Streaming vs traditional

Hello All,

Just my humble 2cts. We all choose our music and our playback systems. I have had songs come on the car radio ( never put a good system in any of my vehicles) but at times; I have been blown away by the song on the radio. Bought the CD, thought it would do the same on my current system. NOT !!

 I am fairly certain that all of us on this forum and others are searching to get the best sound we can. Whatever way is to our liking.

May I suggest / remind that we All take a break; An evening out for some Live Music is Best.

Best to All on this Journey.

" To the best of my knowledge Meridian have never published any of their work in a scientific journal."

Correct, which makes their data equivalent to the study you referenced, not worth much.

willemj, no one is making anyone listen to MQA.  The streaming services will eventually charge a premium for MQA and we will be able to decide for ourselves whether we want to pay extra for MQA or not.   If anyone wants to listen at cd quality or mp3 quality they will be free to do so.  I am all for choice in listening options.  So what is the problem?  

Wspohn:   What did you use to rip your 4000 plus collection of CDs.

Why is there all of this theory talk about mqa vs hi-res vs red book? It sounds like a theory cable discussion where a guy with some electrical engineering background says that in no way in hell a cable should sound different than another. 

MQA has been out for a while and growing in # releases. I have the luxury to compare MQA/DSD/redbook/vinyl for a few albums and it is very interesting to hear the differences between each version and there are clearly better mediums. I have seen some MQA albums with up to 192khz, which is higher than the stated 96khz above. Roon shows you exactly what the file type is and my dac is capable to stream dsd/redbook/hi-res from my local server as well as tidal/internet without using the inferior USB technology.

I could care less if a study on the web or that a reviewer indicates that ‘x’ is better than ‘y’. Go out and listen for yourself, you can’t get better than hearing for yourself in your own room using your own equipment.

@willemj and all other MQA non-believers.
I suggest you get a high quality streamer/server/DAC like the Lumin S1 and tell me you don't think MQA songs don't sound better than their Redbook versions.  Please don't use a Bluesound 2 as your basis of comparison as the Bluesound is the weak link in the your comparison chain.  It's like saying MQA and non-MQA songs sound exactly the same via my $200 Meridian Explorer 2 MQA DAC, so therefore MQA doesn't sound better than Redbook.

IMO, Tidal MQA tracks sound comparable to the HDTracks hi-rez version, which is why I haven't purchased anything from HDTracks since MQA became available on TIDAL. BTW, the MQA album selection on TIDAL is growing rapidly, which will likely spell the end of HDTracks.