Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music UHQCD/MQA Discs

Does this mean that the MQA authenticated light still comes on but with 8 bits less resolution? What is "true MQA"?

I've discovered this video on one guy's recent experience on buying and playing these CD's.

A couple of observations on that:

*100% Dinosaur as described in Ratbert's recent thread...respect!
*Total envy for his uncompromising wall of hi-fi
*Didn't do his due diligence on MQA playback compatibility
*No understanding of MQA, it's goals or where it's aimed
*No apparent awareness of burning his discs and playing back via Roon for MQA at rather less cost than the kit he mentioned
*Most importantly, a Tangerine Dream MQA disc was shown on the website page he reviewed, which has absolutely made my day! At last!



George

Possibly Dinosaur memory issues on this one! Comment based on the certainty that I'd bought the CD of Amy Duncan "Undercurrents", ripped it and have the resulting MQA via Roon, but since I can neither find said CD, not have it in iTunes (where I'd have burned it), I can only conclude that I bought it as a download!



George

PS And Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, as shown in the video, isn't on Tidal as MQA yet.

Has anyone tried ripping these MQA CDs yet? If I use my normal method of ripping to FLAC using dBpoweramp and then importing into Sooloos, my 218/DSP7200SE only seems to recognise them as standard 16-but 44.1 kHz files. However if I rip directly using the Meridian Control:PC app to Sooloos then they are correctly identified as MQA files.

Problem is I also want to be able to play the files on my MQA-capable portable music player. Any ideas why dBpoweramp is not retaining the necessary MQA data (I've disabled any 'DSP Effects' in dBpoweramp and using level 5 FLAC compression)? I'm using the latest (16.4) version of dBpoweramp.

What happens if you do a native export of the MQA rip from Sooloos?

Probably down to FLAC tagging (or lack of it).

Good thought, forgot that feature was there, as never used it. Mixed results though.

I tried exporting three of the MQA CDs back out of Sooloos. Dire Straits 'Brothers in Arms' still only recognised as 44.1 kHz FLAC by my Pioneer XDP-300R; same for Free's 'Fire and Water'. However Queen's 'A Night At The Opera', tracks 1, 7, 8 and 10 are showing as 44.1kHz FLAC but the rest of the album's track are showing as MQA 88.2kHz!

Maybe contact dBpoweramp they may need to update the app, you could ask MQA but I wouldn’t hold your breath!

Very interesting and very very clever. However, it's still a compromise and I have no desire to buy any MQA CDs unless there is absolutely no alternative for something I really want.

All the salient music-related information exists inside the Orange triangle, which MQA protects very strictly.

Very happy to live in the ORANGE TRIANGLE

Many thanks to Meridian, McLaren and Gerry Heeley of Phase 3

Hector