MQA?

@itsjustme so maybe you didn’t read my further comments, but I’m a fan of MQA and also have a Metrum DAC (Onyx) <no MQA card>. My point is that the 2nd/3rd unfold of a MQA DAC maybe less relevant with high level DAC’s especially NOS(non MQA) ones.

He’s getting the first unfold of MQA with Tidal HIFI. My argument is that he may not hear any difference at all if he was to get the MQA card for the Pavane.

I spoke with the CEO of Metrum and he said not to bother with getting the MQA card for my DAC (Onyx), so I would assume he would suggest the same for the Pavane.

The whole MQA thing is very confusing to begin with and sometimes I feel its that way on purpose, but I listen with my ears, not my eyes and MQA on many songs sound great in my system....Roon >Metrum Ambre- Onyx> McIntosh MA6600

I do understand why you might think that logic doesn’t make sense, but I’m thinking the final unfolds in MQA are more effective with lower tier DAC’s. The higher tier esp NOS don’t have filters, so a lot less "noise" to remove.

That’s how i understand it at least and I could be wrong.

I suppose I should also state this. My previous setup was Bluesound Node 2i with a Rotel 1572. The Rotel’s DAC is not MQA compliant, but the MQA tracks playing through Bluesound to the Rotel DAC sounded better to me and I know i’m not the only one who has done this comparison.

We are talking about different DAC’s of course AKM vs Bur Brown and that could just be my taste, but I’ve read other people’s comments on the internet that said the same thing. You would think the bluesound node with a MQA DAC would sound superior to a non mqa DAC, but that wasn’t the case in my setup at least.

Hope that helps to clarify, but I may have confused you even more ;)

Data points are always good.
The unfolding however, is reputed to be much more than filtering.  Its proprietary so we cannot say for sure, but they claim that additional resolution and time coherency are restored. This is why i used the terms "coding vs playback". Its vague, but so is Bob on this point. It's his secret sauce.

(specifically i wrote: Let’s put aside the real discussion which is the basic merits of MQA, and accept it for what it claims to be; an improvement in digital coding ("better HD"). Not playback mind you, coding.)
And no, i did not read your later comments at the time, never got that far, and thanks for the pointer.

G

Here is a 'How It Works' Overview from MQA:

https://www.mqa.co.uk/how-it-works

A Steve Guttenberg interview with a Tidal Representative on MQA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhOMkOB7lTs

An early 'primer' from Michael Lavorgna:

https://www.audiostream.com/content/mqa-decoding-explained

I was first respondent here and mentioned I could hear major mqa positive difference on my reference system but not on my two secondary systems.

For context, those systems are:

Reference: Teac NT-505 (AK4493) -> MIT matrix 6 XLR balanced IC -> Audio Research DSI200 integrated amp ->MIT matrix 12 speaker cable -> Spendor D7, REL S5; Audio Art power cables. Here, MAJOR sonic MQA improvement streaming Tidal vs regular flac Tidal stream over cat7 Ethernet.

Second: Integra DTM-7 (AK4438) -> MIT Terminator 4 speaker cable -> Spendor SA1, Sunfire SDS8; WAudio power cables. Here, extremely marginal if any noticeable sonic improvement steaming mqa Tidal vs flac Tidal over WiFi.

Third: Bluesound Powernode 2 (Burr Brown 5122) -> AmazonBasics speaker cable -> NHT C-1. WAudio power cable. Here, extremely marginal if any noticeable sonic improvement steaming mqa Tidal vs flac Tidal over cat7 Ethernet cable.

So that gives hopefully some context to my “rest of system” comment. My two secondary setups are pretty modest but the source for each fully supports mqa so I can make the comparisons.