I've wrestled with this one, and spent far too long on different Roon settings trying to make sense of it.

In the end I have just learned to trust my ears. As I have Qobuz for its better classical catalogue, I don't have to listen to the Tidal versions, and can join those PCM Purists should I choose to.

But this is where I puzzle. I think I can now detect an MQA 16bit/44.1kHz version by its improvement in 'sweetness', 'tunefulness' and improved 'pace' and 'rhythm'. This is very hard to be certain of, but I even wonder if it is more pronounced using the Roon decode with non-MQA equipment? When a Redbook version of anything follows, it sounds kind of 'sour', and I miss the musicality of the MQA version. Now according to some, it should definitely sound worse, but for me there is an improvement in musical values, though I appreciate my/your mileage etc.

It has been said by others, not least Chris, that the preoccupation with numbers clouds an appreciation of your actual experience...perhaps less theory would help us work out what is best?

At this point you can start to go down a philosophical rabbit hole, as I can, and recognise that any recording, any digitisation of an actual musical event (Kant's 'thing in itself') is always an approximation, a pale copy. But if MQA can extract the core elements that provide for a good musical experience, I remain for it, until the next and better technology comes along. No doubt, one day, we will view MQA as we might 78rpm discs today. But in 1904, to have heard Caruso via those, must have felt miraculous?

Richard