Question about DAC and MQA

@jay73,

I think you should check the Tidal and Qobuz app settings. The free trial with Qobuz may be limited to 24/96kHz resolution. The Spotify resolution is nowhere near the sound quality of Tidal or Qobuz. I would sign up for full service with Qobuz as you can cancel anytime.

Once you experience the 16bit/44.1kHz or higher resolution, there is no going back.

A dedicated music server would definitely yield improvements over your laptop. 

Hi Lalitk,

Thanks for your input and suggestions.

I am streaming Tidal using the Windows Desktop Software through my computer.

Today I also signed up for Qobuz to check out through it's trial period.

Through Qobuz I made sure to select some tracks that were 24/192 but I see on my DAC, the indicator light remains on 44.1/48, so as with Tidal, the DAC is not compatible with Qobuz.

Now besides the technicalities, it still sounds good at CD Quality, same with Tidal.

But I am not sure if I will stay with either service since I am not getting the full benefits with my DAC.

For streaming, I could add a Blue Node to the system and get one of these services with full benefits if I really wanted to but then again, it's a matter of if I want to pay for the services. That is something I will really need to think about.

If I use such a service just once in a while, I might just use Spotify (I know, the horror, lol).

Thanks for your input, that cleared things up a bit.

I have looked up your DAC specs and it is not MQA compatible. Nevertheless it’s a very well designed DAC. Not knowing what device you’re using to stream Tidal files, my best guess is you’re listening to MQA files at 24bit/96kHz resolution. 

Following article should help you demystify MQA decoding, 

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

Tidal streaming is very good. And their catalog is great across the board. If you’re into high resolution files (above 16bit/44.1kHz), I suggest signing up with Qobuz which offers the 24bit/192 kHz streaming quality.  There are so many threads here that outlines user experiences with Tidal and Qobuz, I recommend you sign up for free trial with Qobuz and decide for yourself. 

I am subscribed to both services until Qobuz catches up to Tidal. Qobuz is relatively new to US market and slowly catching up to Tidal catalog.