My corn popping curiosity is enjoying the thread, but to be honest my ears are fine with an AudiFi, 4Stream and Apple Music Lossless. My MidFi system is noise tweaked and cabled well enough to be resolving and I feel I can hear the improvements at 24 or 44…but probably not beyond. FWIW I’m thinking the posters here making the best points are the ones suggesting there is a point in home audio where ROI is not a valid consumer quality claim. We can only be protected against ourselves so far. If MQA is totally bogus, the market may or may not deliver its own justice…as some snake oil has survived for decades.
Tidal class-action
MQA declared bankruptcy. I smell the fear of a class action lawsuit against Tidal. We could do that. Tidal has 8 million subscribers, we don't know how many or how long they all were paying double by subscribing to the 'nobody can prove Tidal has any tracks higher than 44.1khz' plan. They probably have lots of people on phones who haven't even heard of MQA who trust them and wanted the one that sounds better. They're right not to have to listen to any talk about MQA if they want the plan that sounds better.
MQA means you can't prove the file is an original copy or not. That Beethoven track you like it says is 192 could actually be Dua Lipa at 11khz.
The bankruptcy move was probably to protect themselves from Tidal, who is the receiver of people's funds.