MQA’s Spencer Chrislu on reaching out to the Record Industry.
MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVE HEARD MUSIC RECORDINGS encoded with Master Quality Authenticated agree that it sounds really good1—but even they recognize that at least one major challenge remains: ensuring that listeners can actually, get in MQA format, the music they most love. I spoke with Spencer Chrislu, MQA’s director of content services, about the company’s efforts to meet this challenge.
JIM AUSTIN: Please tell us about your background.
SPENCER CHRISLU: Wow, where do I start? I’ve been a music fan all my life, and fell in love with high-end audio as a teenager. I’ve always been fascinated by music production, and wanted to be a recording engineer from early on. I went to school at the University of Illinois and graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering. After moving to California, I got the incredible opportunity to work with Frank Zappa for the last three years of his life, and later moved on to work on high-resolution DVD-Audio releases for Warner Music, where I met Bob Stuart [then with Meridian Audio]. After 14 years at Warner, and after hearing the first generation of MQA, I jumped at the idea of working together with Bob.
JA: What is your role at MQA?
SC: I am the director of content services, which means that I’m involved with helping and advising on the production and archiving of tapes from various vaults around the world,
to the nuts and bolts of making the MQA production process work inside the studios. Since we’re a small team, I’m also heavily involved in new partner engineering discussions and taking some of the administrative burdens off the engineers.
JA: What are the advantages of MQA for music producers and consumers?
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German kitchens, Japanese amps, and Afropop gems
BRILLIANT CORNERS - I have a day job at a museum. One of my favorite things about working there is taking the elevator from my office down to one of the floors open to the public; I walk into the galleries through a discreet panel in the wall. This makes me feel like I'm in one of those horror-movie manors with a tunnel concealed behind a bookshelf. Sometimes I startle people, which I kind of enjoy.
EDITOR'S PICK - RECORDING OF THE MONTH
The record business was awash in money and power. Vinyl LPs were still five bucks, and while the pressings could be suspect, the music-buying public still snapped them up en masse.
The Butthole Surfers wipe out
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You're only lonely
AURAL ROBERT - The least surprising story in music today is the inevitable passing of irreplaceable talent. Tenor saxophonist Benny Golson died at age 95 the day I finished this salute to another fallen star, Southern California singer/songwriter John David \"JD\" Souther.
PS Audio Aspen FR5 - LOUDSPEAKER
I remember the first PS Audio product: a simple phono stage. It was so simple - a passive RIAA eq filter flanked by a pair of primitive op-amps - that when the schematic was made public, I built one myself; I was in the midst of my DIY years. I thought it was, to use a word from that time, nifty.
TEAC UD-701N - STREAMING PREAMP, D/A CONVERTER
In Gramophone Dreams #88, I described the sound of TEAC's VRDS-701T CD transport as \"dense and precise in a way I had never previously heard from digital.\" I went on to explain, \"by dense, I mean there was a tangible corporeality effected by seemingly infinite quantities of small, tightly packed molecules of musical information.\"
Sonus faber Sonetto V G2 - LOUDSPEAKER
Here's a hard truth: A written review of a full-sized speaker any speaker, really-is, at best, semi-useful. We all listen differently, we have different musical tastes, our system electronics are different, and our listening rooms vary a lot. You will gain a general picture of a speaker's capabilities and foibles from John Atkinson's measurements, and I can tell you how the speakers sound to me, in my room. But that's it. You need to hear them for yourself before making a buying decision. The best I can do is tell you how my music brain felt when the speakers were in my house and making music.
STEREOPHILE'S 33RD ANNUAL - PRODUCT OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024
When Stereophile's Product of the Year Awards were first published, in 1992, we decided that unlike some other publications and their awards schemes, we would keep the number of categories to a minimum. That way, we would avoid what the late Art Dudley once described as the \"every child in the class gets a prize\" syndrome.
Moon 861 - POWER AMPLIFIER
It is unusual to begin a review with a detailed discussion of setup. But setup protocol for the Moon 861 power amplifier ($22,000 each), the top-level amplifier in the North Collection from Moon, which I reviewed bridged in mono, proved crucial to its sound.
Mobile Fidelity, PrimaLuna, and First Watt redux
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