Here’s an honest review from someone with an MQA DAC. I’m currently using an Aurender A10 (which I purchased in order to stream MQA tidal files). I would like to believe that I have decent equipment that could showcase the potential differences (McIntosh preamp, 601 monoblocks, and Amati Futura speakers). I’ve been A/B’ing the Tidal MQA files against the comparable Hi-Res files and will say that they are very close to identical for me. Here’s what it boils down to:
Tidal - $5 cheaper/month, even though MQA is lossy - it sounds identical (to me) to the uncompressed Hi-res files from Qobuz. The downside is that you have to have an MQA DAC to get the full potential from MQA.
Qobuz - The biggest plus for Qobuz is that you do NOT need a specific DAC to recognize the potential of Hi-Res and It sounds ohhhh so sweet! Did I mention that they have Springsteen in Hi-Res? I’ve been quite impressed with their Hi-Res catalog.
If you have an MQA DAC, you will be just fine with Tidal. If not, I would recommend Qobuz. When all is said and done I will probably stay with Qobuz due to the fact that I prefer their Hi-Res catalog and like the fact that I can purchase the music from them as well.
