gimmeheadroom
Headphoneus Supremus
The authentication was BS. You could alter the file and remove frequencies and it would still authenticate.
That's not correct. The reason Tidal's desktop app is bitperfect is because any alteration will break the bitstream. This is easy to verify. Set MQA passthrough on the app and run the stream into an MQA DAC. Now change the volume of the bitstream coming in to the DAC (i.e. on the sending side, not on the DAC side) to anything but 0 dB or add some EQ, the MQA DAC no longer recognizes the bitstream as MQA.
MQA is about the best practical test of a bitperfect setup there is.