Why is everyone so down on MQA?

Well Dolby is licenced and complex. Who in their right mind would ... 

Forget it, this is getting silly.

As I recall Tidal upsampled some redbook with mqa and that was not always well received ( google Neil Young and Tidal..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the other hand I did bought some excellent mqa cds like the Hoff Ensemble, Polarity!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To conclude, it is as always down to implementation!

 

 

 

In my opinion 😁

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally, I do not really care if the MQA concept is good or not, I just want to have the best listening experience possible. 

Therefore, here's my thoughts on MQA (I have a non-MQA Border Patrol Se-i Dac and my Zen Stream / S Booster combo is doing the first unfolding) as I compare both for the last month : 

MQA Tidal files seems more 'dense', details are a bit more 'in your face'.

Red Book Tidal : More air between instruments and perhaps more natural.

At first glance / for the first few minutes, the MQA sound is more attractive, more spectacular but after some time, I think I prefer the Red book files (more realistic / natural to my years). 

I do not know if I would conclude the same with a MQA Dac but I think I will drop HI-Fi+ as most of the time, I prefer Red book files. Of course, YMMV.

PS : Qobuz is not available in Canada

 

 

 

Reasons for me:

1. Even Spotify Premium sounds better to my ears.

2. Qobuz definitely sounds better.

3. MQA is a proprietary format that would be a tax on the music industry if its creators had managed to get it established as a standard.

4. I think its original reason for existence of being able to compress files so they can be send with less internet bandwidth is generally not a viable pain point anymore.

My observations on MQA:

1. I’ve heard it thru a couple of different DACs.  Until I heard it thru a dCS Bartok, I didn’t think MQA amounted to much.  I generally preferred high bit rate PCM on Qobuz.  But the Bartok changed my mind.  I now generally prefer the MQA versions on Tidal. I asked my dealer about this, and he said that dCS got the source code to the MQA encoders and analyzed it to produce their implementation.  They even sent fixes back to MQA for bugs they found.  Whatever they did, it works for my ears.  I’m sure there are other excellent MQA implementations out there, but dCS is the one I know.

2.  I had the chance to ask Peter McGrath, a well regarded recoding engineer who now works for Wilson Audio, what he thought about MQA.  He response was unequivocally positive, a definite improvement over PCM, not to mention analog.  
 

3. Reading the responses on Audiogon, I’m guessing that I am in the minority.  The technical aspects of MQA are beyond me, but I’m going to trust my ears.