Meridian MQA

[ogs]

In Devialet MQA would probably have to be decoded in the DSP before any of the other PCM functions such as SAM etc. About the same position in the signal path as DSD conversion takes place. My understanding is this would be 'in hardware' even if the code is not running in the DAC itself. As for software decoding I think Auralic actually had MQA decoding in their Aries streamer at CES, but Meridian/MQA intervened before Auralic could do demonstrations. The question here is how Auralic would go about using the correct dac "signature" as this is an important part of MQA playback.
I also believe MQA "integrity" would be broken if an MQA encoded file is run through a convolver or similar DSP processing. I have sent an email to MQA asking about this. I'll post the response here (if they bother to answer)..