This morning I downloaded this test track from Blue Coast Music Test Your System with Free Downloads
Artists:
Garett Brennan
Record Label:
Blue Coast Records
Genre:
ESEAmericanaFolk
Garett Brennan's "The Dog Song" from Blue Coast Collection in 9 different resolutions (including DSD, WAV, FLAC and MQA) for testing your system's playback.
I loaded all nine tracks onto my Id 25.0.114 and was surprised that all of the tracks including the MQA track played without any issue via usb to my Project Audio DS2 Ultra DAC.
Allegedly the DAC doesn't support MQA but the playback was equal quality to the WAV and DSF versions. I wasn't expecting that.
MQA played back without MQA decoding gives you close to CD quality audio. It is sometimes compared to 13 bit audio. No everyone can hear the difference between 13 bit and 16 bit 44.1KHz audio. It depends on both your equipment and your ears. Part of the premise of MQA (and HDCD before that) was that using a bit or two for coding the information that would be expanded by the technology would not be audible to most people.
The fact that you think the MQA sounds as good as wav is not surprising. In fact, many people think undecoded MQA sounds better than standard CDs because of the work done in the studio in developing the masters.
As to comparing to the DSF versions, you are using 2 very different algorithms for PCM and DSD playback. What you hear is highly dependent on the particular DAC. And the mastering discussion is still relevant.
The whole MQA discussion has become very controversial. Probably best to continue the discussion elsewhere. There is no common view on MQA and probably never will be, although many will reach a conclusion and declare the discussion closed.