Apparently the anti Tidal Masters is sweet tasting itself because I’m seeing a lot of opinion based on absolutely no experience with the service that asked about by the original poster and the media delivery system in question, Tidal Masters MQA. Links to equipment manufacturers and anti-MQA threads started before the service was even up with MQA. Meanwhile more and more manufacturers are coming on board, updates are being pushed to older hardware and player software for no charge blowing that accusation completely out of the water.
People say it’s lossy in one breath while in the next they post , “enjoy it because it’s only CD quality.” Which is it? They have no idea because they have based their entire opinion on 3rd and 4 hand opinions or tests full of issues that were not even testing actual Tidal Masters files.
My gripe has not been about the sq of MQA, but the control over the music industry and ultimately how it will affect the future music I buy. Having a proprietary system imposed on all music seems to be what is happening although you would call that speculation. All one has to do is look at the big picture. All those 50cent CDs out there at garage sales, flea markets, second hand stores simply refuse to die. Why is this important? Because the music industry doesn't make any more money on them once they are sold. They never thought about this when digital was first getting going, but you can bet that they are now.
Music could well be going the way of software, either restricted to one or 3 devices or now going subscription based. Once industry gets fully on board with this or something like it, just watch how restricted it becomes. They will want to sell us a copy for your house, one for the car etc, and forget about ripping to a hard drive, they will be locked down.
I fully realize you don't care, that you never intend to buy another music file again, and with your military discount, it is cheap enough, at least for now, but I, and others do care about control like this over the music we will buy and listen to.
Just want to say it isn't all about you and your desire to stream. If it were I would wish you well, but we are all getting drug along into this one way or another and I don't like it. Flac hi rez is as good as MQA sound quality and it doesn't have the potential hooks in it. Bandwidth is not an issue, why convert all our future music over to something that can so easily become simply a way to control it?