I bought DSD files encouraged by Paul Mac Gowan as well as a Stellar Gain Cell DAC. Unfortunately the electronics of the SGCD gave up on me after just 1.5 years of normal operation.
Being locked down, losing the possibility to listen to music in my home office for weeks, having to ship or take the unit to my dealer I gave up on all the DSD, PCM, CD, MQA discussions.
I did not want the SGCD back as I expect reliable equipment when I pay so much money.
Now I play CDs, stream lossy AAC music from Apple Music which sounds better than many CDs as Apple seems to have an edge on remastering, convert the DSD files to FLAC and play vinyl.
My new NAD system with BluOS is fully MQA certified. I do not stream from Tidal, because I am perfectly fine with Apple Music and don’t want to pay for another subscription.
I do intend to buy MQA sampler CDs though.
MQA does not require a 6000 dollar SACD player to try and get enhanced sound, it works even with my 30 year old Technics CD player, via optical Toslink as long as the DAC is MQA certified.
That is the coolest thing I ever heard of!
A MQA CD costs 4 Euro more than a regular, the samplers are available in Europe and I am happy to import other MQA CDs from Japan if I hear the benefit.
At the end, it is the music that matters. The file format discussions are a Internet forum phenomenon.
Edited, I wrongly stated that PS Audio did not license MQA. Should have done my homework better.
I would like to encourage you to listen to the back end of every Hans Beekhuyzen video “whatever you do, enjoy the music”. I love that statement.