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
