Why is everyone so down on MQA?

My observations on MQA:

1. I’ve heard it thru a couple of different DACs.  Until I heard it thru a dCS Bartok, I didn’t think MQA amounted to much.  I generally preferred high bit rate PCM on Qobuz.  But the Bartok changed my mind.  I now generally prefer the MQA versions on Tidal. I asked my dealer about this, and he said that dCS got the source code to the MQA encoders and analyzed it to produce their implementation.  They even sent fixes back to MQA for bugs they found.  Whatever they did, it works for my ears.  I’m sure there are other excellent MQA implementations out there, but dCS is the one I know.

2.  I had the chance to ask Peter McGrath, a well regarded recoding engineer who now works for Wilson Audio, what he thought about MQA.  He response was unequivocally positive, a definite improvement over PCM, not to mention analog.  
 

3. Reading the responses on Audiogon, I’m guessing that I am in the minority.  The technical aspects of MQA are beyond me, but I’m going to trust my ears.

Speaking of a solution in search of a problem, one oddball thing that has gotten much better over the past 15 years is Redbook playback.  The truly great DACs have narrowed the field a great deal between Redbook and 96/24 or better.   If yo have a DAC that only plays hi rez well switch.

This also means, again, MQA isn't that great if your DAC is already really good at low res.

Personally, I love MQA. My system is about as revealing as any out there, and there is such a clear and obvious difference between MQA and standard 44.1 that I’m surprised by the debate. No debate in this house. I use the Aurender W20Se and Berkeley Ref Alpha 3. Sure, most of the time my high res files may be a little more nuanced but compared to standard, MQA is preferred 8/10 times.

@jhconnor 

+1 Like many of these discussions, it depends on the equipment you own.

Is MQA still a thing? Have not heard much about it in several years. Like most, bandwidth for streaming is not an issue and if one downloads "hi-res" tracks then transmission is not an issue either. 

Agree it tries to sole a problem than does not exist. MQA did seem to be a stealth form of copy protection and this whole concept of being "tuned" to individual DACs where manufactures had to submit their products to be "officially" MQA compatible was pure silliness. In some ways, similar to HDCD and to some extent SACD. I will l say the original Pacific Microsonics HDCD encoder / ADC/ DAC used in mastering studios was a very nice sounding bit of kit in it's day.

MQA is a not something I would ever consider for my music playback.