Meridian MQA

[Chris Marshall]

It's been 6 months since the last post on this thread so I felt it's time to revive it. Not because I started it and I need my ego stroked but because I'm interested to read your thoughts about whether or not you listen to MQA now it's freely available on Tidal. And does it make a difference in your view?

I've got a sneaky suspicion that most of you don't seek out specific MQA albums on Tidal otherwise there would be much more written about it. So is MQA a red herring? (what does that mean anyway?)

I have an MQA dac (explorer 2) for my desktop system and also for travelling (dragonfly red) and have found myself drifting to MQA versions where available.  They mostly seem to be based on good masters and I'm confident even through these less resolving systems that the end result is a step over typical tidal cd quality.

I'm using Roon so have no decoding in my main system and haven't heard anything conclusive either way.

Once the mastering is the same, CD, hi-res and MQA differences seem pretty subtle to me.

Hopefully one of Roon or Devialet will sort out decoding soon and I can make a better judgement.