erik_squires
I heard it more as a softening of transients and removing of space.
I agree with Erik. I more recently have my Bluesound Vault 2 (with HiFi Tidal subscription) connected to an external, non-MQA, DAC. However, prior to that I had been using the MQA compatible internal DAC for some time. I compared quite a few of the same tunes in CD vs MQA quality. Consistently I found that the MQA versions deflated the soundstage. Less air and less space between images. I also found that the dynamics suffered as well. Less "pop" with MQA. The music kinda lost its moxie.
Occasionally I preferred the MQA version of a song if the recording was especially hard/harsh. MQA seemed to be more forgiving with these recordings and "smoothed" them out somewhat.
However, of course, much of this is dependent upon individual systems. Synergy is king. And also, the sound that one person finds "good" may not be exactly the same as the next listener. I’m a bit disappointed that many posters are using generic terms like "good", "better", "worse", etc. to make their points without being more specific about the actual sonic differences that they are hearing between MQA and other formats....
Happy listening all!