Question to Devialet regarding Roon and MQA

[Pim]

I own a Meridian Explorer2 as well and I just assumed the disparity was due to the fact that it's not a world class DAC -- far from it. It's an ok portable DAC but I assume it doesn't reclock etc. Also you will be hearing a lot more USB based rubbish on that DAC unless you've taken care to avoid it.

When I first heard MQA at a Bluesound demo last year in Dublin I loved the natural "LP" like feel to the sound. The imaging was fantastic even though the timbre of instruments changed little. Rhythm was good too. 

/ ......................................   /

The improvement is big enough that I think sooner rather than later Devialet will be obliged to include MQA decoding notwithstanding their "Not invented here" stance heretofore. 

Bob Stuart is right - MQA is an important step towards perfecting "digital" sound.

What I found encouraging was how much the sound improved on the explorer2 when fed MQA versus even hi-res 24/192 PCM - the output quality jumped up to a much higher level. This suggests to me that lower cost DACs will see an even greater benefit with MQA than the high end stuff.

When you think about it; MQA 'fixes' the smearing that comes with any particular DAC. So it could be that a bad DAC with more smearing will end up sounding just as good as a good DAC with less smearing. And so, by Meridian adding MQA to their cheapest offering (more smearing) it will show the greatest improvement as apposed to standard / high res FLAC. 

Looks like there's some clever marketing going on here. 


And if that's the case, Devialet will be able to get away with not implementing MQA by just telling us all that their DAC has so little smearing, it doesn't need MQA. Problem solved