This is my findings to, which is very annoying since I ditched it.
A series of articles here
I’ve been trialing Qobuz alongside TIDAL for a few days now–occasionally disabling TIDAL–and the results have been comparable in many areas; Jury still out regarding folk and Americana.
Didn’t you realise that MQA can also fold time and space?
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Ahh, love those Dune references.
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I got stuck at HHG 
Dune was too complicated
I have tons in this genre Martin and haven’t been disappointed. Pretty much everything came across in the mass conversion with Soundiiz.
The one disappointment has been there isn’t a comparable new-release browse filter in Qobuz, but the library is there.
Thanks @anon55914447. Yes, it would seem that pretty much everything came across using Soundiiz. Of the 2,953 TIDAL releases around 300 weren’t matched, but so far (I’m up to M) only 29 releases aren’t in Qobuz. I can live with this.
My concern was how well Roon Radio would work with Qobuz. So far, I think it’s fine, so will likley cancel TIDAL at the end of the month. The £90 I save this year will go toward filling the few gaps.
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Well, I’ve purged my library of MQA and disabled Tidal in Roon. Using a combination of soundiiz and roon focus, I was able to move all but a handful of obscure titles to Qobuz.
I still have about 9 months left on my Best Buy Tidal Hifi subscription deal. I had both Qobuz and Tidal and was trying to decide which way to go. Tidal has nicer desktop and mobile apps, and decent radio and discovery features that Qobuz still doesn’t have, and the Best Buy deal won me over.
But, about a month after I purchased the Tidal subscription Tidal unfortunately decided to start replacing everything with MQA. It’s not that MQA sounds “bad” or anything (usually). I just don’t want to be part of a cult that promotes and supports a proprietary and unnecessary new format that requires special software and hardware. So out it goes.
With Roon, the discovery and radio features enhance Qobuz, making me not miss those Tidal features. For mobile, I’ll just go back to JRiver synced playlsts unless Roon figures out something on that front.
I’m happy to be free of the MQA virus and enjoying listening to industry standard PCM FLAC files from Qobuz. Bonus, if there’s something really great that I want in my permanent local library, I can purchase the standard format download from Qobuz and play it back on any device using any software without any proprietary hocus-pocus voodoo or special hardware.
Now I just hope Qobuz survives.
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I hope it survives too and heads south of the equator 
It is still a bit Eurocentric along with the US
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And heads north of the 49th parallel.
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I believe that, for what it’s worth, Tidal didn’t have anything to do with this decision, but Warner music started providing the MQA versions and pulling the redbook/non-MQA content. I’ve read that there is some MQA content now surfacing on Qobuz. Tidal is certainly enabling this, but neither of these firms actually “owns” any content (except stuff they actually produce themselves). If publishers feel they can get away with it, they will start pushing content that they can control better, especially if there’s a substantial enough portion of the market that prefers it… and I think MQA is beginning to be a brand with some relevance in the mass market as “fancy” - much like SACD or BluRay were considered “fancy” by an awful lot of people who didn’t care that much about the details.
I think those people care very much about detail in music and MQA are the first people to make it accessible to them and desirable also.
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Sorry, I didn’t mean they don’t care about the details in the music, I meant the contractual details. I’ve been quite open elsewhere that I think there are some MQA recordings that I vastly prefer (to redbook), and others that I hate. Or maybe you were being funny, and I didn’t catch it because this is the Internet.
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The decision will involve contracts between the labels and Tidal, and not involve MQA (educated guess).
There is no evidence that the new file with MQA is the same version that previously was available, considering that the idea of the MQA version is to choose a preferred “best” version as master. So it doesn’t follow that the replacement prevents a before/after comparison.
You’ll have to explain the control theory you’re referring to. One CD vs another CD?
I noticed these today
It’s very much the exact same recording, one in MQA one in not. Perhaps they forgot to replace it? Or some labels aren’t replacing?
Sorry, again I’ve committed the sin of assuming people know what I’ve said elsewhere a while ago. Not fair or realistic.
I realize that before/after comparisons, and even when both FLAC and MQA versions are available to stream simultaneously is not cost if they are the same masterings. The whole pitch of MQA ought to have been that we have access to the “canonical and authoritative version”. That’s the “A” in MQA. But beyond the blue light which says “it’s real!”, there is absolutely no way to see which recording is really which. I know I’d love to see authenticated provenance and mastering data, but I don’t think that’s a mainstream desire. However, if I could look at a list of all the available recordings, and there was really structured data (like “authoritative and exhaustive discogs”) I’d be really happy. I’d even pay something monetary for that. But absent that, we are guessing what each stream is. I meant simply what I said - there are times that I vastly prefer the MQA stream to my own redbook secure rip and/or the simultaneously available redbook stream, and many more cases vice versa. Not trying to be complicated or propose a theory of action. Wish I could, but without data I can’t.
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They may not be the same. Qobuz has the same album in a 44.1/24b version and a 44.1/16b version. The non-MQA Tidal is 44.1/16b but the MQA version just says 44.1/24b FLAC. One way to check is to compare the MB file size of the Tidal non-MQA and MQA versions; if they both originated as 16b, they’ll be almost the same. If the MQA is the 24b version it will be roughly 1/3 larger.
My PCM FLAC rips and Qobuz PCM FLAC 16/44.1 streams sound great to me with my setup. They were released to the public by the labels.
The theory of action is to resist new, unnecessary, proprietary formats that require proprietary software and hardware to listen to music.
As far as mainstream acceptance, Tidal MQA has a rounding error of the streaming market, and a rounding error of the rounding error of the digital music playback market.
What they also have are investments from companies like Sprint, who are probably regretting it, famous artist panache, and a small cult following.
Thankfully, it is not sustainable.
The same rounding error applies to all high res PCM.
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