[rlw6534]

My Brooklyn DAC+ shows the actual sample rate and bit depth of the input stream and also the MQA unfolded sample rate and bit depth. I'll check the two songs @justanut showed but I know there is an issue of different MQA masters on Tidal based on region. We tried to compare some Metallica (I think) earlier and some guys didn't see MQA albums at all, and others had nothing but MQA. And I remember some DAP manufacturer on the site saying that the unfold sample rate shown was not necessarily correct for some reason.

@justanut would you please confirm what DAP that is and send me the Tidal links to the two songs? I'll post my update when I can. Thanks.

They are in the "Vocal Jazz - Tidal Masters" playlist. His DAP looks like an iBasso DX300? iBasso is one of the DAP makers that reports the actual DAC playback rate (rather than the MQA source/Master rate). In his case it is 16x.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

According to my Brooklyn DAC+ which is the best diagnostic tool I have for MQA:

Feeling Good is 24/44.1 KHz raw, 24/88.2 KHz MQA Blue
Unconditional Love is 24/48.0 KHz raw, 24/96.0 KHz MQA Blue

Yeah, I tried to explain that MQA rendering always upsamples to the capabilities of the DAC but as I said, MQA can be confusing with respect to sample rates. You have the source Master rate, the MQA file sample rate (always 44.1 or 48kHz), the core unfold (always 2x the file rate) and the rendering rate (4x, 8x, 16x). To complicate matters some DACs report the source (Master) rate with the MQA symbol and others report the actual final sample rate at the DAC (without a symbol).

I think the core unfold is not relevant by itself. It's just what the Tidal desktop app will do. If you have MQA-approved hardware (full decoder) there are only the unfolded (raw) rate and the MQA rate after full decoding. If some device or firmware "unfolds" more than that then yeah, we have upsampling and I guess it breaks MQA since MQA is about authentication and turning an MQA stream into some unapproved stream is not compliant.

The MQA page at https://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/science-mqa/mqa-playback/# says

• A full decoder is able to indicate MQA Provenance and other information such as Original Sample Rate on its UI.

I agree there is a lot of mumbo-jumbo here and I would also agree that if his DAP is really playing at 768 KHz it is upsampling; but I would say this is not MQA, but rather a vendor hack which is non-compliant.

They are in the "Vocal Jazz - Tidal Masters" playlist. His DAP looks like an iBasso DX300? iBasso is one of the DAP makers that reports the actual DAC playback rate (rather than the MQA source/Master rate). In his case it is 16x.

I'm not sure it is even showing the real rate but rather what it could be. There was discussion on this, I don't have time to look for it.

 

[rlw6534]

According to my Brooklyn DAC+ which is the best diagnostic tool I have for MQA:

Feeling Good is 24/44.1 KHz raw, 24/88.2 KHz MQA Blue
Unconditional Love is 24/48.0 KHz raw, 24/96.0 KHz MQA Blue

Yes, that is correct. Your DAC is displaying the MQA/OFS original sample rate of the source/master track used to create the MQA encoded file. The information comes from the track metadata. It is not the actual final unfolded DAC sample rate (which is 8x or 352.8 or 384 kHz for your particular DAC). It's not just doing the first unfold to 88.2 or 96 kHz, it is fully decoding to 8x regardless of what the display says. That's what a renderer or full decoder does. The iBasso does 16x unfolding, that's why it displays 705.6 or 768 kHz as the DAC sample rate. Some DACs/DAPs report the MQA/OFS rate of the master (Brooklyn, Fiio, etc) and others display the actual unfolded rate (iBasso, Hiby, etc).

I think the core unfold is not relevant by itself. It's just what the Tidal desktop app will do. If you have MQA-approved hardware (full decoder) there are only the unfolded (raw) rate and the MQA rate after full decoding. If some device or firmware "unfolds" more than that then yeah, we have upsampling and I guess it breaks MQA since MQA is about authentication and turning an MQA stream into some unapproved stream is not compliant.

The MQA page at https://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/science-mqa/mqa-playback/# says

• A full decoder is able to indicate MQA Provenance and other information such as Original Sample Rate on its UI.

Again, your DAC is displaying the Original Sample Rate of the master and MQA provenance, not the fully unfolded bitrate. MQA decoders (and renderers) automatically ‘unfold’ as far as the hardware permits (i.e. the maximum supported bitrate of the DAC that is a multiple of 44.1 or 48kHz).

I agree there is a lot of mumbo-jumbo here and I would also agree that if his DAP is really playing at 768 KHz it is upsampling; but I would say this is not MQA, but rather a vendor hack which is non-compliant.


I'm not sure it is even showing the real rate but rather what it could be. There was discussion on this, I don't have time to look for it.

It's not a hack, it's how MQA actually works. MQA can be confusing as I have said.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Well this is a good discussion but I have to admit what you're saying is new to me, I have never read anything like that before. @Mytek last post was January 4th of this year and he has not posted a lot.

I hope he can clarify a few points regarding what the display on the DAC+ is telling me and whether it unfolds further than that or not.

I don't know if Bob Stuart is a member, I have not found a likely userid.

 

[rlw6534]

Well this is a good discussion but I have to admit what you're saying is new to me, I have never read anything like that before. @Mytek last post was January 4th of this year and he has not posted a lot.

I hope he can clarify a few points regarding what the display on the DAC+ is telling me and whether it unfolds further than that or not.

I don't know if Bob Stuart is a member, I have not found a likely userid.

Based on other things Bob Stuart has said about MQA, I highly doubt we would get a clear answer...

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Based on other things Bob Stuart has said about MQA, I highly doubt we would get a clear answer...

Well then this is a golden opportunity for him to give us the straight skinny. I am a fan of clear sound and clear talk!

 

[Brain Damage]

Well then this is a golden opportunity for him to give us the straight skinny. I am a fan of clear sound and clear talk!

This is a really interesting discussion - I agree. I own a few different MQA renderers plus the LG V30 (MQA decoder).

This is my understanding:
MQA albums and tracks when played 'Bit-perfect' do not upsample to the native DAC's limits. Core decoders (like UAPP and Audirvana) take the compressed MQA file and complete the first unfold. As the compressed MQA file tends to be either 44.1kHz or 48kHz, this means the first unfold is 88.2kHz or 96kHz. Renderers complete the final unfold when paired with a core decoder (e.g. UAPP/Audirvana). Even though MQA renderers have a capped input frequency (Dragonfly Black @96kHz/Zorloo Ztella @384kHz), both can still fully unfold up to 768khz and can therefore complete the second and third unfolds (there are only 3 unfolds involved with MQA decoding). This is stated on Bob Stuarts MQA Playback Bob Talks website:

https://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/science-mqa/mqa-playback/#

The advantage of a full decoder versus a renderer, is that the device does not need a core decoder like UAPP or audirvana as it is already able to core decode the compressed MQA file/stream + complete the final 2 unfolds. In other words the full decoder does the equivalent of UAPP + MQA renderer in one package.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I have full decoder DACs and it looks to me like they unfold MQA to the "intended" level, which is most often not the DAC's highest resolution. So it remains a head (or butt) scratcher for me.

 

[FiGuY1017]

Anyone have their tidal say it's still playing a track, yet no music coming through?

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Anyone have their tidal say it's still playing a track, yet no music coming through?

The only problem I see with Tidal in the past year or two is sometimes the desktop app breaks when switching from an MQA album to a non-MQA album. It hangs and you have to pause and play manually, then it works. This is a big annoyance since I have playlists with MQA and non-MQA...

What DAC are you using, and when you say no music is coming through, are you sure it is not because some orher device is active?

 

[FiGuY1017]

The only problem I see with Tidal in the past year or two is sometimes the desktop app breaks when switching from an MQA album to a non-MQA album. It hangs and you have to pause and play manually, then it works. This is a big annoyance since I have playlists with MQA and non-MQA...

What DAC are you using, and when you say no music is coming through, are you sure it is not because some orher device is active?

Hi, thanks! I'm using a M2 Tech Young Mkiii and Mkiv and some times at random I'll be listening and music stops, yet it still shows it's tracking, doesn't happen often thankfully. And I've experienced frying eggs sound at times switching between mqa track to a non mqa track ( between tracks,)just for a fraction of a second.

That experience with the frying eggs makes me wonder if it's a filter issue that is maybe contributing to another issue that is similar. At times I'll get that same frying egg sound for a split second while listening in the middle of a song, but only happens with the IV and not the Young Mkiii.

The IV has a built in headamp stage so not sure if that could be the difference.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Hi, thanks! I'm using a M2 Tech Young Mkiii and Mkiv and some times at random I'll be listening and music stops, yet it still shows it's tracking, doesn't happen often thankfully. And I've experienced frying eggs sound at times switching between mqa track to a non mqa track ( between tracks,)just for a fraction of a second.

That experience with the frying eggs makes me wonder if it's a filter issue that is maybe contributing to another issue that is similar. At times I'll get that same frying egg sound for a split second while listening in the middle of a song, but only happens with the IV and not the Young Mkiii.

The IV has a built in headamp stage so not sure if that could be the difference.

Hi. I am not familiar with those DACS. When the desktop issue I mentioned happens, I see a spinning icon of some kind so the app knows there is a problem. It seems possible your hardware is having a problem. Could you turn off MQA passthrough and see if the problem happens? That might narrow it down to a bug in MQA decoding by the DAC firmware.

 

[Neweymatt]

Must be 1 April, as this was first in the queue of My Daily Discovery today....

HA HA HA, YOU GOT ME!!!

 

[Tennessee]

Does anyone remember Winamp and it's Milkdrop visualisations?

So you can play Tidal to Foobar2000 with imported Milkdrop from Winamp.
It's always nicer to have something to look at.

 

[priest331]

hello..
has anybody experienced this?

the tidal app in my Hiby R8 could download playlist, track radio, and album files faster, when i clear the cache via the file manager app (built in R8 app), and when i also delete the files in the artwork subfolder (also via the file manager app).

it's quite a tedious task to do, especially when you have forgotten to manually update your playlists, and to delete the said cache and artwork files before going to work so you can listen to tidal offline.

secondly, i also have to manually update my downloaded playlists and track radio / master radio playlist files from time to time. and the download process becomes very slow and annoying if i have not deleted the cache files and the album artwork files. is there an auto update (of downloaded playlists) function which i may have missed?
or there's just none?

i hope that there would be a future software update that could resolve this issue, as my tidal listening experience becomes more annoying than relaxing..