Aurender upgrades Tidal - MQA -Only for A10 and 20 - lesser models not worth their time

I did not just shoot my mouth out .for Tidal is working on a version that can be used like a firmware upgrade such as I have been doing with my 
PS Audio Direct Stream dac..tidal says a later in the year .
It is correct  the  A10 does have dac built in . I think the firmware version will be much better for all .it is all a scam about $$. Originally it was supposed to be 1 license  and a small very  minimal charge per unit.  I refuse to pay Tidal a dime as well as Many others until they stop their Black mailing practices forcing companies to  Keep paying .that is my opinion .

audioman58 - please translate your post to English.

On second thought, never mind.

Dave

This device is fully capable of producing MQA encoded streams to a DAC. What it will not do is decode MQA. This is how MQA works. The decoding firmware should be DAC specific.

Having said that, I think Tidal is doing a quasi-MQA decoding if you run Chrome, so it is possible this may be somewhat subject to change.

At the current time though, this is exactly how Meridian designed MQA. I would not be upset with Aurrender.

Best,

E

Right Eric. The Aurender App software just does not (yet) do the first MQA "unfold" like the Tidal App (using a PC) when listening to Tidal Masters (MQA). The former passes the bit-perfect PCM data in its original format with the MQA header attached for unfolding in a MQA-capable DAC.

Dave

Just keep in mind as you rush to spend money on the latest tech that MQA will fail.   Bob's stated aim is to change all music production to AD-Processing-DA with MQA not just DA over PCM.

Secondly, MQA is not "better than" the PCM source in 99% of intentionally distorted and compressed pop music. That's just their marketing to get MQA in the door then take over later.  I would know, I make the source files.  MQA knows this too.   Only for super natural acoustic/natural music based in realism is there even a tiny opportunity for advantage with the MQA round trip.  And not nearly as important as a better amp, speakers, DA, etc.    Pop music and classical music from tape or digital PCM to MQA?  Forget it.

From Michael of Berkeley Audio, who is on board with MQA:   I spoke with Bob Stuart about your concerns regarding the marketing of MQA and he conceded you have valid point.   He also said that “de-blurring” (the MQA time-domain filter fixup) can be omitted during encoding and that doing so would be appropriate in situations such as yours where what could be considered technical artifacts of the A/D conversion process are part of a large number of factors that were combined deliberately to produce the precise sound of the mastered recording. "

Including and adjusting for the AD artifacts is part of the gig in mastering.  I suggest people push for streaming of master files or use the services coming on to stream them.   If you want to have a nice 16 bit file, use dbPoweramp to shrink your files, it's far better than MQA. 

SRC comparisons here:
http://src.infinitewave.ca/