I’m afraid I haven’t heard the 24/96 (non MQA) version.
Regarding whether this is a valid comparison given that the masters may not have been the same, this is a good point, but I believe there are a couple of higher level factors at work:
- Of the MQA albums I’ve heard on my own system , and demo’d on others, there are recurring improvements I’ve heard. I won’t list them as they’ve been discussed (and debated) ad-infinitum.
- Presumably, the master used for the MQA is the master that the artists choose for the MQA rendition (kind of a definitional thing).
Most importantly, the only thing that really matters is the music, and the MQA version of this album is glorious! It makes the CD version sound broken.