It was not bad as such, just that the Redbook version was 'nicer'. There was a passage in particular that Adam and I concentrated on, the Redbook won the day. But of course, by definition, the two versions were different. The Redbook was either downsampled from the higher res version (that the MQA version was folded from) or they were different masters. Beyond that, even though I've tried to understand the maths behind MQA, it is all beyond me (thank gawd). :)
Well purism of course is a honourable pursuit Tom and I for one would always try to stick to that road when I can (e.g. liking NOS Dacs). However recently I have been 'dicking' around with DSP room filters and the results so far are very encouraging.
Just to be provocative (and also friendly!) isn't implementing an RIAA curve on vinyl tantamount to 'dicking around with the signal'? :)