DAC for Gold Phantom (Stereo)

[Confused]

Reading this thread makes me think that it worth a quick reminder that the "second unfold" for MQA does not actually provide any additional data from the music file, or indeed anything of use for a Devialet Phantom. The second unfold is upsampling (which a Phantom does anyway for inputs below 24/192) and the imposition of a minimum phase filter.

The first unfold does matter, and this can be done in some music playing software, such as Roon, Tidal and others.

I wrote about this last year in a post regarding MQA for the Expert range, but in principle it applies equally for the Phantom.

See link:

https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Decoder-...5#pid90205

The simple answer is to make sure that you have software that will perform the first unfold, and then don't worry about the second unfold, it cannot benefit a Phantom. In fact arguably the second unfold is of little use even to an MQA DAC, other than being able to offer a nice looking file bitrate on the DAC's display and a blue light. The actual file bitrate shown for the second unfold is bogus, it would be no different to a Phantom displaying 24/192 when playing a 16/44.1 file, just because the Phantom has upsampled the input.