The best part about MQA bankruptcy..

Nobody is going to sell their 10k dac they’re impressed with to try mqa.

MQA is the wrong format to care about. It says it folds sample data into fewer samples to take less space, then the secret way unfolds them back, and won’t let you encode it, only decode it, or else you might just find out Tidal actually doesn’t have any original higher than 44.1 res files. They didn’t think people would be able to know the difference true higher res streaming would make that way. And you still don’t. If you are using Tidal right now, and the track is supposed to be higher res, you don’t know what it should sound like if it were not mqa

SACD is not dead, it prospers as even higher bitrate dsd files.  They're up to dsd256, up from the original 64, so far.  There's probably higher already, my dac can do 512.

Beta-VHS…..

I'm struggling to comprehend how hickamore claims it is "Unlistenable".

That statement is Incomprehensible and I can clearly see an unhealthy bias.

Pulled out a treasure trove of CD-Rs that were recordings of live concerts in peoples homes. Pioneer BDP-09fd playing into Devialet Expert Pro 220 (this time as preamp (not DAC) then out to tube amp. I love Qobuz, and for certain music Apple Music. Great sound quality, BUT, not on the level of what i heard on the CD-R. The sense of palpability, music and soundstage extending all over, was just greater and more easily produced with the CD. There is also another level of resolution, even though Qobuz generally sounds great.

My feeling is that streaming services equals xcllnt sound and super convenience.

CD equals even better sound with a bit less convenience because the library is limited..

Vinyl equals the possibility of the state of the art sound, but with a good deal of inconvenience, primarily because it can be a bit of a pain in the arse to keep the deck, tonearm, cartidge and LPs in optimal playing condition.

Feel free to correct me if I am off base.

4afsanakhan:

Have you tried to equal cd with uncompressed files on another source?  It's not easy, because sources probably only get noisier and more complex after a cd reader.  If you can get it going, more confidence about the reading than scratchable disks, better playlists, and then higher res await.  But good luck keeping it that quiet.