I started this thread so I thought I should chime in. I access Tidal thru my Aurender A10's Conductor app and stream fully decoded MQA files with my $19.99 subscription. When I checked my Tidal subscription on my iMac I found that it was set to "Hi-FI" not "Masters" so I changed it. I can't tell a particle of difference. Prior to the change both the window on the A10 and the display on the Conductor app showed 24bit/48,96,188,192, or 352khz depending on the track. It still shows the same thing and sounds the same so, for me, moving the button to "Masters" did not improve anything.
In settings though, I was able to find a tab under "Sound" called "Sound Output". It has two choices, "Default built-in output" or "Built-in output". If you click on Built-in output, you can enable/disable 3 features: Exclusive Mode, Force Volume (which I assume is the volume normalization), and Passthrough MQA.
The text under Exclusive Mode reads:"With Exclusive Mode, Tidal has exclusive use of the audio device. This option only has effect for HiFi and Master playback" Does anyone know what this means? Also, I wonder if disabling MQA decoding has any effect on SQ for those without MQA DAC's?"