What a format sounds like (assuming it is not grossly reducing data… like MP3 is very large the result of the hardware that is used to interpret it. MQA was a great idea, with lots of things going for it that was too late to market. It can sound great, and would have been a great if introduced 10 years ago.
Top level companies need to embrace new standards in technology. I have heard MQA on a Berkeley Reference Alpha 3 in my system. It sounded great. I did not do a detailed comparison. But I seriously doubt there was much if any difference in the sound quality with a red book file.
I don’t see any reason to fault Berkeley. If you use Tidal, that was what much of their library was in.