossless to very lossy rates. FOQUS represents an innovative approach for analogue to digital conversion and QRONO brings a variety of audio processing enhancements within playback devices. These technologies are expected to debut in a variety of licensee products before the end of calendar 2025.
Gordon Simmonds, CEO of The Lenbrook Group, LMG’s parent corporation said, “The creation of MQA Labs and its newest product families reflect Lenbrook’s passion to improve the whole audio chain and bring the highest quality recording, distribution and playback technologies to benefit the entire specialty audio industry and its fans.”
According to Greg Stidsen, Chief Technology Officer at Lenbrook, “The digitization of an analogue signal introduces a range of imperfections to the resulting audio file. One of the most common and critical is something often referred to as time smearing – when the resolution of two sounds is reduced because their timing is incorrectly reproduced within the digital file. MQA Labs’ team are experts in time-domain audio improvements, having invented many of the techniques to avoid or eliminate such audio defects.”
The company expects that two of the new product families will address the issue head on: FOQUS, which tackles the analogue to digital processes, and QRONO, which will address converting digital back to analogue.
The third product family previously known as MQair or SCL6 is claimed to ensure the best resolution possible regardless of bandwidth availability. Now named AIRIA by MQA Labs, the codec was developed to transform audio across wireless connections. Most recently, LMG successfully completed pilots for use as a distribution codec – perfect for streaming services. As a transmission codec, the company claims it as a high-resolution codec with dramatic operational savings and reliability.
