MUSIC MAKER

From Meridian to MQA, David Price looks at the illustrious career of Bob Stuart

- David Price

There have been a good many remarkable characters in British hi-fi over the years, with a good number coming from the Seventies generation of go-getting entrepreneurs who decided to do things differently. They were hi-fi punk rockers, you might say. Some were great talkers with a messianic quality, backed by unshakeable self-belief and all underwritten by a unique talent for self-promotion.

MQA’s Bob Stuart was not one of them. A quietly spoken and thoughtful man, he’s never been the type to blow his own trumpet. Despite not being very box office, Stuart’s career has been monumentally influential in the great scheme of hi-fi things – as evidenced by him recently being awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Prince Philip Medal. Bob got it for: “his exceptional contribution to audio engineering, which has changed the way we listen to music and experience films”.

This is the first time that someone in audio engineering has been thus honored. Previous recipients include the inventor of the turbojet engine, Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle; geothermal power innovator, Lucien Bronicki and the electrical engineer who revolutionized fiber optics, Dr. Charles Kao. “One never truly knows which aspects prompted this award,” Bob told me, “but I think the two things that are unusual in my career are the work we did around standards – Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP) in DVD-Audio and Blu-ray, and more recently Master Quality Authenticated (MQA)”.