Who’s Lisa?
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you only get to know upon the 3rd unfold.
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Another stupid question that just came to my mind!
But it’s also only theoretical.
We have said that a Dac without MQA support causes noise floor in the worst case.
Which can certainly also happen with less good implementations.
Is it different with a Dac that supports MQA?
Surely there are people out there who have bought a Dac with MQA support and previously had one without MQA.
Have you noticed a difference?
If so, please describe your experiences.
What has changed.
What you like acoustically better with or without MQA.
It could be that the MQA implementation of the Dac is slightly different than with a Dac without MQA and could possibly be the explanation for the noise floor without MQA.
For me personally, it is clear that I will not buy a Dac because of MQA unless it would offer itself.
Otherwise it is of no interest to me.
Also because I’m not sure if I want what the advertising promises.
As @a_jedi already wrote, it would be really unfortunate if Tidal only offered MQA and no hi-res files.
And also deliberately creates two camps in terms of marketing.
That would be unfortunate for you.
And obviously pursue something that only arrives later on the community side.
The shot could also possibly backfire.
On the other hand, if you look at the streaming story.
Spotify set a trend back then that was unsurpassed.
When Tidal came along, they created their own clientele somewhere with a lot of intensive work, especially for audiophiles.
It could be that if you look at where Quboz was last year and where they are now, that they may have made a secret or partnership deal with Tidal.
Because Quboz has suddenly improved in quality and the number of songs has gone up steeply.
I mean back when I was subscribing to it they were just at 20-30 million songs and suddenly they can offer double that.
It would also be speculated that through the partnership one platform offers MQA files while the other offers Hi-Res files.
If so, it would at least have been appropriate to inform the customers instead of advertising how great the new format is, which could possibly lead to complications in the audio chain.
As written, this would have been purely my own assumption, without wanting to hate stream providers.
I just have to see how I can copy my Tidal playlist over to Quboz to experience my own impressions.
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I was a long time TIdal user and current Qobuz user.
I prefer Qobuz before the deep dives into the quality of MQA.
IMO, here in the states…Qobuz should be your de facto lossless choice for streaming.
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I recently moved over to Amazon HD from Tidal. I was able to transfer a majority of albums over surprisingly. I had maybe 2 albums and like maybe 1 or 2 songs unavailable; Santana-Caravansarai, Judas Priest- Sad Wings of Destiny, and Denise Kings rendition of Besame Mucho. I had a lot of issues with Tidal Masters especially stuff like Eric Clapton and CREAM for some reason. I’m very pleased with Amazon HD so far and will try Qobuz once it becomes available in Canada.
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I always felt like the Tidal Masters were off a bit, but assumed it was just what high quality mastering sounded like. As a new audio hobbyist I was not a fan of the sound of most of the masters vs the Hifi tracks offered by Tidal. Once I heard that MQA was not truthful on the whole lossy lossless stuff I felt this is why I had trouble with the Masters tracks, which in turn led me to try the competition. So far I am happy to pay half the monthly price for a bigger library and identical if not better* sound quality.
*By better I mean that I have not had the same off putting sound characteristics that some of the Tidal masters gave me. It could be that I’m not a fan of Eric Clapton, but looking back on the decision to switch regardless of reason. I see no point of going back to tidal for twice the price at this point.
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I did not MQA her! I did naaaaat!
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Ive had a similar reaction too. This forum has been pretty great with how civilized and concise it is. Debate and discussion are fantastic. Ive always viewed being emotional and irrational to be counter productive in a debate. It almost concedes the point when someone decides to turn to needless abuse and name calling. I am more than happy to admit when my argument is flawed, but all I usually ask is to show me how I was wrong and what led me to my initial stance.
TLDR; This forum is fun and full of cool people doing cool stuff with other cool people.
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Just wanna say that there are no stupid questions here 
There are lots of people here who really enjoy providing information and answers, myself included. Unfortunately I dont have the answers you seek currently, but now that the question is out there I’m sure someone in this lovely community could provide some information. Keep asking questions!
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I spent like a week ripping all my CDs to flac. I want to do it again as i dont remember the settings and i want to make real real sure its the best it can be… But i dont think i have the time. And to be honest most of that music was not recorded great and many cds have been scratched from being 2nd hand or used by family. Going forward ill probably avoid cd purchases and just download the hq flac albums. This leads to my upcoming post about building a nas, how should i actually do that, and all the things that go with it since i have so much just stacked on drives.
Back to mqa, the target there was always moved. I believe it used to represent itself as lossless but that may no longer be its slogan. Since its inception there has been people researching it and poking holes in what it represents so this video is nothing new. A lot of it boils down to we tested as much as we can and tests show its a bit bs, mqa knows the truth but is hiding it as much as possible. Having mqa versions of everything and replacing the normal stuff is the final nail for me. Its more cloudiness in an industry of snakeoil. If you dont agree then why are there so many sites and yt channels named after “honest” or “true” reviews
Tbh the open sourced free formats almost always win out so ill stick to those until there is another revelation and that is refined.
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Ultimately, what is the point of MQA? What problem does it solve or portend to solve? I really don’t get what the benefit (or advertised benefit) is.
If people like how it sounds, that’s cool. But it should then be called and/or sold as an “audio augmentation” algorithm. And each can decide for themselves if they like how it sounds.
But otherwise, what’s its reason for existing?
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I agree and this is what i was hinting at. A bit of aint broke dont fix or dont bother until a significant step forward is made.
Lets say mqa took the “master”, encoded each channel/track/instrument of a song to its own separate digital line then combined those all into its own compact digital file, say 1 flac. Then on decode it used that one file but decoded each line separate before reconstructing the entire composition for playback… Then maybe you have something different and possibly better.
But right now you have them taking your origami crane, undoing the work, reorigamiing it with extra folds, then presenting it as better and more accurate to what the studio intended
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And that’s the marketing. When I first got Tidal I thought that they were lovingly mastering each and every MQA labeled album. 
that’s a good one.
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A video from Hans about MQA
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He carefully avoids discussing licensing, honesty and marketing crap and just talks about listening tests and Meridian’s right to earn back some of their investment.
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At the end of the day being an audiophile is just that…what you perceive as being sonically right for you is right for you, no graph, marketing, snake oil, smoke and mirrors is going to change that…no one forces you to subscribe to or buy into anything…If you’re down with MQA then cool if not then that’s cool too 
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My primary issue with the MQA model is charging a license fee to manufacturers.
That means that any consumer than buys an MQA enabled DAC is paying for it.
Tidal’s popularity has pretty much forced manufacturers to add it to be competitive.
And of course a lot of that popularity stems from the marketing and in some cases (lossless) misinformation.
So we all end up paying for it.
There was actually something I saw on another forum, that suggested that they were also pressuring manufacturers to always use the MQA linear filter whether decoding MQA or not, because DAC’s have to mute the output to swap filters and users didn’t like that.
That would be terrible if it’s true, minimum phase filters are IMO superior.
In general though I do agree that if you want to actually assess MQA, (once you get past it not being lossless) you do it by listening to it, and deciding if you like it.
I just want there to continue to be an alternative (I use Qobuz), because I was not impressed when I listened to it.
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stop with your reasonable reasonableness! we’re trying to have arguments here! 
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