First things first liking the new forum but had to sign up again so you will have to excuse me as I’m sure it’s been mentioned soooo many times…but are we ever gonna be able to stream master’s quality through our Naim products please?
Steve
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Directly though your naim products…not at the moment…and probably not in the near future
But there is ways round it…with third party software I believe
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Thanks for the quick response, but why can it not please? And what 3rd party software would you recommend please?
Steve
Naim does not support MQA (Tidal Masters) So the app will only show standard 44.1/16 bit CD versions. If you want masters you need to use hardware or software that supports MQA decoding or unfolding of the first stage, such as the Tidal Desktop App, Mconnect (although not sure how well it works), Audiovarna, or Roon there are others but they escape me right now. This will only get you the first unfold of the MQA process to get the full resolution past 96/24 you also need an MQA rendering capable dac.
Just tried mconnect, whilst it will list masters it does not perform the first unfold to 88.2/24 or 96/24 so absolutely pointless.
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Which 3rd part software?
I believe roon has been used successfully by some to unwrap masters quality audio files
Have not tried it myself though…
I plugged my pc into my 272 the other day to compare the Tidal desktop app with MQA and non MQA versions of the same music on Tidal - some Led Zep tracks. Firstly, the sound was horrid, so it wasn’t a great test. But I couldn’t tell the difference. I also tried listening to the same MQA and non-MQA versions of the same tracks on the PC itself via headphones - also no noticeable difference. So either I have misunderstood what Tidal mean when they say the Tidal desktop app unfolds MQA. Or there is no difference. Or my PC is so poor that the differences were swamped by the noise in the signal.
But what exactly do Tidal mean by playing MQA files through the desk top app?
Using the pc soundcard output is never a good test and likely looses a lot of the benefit but if you heard nothing you heard nothing. TBH i struggle to heat the differences from CD to HiRes in non MQA a lot of the time it does really depend on the master. I have noticed some difference when I listen to them via Roon on my Atom but some CD versions sound better and sometimes the MQA ones do.
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I want to help, and I need help with this topic. MConnect and Roon is an easy way to stream 24 bit, but yeah it’s not true MQA.
I am using MConnect, and it delivers playable 24 bit files to my 272 streamer. The 272 detects these 24 bit files, but I’m losing 96kHz, correct? Is it 48kHz?
why doesn’t Naim support MQA natively? Can’t they simply license BlueOS as their streamer OS and call it done? Thats what NAD did 
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You will just get the unfolded MQA stream so yes 48khz/24 bit is what you get from Mconnect unless your streamer or DAC support MQA decode and rendering it does not seem to perform the first decode stage.
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