Meridian MQA

[Hifi_swlon]

Flashman, can you point us to a reference from MQA about this?

You can get this information directly from the MQA website.  The link below will take you to a Q and A where you will find this statement:

"MQA can be played on any audio device, whether that’s inside your home, your car, from your phone or anywhere else you might be – perfectly fitting into the way you listen to your music today. Without an MQA enabled product, the sound will be better than CD quality. To truly unlock the richness of MQA you’ll need a device or software with an MQA decoder. On playback of MQA content, the player indicates you are hearing exactly what the artist recorded and approved in the studio."

http://www.mqa.co.uk/customer/how-it-works

That statement about not decoded MQA is not consistent with my listening experience - see my reply above

Yeah, I'd kind of concluded that from skip-reading the huge thread on the Roon forums too.

In the end I gave up, it seems like they (MQA) haven't really given everyone all the details they need to understand it (maybe they wont if its proprietary) and they've made a total mess of the press release for it.  It seems like a bit of a debacle but also to get the 'full' benefits, you'll need to buy an MQA certified DAC as well as the MQA files themselves. I suppose you might get lucky with a firmware update, and also get the data from streamed sources like Tidal, so in that case it would be win-win if it was actually good - but the reality is very few people have heard it for real and on their own systems.  I don't think they've even announced when certified MQA capable DACs will become available?

If it is amazing new technology that transforms the listening experience for us with no downsides, then that will just be amazing.  But I'm just going to wait until it falls in my lap rather than worry about it.  I use Tidal and Roon, so I'll most likely get access to the format, but who knows what Devialet will do on the DAC side - I can't imagine it will be immediate whatever it is.