I would like to stress the fact that I heard the lossy nature of MQA only when critically comparing a modern classical recording involving the piano, an instrument particularly sensitive to reproduction imperfections. When listening to rock or electronic music I didn't hear any problems w/ MQA. It's like a lower resolution photo with some HDR, resulting in the ultimately pleasing experience. Good mp3 doesn't sound all that bad either... Lossy formats are good for the streaming services in lowering their bandwidth costs. What annoys me is how misleading the name "Master Quality" is -- for a lossy format.
MQA and classical music
While I still had an active Tidal subscription a few weeks ago I was able to A/B Tidal's MQA vs Qobuz's 24/96 on a great new recording of Diana Tishchenko "Strangers in Paradise." About 2:54 into the 1st piece the difference can be heard when concentrating on the piano part. The HiRes sounds clean and sharp while the MQA becomes "watery" as if a slight pedal was used. This reminded me about an earlier experience with mp3, which I had used to rip some piano music to conserve disk space a few years back. I had no idea at the time that a lossy format like mp3 would affect piano music negatively. I have since re-ripped all my piano CDs to FLAC. 5 times more space taken, but hey, I happen to really care about sonic nuances.
The recent experience reminded me that MQA, like mp3, is lossy. Quoting from TechRadar: "In hi-res competitor format DSD is 306MB while the MQA file is just 40MB. This compares with 73MB for the 24-bit/96kHz FLAC file and 142MB for the 24-bit/192kHz version." Thus MQA file size is just about 54% of HiRes FLAC size; there is no going around information theory: less information is less information. And for some music, definitely not all, it can be heard.
Initially, when I started comparing streaming services in October 2019, I thought MQA was some great new music format; "Master Quality Authenticated" is a great name! It invokes associations with master tapes and mastering, and "authenticated" I took to mean something like "guaranteed." That's an effectively misleading naming. Wikipedia has a good article on MQA. I can now understand why some DAC companies like Chord, RME, Schiit, and likely more, will not support MQA. More popular brands like Bluesound and Fiio, do support MQA, as there is popular demand for native decoding of the format. If we spend thousands on dacs/amps/speakers/cables and discuss the tiniest sonic nuances that upgrades of them make, then digital format differences should not be overlooked either.
The recent experience reminded me that MQA, like mp3, is lossy. Quoting from TechRadar: "In hi-res competitor format DSD is 306MB while the MQA file is just 40MB. This compares with 73MB for the 24-bit/96kHz FLAC file and 142MB for the 24-bit/192kHz version." Thus MQA file size is just about 54% of HiRes FLAC size; there is no going around information theory: less information is less information. And for some music, definitely not all, it can be heard.
Initially, when I started comparing streaming services in October 2019, I thought MQA was some great new music format; "Master Quality Authenticated" is a great name! It invokes associations with master tapes and mastering, and "authenticated" I took to mean something like "guaranteed." That's an effectively misleading naming. Wikipedia has a good article on MQA. I can now understand why some DAC companies like Chord, RME, Schiit, and likely more, will not support MQA. More popular brands like Bluesound and Fiio, do support MQA, as there is popular demand for native decoding of the format. If we spend thousands on dacs/amps/speakers/cables and discuss the tiniest sonic nuances that upgrades of them make, then digital format differences should not be overlooked either.