MQA....again.

I thought every audiophile owned a BlueSound product. 🤪

only a very small portion of my playlists are MQA. I might go through and note which are MQA. So I either find it in a different format or on Qobuz or I just won’t listen. I’m wondering if MQA was so hot because it gave us the abuility to listen to very High Rez on a lower bandwidth. Now internet services are so fast at home and on my portable products it really doesn’t matter. Also, Maybe this is why Tidal lowered their prices so they don’t lose every single customer. I man all of them. 
Im sure we will all survive. 

Friendly reminder facts 

1. The native sample and bit rate of the mastering session is the best quality that any product could ever be
 

2. MQA is sonically distorted and lossy.  Might be subjectively preferable distortion or might not, but it's definitely distorted.

3. MQA is not master quality. (See 1.)  MQA is not authenticated. It's almost always bulk processed. 

I wonder what audiophiles will say about the cassette tape format that is coming back. I am sure the talk will focus on how badly it sounds. 

Personally, not a lot. Cassettes probably hold a place of nostalgia for a lot of folks, me included, and bringing them back probably won't involve one company attempting to create an unnecessary, proprietary tech/means of playing them, and licensing that proprietary tech to any manufacturer who wishes to produce cassette players. 

I used to love my Nakamichi player back in the 90's; would I revisit cassettes now? Probably not. Not because I don't think they're a viable way of listening anymore; id just rather spend any spare money on my existing system. I've gone all in on streaming, and my system continues to evolve, plus I'm late 50's now and lazy. The convenience of streaming suits me down to the ground 😄

MQA is fine as a niche thing if people want it. Had it become dominant it could have negatively affected the industry - end to end systems always have issues (HDCP!) - but so what if it exists at the fringes. 

I think if there is going to be another streaming service it's going to need to be different. Having the same catalog alone doesn't make sense. 

A streaming service that had the whole catalog and then exclusive content like white glove high quality remixes you cannot get elsewhere...that would be cool.