MQA dead or alive?

No real dog in this fight but seems there's something afoot with MQA. According to various reports on line, the company is winding down either because it's in trouble or because it's preparing for a change of ownership.  Here's What HiFi? has on it today:

The statement from MQA reads:

"Following the recent positive reception to MQA’s latest technology (SCL6), there has been increased international interest in buying MQA Ltd. At the same time, MQA’s main financial backer is seeking an exit. In order to be in the best position to pursue market opportunities and expedite this process, the company has undergone a restructuring initiative, which includes entering into administration and is comparable to Chapter 11 in the US.

"During this process, MQA continues to trade as usual alongside its partners.

"We won't be commenting further while negotiations take place."

more here: What Hi Fi news

Tannoy Gold 7 in the house

I have been trying out some new desk monitors for my main working space and settled on a pair of Tannoy Gold 7s for now. I say 'for now' as the process has been interesting. After waiting weeks to find a pair (had initially wanted the Gold 5 but they seem backordered for months so grabbed a pair of 7s when I found them. Main difference is size, the 7s have 6.5" drivers and are taller/deeper, but not too large for nearfield use.  

The pair came rather flimsily packaged by the seller (Gearnutes via Amazon) but survived well enough. Installation was relatively simple and first impressions are that they are a step up from my regular Audioengine A5+ pair which have served me well for years. All good for the first week but since then I've hit a few hiccups with the auto-start in one speaker. First, it just would not start while the other speaker, a few seconds after triggering, played perfectly.  A power-down and up again of the Jotunheim preamp feeding them solved it but that takes close a minute to do. Since then, the left speaker just seemed to go into sleep mode for no apparent reason even while playing music.  

Since I bought from Amazon, I started there for help but  they offer a return only, and pushed me off to a Tannoy help site for assistance with technical issues.  To get help there one has to register the product and join the MusicTribe forum to submit a ticket.  Yikes, that took even longer than a reboot  of my whole set up.  In case it was my preamp or cable I tried in a series of swaps while I waited for answers. 

Well, one good suggestion from the Tannoy end was to play with the gain as it was possible I was not feeding enough signal to trigger the speaker into action.   Well what do you know, I had reduced trim level on the front (raising the inner Class AB amp volume while minimizing gain from the Jotunheim) as I played with set up. Then I had used the trim further as minor adjustment to tweak the center image and balance for the pair in use. Well, seems in doing so I might have inhibited the actual input signal too much causing one speaker not to recognize that it was actively being fed all the time. If so, I must have been just on the cusp as most times it worked, that is until it didn't.  I've put trim back to noon and noon+ now and raised the output gain from the preamp which seems to have solved the problem so now I can proceed to give these a real listening test.