[jimtranr]

As good a time as any, I guess, for this Luddite, a curmudgeonly geezer who relies on CD rips and purchased hi-res downloads for any music sourced via computer, to check in here. I'm not the Henny Penny sky-is-falling type, but I wonder what will happen when a master hacker inspired by Allstate's "Mayhem" takes down enough of the 'Net to render streaming the definitive performance of Paul Simon's "Sound of Silence"--you know, in the vein of Montgomery Scott's observation that "the more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

OK, enough snark. At best--and taking on faith all the good things that have been said about it, while noting the critiques issued by skeptical industry professionals--I see MQA as a stopgap solution to current bandwidth limitations. Do I want to be locked in, equipment-purchase-, software-availability-, and performance-capability-wise, to a proprietary system, the need for which may be rendered irrelevant tomorrow, given the pace of technological advancement? The answer is obviously a your-mileage-may-vary, to-each-his/her-own. In my case, it's "no", even if MQA is all its promoters say it is.