What I wanted to have a look at today is a few of the "Masters" albums available and a peek at what the MQA encoding/decoding did compared to what I believe are the hi-res downloads they originated as. However, it does give us a look at MQA in the context of real music that would be consumed by the average TIDAL subscriber. The availability of a software decoder doesn't change those impressions nor general criticisms which we can still think about and summarize near the end of this post. My intent today is not to review the discussions previously or to rehash specialty hi-res audio files like those by 2L. And summarized my feelings that it's essentially a smart, partially lossy encoder. Remember, over the last year, I have posted already on MQA - here and here. I suspect this could be confusing for some. Otherwise, it will not be "bit-perfect" and the DAC will not recognize the MQA encoding. 44kHz or 48kHz at 24-bit depth) and that the volume is 100% (either with "Force volume" or making sure the computer volume slider is 100%). My assumption is that if you do have one of these MQA DACs and passthrough is on, you should either make sure "Exclusive" mode is ticked or if not, manually make sure the OS samplerate is correct (ie. "Passthrough MQA" should be ticked only if you have an MQA enabled DAC or want to purposely hear MQA undecoded (I'll say it now that this is not recommended). If you're not using "Exclusive" mode, you can tick "Force volume" to set it to 100% volume so the internal mixer/dither routine hopefully doesn't mess with it.
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