Mqa-from-an-nds

As others have said, NDS and Naim know nothing of MQA compression. If you feed an MQA compressed file to any Naim streamer or DAC it will playout as a compromised lossless file with added digital noise and less resolution and dynamic range… this happens because MQA compression is designed to be playable on non supporting equipment albeit with a loss of fidelity and added digital distortion/noise.

If you use the Naim app to play from Tidal, it won’t select MQA compressed media, it will instead select lossless LPCM where available which it nearly always is.

“albeit with a loss of fidelity and added digital distortion/noise.”

Really? It certainly doesn’t sound like it at all. Far from it.

Hi JimDog

The idea is to keep the best sounding components and sell on the rest. If I decide to sell the BB then I’ll sell the Syntaxx. Maybe some time as I’m enjoying the evaluation process.

Thanks for the info about other ways to upscale, all food for thought :+1:

Regarding changes to the sound of the BB with the Syntaxx, it’s a bit early to say as it’s only had about 8 hours of use but I have noticed deeper bass. The mids are about the same and the sound stage is overblown (individual instruments and voices are way too big). I saw Hans Beekhuyzens review and he found great improvements after 8 days continuous playing. I can’t spare the time for long periods of listening at the moment owing to family illness but once I’m happy that the NDS/Chords have completely run in, I’ll leave the BB/Syntaxx playing and get some periodic listening in. Once everything is run in, time for some serious evaluation :grin:

I’ve compared Tidal Masters vs standard 16bit and there is loss of fidelity.
NB this is where you are not playing through an MQA DAC.

Hi Guinnless

I’m wondering if you have used an upsampling DAC in your comparison. Which System/DAC were you using? It’s always interesting to have another’s view. Do you have any particular tracks I could listen to, in order to compare (on Tidal) please? There seems to be plenty of disagreement about MQA but I like to think I’m neutral, at least until I’ve finished evaluating these lovely products! Others in this thread have said that it is the same stream fed to any DAC, which makes sense to me. If it’s bit perfect, there shouldn’t be any added noise surely?

Cool, then you are lucky you can’t hear the difference in the audio… but yes technically it is an inferior sound… the MQA encoding is a ‘dithered’ onto lossless bass band, using the least significant bits for the higher resolution compressed encoding.
Read the MQA patent if you want to see how it’s done… the view is that that many don’t really appreciate full 16 bit LPCM so wouldn’t notice… if it was reduced, and perhaps you are an example of that…
I unfortunately absolutely can hear… which is a shame… so for me it’s either MQA or lossless PCM.
Naim are also aware, which is why they don’t send un decoded MQA to their streamers and DACs from their Tidal portal on their app as the quality is not commensurate with Naim standards.

Exactly perhaps @Russ is getting confused on what is MQA decode and MQA backwards compatibility… the two are very different… I guess it could be somewhat confusing if you were new to it… some of the marketing blurb I feel almost deliberately obfuscates.

But hopefully @Russ understands a little better now, as many forum members have attempted to correctly answer his questions…

Hello Russ
Thanks for the info on the Meridian 218. I just ordered one to use downstairs to power a set of M6 speakers for our LR/DR/Kit area.

So and ND555 + PSU 555 + M scaler + DAVE DAC + Preamp = $20,000 + $13,000 + $5000 + $11,000 + $16,400, and you have the next Statement front end—wow. That is too rich for my blood. I opted to sell my ND555 and go with the Meridian Ultra Dac which gives MQA, Apodizes CD, and I pass on resampled Hi Rez and go with stock Hi Rez, and its one box instead of 5. Best sound I have ever had.

I agree that some great products must be in the pipeline to address the time domain issues with current Hi Rez. Several years from now, digital will be quite different.

Hello Russ
Thanks for the info on the Meridian 218. I just ordered one to use downstairs to power a set of M6 speakers for our LR/DR/Kit area.

So and ND555 + PSU 555 + M scaler + DAVE DAC + Preamp = $20,000 + $13,000 + $5000 + $11,000 + $16,400, and you have the next Statement front end—wow. That is too rich for my blood. I opted to sell my ND555 and go with the Meridian Ultra Dac which gives MQA, Apodizes CD, and I pass on resampled Hi Rez and go with stock Hi Rez, and its one box instead of 5. Best sound I have ever had.

I agree that some great products must be in the pipeline to address the time domain issues with current Hi Rez. Several years from now, digital will be quite different.
[/quote]

Nice DAC. I haven’t heard it but heard great things, you’ll be very happy with that! What are you using for a bridge?[quote=“bailyhill, post:29, topic:2899, full:true”]

There are no time domain domain issues with loss less Hi definition per se… I don’t know where you are getting this from… it just doesn’t make sense. Sure digital electronics vary on how well they manage timing bandwidth and phase… but that varies from design to design…
However if you compress Hidef using the MQA compression algorithm and reduce frequency information, MQA allows you to not sacrifice timing info as well, but that is an artefact of MQA, and not hidefinition generally…
Lossless LPCM allows the retention of timing and frequency information, as both are conveyed, though on reconstruction ultrasonics are usually filtered, but that doesn’t affect the timing info which is encoded in the pre filtered LPCM.
But LPCM is relatively bandwidth heavy which is where the MQA compression comes in.

You might want to join the AES if you are more interested in this, and there are many factual documents on the subject… and it’s light on sales marketing…

Both Rob Watts and Bob Stuart talk about this in papers and presentations to AES and to the audiophile community. I have not heard Rob Watts (Chord) hardware, but many speak well of it. I have heard Bob Stuart’s hardware (Meridian Ultra Dac/MQA) and it is clearly better to my ears, my system, my room. Others agree. Others disagree. I am sure Naim is working on other approaches that will accomplish wonderful things in the digital domain compared to where we are now–but they do not talk about it. I asked via support if they had something coming, and they were typically no comment. So I moved on.

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