I am no longer getting MQA?

2psyop -- I totally understand where you're coming from regarding the, er, difficult choices we must face regarding streaming. For me, though, it was no problem. It was almost comedic how quickly they cut me off when, after I negatively responded to their message that my trial period was ending and that I was gonna have to start to pay if I wanted to keep getting Tidal.  Did it take 'em two seconds? Maybe three?

Why bother knocking Qobuz or MQA when you can have both? I mean the cost of the subscriptions is nothing to what people here pay for their audio systems. It seems childish to bicker about what is good and what isn’t?

This was done because Tidal changed the way it implemented MQA tagging.  If you still wish to use Auralic’s proprietary MQA decoding method, there is a way to do it but it must be turned on manually.  Here is the email I received from Auralic describing the process:

 

Kelly Scheidt (AURALIC LIMITED) 

Mar 11, 2022, 8:36 PST 

Hello Eric, 

Thank you for contacting AURALiC. 

To answer your questions, our products have never been able to decode or render MQA content. However, our streamer line, ARIES, is able to passthrough MQA content to a MQA certified DACs, should you own one. 

Our outdated feature "simulating" MQA was removed due to MQA changing how the files were tagged through Tidal. If you want to bring this simulated MQA back, simply engage your resampler and upsample to your preference and engage the smooth filter. That is all the previous feature was doing, it now just has to be done manually. 

Kind Regards,

Kelly Scheidt
Tech. Support Manager
AURALiC North America

Please join our online community of streaming enthusiasts at community.auralic.com for further troubleshooting tips, performance tweaks and more!

As of version 8.0, there is no more MQA support.  (The current firmware version is 8.5):

 

Auralic removed MQA support from its firmware quite a while ago.

My Auralic Aries G2.1 streamer sounds good with my PS Audio Directstream dac but it no longer decodes MQA. The sound is good and I find the setting for MQA/FLAC on my Aries sounds the best. My Directstream dac will play the upsamles but it sounds best at 48KHZ 24 bit.

I have an Auralic G1 streaming to a Berkeley Alpha Reference DAC with MQA. I also noticed that MQA doesn’t show up when streaming from the lightning app even though the track is MQA. I have MQA set in the Tidal streaming settings in the software. It used to show MQA but no longer. 

Yeah; I am going to try that face-off soon.

Phil

That’s a great ad for Qobuz. 

I have both the Auralic Aries G1 and G2.1, in two distinct systems. Between how things are labelled in Tidal and the behaviors you see from your DAC when either of these streamers are the source, MQA in practice can seem confusing.

MQA "folds" high resolution & rate data into compact files that are no bigger than full resolution 16/44 files, and may be smaller. You can do a first unfold in software apps, ala Roon, and send the stream to a non-MQA DAC and gets the 24/96 potential of the first unfold. To get the second unfold to uncork a higher sampling data stream, you have to decode in hardware, either supplementing the Roon first unfold with the second, or simply send the original MQA stream to a hardware decoder/renderer, which is where MQA DACs come in.

Auralic has philosophical and technical reservations about MQA so since anything in software can be circumvented by workarounds, they developed their proprietary MQA decoding emulator that operates outside MQA licensing and doesn't violate it. Their streamers give you the option of passing unmolested MQA through the Aries for decoding in a downstream certified MQA DAC, or to perform the MQA emulation in the Aires and pass the higher-res output to a non-MQA DAC. That's the beauty of Auralic streamers. You don't have to have an MQA DAC to listen to MQA resolutions.

If you choose to have the Aries fully decode the MQA data in emulation, you can set it up for "Auto" - the Aries chooses the optimum sampling rate for the 24 bits stream, and won't exceed the rate of the target DAC. You can also set up for "always 2X 88.2 or 96,' always 4X 176.4 or 192,' always 8X 352.8 or 384" and if you do nothing it will not decode, putting out 44.1khz or 48khz. MQA claims the latter will still sound detectably better than 16/44 CD nevertheless.

Now, I've been using no-display mhdt R2R DACs, so I haven't paid much attention to this. But I recently added a Bricasti DAC with alphanumeric display. So far, when playing Tidal MQA tracks, I've seen mostly 48khz and occasionally 88.2khz, once 96khz. I haven't played an MQA track yet that registers on the Bricasti as higher than 96. By far, most of the tracks show 44 or 48. Allegedly MQA can result in outputs as high as 768khz. In the Auralic Aries streamers, that would top out at 384khz. I haven't seen that yet.

Now there could be a few reasons for this. One might be that a lot of the music I'm listening to via Tidal HiFi has been MQA'd at relatively low sampling rates and I just haven't stumbled on the high-rate material. It's also possible that the Aries streamers' software is analyzing those tracks and determining that 48khz is the rate at which they'll sound best. I'll have to try enforcing a higher rate in my Aries settings and circle back.

I also have the m2tech Young III DAC that is delta-sigma and MQA certified, which I use in a phono ADC>DAC stack. I have determined that in many cases, MQA processed in that DAC is bettered by MQA processed by emulation in the Aries streamers and played through the m2tech. I have to go back and do that experiment and compare the sampling rates as registered by the DAC. Another point to circle back on.

FWIW, MQA SQ is inconsistent. It is sometimes clearly better than 16/44; very often different but neither really better nor worse; and disturbingly often it's just plain worse. My favorites collection in Tidal HiFi has many MQA albums backed up by a CD res version of same. Here's where Tidal makes it confusing: Albums and songs that are MQA encoded are labelled accordingly, as MQA FLAC. But if you go into the Tidal Masters Playlists, nothing is marked MQA, yet Tidal claims Masters are MQA files. More to the point, virtually everything in all the Tidal Masters Playlists sounds from remarkable to transformed. Yet there is not an MQA tag to be found on those lists.

One more thing: I could have this wrong, since I've found conflicting information pertaining, but my understanding is the Aries streamers will only decode Tidal MQA in emulation if you play your Tidal HiFi subscription from *within* the DS Lightning iOS app. Trying it direct from the Tidal Hifi app won't trigger Auralic's proprietary decoding. This is fine with me, as DS Lightning is free and everything played from it sounds better than same played from Roon. DSL has no data editing facilities so you can still use Roon or something else for that. For playback controlled from an iOS device, however, it's stable and effective, with few glitches and reboots than Roon.

I'll circle back on what I find on the items noted above.

Phil

My PS Audio DirectStream DAC is the same way. It has the Bridge II card with an ethernet connection.  It used to play MQA with Tidal, but it doesn't anymore.   I called PS Audio. They didn't know why it changed.  They said I'm getting the same quality.  I haven't followed up with anyone.  I use MConnect.

I am no longer getting MQA?

Lucky man, that's like being re-tested for covid and getting negative after a false positive first test.
Cheers George

Hi Mitch -
Are you using the DS Lighting control app on an iPhone?
When looking at mine (Version 4.7, so not the most recent) and used to control an Aries Mini):

Select "Lightning setup" under Settings
From there, select "Lightning Device" (for me, it shows My Aries)
Scroll down just a little and find "Additional Operations"
Open "Additional Operations" and scroll down to near the bottom
Find "MQA Playback Setup" and also "Streaming Quality"
Under "MQA Playback Setup", is MQA Pass-through (to an MQA enabled device) selected?
Then, under "Streaming Quality" (for Tidal) is FLAC MQA showing or do you see FLAC Lossless?

Maybe somehow FLAC Lossless got selected instead of the FLAC MQA option.

Might be of use if you’ve not checked already.

It may be you are using the wrong filter setting? In my Brooklyn, if you change the filter to anything but apodizing MQA is disabled.

I should note that my Auralic app used to indicate MQA when being used but now indicates FLAC on albums which should be MQA.

I read Mike’s post about the settings but my PS Audio Directstream dac does not do MQA conversion unless using a Bridge II which I am not. If I turn on MQA pass through then I would surely not get MQA as my DSD does not support MQA on it’s own. I am dependent on the Auralic Aries G2.1 to do the conversion for me. All that said I notice some Albums now doing 48KHZ 24bit are sounding better than before the change to higher KHZ and bits. The Auralic app says that the albums are MQA but my DSD says 48KHZ 24bit when it used to go 88,96 and 192 KHZ. Perhaps what I get now 48KHZ 24 bit is the best Tidal will give Auralic Aries G2.1 streamers. The sound is still good however. 

That was “Mike in NC “

Have you read the post from mike in case?

I am getting good sound but I am getting 48KHZ 24 bit flac on the albums which are supposed to be MQA. Is what I am currently getting the best Auralic Aries G2.1 streamer will do with Tidal?

My Lumin T2 just got a firmware update and the release notes indicated that there was an update to the MQA decoder (although they didn't say why the update was needed).  I don't have Tidal and, therefore, don't stream MQA but perhaps your Auralic needs an update (or maybe Auralic is working on one).

Tidal has App on Opportunity-105 (D). Can use iPad or any handheld device to browse and play as long as it is on the same Wifi network. A very good feature. 

I kind of get a kick out of all the hostility there is on this site regarding MQA. I tried it. I liked it. It did allow me to wrest a bit more SQ from Tidal. The trouble was, I found that standard issue Qobuz gave me better fidelity than Tidal ever did, MQA switched in or not. Unless Mytek invaded my Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of the night and stole the feature from me, I probably still have it, too.

Good riddance.

It’s a little ironic that Qobuz, a French company, isn’t available in Canada where about 20% of the population speaks French but is available in the US where hardly anyone speaks French and 20% of US-born citizens can barely speak English. 

You may need to change the settings of the Aries to MQA Pass-Through ON, under Streamer Settings.
https://support.auralic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000190254-The-Streamer-Menu

Tidal is not bad. No need of Qubuz.

I am in Canada and don’t have Qobuz as an option not to mention that I have created a large library with Tidal. The sound is still good but not MQA.

Congrats!  What a great opportunity to try a free Qobuz subscription and rid yourself of the absurdly intrusive and burdensome MQA menace.  

44.1k/16bit sound good enough. MQA is folded into 44.1k/16bit which is no worse than Red Book. If your system is capable of doing 192k/24bit, why bother use MQA. Just go Qobuz.