Understanding MQA/tidal/ DA conversion
Hi - I have both an oppo 205 and 203, and considering selling one to help fund a Levinson integrated. The new 5802 and 5805 day they can handle MQA and apparently high rates of digital conversion. I find all the dsd/dxd/pcm DoP lingo a bit confusing so the cut through question is can the oppos, when used for streaming tidal, output the highest quality signal from Tidal Masters and can the Levinsons convert that signal to its maximum potential? If yes I think using either of those as a transport would have seemingly equal outcomes of just pushing the digital signal out.
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After a lot of listening to modern DAC behavior, I've settled on 96 kHz/24 bit being good enough for my ears. In particular, modern DAC's are just a lot better with lower rez music like Redbook (44.1kHz/16) and the only improvement I can hear with high resolution files is completely explained by the slope of the anti-aliasing filters at each higher resolution. There may be some who still hold out for 384kHz/24 bit music, but for me I've not heard anything best 96/24 in a long time. |
I believe Qobuz now also offers a family plan that is worth looking into. @erik_squires makes a valid point about the content difference, but it’s free to try Qobuz so why not? That said, MQA must die!!! |
I have both TIdal and Quboz. They do not have the same albums so having both is worthwhile. I did quite a bit of listening to MQA and don’t find it’s worthwhile, overall, but I like Tidal’s record collection. On my DAC there’s no way to use it with my preferred filter so I leave it off, but Roon does some of this. As has been written elsewhere, while MQA may claim to be high resolution, it’s also lossy. See the Benchmark Media paper on it. In a world where 100mBit+ speeds is normal for audiophiles it makes MQA compression less important. I'm also lucky enough to use Roon which will do 96/24 bit MQA decompression in software so I don't really think much about the whole process. |
No problem with Qobuz but I have tried Tidal MQA and with many recordings it sounds great, really great. But not all MQA recordings sound great. And as others have mentioned you must have a DAC to fully unfold the MQA file. That's kind of a pain. I have a Bluesound Node and Vault which are MQA compliant. I don't know if Oppos are MQA capable, but it should be easy to find out. |
appreciate the suggestion, my constraint is we have a TIDAL family plan so we're all paying $30 a piece for the full year, so will have this for at least the next year or more as I'm the only one who cares about the HIFI component, the rest just like the service. So with the QOBUZ piece though, would the Oppo (or any streamer) output a high rez signal directly to the DAC? I have tried but don't fully understand how it all comes together. I need Digital Audio for Dummies....
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I agree with @vinylvalet Do yourself and the audio world a favor and let MQA pass away. |
