We maybe like different. I have a Mojo with my Samsung s7 and this sounds a bit better than a Lg v30. But MQA in my opinion sounds more flat and boring than music without MQA if using equalizer.
I did a blindtest with 4 friends and they all said the same thing. This was jazz and rock music.
No doubt MQA has its pros and cons and its proponents and detractors. The same can be said of EQ. If you and your friends prefer EQ'ed sound, that's perfectly fine -- and if so you probably
should avoid MQA which doesn't allow it. But that preference does not prove in any way that MQA has inferior sound quality.
I don't say this to either defend MQA or to denigrate EQ'ing, but a better comparison would be to compare MQA and non-MQA without using EQ. And of course the ideal, as far as pure sound quality, would be to find a sound system (DAC, Amp, headphones/IEMs/speakers) that has the signature you like, so you wouldn't have to EQ in the first place.
I am personally a bit split on MQA: When the source is of high quality (recording, mastering, transfer) it does indeed preserve a bit more of that quality compared to a plain 44/16 Redbook FLAC. But I am not a huge fan of the MQA Digital Filter, which I find a tad unnatural on my V30, and I wish I could use my preferred Sharp filter instead. I do understand that MQA considers their filter a critical part of the MQA experience, I presume it being key to their claim of time-domain supremacy. But to me it adds some air that doesn't seem real. Again, that's just me.
In the case of UAPP, this forces me to toggle its MQA flag on/off all the time when I switch between playing MQA and non-MQA albums, since otherwise UAPP keeps the DAC in MQA mode (locking it to the MQA Digital Filter) regardless of whether MQA is actually being played or not. I understand this is another requirement from MQA on the developer -- although the LG Music app doesn't do the same, it only sets the MQA flag when playing actual MQA tracks.
Another problem with MQA on Tidal is that many of their Master albums are from 44.1KHz or 48KHz sources, so while you get the 24-bit depth, there are no additional samples to add during the 1st or 2nd unfold. In those cases it's almost a toss-up for me whether I prefer the MQA version (24-bit) or the plain 44/16 version (allowing me to avoid the MQA filter). And of course many other MQA releases are just poor recordings in the first place, so it doesn't add anything.
But there are also some great MQA releases on Tidal which I enjoy tremendously. I mention some in
this post (classical genre).
Edit: One undeniable benefit of MQA which I should have added for LG Quad DAC users (V30/V40/V50/G7/G8): Since MQA tracks are all 24-bit, they can be played offline in the Tidal app without the dreaded up-sampling of the Android Mixer: The Tidal app will play them through the Direct path exactly like UAPP. Of course you need UAPP to play all 44/16 (non-MQA) tracks unmolested -- and if offline isn't a concern, I would recommend using UAPP for all Tidal playing.
