Hi-Res CD Sampler for Rock & Pop [Hi-Res CD (MQA x UHQCD)] [Limited Release] Customer Reviews

I have a hifi system worth about $45,000 with the Auralic Aries G2 & Vega G2 (connected by Audioquest Diamond HDMI cable) in front of vintage Sonus Faber floor standing speakers. I ripped the MQA-CD to my Synology NAS and played it just now. It is compressed, distorted and unlistenable. Of course! It must be the upscaling software used by Auralic being incompatible with the MQA encoding on the disc. Ripped the standard CD and told myself the tracks are good, and there's nothing wrong with good old Redbook, anyway. Still sounded terrible. I compared "Mandolin Wind" with my "Sing It Again Rod" CD (also from Japan) and "California Girls" with my Japanese "Endless Summer" CD. Both CD's annihalated the tracks on this 2018 sampler. As the Review Title states this is going straight into the garbage bin. There were also some annoying clicks also on some tracks. Not that it matters now as this disc is no longer part of my music collection.

I am REALLY very disappointed! The sound is not only below my expectations, but actually my impression is that either something went wrong during production process or there is an compatibility issue with a regular CD player – the sound on some tracks has very low dynamics, there happen additional noises/digital buzz, some tracks sound like over-steered (like when recording on analogue tape you put too high level of gain). Generally the silver CD sounds much better than the green one (however still below quality of many regular CDs pressed in Japan). My player is an vintage Marantz CD-16 so maybe the player is too old and therefore not compatible? I asked CDjapan already twice about that but I received no answer at all:(