MQA New Release: Discover newly remastered version of Linda Ronstadt’s ground-breaking + Grammy Award-winning album Simple Dreams now on TIDAL Masters
From an Audiogon discussion on a Ronstadt song from another album, "What's New",
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/mqa-dac-or-not
Some of Tidal’s MQA versions are sonic stinkers, IME. I listened to the Tidal MQA version of Linda Ronstadt’s "What’s New" last night. Oh my, the glare on her voice. The non-vocal sound of the MQA mastering is very nice indeed. I then listened to the ordinary non-MQA Tidal version and Linda’s voice was much more pleasing to my ears. This title has been one of my long-time references for detecting glare and brightness with equipment/cables. The MQA version sounds like when the VTA on my tonearm is adjusted "too high" with the vinyl version.
I am tending to agree with some others, even those with full unfolding capability, that the superiority of Tidal MQA depends on the title and the quality of the remastering, but could it be that full unfolding somehow tames these gremlins and, if so, is it sufficient to warrant investing in MQA-capable equipment?
That person does not have equipment to fully unfold MQA, another one apparantly does, but agrees:
I can definitely concur about the song "what's new" by Linda Ronstadt,the vocals on the mqa version do have such a unpleasant glare but the music is ok.The regular non mqa version of this song is fine.
My direct stream does unfold mqa,but I'm a fairly new Tidal user and still discovering.
A fun comment from earlier in the discussion:
"MQA may be DOA"