This isn’t a game of ‘show me yours, and I’ll show you mine’!
You made a claim about batch-processing of PCM files into MQA, by Tidal. I’m not aware that situation exists.
If you have evidence to the contrary, back up your ‘claim’ and justify your claim please.
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Of course it is a game of ‘show me yours, and I’ll show you mine’ - that’s exactly what proprietary-hide-behind-NDA software is about!
Yes, MQA files are batch processes from PCM into MQA - that’s how software works. There are now over 10,000 tracks of MQA on Tidal, with more (I don’t know the exact number) be added every day.
Back to what Erik is asserting, that MQA has something to do with the Hi-Res-Gate, how? This fraud was uncovered by consumers and “fixed” when it was widely reported. The Hi Res sellers are now more careful now, as our lables. All this happened before MQA. It’s another conflation with MQA marketing…
Stop trying to deflect and change the subject.
As I have already requested, please provide clear evidence that Tidal ‘batch processes PCM to MQA’, as you seem to assert.
With a lack of any such evidence, your claim is spurious, and false. It’s as simple as that.
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No, it’s true. That’s how software works. MQA is just software, an encoding. All this is self evident, it’s fact.
edit: explain your notion. How do you believe a PCM file gets encoded to an MQA file? What do you believe software is, and what a computer/digital device is and how it works?
It’s only true, with evidence.
Where exactly is your evidence that Tidal ‘batch processes PCM into MQA’? Where? Show us? Enlighten us. Prove your assertion is correct. Share a document. Share a link.
We’re all waiting…
The evidence is that there MQA exists…is yours a metaphysical argument? Have you played MQA from Tidal? It exists, I assure you - how do you believe software “comes into existence”? 
We all know how MQA files/music is produced. That’s not the issue here.
The issue is, you have categorically claimed that there is:
So show us the evidence that this indeed happens! It’s a simple request really.
I wouldn’t trust @crenca on this. He’s a known MQA critic.
I would, however, trust Mike Jbara.
In his own words: “The MQA [encoding] tools were developed with the ability to allow batch encoding in today’s digital supply chain.”
You could also take it from Jason Serinus, a man known for his deep love and understanding of all things digital, and whose copy/paste abilities are unimpugnable: "From Michael Nash, EVP, Digital Strategy [at UMG] “We have tens of thousands of songs available in Hi-Resolution Audio, with a near-term goal of seeing that rise to more than 100,000 tracks. MQA has already begun the process of encoding those songs and providing them to services that license their platform.” - doesn’t exactly sound like a very careful process to me, closer to lame -V0 umg_catalog.wav umg_catalog_mqa.mp3, but, hey, to each their own.
You could also listen to Bob and Mike’s favourite analyst / fanboy, who informed the world that “MQA offers a cloud service so the studios can batch process files that way.”.
I also seem to recall that there were a few comments by mixing engineers who’d had MQA versions of their work appear without having been consulted beforehand, early on. Can’t find 'em though, might’ve been on one of the longer threads on Computer Audiophile.
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“We all know how MQA files/music is produced. That’s not the issue here…So show us the evidence that this indeed happens! It’s a simple request really.”
Those two sentences don’t add up. How do you think an MQA file is “produced”? It’s software. 10,000 + albums (you can use Google to find various spreadsheets of them), dozens added every day = massive batch processing.
Talk to your favorite IT support if you want to know more about how software and computers work.
Thanks for this. Some sense, at last 
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They don’t ‘make sense’ because you have deliberately truncated my quotes. Hence, that’s why that doesn’t indeed make sense.
[Moderated]
Much to my chagrin, it does happen… 
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On the one hand you say you “… all know how MQA files/music is produced”, on the other hand you want me to provide you with basic evidence of how software and digital works.
The “English” that is confusing is the MQA marketing speak thrown into a basic ignorance of how digital works. You probably thought that there was something to “end to end”, white glove treatment of the MQA sells narrative…nope.
Thanks for this. And trust me, I DON’T 
Does anyone…? 
It’s not about trust or the man - that’s what MQA is about, the audiophile sells game.
It’s about facts.
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As seen, not all MQA releases are treated the same. Some are given “white glove treatment” which takes maybe a year; others are given a remaster proven by comparison to non-MQA releases - Donald Fagan’s Night Fly is an example (not sure how long remasters take) and still others seem to be the same mastering as other existing releases just in the MQA fold.
However they are produced, the final files are run through a conversion process that can probably be batched.
There are some recordings which are being given the “white glove” treatment, you can read about the lastest project here: MQA The last page is the timeline, I think it was 8 or 9 months from true working on the tapes to final production.
I would imagine a remaster takes some time as well, maybe not as long as the white glove treatment.
I think some were making the argument, that given the number of albums/tracks released there is not enough time or manpower to generate them without some type of batch processing being employed. Certainly, not every MQA release was given the “white glove” treatment, or, even a remaster. So, probably most of them were batched. It makes sense to me. Especially, in recent pro-tools produced content that is locked to 24/48 or 16/44.1 from the beginning.
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OK, since you’ve made a nice little compendium of MQA marketing claims, here’s some of what’s problematic with them, to the best of my knowledge. As should be clear, I’m not a believer, and I also think the time has past to be respectful of MQA Ltd and its principals, or polite about what they’re doing. I’m also not an engineer, so please defer to the proper authorities or deities, depending on your preferences.
Because by being lossy (more on that later), it doesn’t fit Meridian’s own definition of HiRes, which is “Lossless Audio that is capable of reproducing the full range of sound from recordings that have been mastered from better-than-CD quality music sources”. Yes, this is pedantic, and using Meridian’s definition of HiRes to take potshots at their own product is petty, but you know what ? I’m not the one shoving my proprietary format up and down people’s orifices.
You also need to keep in mind that “lossy” and “lossless” have a meaning in this context, and that meaning is emphatically not “audibly lossless”. Well-encoded 320 mp3 is “audibly lossless”, at least as far as can be proven. I’m not saying this to compare MQA to mp3, but because they’re both “lossy” in the meaning that is used in audio. If MQA was “lossless”, you could take an MQA file made from a super high-res master (say, 256 DSD), and re-create that exact master, to the bit, from it. This is not possible, therefore MQA is “lossy”. It also isn’t “lossy” in the way that downsampling that FLAC would be lossy if you downsampled that DSD file to 24/192: FLAC could spit that 24/192 file back out, exactly, and to the bit. MQA cannot do that, and therefore, it is “lossy”. This is not “opinion”, this is demonstrable fact (and it’s fine, as long as you and I can agree that marketing departments don’t get to change the meaning of words).
Obviously. In other news, water is wet. But more on that later
This might be a language barrier issue, but nope: if you were correct, then any and all 24/192 capable DACs would play MQA at up to their max resolution (say, 24/192), and you’d need an MQA dac for anything beyond that. In reality, non-MQA capable DACs that aren’t driven by MQA-licensed software such as Roon or Tidal play the so-called “folded” file at sub-cd quality. If there’s MQA-licensed software, they’ll play back at the maximal resolution of MQA, which is 18/96 if memory serves, and if the dac itself is MQA-licensed, then they’ll interpolate up to heaven-knows-where, using god-knows-what filters. If you’d like an extensive discussion of this by a superlative engineer who is critical of MQA, John Siau has you covered (in case you were wondering, he’s the guy behind the best dac and amplifier Stereophile ever measured, if someone wants to discuss the taxnomical differences between of measurers and listeners, please be kind and find a more interesting question to answer in life, like what makes the sky blue or something).
Possibly, but not necessarily. There are other ways to achieve the same bit depth as MQA, as @Miska explains right here. That it’s technically feasible without the downsides of MQA brings us to your next point, which is the authentication.
@Crenca already addressed this, when he said MQA’s authentication was mediocre. What ■■ is selling is of course alluring, the thing is that the real world has a way of not always getting along with marketing.
In this case, there are two separate issues.
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In practice, the “authentication” is sometimes automated. By automated, one means that the artist, or the engineers, aren’t involved in it. This is a problem, even if you believe the tale being told about authentication (that it’ll pretty much guarantee that you hear what the artist heard and intended, which of course is impossible, even with, say, SonarWorks, though that’s obviously way closer than your room + MQA)
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It’s possible to mess with authenticated MQA files with data that doesn’t belong there, and still get the signal to come back as authenticated. Read this if you’d like more details.
Well here’s where my pettiness from before comes into full bloom, and I turn your arguments from authority against you: if Bob Stuart, CEO and founder of Meridian gives a definition of HiRes that doesn’t fit that of Bob Stuart, inventor of MQA, who are you to declare it “HiRes” ? If Bob Stuart himself declares that MQA comes from science that’s “post-nyquist”, who are you to declare that science to be irrelevant ? Of course, you and I can possibly agree that the hearing mechanism of birds is irrelevant to HiFi, but then you’d have to also agree with me that it’s possible that MQA Ltd is taking you for a ride.
As this link I’d suggested you look into before explains, this is still possible. But I’d understand that you’d consider doing something like that to be bending the rules, and that no self-respecting music industry exec would do anything that vile, and also that both MQA Ltd and Bob Stuart are too honest, and have too much at stake to do something that disgusting to consumers.
Well, let me tell you a little not-quite a secret.
See the end of that sentence ? “12-bit deck” ?
That’s less-than-CD-resolution.
Aha ! you say… but that PCM 3324 was 16/44 (or 48) !
To which I’d say fair enough, the best that performance was recorded at is 16/44, so it can conceivably be remastered at 16/44.
Why am I ranting and raving about Like A Virgin minutia ?
Well, given that we already agree that “If the original is not hires, it will never be hires by MQA”, and that you believe what MQA Ltd. and Bob Stuart have been telling you about authentication, how would you feel about Bob Stuart if I sold you an officially released, 24 bit, 192khz MQA-authenticated, recording of Like a Virgin ?
How would you feel if ■■ himself told you that the MQA was made in some super-duper special fashion, worthy of being the flagship in the Master Quality Authenticated, Provenance Series ? That he, himself, would guarantee you that the precious waves had been massaged like the finest Kobe beef, using only the best sake ? And that some of the stuff on his version came from an analog recording, impervious to the nastiness of early digital, and that that’s why his version is so fully deserving of being presented in MQA ?
And now, how would you feel if some evil, cynical, anonymous doubter came along, and compared that super-special flagship version with another that was available earlier, and it turned out there was, well, almost no difference at all ? What if his observations included the words “We basically see a steep frequency cut-off just past 20kHz” ? A “steep cut-off” just past 20kHz doesn’t sound like a whole lot of 24/192information, now does it ?
And yes, of course, it’s entirely possible that there are multiple MQA versions of Like a Virgin, and that’s the kindest explanation to what’s going on. But even then, how would you know which to trust ? Isn’t the whole selling point of the blue light to take that doubt away from you ?
Now that you know this about Like a Virgin, would you maybe feel like you were… hoodwinked ? Or, like a virgin in the wonderful world of audio fraudsters, maybe something else, with fewer letters, that might also end with “-ked” ? Would you still trust that blue light, and the sultry words of the suave englishman ?
I’m not entirely certain how this is relevant at all, but, hey, if you’ve got a data encapsulation fetish, to each their own.
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As far as I know, official “end to end” MQA requires the original recording to take place in an MQA certified recording environment. Until then, it is all just applied processing.
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Part of the “let’s through this software encoding/“end to end” concept at the all and see what sticks” mess of what was and is MQA’s ‘plan’ is it not. Were they positioning themselves to be a mastering outfit? What is “certification”, exactly, given that non-disclosure is essential to all that MQA is? Were they positioning themselves as a kind of post processing, DSP, batch processing software encoding outfit from the beginning? That is what they have in fact become. The shift happened pretty early when they realized that there only real hope at any market share was through streaming.