Is this MQA news a big deal?

I don’t think MQA is going to be the end for music...For those who think the recording industry is not buying into MQA I posted this a few months back.
I am pretty sure the following audio companies have agreements in place to implement MQA into their current or upcoming hardware.

Audioquest (Dragonfly)
Aurender (A10)
Auralic (maybe???)
Bel Canto
Bluesound (Node, Vault series and Soundbar)
NAD (M12, M50, M32, C 390DD, M502...)
Brinkmann
CanEVER
Cocktail Audio (X35)
dCS
Esoteric
IAG
Krell (Vanguard)
Mark Levinson ( No519)
LG (LG.V30 smartphone)
Lumin
Meridian (many products)
MOON by Simaudio
MSB
Mytek
Onkyo
Pioneer (XDP-100R)
PS Audio ( PS Audio DirectStream)
Pro-Ject ( now owner of Musical Fidelity)
Sony (NW ZX300 and NW-A40)
Teac
Technics ( SU-G30)
Wapax

Nevertheless, so many more companies are not going the MQA route.

There are so many formats to choose from and vinyl has made such a come back, I don’t see the problem. Artists will contine to find ways to use computers and the internet to create and distribute their music and with the ever increasing wide bandwidth for streaming hi-res files, I don’t see MQA causing the sky to fall.

OK, put those rotten tomatoes down........

When I first heard MQA streaming on Tidal, I was smitten, so smitten that I purchased a Mytek Brooklyn DAC just for MQA (I also have a PS Audio DirectStream DAC).

I find that many of the MQA remasters to me do sound better than the prior masters, but certainly not all of them.  I would not attribute the improved sound quality only to being MQA, as comparing some albums to their "traditional" FLAC versions, it seems that some of them have the bass or midrange accentuated, in some cases I find more compression of the dynamic range, sometimes less compression, etc.  But I must say, some albums like the first four Led Zeppelin albums, the Crime of the Century, Excitable Boy, and several others (to me) do sound better.

But when I compare some of my classical favorites which are also available on either CD or SACD, I'm finding those older masters to sound better on my DirectStream setup, especially those on SACD.

Having said all of that, I think that the news that ESS will incorporate MQA rendering to their hardware is good news for the industry, especially since so many of our manufacturers are not large companies with lots of cash for R&D, ones which might use the ESS chipset in their future designs without having to provide their DACs to the MQA company for their review.

I think competition is a good thing!  And just about every DAC you will see advertised will decode DSD, which is another "esoteric" file type, but one that doesn't ruffle as many feathers.

@ptss -

1 - MQA plays back on anything. You just don't get the extra ffeatures. 

2 - DRM prevents copying. MQA does not do this. I can make copies and send them to others. If they have an MQA capable player, it will play at full resolution. 

So, this is NOT like HDMI, which prevents copying. 

Best,

E

MQA is a solution to what?

Can someone explain this ?