MQA is Legit!

I have read from many sources that MQA is or can be much better than red book. I think the more important parts are around licensing, costs, DRM (does not seem to be a problem) and monopoly about an audio technology.

@dweller

MQA is half lossy and half lossless, interior to the quality of CD in my opinion, it also can’t know what happened in the mastering of the track.

A quote from someone more knowledgeable than me:

An input signal is truncated to 17 bits (and the input sample rate), and is then split into a high and low-frequency band. The lossless portion of the LF signal (13/44.1) is added as-is to a 24/44.1 container (FLAC or otherwise), and is nominally compatible with any Flac decoder. The remaining signal is a lossy encoding of the high-frequency content, and lives in the lower 8-11 bits of the FLAC. Somewhere in the encoding process, specific instructions for what reconstruction filters (low-pass filters to prevent aliasing of audio) should be used during decoding

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Not to mention it prevents digital volume control and DSP.

The MQA ney-sayers sound exactly like the cable ney-sayers. If you compare these groups, they put down the people that can hear a difference. They state so-called facts, charts, expert comments, and whatever else they can find to support their cause. I don’t give a sh$# about so called experts opinions, charts, etc..., listen with your own 2 ears! If you don’t have good ears or a good quality system, then you probably won’t hear a difference.Hey, some people don’t think computers improve performance either! 
Redbook SQ is ok, but hi-res/SACD/MQA done right surpasses it by a large margin. MQA has sounded better than my vinyl music when I compared both. I can’t say that all hi-res/SACD/MQA cuts sound better than redbook, but I can say than neither of these formats have sounded worse.

I spent an afternoon at my friendly dealer (Martins in Norwich) switching in Tidal between all available sources, using DCS and Vitus kit. We came to a view that maybe 1/3rd were better to us with MQA, vs other formats. In my view therefore not amazingly reliable as "it all depends on the track" which is not amazingly helpful in playing a range of tracks at home at leisure. Also what is true MQA? - the source is not usually identified - we need transparency before I personally would be that bothered. 

Overall, I think Tidal's MQA Masters series recordings sound great and better than CD or traditional 44.1 Tidal hi-resolution downloads.  I don't have experience with MQA in any other format than Tidal's Masters. 

I haven't made many direct comparisons between an actual physical CD and MQA.

I'm not hearing any increase in distortion, loss of information, noise or anything. What I am hearing is a general overall improvement.  I agree with others who think there is more body to MQA and a seemingly lower noise floor.  Everything sounds more defined without added harshness to me

I get the OP's point that maybe Tidal's MQA Masters sound better just because there's attention given to making them sound better, as opposed to an improvement being solely due to the MQA format. 

For now, I'm just happy that a digital format sounds great. I simply cannot buy to try everything I'm exploring on vinyl. Tidal and a good DAC allow me to explore to no end.  I'm living in a world with great vinyl and great digital so--to me--it's a new golden age.