NAD C3050

It wasn’t exactly a coming-out party, at least not the one I expected. In a January 1 feature on Simplifi, Mike Jbara, vice-president and general manager of Lenbrook Media Group (LMG), said High End 2025 would mark “the coming-out party” for a new streaming service specializing in MQA-encoded music.

Read more: MQA Update, October 2025

After years of broken promises, Spotify has finally done it. The streaming giant is now rolling out lossless audio to its Premium subscribers, ending one of the most prolonged feature droughts in tech history. Four years after first teasing “Spotify HiFi,” the company that dominates global music streaming is finally delivering serious audio quality to those who demand it.

Read more: Spotify Lossless Is Here at Last! Was it Worth the Wait?

I’ve been a strong proponent of active loudspeaker systems since early in my audio journey. As I described in my recent introductory feature, I bought my first set of active studio monitors back in the late 1990s. Before that, I had assembled an audio system piecemeal that incorporated active crossovers—and in the process, I heard the benefits of this approach firsthand.

Read more: Why Don’t People Get Active?

Like most music lovers these days, I use some kind of computing device for the bulk of my listening. When I’m listening through the KEF LS60 Wireless active speaker system in my living room, I cue up music, control playback, and adjust system settings using a ninth-generation iPad. Upstairs in my home office, I use my MacBook Pro (late 2023, M3) to control playback through the PSB Alpha iQ active speaker system on the top shelf of my secretary desk.

Read more: Shape-Shifters—Using Music Apps on Foldable Smartphones

Ever since I got into file-based playback in the late 2000s, I’ve used some kind of app to play music. At first it was iTunes, the music app bundled with Mac computers. When I started purchasing high-rez albums from download stores like HDtracks, I added BitPerfect, an inexpensive utility that runs on top of iTunes and enables bit-perfect playback of files with different sampling rates and bit depths.

Read more: Direct Connections—Do You Really Need a Music App?

As this is my first feature article for SoundStage! Simplifi, and my first contribution as senior site editor, I’m going to kick things off with a synopsis of my hi-fi journey to date. This will hopefully break the ice and provide some context about my philosophy when it comes to our audio hobby.

Read more: The Long Way Round: My Journey to Simplifi

It’s been said so often, it’s almost an audiophile cliché: the most important component in any sound system is the room in which it’s used. Like all clichés, this one contains a large measure of truth.

Read more: Reading the Room: An Interview with Nilo Casimiro Ericsson of Dirac Research

Back in 2012, when Canada’s Lenbrook Industries was getting set to launch its Bluesound line of multiroom streaming products, they made a critical hire. Who was that person? A software engineer who could oversee development of the operating system and apps that would underpin the new components? A hardware engineer who could design those components? A marketing director who could create a campaign to drive awareness of the new brand?

Read more: Help! I Need Somebody!

Am I kidding myself in thinking that I’ve put together an endgame music system? Make that two systems—one in my main-floor living room and another in my second-floor office. Recently, I’ve made some changes to both setups, and I’m delighted with the results. I fully expect both systems to keep thrilling me until I shuffle off this mortal coil or get carted off to a home.

Read more: Game Over!

When Canada’s Lenbrook Industries purchased select assets of MQA Limited in September 2023, audiophiles had lots of questions. One question was, Why? What interest could the owner of three major audio brands—Bluesound, NAD, and PSB—have in an audio format that had been embroiled in controversy for the whole of its existence? Critics of MQA (of which there were many) had even more pointed questions, such as, How is this thing not dead yet?

Read more: MQA’s Second Chapter

I consider it fortuitous that my semi-retirement coincided with the emergence of streaming as the dominant mode of music distribution. As I wrote in my kick-off feature for Simplifi, my missus and I downsized in early 2018 in preparation for our retirements. Our previous home had a dedicated listening room in a third-floor loft. In our new home, the hi-fi has to live in the living room. That multipurpose space can’t accommodate a conventional component system—hence my use of active speakers, where the amplifiers and other electronics are built into the speaker enclosures.

Read more: Mixed Media

  1. Getting Physical
  2. Getting Spaced: What’s the Future for Atmos-Encoded Music?
  3. Little Colored Lights: Drilling Down in Roon
  4. The French Connection—Is Audirvana a Worthy Alternative to Roon?
  5. Apple’s War on Windows
  6. Fire Sales
  7. Direct versus Retail
  8. Harman International Has Bought Roon Labs—What Comes Next?
  9. Getting Physical—Do LPs and CDs Have a Place in Simplifi’d Hi-Fi?
  10. Active Voices: Livio Cucuzza of Sonus Faber
  11. Is Roon Worth It?
  12. Out and About—Using Roon Away from Home
  13. Lakeside Streaming—Network Entertainment at a Vacation Home
  14. Streaming Update—Spring 2023
  15. Active Voices: An Interview with Paul Barton and Rob Nicholls of PSB Speakers
  16. The State of Streaming—2023
  17. Gordon's System, Re-Simplifi'd
  18. Mix Master: PMC's Heff Moraes on Making Music in Atmos
  19. Toronto Audiofest 2022, Simplifi’d
  20. The Great Debate: Is Component Hi-Fi Dead?
  21. Evolving Hi-Fi: My Journey with a Fleet of Devialet Silver Phantoms
  22. Simplifi'd Hi-Fi at Munich High End–and Elsewhere
  23. How We Listen
  24. Wayback Playback
  25. Listen While You Work
  26. The State of Streaming—2022
  27. Why "Simplifi"—Five Years Later
  28. The Evolution of BluOS: An Interview with Lenbrook's Andrew Haines
  29. Dolby Atmos Music in Your Home
  30. The Big Switch
  31. I'm Only in It for the Money
  32. Encore! Encore! An Interview with Patricia Barber, Jim Anderson, and Ulrike Schwarz
  33. The New Apple Music
  34. Moving Forward with Formation: An Interview with Andy Kerr of Bowers & Wilkins
  35. Glory Days
  36. Spotify Goes Lossless
  37. In Defense of Streaming
  38. Tinkering Simplifi'd
  39. Simplifi Defined
  40. Going Deep with Artison
  41. A Simplifi Yearbook
  42. A Perfect Pair
  43. The Critical Component
  44. Has the Time Come for Surround Music?
  45. My Top Ten Products of the Last Two Years
  46. Turning Pro
  47. All About That Bass
  48. Gently Down the Stream
  49. Big Events
  50. Rules of the Game
  51. The Name Game
  52. January 1, 2020: The State of Streaming
  53. Warsaw’s Audio Video Show 2019, Simplifi’d
  54. Toronto Audiofest 2019, Simplifi'd
  55. Hi-Rez à-Go-Go
  56. Streaming the Classics
  57. Play Nice Together -- An Interview with Rob Darling of Roon Labs
  58. Active Voices, Part Three: KEF's Jack Oclee-Brown
  59. High End 2019, Simplifi'd
  60. Active Voices, Part Two: Axiom Audio's Andrew Welker
  61. Montréal Audio Fest Simplifi'd
  62. Active Voices, Part One: Elac's Andrew Jones
  63. Let's Keep it Simple
  64. A Roon of One's Own
  65. How I Simplifi'd My Wi-Fi
  66. Are Downloads Dead?
  67. Hi-Rez Streaming: Tidal vs. Qobuz
  68. Toronto Audiofest 2018 Simplifi'd
  69. How I Simplifi'd My Hi-Fi
  70. Time to Celebrate: Five Years of Google Chromecast
  71. How Good Can Voice Recognition Get?
  72. Are Smart Speakers Any Good for Audiophiles?
  73. High End 2018, Simplifi'd
  74. Is the Smart Speaker a Dumb Idea?
  75. What's Up with Apple AirPlay 2?
  76. The Spotify Dilemma
  77. CES 2018, Simplifi’d
  78. Farewell, CES
  79. Room Tunes
  80. Social Streaming
  81. CEDIA 2017, Simplifi’d
  82. Classical Prime Time
  83. The Röst Reconsidered
  84. High End 2017, Simplifi'd
  85. Vinyl: There's an App for That
  86. Metadata: Life with Roon
  87. The Internet and Audio: The Good, the Bad, and the Impossible
  88. The State of Streaming
  89. CES 2017, Simplifi'd
  90. Why "Simplifi"

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