But doesn't MQA(Master Quality Audio) require some quite expensive home equipment to use it though, like $2000 or something? Also Tidal isn't an option for me, because I'm not in the United States.
We have Tidal in the UK. Maybe you need to set up a VPN
I have one of the Meridian Explorer 2 DACs which TBH I just use as a headphone amplifier connected to my PC. Most of my listening is with vinyl (very good turntable, arm and cartridge) on the 'main system' although I do occasionally plug it into the laptop and play stuff through that through the amp & speakers.
That £200 DAC (might be cheaper now) playing MQA walks all over much more expensive DACs playing CDs or CD quality streams of the same thing. The difference isn't subtle. To my ears anyway.
There are other MQA DACs but they're quite rare. Oddly enough one is indeed made in the US by a company called Brooklyn. Suspect they ship worldwide. There has been some interest in that in certain circles. It's quite expensive.
For everyone else's benefit: MQA is an algorithmic implementation that needs to operate throughout the digital chain including the DAC which is the bit in your device that converts digital signals back to analogue that you can hear. So it has to be implemented in the DAC.
The DAC is the "chip" in your device/phone that does that bit.
Some phones - I think Sony ones - have MQA support built-in. But then phones rarely have high-quality audio stages.
I believe you can buy MQA files outright but they're scarce.
I can see why it hasn't exactly "taken off". You'd be hard-pressed to hear much difference with cheap headphones, people aren't terribly interested in sound quality, and as a result and compounding this the library of MQA music is highly limited. It remains esoteric despite being the most significant invention in audio in decades.
It's all on my smart-phone, as a mixture of MP3, AAC, Vorbis and FLAC.
