MQA - One Filter to Rule them All?

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I'd start another flame....er, discussion. I've been reading some about MQA.  It has several components, but I want to focus on one in particular. The digital filter compensation.

The other two parts are compression and authentication.

We don't have a lot of DAC's to listen to with MQA right now, but here's my understanding.

By measuring time or amplitude errors in ADC's AND DAC's MQA seeks to correct the behavior, making the entire A/D --> D/A chain closer to ideal. It's pretty ambitious. What I'm wondering is, assuming this is real and not snake oil, does this mean all MQA DAC's will begin to sound alike? Will otherwise mediocre DAC's step up, and great DAC's not have that much to contribute anymore?

If so, maybe this will usher in another great era of tone controls being built into our preamps or DAC's instead of having to make tonal changes via cables and tweaks.

What say you? Assuming MQA is not snake oil, (could be, haven't heard it) doesn't it mean all DAC's will sound the same?

Best,


Erik