MQA files

Audirvana+ is currently the best application for mqa playback. Audirvana+ usually includes a few free months of a Tidal subscription too. MQA is well worth the effort!

Bogologo,

There are limited ways to play MQA audio, such as the Tidal app. iTunes cannot. If you want hi-res audio that plays in iTunes, use ALAC-HD. It is an option on the Live Metallica site, which you can choose when you shop:

VLC is on the App store for iPad. This will play MQA files encapsulated in FLAC format, but will not unfold the MQA. It will be CD quality, although MQA claim it may sound better than ordinary CD quality files ( I can't remember the reason why this may be so).

Streaming from TIDAL Hi-Fi using their embedded MQA decoder should give the best result, but it'll cost you £19/m or thereabouts. This will work on iMac and PC as well. If you have an MQA capable DAC, you can bypass the Tidal decoder. Audirvana+ is the best bit perfect player to use on the Mac, and Foobar 2000 on a PC (you will also need the MQA driver installed on a PC). The Tidal service works well and I can recommend it.

You phrased the question as "I cannot add . . ."

I'm assuming this means that you purchased the files as flac files. iTunes will not natively play flac. This is independent of whether the flac files are MQA encoded.

Unfortunately, using a file converter will change the files sufficiently that they will no longer be recognized as MQA files. My use of VLC seems to cause this problem as my DAC (a Meridian 818v3) does not recognize files played through VLC as MQA files.

An alternative (the one I went with several years ago) was to use roon for playback. Besides a wealth of other advantages, it plays MQA files bit perfect, so a downstream DAC sees them as MQA files, and does whatever level of enfolding it is capable of.

As a side note, to my ears, MQA through my system is a seismic difference in audio quality. Better than I believed would be possible.