Out the gate, Tidal is not MQA or visa-versa
In terms of MQA as an audio codec, pages upon pages of posts and hours of time have already been wasted on discussing this. Probably better not to start yet another one of those discussions here, there’s very little to add.
But in terms of why the hate for MQA.
Firstly in 2023 there is very little need for a proprietary, licensed,
lossy codec to transmit audio data. Internet bandwidth is now at the level that you can either stream the data using a free, open standards
lossless codec or if bandwidth limitations are an issue via a free, open standards lossy codec.
You can’t get ’better’ than the original data sent via a lossless codec. So in that sense MQA’s codec brought nothing new to the table, yet saddled everyone, directly or indirectly with licence fees. None of that licensing revenue went to support artists, in fact if you think of a streaming plan as a fixed cost, MQA were taking a cut of that fee and not delivering any significant, tangible benefits to the user in return.
Had MQA simply been marketed as a high quality lossy codec, possibly useful for steaming over low bandwidth mobile connections (arguably plenty of free options already existed), it probably would have gone largely unnoticed, after all people are far less concerned about Dolby licensing their proprietary codecs.
Where MQA stoked ire was in their marketing which (at least initially) made claims about ‘superior’ sound. When it comes to compression you can’t improve on lossless, it’s like claiming the .zip compression format made your images appear with more vibrant colours when compressed with it - not only is that statement ridiculous, but if your .zip files were charged by the zip compression it wouldn’t be a very good compression format.
In short MQA made a lot of wild marketing claims, scientists, audio engineers, people who understood audio codecs and digital audio saw though this and called them out on it. Yet much like cables and other areas of audio, it ended up with an opposing camp of believers who ‘heard a difference’.
(
there was also some other stuff along the way about then white gloving certain albums for exclusive MQA remastering, but not sure that was ever more than a handful of albums)
Anyway, hope that’s a useful potted history for you.