It's a bit hard to say out loud, "We've distorted the music for your enjoyment" I have had the privilege of being introduced to the notion of "only as good as

It's a bit hard to say out loud, "We've distorted the music for your enjoyment" I have had the privilege of being introduced to the notion of "only as good as the weakest link", and "train your ear neutral" around the time I transitioned from headphones to speakers. Since then, 7 years ago, I have been putting a couple hundred dollars a month into my hobby. It's always tempting to take a shortcut to audio bliss, but it's a dead end. One transgression, and progress can come to a dead halt. Any comparisons, A/B's, and purchases are forever tainted. I will only purposefully add coloration or distortion in one single part of the chain. For me, that's the "warm", "green" filter on my Qutest DAC. It could also be a Tube amp in the future. But I'm certainly not going to waste it on MQA. MQA is not "free" (even if I don't have to directly pay for it), and even if it were, and were equal to FLAC, I still wouldn't use it. The computational power required for the best folding means more money must be spend to isolate the electronic noise generated by the processor. And even if I did that, I would then have to have a more powerful processor, which would cost more money to have a higher voltage Linear Power Supply. I spend a lot of money. There is zero chance I would purposefully introduce an abhorationn like MQA, even if it were free. I would pay dearly chasing perfecting that was tainted in the D/A realm.