[aaf evo]

Like which lol sp2k?

I did sell my SP2000 and kept the DX160 if that’s any indication

edit: just to clarify I’m not saying the DX160 is a “better” dap than the SP2000 but the SQ for value is much more attractive.

 

[Ojisan]

I don’t know tbh but I found the DX160 to sound better than some “flagship” DAPs.

I didn’t try DX160 but I had Marantz HD-DAC1 which had the prior generation Cirrus chipset to 160. Even taking into account the general warmer Marantz sound, I remember is was quite full bodied and musical. With clarity of iBasso amps, I can see it shining.

Let the speculation continue

 

[hshock76]

It has been proven on more than one occasion that a top tier DAC does not guarantee a top tier SQ. In most instances, tuning as highlighted countless times plays an important role and not forgetting personal preferences on signature and tuning. I personally have moved from preferring a warm signature to a more neutral and natural presentation. Realism is my key criterial now.

 

[Whitigir]

well, just lately I have been addicted to MQA . I need the dx300 to also do MQA 16X LOL!!! I think the only DAC-IC that can do MQA natively and fully is Sabres ES9068AS. Not sure how much it Could unfold, but A&K only have it upto 8x. If there are more, then I would be very interested to learn.

This Album is so freaking phenomenal

 

[twister6]

well, just lately I have been addicted to MQA . I need the dx300 to also do MQA 16X LOL!!! I think the only DAC-IC that can do MQA natively and fully is Sabres ES9068AS. Not sure how much it Could unfold, but A&K only have it upto 8x. If there are more, then I would be very interested to learn.

This Album is so freaking phenomenal

Hiby R8 (AK4497) and Hiby R6 2020 (ES9038) can do MQA 16x and DSD512.

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

Oh I'm interested too but I'm waiting for official info rather than speculating!

I'm not sure about the form factor and that standing out volume wheel but the tech inside, for what we know, looks very promising. Keeping the hype in check.

Smart. It’s not the most “Sexiest” thing so I’m shocked by what they are delaying announcements.

NOS = Non Over Sampling. There are only 2 kinds of conversions in a DAC, Over Sampling or Non Over Sampling. The DAC can be just about anything in technology, Discrete resistors ladders, an FPGA coded Modulator, an Sigma Delta modulator...etc.

I get that but if it’s NOS, Sigma Delta modular isn’t multibit nor “bit perfect” on the analog. If they go R2R it won’t be a ESS or A&K chip but maybe a Burr Brown or if Cirrus logic if it does R2R. Honestly if they go this route and it’s fine tuned PCM will sound awesome and I’m a DSD fanboy mostly.

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

well, just lately I have been addicted to MQA . I need the dx300 to also do MQA 16X LOL!!! I think the only DAC-IC that can do MQA natively and fully is Sabres ES9068AS. Not sure how much it Could unfold, but A&K only have it upto 8x. If there are more, then I would be very interested to learn.

This Album is so freaking phenomenal

This is why I’m leaning towards A&K se200 two flagship dap chips. My only pet peeve is that has a 2.5 balance and A&K is kind of dodgy with the mw output at least in my lazy research methods I didn’t find that info. Lol.

Ok, 8x vs 16x rendering MQA one runs smoother less jitter noise from the faster unfolding??

 

[Whitigir]

Hiby R8 (AK4497) and Hiby R6 2020 (ES9038) can do MQA 16x and DSD512.

Ah yes, I am aware, thanks for the info. However, at the moment, I am interested to see what DAP out there can Natively Unfold MQA without the CPU loads.

I am not sure beside ES9068AS , what other DAC-IC out there is fully compatible to MQA natively ? ESS isn’t a fan of disclosing Datasheet to the public either, so I can’t find any info about how much it can unfold these MQA

Talk about HIBY R8/6, they are using 660, and so does the Dx300. This Means the dx300 will possibly be running 16x as well. Omg, I crave more Details about DAC on Dx300 X_X

This is why I’m leaning towards A&K se200 two flagship dap chips. My only pet peeve is that has 2.5 balance and A&K is kind of dodgy with the mw output at least in my lazy research methods I didn’t find that info. Lol.

Ok, 8x vs 16x rendering MQA one runs smoother less jitter noise?

MQA idea is pretty simple but also confusing at times due to their sloppiness in presentations, and secret trade stuff. *disclaimer* I am still learning as I go, and this is what I have gathered by far. A lot of trade secrets don’t really help explaining stuff at all.

1/ usually Studio record very high sample PCM 384/768 for the purposes of editing and mastering. When done mastering, it still remains that high sample rate. Then it would be Down sampled to Redbook 16/44.1 standard. This was an old standard back in the 80th, Nyquist and others thought that 16/44.1 would fully be able to reproduce the original sinuous waves, and the spectrum is out of human hearing 20-20Khz. Back then, storage was a problem, and the computational power was also a problem.

2/ Nowadays, with remastering, and so on, together with how the modern studios are taking advantages of the new technologies, the MQA people would be like “why don’t we use the steps that down convert the recordings, and then revert it using the same algorithms DSP ?” Therefore, MQA was born.

How ?

1/ The moment the Recording Being down converted, they imprint a bit info to trigger a specific options of ”digital filters” and probably “dithering”, shaping order....etc....apparently, these things if applied to any files during upsampling would slightly alternate the sound quality. So using the exact combination when it was compressed down, in reverse, would net it closer to the original recording. Here is where the confusion happened

A/ The MQA team claimed that MQA isn’t lossless, but it is a lossy compression! However, they didn’t clearly state it being lossy compared to what ? It actually is a lossy compared to the original high sampled recording. So there would be lost information, and even with the MQA upsampling process, it would never be able to reproduce 100% precision, but rather being very close to it.

B/ MQA claimed that the lost informations could never be recovered....well, it is true, but it could be guesstimated and resemble the original almost the same.

So, MQA is only a Lossy compression in referred to the original high sample recording. Under this standard, your CD Redbook is also a lossy kind.

Now, your question, why 8x vs 16X ? Because it is Sampling, the higher the sampling, the better the performances, the more accurate the outcome of the sinuous waves, or so they said . Is it necessarily lower noises ? Not really, because all of these are Live-processing, and components can get noisy when stretching their limits, hisses would occur, unless you go all out and pay a pretty $ for a real one. I think the one being listed by MQA to take advantage of this is a $25K DAC or so ? It is still PCM

Here is the arguments! Why don’t we stick to the original releases instead ? Since memory isn’t a problem anymore ? Oh well, apparently, MQA compressions allows better quality for streaming and also save storage. But no one stops anyone to buy the original 384/768Khz PCM either......however, getting to buy them is ......I don’t know where to get them LoL, except a few of the older collections. Most of the modern stuff are going MQA

But remember, we have another debate after all this MQA, upsampling and stuff.....there are Oversampling toward DSD as well, and there are also Non Over Sampling after the High Upsampling from MQA too!!!....the rabbit holes are Deeps ...

Anyways, I can understand the benefit of MQA, I can also see a big market is going to keep blooming, and may be faster than the other stuff. This is the same lesson that Apple taught us all, MP3 won when it happened at the right moment. So will MQA

Finally, what is MQA ideas again ? To somehow manage a low storage space, as low as Redbook standard of normal CD, but allow much higher accuracy of a much Higher original Sampled PCM recordings from the Studio (whether it was recorded that way or remastered). So then, what do the upsampling ? CPU/FPGA software with constant upgrades in MQA DSP updates, and or hardware that is hard coded and fully compatible such as ESS. So, is MQA lossless or lossy ? It is Lossless if compared to CD standard, and it is Lossy compared to Studio original recording sample rate.

So what really is the best format of digital music ? I gotta say that it is DSD, but it has to be originally Done, whether recorded, remastered, or processed by the studios. You get 80% of the works done without your systems doing all the “errors”, leggy works, processing....etc....it is all done under strict standard from the studios. All it needed is to pass by a capable system to go toward the Low pass filters. The newer Digital interfaces and CPU power can allow us all to enjoy DSD512 and 1024 or higher. But then, the problem again....Nobody is really selling and marketing as many album as MQA (especially modern Stuff), and can not be streaming for sure ....LOL

 

[HeyManslowdown97]

The 384/352 are basically multiples of 48/44.1 thats what clocks do when they read the oversampling for instance say you are in 96/24 then it will go to the 48 clock because 48x2= 96 so the high sampling rates are “downsample” when goes into the analog board in Sigma Delta. The R2R is when the analog output in theory is bit perfect. Therefore, Resistors are not futile. Lol.

All DSD is first mastered in PCM (DAW for DSD is extremely rare and not widely used) upsampled DXD (just PCM at 352 and up) It just converter at 44.1x 4= 176.4 DSD64 44.1*8= 352.8 DSD128.

So In theory 24/176 is the conversion to PCM if you wanted to convert your DSD64.

DSD is the most “analog” of all the digital formats because it’s read in “Real Time” however it’s resolution is low at 1 bit.

PCM about 24 bit is considered “high res” as far as 44.1/16 on loseless (Flac, Wav, Aif, Alac) has also been downsampled from 64, 32 or 24 bit to 16 and in truncation they add dithering.

****
I got this from an article that was informative about the MQA process “decoder” and “rendering” based on what I read is means the same thing.


Fact: Yes, this gets done in a lossy way but not lossy as is thought of with an MP3 because MQA never claims that the missing information is "psychoacoustically irrelevant" or that it can't be recovered.

The "unfolding" occurs in a series of steps sometimes in software and sometimes in hardware. So 48kHz gets unfolded to 96kHz and then again to 192kHz. The resultant bitstream does have some missing information; but MQA also encodes the difference between this final unfolding and the original analog waveform, and this difference gets used by an MQA-enabled DAC to reconstruct or "decode" all of the original information, so, in a full implementation of the MQA playback chain, the result is the same as lossless compression.

MQA is both lossy AND lossless. MQA is Schrödingers format.

https://audiophilereview.com/cd-dac-digital/mqa-the-facts-versus-the-fiction/

Schrödingers format. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation

 

[Zambu]

Me with my FLAC library reading the discussion

Much appreciated though

 

[hshock76]

This is why I’m leaning towards A&K se200 two flagship dap chips. My only pet peeve is that has a 2.5 balance and A&K is kind of dodgy with the mw output at least in my lazy research methods I didn’t find that info. Lol.

Ok, 8x vs 16x rendering MQA one runs smoother less jitter noise from the faster unfolding??

SE200 balanced output: AKM 720mv / ESS 320mw @ no load conditions.

I have the SE200 and it drives my all my IEMs well on both DACs.

 

[Tony Ng]

I don't believe the DX300 will have Mango OS. Qualcomm will not provide sources for writing Mango OS

ibasso japan dealer site mentioned that android n mango os, would both be available

 

[Skullar]

This is why I’m leaning towards A&K se200 two flagship dap chips. My only pet peeve is that has a 2.5 balance and A&K is kind of dodgy with the mw output at least in my lazy research methods I didn’t find that info. Lol.

Ok, 8x vs 16x rendering MQA one runs smoother less jitter noise from the faster unfolding??

Exactly my thoughts. 2.5mm jack is a nuisance on AKs.
But i thik if iBasso moves with some dac that makes it sound thick and with scooped out upper mids... Might go the other way..

Hard to say without auditioning obviously, but it seems M8 and R8 are fuller sounding options.
Id prefer something more energetic sounding while retaining good subbass rumble.
Basically dx228 on steroids that fita in a pocket.

 

[meprateek]

Price reveal -- accessed moon-audio cached page on google.
Priced sweetly though!
Edit: Looks like they just templated the DX220 page with a heading change. Sorry for confusion.

 

[gerelmx1986]

So @Whitigir is not an audiophile then, MQA is lossy and worse, creates noise artifacts on the upper 44.1kHz band (16-22khz) that's what even present on tull unfolding