Next Best Upgrade for Tidal MQA?

Change to Qobuz.  Hi-res sounds better than MQA.

@cycles2 thanks for a completely unhelpful comment based entirely on your subjective view that, regardless of your opinion, is non-responsive to my thread...

I've run my KEF LS50 speakers off some similar gear with Tidal MQA as a primary source. I still have my Mytek Liberty DAC. I traded in my Mytek Brooklyn for a Manhattan I. The upgrade differences in those three DACs was quite a bit. I also upgraded my A21 to a JC5, which was a noticable but smaller difference.

I agree with several others here. The weak point in the chain is the AVR and you should remove it from the signal chain. Any preamp with an HT bypass probably meets what you want. Note that a Brooklyn Bridge if you like the Mytek sound and to keep MQA ability would not only be an upgrade for the DAC portion compared to a Liberty, but it is also a competent preamp. It has both a bypass mode and a good sounding analog volume control option which the Liberty lacks. So you would not need to purchase a separate preamp. I took that route myself and was quite happy with the decision.

I also sometimes use subwoofers with the KEFs. If you want to integrate those for stereo listening better, then you can add some room control ability which has also been suggested. But that's a completely different rabit hole...

I am not sure a tube preamp fits your request for a 'clearer' sound. A tube preamp creates distortion by producing harmonics. We generally consider even harmonics as pleasant sounding. So if you are looking for 'warmth' then that's a good description of tubes. If you are looking for 'clean' then tubes may be the wrong route. You gotta just go listen to some preamps and get an idea of what you want. Or buy a Schiit Freya +, it is pretty cheap and has tubes, solid state, and passive modes so you can switch between all three methods. "Bypass" would be achieved by going passive and turning the volume up all the way.

Best of luck.

@dfansler - thank you very much for the response!

The Brooklyn Bridge was on my list already as an alternative and would make a lot of sense.  This tube preamp concept is new to me and is intriguing.  I didn’t articulate very well what I’m hoping to achieve - I suppose “clearer” is a bad description.  I remember demoing (for fun) some Tannoy Kingdoms that were $80K backed by probably $150K in electronics (I forget now the specifics).  When the dealer played some sample Digital tracks, listening with my eyes closed, I could have honestly said the singer was in the room. It was astonishing.  I want to continue to build toward that experience. The voice was solid, hovering stable in the room, natural, believable...

If a tube preamp gets me a step closer to that, I’m all in.

I have apogee duetta 2 speakers, a krell amp and a bluesound node 2, I used a marantz sr7007 for a preamp and then an adcom preamp both sounded really bad harsh and not detailed. I bought a tube preamp and now I have exactly what you described, the sound is clearer more detailed and voices have a more human sound to them.