MQA?

I was first respondent here and mentioned I could hear major mqa positive difference on my reference system but not on my two secondary systems.

For context, those systems are:

Reference: Teac NT-505 (AK4493) -> MIT matrix 6 XLR balanced IC -> Audio Research DSI200 integrated amp ->MIT matrix 12 speaker cable -> Spendor D7, REL S5; Audio Art power cables. Here, MAJOR sonic MQA improvement streaming Tidal vs regular flac Tidal stream over cat7 Ethernet.

Second: Integra DTM-7 (AK4438) -> MIT Terminator 4 speaker cable -> Spendor SA1, Sunfire SDS8; WAudio power cables. Here, extremely marginal if any noticeable sonic improvement steaming mqa Tidal vs flac Tidal over WiFi.

Third: Bluesound Powernode 2 (Burr Brown 5122) -> AmazonBasics speaker cable -> NHT C-1. WAudio power cable. Here, extremely marginal if any noticeable sonic improvement steaming mqa Tidal vs flac Tidal over cat7 Ethernet cable.

So that gives hopefully some context to my “rest of system” comment. My two secondary setups are pretty modest but the source for each fully supports mqa so I can make the comparisons.

@kren0006 curious if you had the TEAC before the firmware update for MQA? Did network player have the software for MQA already and the firmware just updated the DAC?

It would be interesting if say, only the streaming side of things was MQA complaint but your DAC wasn’t if there would be a difference in sound quality. That's the point of debate right now.

However, that seems like a really nice DAC.

Hey, sorry I don’t know answer to that question re Teac dac.

i got mine and ran it awhile without the firmware update but wasn’t really focused on the question at hand, more really was just fumbling trying to get the fw updated (doing so not as easy with most modern hardware). But yeah, I really like it. 

MQA is a marketing ploy. No one needs it, but since it generates lots of profit it won’t die. There is no issue streaming hi rez files anymore. That’s the problem MQA is supposed to solve. So to continue the ploy they tell you that compressing the data and then decompressing it with their special technique somehow enhances the sound quality. It’s now better than the original. They can’t prove it, but people somehow believe it. And billions will be pocketed by the people behind MQA. Yes, I’m jealous I didn’t think of it first. 

MQA just adds distortion. The original full resolution version of any digital file (same master) always sounds better because they are lossless. MQA claims are entirely false.