Devialet and MQA

[David A]

@petrik ,

I always assumed that the Devialet's DAC operated at 24/192 because that't the highest resolution it can accept. I hadn't heard that it operated at 40/384 and I'd never seen the 8.1 firmware release because I didn't get my Devialet until they were up to FW10.something.

I downloaded a copy of FW 8.1 from the firmware archive and took a look at the PDF manual that came with it. I couldn't see any mention of the resolution the DAC operated at in the comments about the DAC itself but buried in the comments on the MAT DSD Engine there was the following statement: "MAT DSD Core technology converts the DSD format into Expert internal native PCM 40 bits / 384 kHz format…" so you've got a very good memory.

There doesn't seem to be any mention of this anywhere on Devialet's site in their comments on the technological features of the amp. Many thanks for the info.

[Confused]

@petrik Is correct. See link below which mentions "Expert internal native PCM 40 bits / 384 kHz format"

https://www.devialet.com/media/wysiwyg/d...warev8.pdf

I recall that this information used to be on Devialet's website, but only mentioned for duel mono units, so it was never clear if this is for all ADH implementations or dual mono only.

@David A mentions that all inputs are upsampled to 24/192. I can recall being told exactly the same thing, but how exactly this relates to the 40 bit 348 kHz statement is not clear. Another curiosity here is that the USB input can accept 32bit / 192kHz, although quite what the use of a 32bit input is I am not quite sure.

Mindful of the above, which is relevant, let's take this fully back on topic. Let's say you have software (Tidal or Roon) that does the first MQA "unfold" and sends this to an MQA enabled DAC that does the second "unfold". You might see a situation were the software "unfolds" to 24/48, then your MQA DAC shows 24/192 (or maybe even higher) after the second "unfold". A little blue MQA light appears on your DAC and the display shows 24/192. Hooray, you think, I am getting 24/192. Although this is a bit of an MQA con as the last bit is nothing more than upsampling in the DAC.

Do the same thing with a Devialet, you have Tidal or Roon to do the first unfold, this gives you the same 24/48 feed as above. You feed your Devialet 24/48, and the Devialet upsamples to 40bit / 348kHz, then does it's ADH magic. No blue light appears, you do not have a display showing 24/192, but essentially the same thing is happening as if you had an MQA DAC, it is a 24bit 48kHz feed being upsampled by the DAC.

If you really wanted to, you could get a little blue light and a sticker with 40bit 438kHz written on it.

A better plan would be that if you want to listen to MQA content, remember that the first unfold matters, this is extracting more data from the file, and this you can do using Roon or Tidal software "unfolding". Feed this to your Devialet, enjoy the music, the rest of the MQA stuff you need not worry about, it really does not matter.

If you ARE still worrying about the above, you could use Roon / HQPlayer to feed your Devialet. HQPlayer has some filters specifically optimised for use with MQA feeding non-MQA DACS. This is arguably the ultimate way to listen to MQA via a Devialet, and if you happened not to like the HQPlayer MQA filters, there are a dozen others to choose from to try.

[thumb5]

@petrik Is correct.  See link below which mentions "Expert internal native PCM 40 bits / 384 kHz format"

https://www.devialet.com/media/wysiwyg/d...warev8.pdf

I recall that this information used to be on Devialet's website, but only mentioned for duel mono units, so it was never clear if this is for all ADH implementations or dual mono only.

@David A mentions that all inputs are upsampled to 24/192.  I can recall being told exactly the same thing, but how exactly this relates to the 40 bit 348 kHz statement is not clear.  Another curiosity here is that the USB input can accept 32bit / 192kHz, although quite what the use of a 32bit input is I am not quite sure.

I hope I'm not taking the discussion too far off topic again...

For what it's worth, I'd understood the 40-bit/384 kHz specification to refer to the format used by all the DSP going on inside the Expert amps, presumably including ADH.  SHARC DSPs use a 40-bit extended-precision floating-point format (and have 40-bit registers) so this word width is a natural choice.  That suggests all inputs, analog or digital, are eventually scaled and up-sampled to this internal format and sampling rate so that they can all be processed by the same DSP pipeline and code.

[markush]

Why does the whitepaper mention toslink, coax / digital but not LAN connection?

[bernardl]

We can perhaps hope that at some point the Devialet might be able to accept 384/24 files.

Not that I think it really matters when you hear how good a mere 44/16 XRCD can sound.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Confused]

@markush - If you are referring to MAT, DSD via Ethernet has never been officially supported by Devialet, to this day there is no mention of it on their website. Although curiously, some have been able to get DSD64 to work via AIR / Ethernet. It is one of those great Devialet mysteries.

@bernardl re your first point, mindful of the recent test that indicated that in blind test conditions, nobody can reliably tell the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/96, I would tend not to worry too much about Devialet supporting 24/382. Re your second point, yes, agreed!

[David A]

…
@bernardl re your first point, mindful of the recent test that indicated that in blind test conditions, nobody can reliably tell the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/96, I would tend not to worry too much about Devialet supporting 24/382. Re your second point, yes, agreed!

I don't think that we can reliably tell the difference between 16/44.1 and higher resolutions but I do think we can reliably tell the difference between two different masterings when one is of higher quality than the other and higher resolution source material is sometimes/often better mastered than the CD resolution release.

But that's irrelevant to the question of whether there could be an advantage to 24/384 input when compared to the current 24/192 input capability we have.

If our source material is of lower resolution to 24/192 we currently have a choice between upsampling to 24/192 prior to sending it to the Devialet or sending it at native resolution and letting the Devialet do the upsampling. Which is better is going to depend on whether you've got an external device which can do the upsampling better the Devialet so some of us may be better off doing it elsewhere in our signal paths and some of us may be better letting our Devialets do it. That isn't going to change if the Devialet became capable of accepting 24/384 input. The issue is still going to be can we get results we prefer doing the upsampling elsewhere in the signal path or letting the Devialet do it.

The situation changes if we have some 24/384 native content. Currently we have to downsample that to 24/192 oer lower before sending it to the Devialet where it gets upsampled to 40/384. If the Devialet accepted 24/384 input we could avoid a lossy downsampling step, send the native 24/384 to the Devialet and just have it upsample that to 40/384. Would that deliver a sound improvement? I have no idea but in principle its best to avoid any lossy downsampling process if at all possible.

Put all that together and I'd see having 24/384 input capability as being beneficial to anyone with native 24/384 content or with the capability of doing a better upsampling job external to the Devialet. That's probably a small group of people but if Devialet chose to offer amps with 24/384 input capability I wouldn't knock it. I doubt anyone takes full advantage of every feature and capability the Expert Pro range currently offers and any new feature or capability that Devialet add in the future isn't going to benefit every Devialet owner so the fact that 24/384 input capability won't be of benefit to everyone isn't an issue provided it is of benefit to some, just as every other feature and capability is only of benefit to some owners.

[Axel]

I’m not sure if I’ve posted this before, but here goes:


https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6938

I don’t think it’s too late to participate if you want to.

[markush]

MQA on Tidal is increasingly becoming more and more available.
To fully exploit it would be nice if Devialet could include fully encoding in the DAC as well as DSD.
Any idea how much effort / feasible this would be?

[Flashman]

MQA on Tidal is increasingly becoming more and more available. 
To fully exploit it would be nice if Devialet could include fully encoding in the DAC as well as DSD.
Any idea how much effort / feasible this would be?

I don’t think the current DAC could be tweaked for MQA.  It would require a hardware change, which, of course, Devialet won’t do.