For me, the most interesting thing about MQA is not the encoding/decoding but the claim that the recordings were remastered into MQA with the intention of the original artist/engineer in mind, and getting rid of compromises. Think about all those horrible compressed recordings - like on compilation CDs. I'm sure it is one reason LPs often sound better than CDs. I think different quality of recordings makes more difference than the differences between redbook and hi-def and MQA. If we hear an improvement when listening to an MQA recording, I suspect it will be more down to the remastering done than to the MQA encoding - and for that reason I think that listening to the MQA masters, even with the encoded impurity that Simon mentions, is sometimes still worthwhile.