Here’s a weigh-in from the Linn site:
MQA is bad for music. Here’s why.
Mike
As Elk asked, I suspect that a substantial amount of dissent to MQA stems from their insistence that it be done in the DAC, and requiring the DAC manufacturers to send the unit to MQA for profiling. This is certainly my greatest issue with MQA, as it looks to me to be a money and power grab.
ALL MQA decoding is ultimately done in software, be it firmware (software stored in some form of ROM that may or may not occasionally be updated) or “software” stored on a more flexible random access media, either of these then processed through a conventional multipurpose CPU, or some form of code that is implemented in hardware, be it a custom chip or something like an FPGA.
MQA is still holding on to this power grab to some degree by only allowing unfolding to 88 / 96 KS/s in software and restricting the second unfolding to 176 / 192 KS/s in the DAC in combination with the temporal correction. I see no reason other than avarice to couple the second unfolding with the temporal correction. Yes, I still carry a negative opinion of MQA as a company. At this time I have no first hand experience with MQA media so cannot offer a subjective opinion on its audio quality. A fully unfolded MQA track from the same master may indeed be very close to or indistinguishable from a conventional uncompressed 192/24 track. I seriously doubt that very many people have ever heard that same master source comparison and suspect that MQA have been careful to not provide this comparison for fear that most could not hear how much ‘better’ MQA is than conventional uncompressed distribution.
If and when MQA allows software unfolding to 192 KS/s to then be sent to the DAC then my opinion of the company will soften considerably. DAC manufacturers may still choose to send their products to MQA for profiling and implementation of the temporal correction feature of the complete MQA package. It also seems possible and reasonable to me that MQA could send out a complete testing and profiling procedure that the DAC manufacturers could do themselves. The results could be sent to MQA for implementation of the temporal correction algorithms which the DAC manufacturer would then build into the DAC.
Just one opinion…
J.P.
I believe the DAC profiling is a marketing strategy to ascertain protection of their IP. It is also an advantage to keep customers under a NDA which might be easier to keep things under control. I cannot remember to have seen MQA’s rationale for DAC profiling other than superficial headlines (mumbo jumbo? 
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