It's a bit off-topic (even if this DAC supports MQA), but:
- I'm not talking about a modified version. I should not have used "best" as there are not necessary several masters, but let's say it's the highest bit depth/sample rate they have (it can be 24/44.1, it's not necessary higher), and I'm not sure MQA said that in the sense of providing a lower version to customers, but more to keep the original master/format so it can turn into a marketing trick to justify the use of something else than WAV/FLAC
Don't forget that in 2014, Bob Stuart himself was saying that there no point to change anything in audio, that all we had we perfect. Then he goes 180°. Maybe because they lost big money in video (in fact, there's no "maybe")
- When I talked about "conversion", it's because it's what you get in most MQA tracks. They are not mastered while using MQA equipment, it's encoded after that, from the original master, and it's what make it impossible to be what the artists/engineers want you to hear. There are some cases like 2L label working with MQA encoder, but it's presented like every MQA in created like that, which is not the case at all.
Not sure this is all accurate, unless I’m misreading you. The “MQA Studio” catalog is promoted as being “approved” by the original artist/producer/engineer—per MQA allegedly the “best” or most “authentic” version of the master available. Whether that is accurate is another unsolvable problem obviously, since few artists (save the most earnest, and usually richest, like Neil Young) are objecting to their output being promoted on Tidal.
There are so many masters out there for any given album that it is impossible for me to be certain which one is “best”. Some still exist that were originally mastered for iTunes during the Loudness War, and were then updated more recently now that Apple is embracing the lossless/hi res Tidal wave. Every streaming service is vying for the “definitive” master so they can claim their catalog is superior to their competitors (other than maybe Spotify), but Tidal/MQA has gone farther than any other with their “provenance”/MQA Studio shill—who knows how many masters of any given artist have been granted “definitive” status at this point? Remastering occurs so frequently these days that the full story is never told.
As an example, I think Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” has been re-released with new masters at least twelve times, maybe more. And it has been subjected to multiple iterations of surround formats—first for laserdisc, then DVD-Audio, a DTS version, and finally Atmos. And it has been remastered a couple of times for vinyl, well after the CD era, and has been released in standard, hybrid and SHM SACD formats. There’s an MQA Studio version for Tidal, a “new” hi res lossless version on the Apple Music Store (along with an Atmos version), and a non-MQA “remaster” on Qobuz and Amazon HD. How could anyone possibly sort through all this nonsense?
Out of learned helplessness, I’ve opted to subscribe to both Qobuz and Tidal, and host both of them through Roon. I listen to versions from both platforms and make a rather capricious decision which one to add to my playlist. Even then I’ve oft revisited my decision and switched to the other one, then switch yet again when a new master is released. The whole mastering industry has become such a marketing tool that it’s hard to know which one most closely resembles the original vision of the artist. It’s become so frazzling and arbitrary that I occasionally long for the analog days when there was only one choice to make.
But I sure as hell don’t trust any streaming service that claims “provenance” for their catalog. There is no such thing as the “definitive” master—not in the digital era, anyway.