MQA?

IMO all depends on quality level of rest of your system. 

Speaking from experience with full mqa across 3 systems, it is only my main system where I can appreciate the sonic difference of mqa. But the difference on that system is substantial and well worth price of admission for me. I gravitate to mqa albums there because noticeably improved quality. 

But it on my second and third music systems (roughly $3k and $1k total each) I can’t necessarily hear the mqa difference. 

That’s not to say results would be same for all systems in those price ranges, but just my experience with my stuff. 

Hey, sorry I don’t know answer to that question re Teac dac.

i got mine and ran it awhile without the firmware update but wasn’t really focused on the question at hand, more really was just fumbling trying to get the fw updated (doing so not as easy with most modern hardware). But yeah, I really like it. 

I was first respondent here and mentioned I could hear major mqa positive difference on my reference system but not on my two secondary systems.

For context, those systems are:

Reference: Teac NT-505 (AK4493) -> MIT matrix 6 XLR balanced IC -> Audio Research DSI200 integrated amp ->MIT matrix 12 speaker cable -> Spendor D7, REL S5; Audio Art power cables. Here, MAJOR sonic MQA improvement streaming Tidal vs regular flac Tidal stream over cat7 Ethernet.

Second: Integra DTM-7 (AK4438) -> MIT Terminator 4 speaker cable -> Spendor SA1, Sunfire SDS8; WAudio power cables. Here, extremely marginal if any noticeable sonic improvement steaming mqa Tidal vs flac Tidal over WiFi.

Third: Bluesound Powernode 2 (Burr Brown 5122) -> AmazonBasics speaker cable -> NHT C-1. WAudio power cable. Here, extremely marginal if any noticeable sonic improvement steaming mqa Tidal vs flac Tidal over cat7 Ethernet cable.

So that gives hopefully some context to my “rest of system” comment. My two secondary setups are pretty modest but the source for each fully supports mqa so I can make the comparisons.

I confess I have no idea whether MQA itself is good or bad, but my only music source on all of my systems is Tidal streaming, and so therefore the only way I can hear music above FLAC quality is via Tidal Masters which necessarily involves MQA. 

So I guess technically I should amend my comments in this thread that what really sounds good to me on my reference system is Tidal Masters via MQA, whether or not the MQA itself plays a positive or negative role in the music rendering.  Either way, definitely better than straight up Tidal 16/44 flac for me on my main system.