Hi Wim, congrats on purchasing Roon after all…! So now you own the Matrix Element-X and Roon, just like I do. GREAT.
Regarding MQA vs PCM, I disagree with you, since it sounds better than PCM in my current and former system. I also prefer MQA when I listen to it via my HiFiman 400i planar headphones and the iFi nano black, playing direct from my laptop, passing Audioquest jitterbug.
It’s OK that you have your preference, others clearly prefer MQA, not only 24 bit 88.2 → 352.8 but also 16 bit 44.1 MQA which is simply bliss, some albums are a large improvement compared to the PCM version.
This is not unique, some recording and mastering engineers like Peter McGrath testified this already years ago. I’ve met him twice in The Hague during demonstrations of the Wilson Audio Loudspeakers. I asked him what he thinks of MQA and he confirmed the testimionial which is written in the Stereophile article. The improvement of his personally recorded PCM files was overwhelming and even emotional for him. Such contacts with persons who are deeply involved into the music and produced and know the original master tape for years, are much more worth than anything else. I hope to be able to witness an MQA encoding process somewhere in the future, this would be the ultimate experience.
An example: a few years back Peter had sent me a live recording he had made with his Joe Grado omni mics of the Belcea String Quartet’s performance of Twisted Blues , a work by Mark-Anthony Turnage based on “Stairway to Heaven.” I love this recording, but it had taken me several plays to decipher the modern scoring, to become comfortable with the performance. When Peter played the same file in the Sunny room, it sounded just as I expected, somewhat opaque, somewhat raw, and somewhat intimidating. When Peter then played the MQA version, my jaw dropped—this was not the recording with which I was familiar. This was now a live string quartet playing in front of me. The music made instant sense in a way that it had taken me a long time to comprehend from the PCM original.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-laas