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Tidal MQA vs Qobuz hi-res

My brief experience.. for posterity.

Comparing Tidal MQA to Qobuz hi-res, you -will- hear degredation/loss in the high frequencies (violins in an orchestra etc) on MQA... assuming you have reasonably resolving equipment. For me, that’s Macbook USB to a $150 Audio Engine D1 DAC going to a $600 used Parasound A23 going to used $600 Kef LS50’s, $100 Transparent speaker cables and cheap USB and RCA cables.

The Audio Engine is surprisingly good for it’s price BTW. Over the years, trying different DACs in audio stores when I had an opportunity, I feel like you’d need to spend close to $1,000 to get something significantly better.

The A23 and LS50’s are really good too for today’s used prices. New, they would’ve been $2,500 a few years go

bataras

Showing 1 response by oldschool1948

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oldschool1948
507 posts
 
I A/B listened to Qobuz HighRes and Tidal MQA.  I didn't hear much of a difference. In some cases, a track would sound better on one than the other, but neither was a clear winner in that department.  When it came to CD quality tracks, there was no appreciable difference between either streaming service or tracks played from my Innous Zenith MKII network streamer.  I settled on Tidal because it has more of the music I like and I get a 40% military discount. 

I use Roon.  My PS Audio DirectStream DAC (DSD) renders MQA and I like the sound.  I placed a Matrix X-SPDIF 2 between the Zenith and DSD.  The Matrix does not render MQA; however, sound quality via the Matrix i2s HDMI interface is noticeably better than what I had before.

In my case, I think my choice of system components had a bigger impact on SQ than my choice of streaming service or the format of the music streamed.
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