MQA is Legit!

One perspective, uniquely my own, is that MQA is very very late to the Audio world.

Two things are true now that were not true before 2000:
1 - Network bandwidth is MUCH cheaper.
2 - A lot of DAC's are much better at playing Redbook than they were before, significantly closing the gap between it and high resolution playback.

If we were still in that era, MQA would probably seem like a divine gift, and would be better in all respects.

Almost 20 years into the 21st century however, MQA seems like a solution for the wrong era.
Best,
E

+1 @jbhiller & @mofimadness

erik_squires

I heard it more as a softening of transients and removing of space.

I agree with Erik. I more recently have my Bluesound Vault 2 (with HiFi Tidal subscription) connected to an external, non-MQA, DAC. However, prior to that I had been using the MQA compatible internal DAC for some time. I compared quite a few of the same tunes in CD vs MQA quality. Consistently I found that the MQA versions deflated the soundstage. Less air and less space between images. I also found that the dynamics suffered as well. Less "pop" with MQA. The music kinda lost its moxie.

Occasionally I preferred the MQA version of a song if the recording was especially hard/harsh. MQA seemed to be more forgiving with these recordings and "smoothed" them out somewhat.

However, of course, much of this is dependent upon individual systems. Synergy is king. And also, the sound that one person finds "good" may not be exactly the same as the next listener. I’m a bit disappointed that many posters are using generic terms like "good", "better", "worse", etc. to make their points without being more specific about the actual sonic differences that they are hearing between MQA and other formats....

Happy listening all!

I think MQA sounds pretty good..

First off, you need MQA dac to hear full MQA unfolding.  I've only heard MQA streaming Tidal through Roon on non-MQA dac, sometimes sounds better than non-MQA. I've always suspected different masters responsible for qualitative difference. Whether it is better or not is moot for me. The proprietary nature of MQA makes it a no go, control of music catalogs by one entity is not healthy. I will soon try Qobuz, much prefer their method of high res.