Hello @ComputerAudiophile,
Looking at this copy of Space Oddity on Tidal, it appears to be a 16/44.1 MQA release.
For 16/44.1 MQA content, toggling between “HiFi” and “Master” in Tidal will not result in a different file being pulled from Tidal’s servers. The Tidal streaming quality setting does not take “MQA” into account, it only controls the maximum bit-depth/sample rate of the files it will pull from Tidal’s servers.
From what I can deduce from playing with the Tidal app, selecting “HiFi” and playing 16/44.1 MQA content disables the built-in MQA Core Decoder, resulting in the 16/44.1 MQA file being passed directly to the DAC.
Selecting “Master” and playing 16/44.1kHz MQA content will result in the audio being processed by the MQA Core Decoder, resulting in a 24/88.2kHz audio stream sent to the DAC.
-John