Quick Update regarding MQA on Xperia 1/5 II:
It does MQA straight out of the Tidal app, when paired with a compatible MQA renderer DAC - there is no Android "upsampling to 48khz" as in other devices - as long as you keep volume at 100% on the Xperia.
The issue is you need a DAC with indepdendent volume control. I just tested it with the iFi hip-dac and the xDSD. If you play a Masters song through TIDAL, as long as you keep the Xperia's volume to the max (as you should anyway), the LEDs on the DACs indicate MQA (purple). There is even a switch (which interrupts the music for a split second) when you go from 99% to 100% volume on the Xperia (and the LED at that point switches from regular green to purple MQA) - that is because the Xperia switches to bit-perfect volume at 100% (since it's a digital volume).
The caveat is that, of course, if you use an MQA DAC with no volume adjustment that relies on the digital volume of the Xperia (like a Dragonfly), it won't switch to MQA unless you go full volume - but that's not useful at all unless you have very tough to drive headphones or want to blow up both your eardrums and the headphones/iems
. But then again, why would you want the slight improvement MQA does when you are using a device with digital volume, that generally loses around 2 bits unless it's cranked up to the max ("bit perfect" mode).
I did NOT try this on other Android devices. On Xperia, through TIDAL app, as long as you keep the volume at max (and therefore need to use a usb DAC with it's own volume control), it 100% goes into MQA mode - no need for UAPP.
I also have a -slight- feeling that the Xperia does MQA on it's own (even though Sony never mentioned it). The only way I was able to tell, is that on "Masters" songs in Tidal, the "Dsee Ultimate" upscaling tech does not engage -this can be easily tested by enabling and disabling it while playing a Masters song - nothing happens. When you activate it on a "hifi" song, you'll hear the music interrupt for a split second and you can also hear a slight increase in dynamics and airiness.
This tells me that the Xperia recognizes Masters songs and does not alter them - probably because it unfolds them, I presume.
Even though the Xperia documentation says nothing about MQA, it would kind-of make sense for it to render MQA, considering all of Sony's Android-based Walkman DAPs do it natively through the Tidal app in Android.
