Can someone tell me why Tidal MQA shows as 96Khz when using a non-MQA DAC?

You Tidal PC app will do 1st unfold for you. So if you have a HiRes DAC, ot will show 96/24 or 88/24. If you have a MQA DAC, it will do the 2nd unfold to 192/24, 176/24 for you. Remember anything above 44.1khz is a lossy but it's beyond your hearing limit above 22khz. If you have a MQA DAC, you can do doirect through and let the DAC to unfold everything. The 1st unfold will take some PC CPU power. Which one is better, let your ears tell you.

BTW, I just tried the suggestions in that article, though finding the settings was a little weird, but I can confirm that I'm getting either 44.1 or 88K depending on what I'm listening to.

I imagine the MQA pass through also works.
Best,
E

For Windows I found the perfect article.


https://inspiringheadphones.com/are-you-getting-the-best-out-of-tidal-hifi/
If you have an MQA capable DAC use the eclusive, and MQA passthrough settings.

If you use PC to stream MQA and let PC App to do the 1st unfold, you will get 96/24. If you have MQA DAC, it will unfold the rest to 192/24. 

Got it. That makes sense. For the life of me I cannot recall what my MQA DAC says when streaming the same MQA track. I really appreciate the fast and salient responses 

What tomcy6 and uberwaltz said!!

Tidal does stream many albums at 24/192. 96 is not their limit.
However 24/96 will be the highest you will see on a non MQA dac, as it cannot complete the full MQA unfolding.

It will still sound mighty fine though!

There are a couple of steps to the MQA > analog process.  If you don't have an MQA authorized DAC your streamer does the first unfold to 88.2 or 96Hz /24 bit  You need an MQA approved DAC to go higher than this.

Here is a link to the explanation:
http://www.mqa.co.uk/customer/how-it-works

I thought it might display 44.1 if you use a non MQA DAC.  

As I recall, if you are using the Chrome or Tidal app, that's what it should do.

I don't know of any way to pass the original MQA stream directly to an MQA enabled DAC.

Mine does the same. Never seen anything higher from Tidal Masters. I'm guessing that's their highest rate for the streaming content.