There was questions about how far the Roon Core was able to process the MQA decode.
Problems, I don’t hear any problems with MQA versions.
I have listened to MQA 44.1 against older Redbook rips
I have listened to MQA 96 against the 24/96 versions
I have listened to MQA 192 unfolded to 24/96 against 24/192 versions
I have listened to MQA version against DSD versions (SACD rips)
Where I do I find and hear the problems you are hearing?
No faffing, just playback in Roon
If you prefer the sound of a lossy process, then that’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Or try to justify it. It doesn’t matter. Enjoy!
Faffing in terms of setting up/connectivity based on your sketches, not necessarily at each play.
But my understanding is the sample rates for an MQA’d version of a 16 bit recording would still be 16 bits - except that the three least significant bits would be dither (as opposed to truncated).
I don’t playback MQA without applying a level of unfolding, whether local stored MQA, or Tidal Masters or whether at home in the Roon environment or on the move with native Tidal app and an external dongle DAC.
I don’t use the Naim Tidal integration with my NDS, and I have never heard the Naim Qobuz integration.
Not that I mean! Tidal actually send CD version to non-MQA streamers (like the linn streamers), not really the one that is MQA-encoded.
It’s still lossy. Anyway whatever you like to listen to is fine. Lossless via Naim could well sound worse to you! It’s really not worth worrying about.
Unfortunately it can’t actually work that way.
Dither has to be a shaped noise signal - it has to be genuine noise, i.e it has to have no correlation to the signal being dithered and it has to have no correlation to itself.
The lower 3 bit of MQA carry compressed data that can be unfolded into information that can be added to a higher resolution reconstruction of the signal, and therefore must, by definition fail the above two criteria.
Referring to them as ‘dither’ is mathematically incorrect, the compression algorithm may (from the human perspective, largely mask the fact that this is a separate foreign signal buried below the 13bits of music (thus allowing them to act as an inefficient dither like signal), but it can’t actually turn them into dither.
Fine. Dither was somebody else’s term, not mine. I just borrowed it. But in any event it begs the question that I asked in my original post, and to which I have yet to receive a clear answer. (You may feel I have; maybe I can’t see the forest through the trees, but I am not satisfied.)
When:
am I getting (a) the Master version or (b) a hidden CD Quality version?
Choices are (a) or (b). No alternatives accepted. I am not asking about Roon; nor am I interested in debating the merits of MQA.
You will not decode the Master version, for sure. In your case, without Roon.
But then some say you will then have 13/44 , like Xanthe, and other the 16/44 Flac. I would like to know the exact information.
Unless the Master was encoded in MQA at the time it was made, any MQA ‘Master’ isn’t the original Master by definition.
Any Master might subsequently be encoded into MQA and labelled by them as an ‘MQA Master’ but it isn’t the original - merely a lossy version of it. Whether you prefer this lossy version is another matter - some clearly do.
OK I’ll admit, I’m losing bits in this topic too…
Maybe you need a better ethernet switch?
Unfortunately you’ll have to put up with an alternative:
Without recording the data stream and doing a technical analysis of the data, only Tidal themselves can tell you whether you are getting:
A) 13bit/44.1 MQA encapsulated as FLAC
B) 16/44.1 PCM encapsulated as FLAC
It’s entirely possible that for some albums you are getting A, and for others you are getting B.
Yeah, that should’ve been (c). But I was hoping that maybe someone from Naim would know. @Stevesky said something that suggested to me that Naim streamers would always get a proper CD Quality 16 bit encapsulated as FLAC file, but I would love a simple yes or no.
Maybe you need to ask Tidal? If anyone knows they should! (All the more so as they appear to claim to know more about Naim’s engagement with MQA!)
This is fine if you can be sure that they will give you a correct and direct answer to the question being posed. Given that Tidal seem invested in MQA there might be some grounds for thinking this isn’t a given…
They’d probably just tell me to get Roon.