MQA is a dicey topic on this forum. It gained dominance by presenting itself as a solution to a problem that never existed—by the time we were able to stream hi-res files that required such wide bandwidth, access to the storage media required had already become widely accessible to both streaming sources and end users, and the availability of high speed internet and cellular had also become democratized.
I don’t want to rehash it on this review forum, but a lossy format that purports to sound “better” than its lossless equivalents, particularly one that comes at a hefty price tag to both manufacturers and consumers, is fairly antithetical to the group consciousness on here. I still prefer gear that has MQA capability, only because Tidal has a large catalog of some of the highest quality masters of albums I love, some of which are proprietary.
But I’m not at all happy about the stronghold tactics MQA has managed to infiltrate into all aspects of the consumer audio supply chain, nor am I pleased at the surcharges I must pay as a result.
And by the way, Stereophile’s leading guru was one of the earliest champions of this technology, calling it a revolution in audio science and helping convert countless others into adopting its alleged assets. Make of that what you will…