Devialet and MQA

[Confused]

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 seem to remember reading something, possibly a comment from one of the Devialet people quoted in one of the Munich show or Oxford Audio event threads, that implementing MQA processing would adversely affect the DAC/ADH processes in the Devialet so my guess is that it isn't likely to happen, or at least not with the current Expert Pro models. It may be more feasible in a new model specifically designed with MQA processing in mind.

There are 2 steps in MQA processing, what MQA calls the first and second unfolds. The first can be done in software so it could be a candidate for inclusion in Devialet firmware BUT the first unfold can already be done in Roon and Devialet already has an association with Roon that it promotes, and it can also be done in some external devices. Even if it were possible to easily include the first unfold in Devialet software I doubt Devialet would see much benefit in adding the first MQA unfold to their list of features. It's a lot easier and cheaper to promote Roon as the way for Devialet owners to access the first unfold. The second unfold can only be done in hardware so we aren't going to see that in any current model Devialet and I doubt we'll see it in a future model

I also don't think native DSD handling is possible with the current DAC.

David - your memory is almost right!  See link below:

https://devialetchat.com/Thread-UK-event-with-Mathieu-Pernot-17-July?pid=85585#pid85585

@markush - It really is not worth worrying about Devialet incorporating MQA.  Firstly, it looks pretty clear that they are not going to do it.  Secondly, you can play MQA with a Devialet; Roon or Tidal will do the first unfold (the important bit), and if you really want to optimise further, you can use HQPlayer, which can both do the "second unfold" upsampling, and add a filter specifically designed for use with MQA.  Thirdly, many say that versus normal PCM/FLAC, some MQA tracks sound better, some sound worse.  So unless you want to keep A/B testing tracks, you are probably just as well off keeping with good old FLAC. (or similar)  Fourthly, I would tend to agree with @maxijazz, and to add to this, apparently MQA's great hope was a link with the one of "big boys" of streaming. Apple & Spotify are not interested, and now that Amazon Music HD is up and running without MQA, it looks to me like the future for MQA is looking very uncertain.

So if you like MQA there are some very solid ways of optimising your system to enjoy it whilst it is here, but I would not worry too much about Devialet's plans.

As an aside, I was looking at this review of the MQA capable Mytek Brooklyn Bridge.  OK, a very different product, but it does indicate that in some cases MQA implementation can be problematic.  If Devialet were to do it, I would not be 100% confident that they would not mess things up completely! 

http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/mytek-d...ac/?page=2