DAC’s and Streamers

[wklie]

Originally Posted by doggiehowser

some software today can perform the first stage (unfold to 24/96) and send that to a non MQA DAC like the yggy. That’s what your Auralic is doing

The first part of the quoted sentence is correct - Tidal desktop app, Audirvana, and Roon can perform the MQA Core decoding (first unfold) of MQA.

Auralic is doing its own proprietary upsampling for MQA music, it does not perform the MQA Core decoding necessary to extract the musical information from 22/24kHz to 44/48kHz embedded inside the MQA music file or stream.

Streamers that can perform MQA Core decoding and send it to another DAC include Lumin product line (U1 MINI / U1 / T2 / X1 can output to USB), Aurender with MQA Core decoding upgrade (not free), and dCS Network Bridge (no USB output).

Disclosure: Our company is obviously a MQA licensee.