Trying to get going with a ND5 XS 2

[Guinnless]

I’m assuming that your NAS is transcoding to to WAV, or you ripped to WAV rather than FLAC in the first place. This would give your local stream a bit more of a jump in SQ.

If the Tidal album you are playing is an MQA version then it’s down on quality - see my comments in the “Tidal vs CD” thread. Sadly you can only see if it’s an MQA version in the Tidal desktop App.

Tidal vs CD

Just a quick comparison - all I have time for at the moment. Through the Naim App playing “Alison Moyet - All Cried Out” the MQA version is a bit softer, less dynamic and a touch quieter, not terrible but once you’ve heard the standard version it’s noticeable. The MQA version had a slightly higher bit rate displayed, just a few Kb/s more. Through Bubble I compared “Madeleine Peyroux - Down On Me” and found both Tidal and Qobuz sound the same. These were both transcoded to WAV by Bubble so I…

Also read.

@Simon-in-Suffolk

the MQA encoded file can be played back by a regular lossless PCM DAC albeit with a slight loss of quality (effective reduced bit depth/dynamic range - in practice around 14 bits or less and reduced SNR) compared to a true PCM file without MQA encoding.