MQA thoughts

I have a TEAC 701T and a Berkeley Reference MK II MQA DAC and I have bought 18 MQA CDs (I just counted them) to test the format. Most of them sound pretty much identical to the regular CD. An example is Rapture by Anita Baker. This is a great sounding CD and the MQA version sounds very close if not identical. On the other hand I tried a couple of Doobie Brothers titles and OMG, what a difference. The MQA versions sound clearer, more detailed, and overall much better than the CDs. I went back and bought all of the Doobie MQAs I could find.

I'm sure that the sound of the Doobie MQAs was due to remastering but they are the best sounding versions I have. I also have most of these tities on CD, SACD, and vinyl and the MQAs are absolutely superior.

My take is that the MQA format itself is very close to the original CD in SQ but sometimes you can get a remaster than sounds clearly better.

MQA is the Beta Max of the 70's/80's and we all know how that turned out...VHS. These digital formats seem to be changing (albeit for the better) all the time . 

Some people thought Betamax was the better format although VHS won out because of the longer recording time. See how that works?

I don’t bother chasing or rejecting MQA, I simply judge a DAC on non-MQA Sonics within budget. Upon playback including streaming, I simply choose the best Sonics version available.

I had beta because it was better. I had sacd because it was better. I used MQA with tidal because it was better. The same reason why some think analog is better (tt) than digital. 
The biggest complaint about all the above was that people didn’t want to repurchase what they already had. It was never about the better quality product, which beta/sacd was clearly superior), it was always about $$$. Same goes for anything you buy today. Why do most people buy a Toyota or Nissan instead of the truly better car Porsche? $$$$!! A lot of analog loving audiophiles have 4-5 digits invested in analog, then they spend $1000 on digital and complain why their digital setup doesn’t sound as good as vinyl. I see this in reviewers (1 particular reviewer does this at stereophile), but I also see it here and in other forums.

Most people don’t want to buy the best or better quality item because they don’t want to spend the $$$$.