Next Best Upgrade for Tidal MQA?

You should take the advice of myself and several other posts about changing from the avr as a preamp and get a dedicated preamp, that will be your biggest hardware upgrade.

This is interesting. I almost always see people saying Qobuz sounds better compared to Tidal, but the trade off is in the catalog and the functionality. 

@jjss49 yep, will test it out myself, just interesting to see the comments from the “professional” reviewers.

@invalid I am 100% with you - just need to decide what route to take.

I still might mess with a device that cleans up the network though - they are relatively inexpensive.  That Uptone device has a generous return policy - seems like a no brainer to give it a shot.

Someone messaged me about bluesound node 2i upgrades.... In UK fidelity audio do this...
https://www.fidelityaudio.co.uk/bluesound-node-2--2i-336-c.asp

I went for mid upgrade but have been mightily impressed

Such agendas! You have a listener using an AVR as a preamp asking for the obvious upgrade path and people are suggesting network tweaks, cable upgrades, their favorite DACs.

Come on people! The obvious upgrade is a preamp, as the sane posters have suggested.

Reasoning: the preamp in the AVR is tuned specifically to the amps in it. It may sound OK as a preamp, but it’s intended to be mated with the amps in the AVR. Manufacturers do not invest as much in making the preamp section of an integrated amp work with many different amps, because they are together. The bypass is great as a convenience, but it’s not intended go give the requisite synergy with just any amp. Get a real preamp and see how that sounds!