Tidal MQA vs Qobuz hi-res


My brief experience.. for posterity.

Comparing Tidal MQA to Qobuz hi-res, you -will- hear degredation/loss in the high frequencies (violins in an orchestra etc) on MQA... assuming you have reasonably resolving equipment. For me, that’s Macbook USB to a $150 Audio Engine D1 DAC going to a $600 used Parasound A23 going to used $600 Kef LS50’s, $100 Transparent speaker cables and cheap USB and RCA cables.

The Audio Engine is surprisingly good for it’s price BTW. Over the years, trying different DACs in audio stores when I had an opportunity, I feel like you’d need to spend close to $1,000 to get something significantly better.

The A23 and LS50’s are really good too for today’s used prices. New, they would’ve been $2,500 a few years go

bataras
I’m brand new to streaming. Just got Tidal and Node2i 4 days ago, and i’m in the "comparing to CDs & LPs" phase. I’m noticing a few things. The albums on Tidal are sometimes EXACTLY the same as the CD. But sometimes they are the same master, but a couple dB louder, and thus more compressed/limited. I have 3 CDs of one album that are 3 different masterings (1985,2001,2009). Tidal has the 2001 & 2009 masters available. The 2001 sounds exactly the same, but Tidal’s version of the 2009 master is about 2 dB louder than the 2009 CD.
As for MQA, it seems like the highs are a bit soft and squishy sounding. I was expecting better sounding transients from MQA, but they sound less exciting instead.
I have heard several 70-80’s rock tracks that are simply crushed. I pull out my old vinyl to A/B with Tidal, and sometimes it’s better, and sometimes it’s worse, but the new versions are always more compressed. MQA isn’t worth a damn to me if the dynamics have been squashed.
Qobuz offers different file formats to download. All that I have seen have "CD quality" (16/44.1) as an option with a few lower options (mp3s, I think).

The files you dowload at 16/44.1 will be just that, 16/44.1. However, is that really what it was originally? Is there a possibility that some of those are upconverted files?

I ask because I have seen a few somewhat obscure albums in "CD quality" while I have doubts that they ever made it to CD. I am probably just paranoid, but provenance of streaming files seems unknown at times to me.
I A/B listened to Qobuz HighRes and Tidal MQA.  I didn't hear much of a difference. In some cases, a track would sound better on one than the other, but neither was a clear winner in that department.  When it came to CD quality tracks, there was no appreciable difference between either streaming service or tracks played from my Innous Zenith MKII network streamer.  I settled on Tidal because it has more of the music I like and I get a 40% military discount. 

I use Roon.  My PS Audio DirectStream DAC (DSD) renders MQA and I like the sound.  I placed a Matrix X-SPDIF 2 between the Zenith and DSD.  The Matrix does not render MQA; however, sound quality via the Matrix i2s HDMI interface is noticeably better than what I had before.

In my case, I think my choice of system components had a bigger impact on SQ than my choice of streaming service or the format of the music streamed.