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Witchdoctor,please have your own comments and opinions be the majority of the posts, not just links to other forums or articles. It will garner much more discussion if you can provide personal feedback. Let's not make this thread another MQA ad.IMHO, I find it quite unique that MQA receives soooo much defensive positioning, rather than letting the market decide, as they have with other compression or codec inventions. Any demos I've gotten (and two of them were driven by Bob Stuart himself) I was less than impressed with any a/b comparisons, which were done only after significant prodding by the audience. But these demos were in show conditions, which are notoriously poor environments.Don't get me wrong; no one here is more of a hirez fanatic than moi, so I am open to anything that will allow easier playback or more incentive for labels to produce hirez sources. I'm just not sure MQA's value prop is solid enough for the everyman audio lover.
Agree totally with Ted. Why must there be such a war of words between proponents an opponents of MQA. Ultimately the market place will determine it's value to listeners. I am curious about it and certainly will factor MQA compatibility into my decision to buy a Dac/streaming device but MQA will not likely be the sole driving force. There is room for both MQA and non-MQA options in our hobby....it's just another choice. Tubes, SS, vinyl, digital, cables and a myriad of other choices and mixtures happily coexist. There is no reason IMO that MQA can't coexist with other forms of digital playback. I do understand the criticism of MQA yet I am intrigued by it...enough so that I am anxious to listen for myself. I will at least keep and open mind and will make attempts to listen and compare MQA files...despite Witchdoctor's approach of bludgeoning us with MQA until we succumb, not because of it.
But to even do that comparison fully you first need an MQA decoder in your dac, then a Tidal subscription with Master. And then I would like to understand if the sources are true hirez or just upsampled by the labels, etc etc. White gloves can get pretty dirty quickly.
"I'll take that as a compliment to my articulate wordsmithing though so thank you"Take it however you wish but it was not a compliment.
Am I the only member on AC that has even compared a HIFI track with a MASTERS track via Tidal?
No, you are not alone I've had my Bluesound Node 2 for over a year now and have listened extensively to Tidal Masters since the Bluesound MQA upgrade was released. I like it. BTW, I purchased my Node 2 long before they announced MQA compatibility was coming to the platform so it was a nice free upgrade. In my experience not every MQA file sounds significantly better than the non-MQA file but for the most part the difference is easily heard. Did I mention I like it? FWIW, Bluesound products max out at 24/192 so your getting a second (hardware) unfold via analog out. I believe a full MQA unfold to 376.4 or 384 is possible via coax out to a DAC like the Mytek Brooklyn, for example.
The app, while not perfect, is a pleasure to use. Bluesound is very attentive to their customers and continues to tweak it. It's come a long way in the past year, as has their software in general.
Need to bin this one too.
