So I finally received my MQA copy of Donald Fagen's
The Nightfly, one of the most reference-quality albums ever made. I ripped the CD, put it in my SP1000 and hit play (well, actually, it seems like with one of the newer updates the player just starts autoplaying the first song when an album is selected. Unless someone knows how to disable that "feature."). I get the MQA symbol, a green light, and 44.1. I then compared it to my Donald Fagen box set
Nightfly which plays at 48. The MQA sounds louder, somewhat brighter and more transparent, maybe a bit more lower end/timbre (but I can't swear to the latter). Then I thought, since the ripped MQA files say FLAC only, why not run it through the MQA app that adds MQA ahead of the FLAC on each cut's tag. Did so, tried it that way, same green light and same 44.1. So then I thought, let's download from the site that has MQA samples
http://www.2l.no/hires/ and see what's what. I dl'd an MQA "original file," which opened with a blue light and 300+. Then I dl'd the same music but listed as MQA CD 16/44 and THAT one opened with a green light and 300+.
So, it looks like if you rip from an MQA CD you will get the green light, and if you get ahold of an original (non-CD) MQA file you get the blue light. I'm not sure if adding the MQA tag ahead of the FLAC via
https://www.mqa.co.uk/tag435sdf43te does anything, as with this CD I got the same result both ways.
I'm going to play the CD through my Oppo BD player, which is listed as opening up MQA as well. My guess is that I will see the same 44.1