Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music 218 straight into DSP legacy speakers is the 218 unpacking MQA

Hi all,

Just as the title suggests if you use 218 for Sooloos streaming with Tidal and go straight into legacy speakers SPDIF port with coaxial digital connection.
Is the 218 unpacking the MQA info first and sending all to the legacy speaker???

In this case the 218 is doing the first unfold and passing it on to the speakers at a max of 96k. Still better than CD but not full MQA rendering.

Yes you can do that.
Another choice is that not the 218 make the "hardware" MQA decoding, ROON/TIDAL will do it.
You can choose that in the 218 option in the ROON setup menue.

OK so that works perfectly for full MQA. THANKS.

Another question with regard to MQA.... MC200 straight into special edition speakers via SpeakerLink. The speakers do the full decoding of MQA??? Or you can't use MC200 as a source for it???

No a MC200 as a source with SE speakers will not do full MQA. You still need a 218, 818v3, or 808v6.The MC200 can serve as a Sooloos Core, store, and player. It can also serve as a Roon endpoint if you have another device running Roon core.

OK.

Thanks for the valuable information.

Which versions of 808 or 818 are upgradeable to current spec to be compatable with MQA?? Any?? so I could buy for a little less and upgrade them.

Can soneone please post a list of products that run MQA as is or can be upgraded to do so.

The 818v3 upgrade from 818v2 gives a substantial improvement in sound quality and is worth it regardless of MQA (IMHO).

The upgrade is ~£1.5k, maybe less depending on how your dealer is feeling. You can go v1 to v3 but it costs more. Factor that in if you are buying sub v3.

I have no experience of the 808 range but reports here suggest that the v6 (MQA) upgrade delivered the same SQ improvement found in the 818v3.

MQA can be experienced in analogue (full) and digital (first unfold) via the 218, 808v6, 818v3 and via the UltraDAC (full, in analogue only). I believe the 251 (all-in-one analogue) and 210 (streaming device) are also/will be MQA compatible.

Any speaker (DSP5200, DSP7200, DSP8000) with an SE suffix will provide full MQA from a compatible source.

Any 24/96 capable Meridian DSP speaker can receive MQA digitally after the first unfold from the compatible sources listed above.

Apologies if I have missed any other option.

"MQA can be experienced in analogue (full) and digital (first unfold) via the 218, 808v6, 818v3 and via the UltraDAC (full, in analogue only). I believe the 251 (all-in-one analogue) and 210 (streaming device) are also/will be MQA compatible"

I am a bit confused by this part of your reply. what is the distinction between analogue and digital ? And will a 218 into an F80 not give full MQA (using Tidal or Sooloos)?

Thanks

Full MQA can be experienced in analogue only.

First unfold MQA is available digitally, for example from TIDAL over USB and from any of the Meridian source products (except the UltraDAC) listed above.

Full MQA is the sum of the first unfold and the second DAC-related* processing (hence the analogue only comment above).

If you use the analogue outputs of the 218 into the f80 analogue input you will get full MQA.

If you use the digital output of the 218 into the digital input on the F80 you will get the first unfold.


There is a lot more to it than that and I am sure others will chime in. I have tried to simplify it down to outcomes rather than signal path processing.



* the second part of MQA corrects for the DAC so, by definition, it can only be experienced after the DAC, i.e. in analogue.

MQA is an end to end system, so Analog sound goes into a digital pipeline and an MQA aware DAC delivers the audio, (rendering) analogous to the input audio.

If you take a signal from the middle of said pipe line, you won’t get full MQA.

So if you have DSP speakers 24-96 which I do. First unfold via any of those products straight into digital of the speaker is MQA???

JUST clarifying that's all..

Thanks for all the help.

It's MQA 'lite' if you will...not the full fat version, but sounds very good nonetheless. Set aside the MQA label and it's still a superb sounding high res signal.

I have a non MQA system of DSPs and processor, with Roon doing the first unfold (as a 218 would do in our respective set ups) and it feels like a free upgrade to my system. That's with Roon > ID40/861v4, and Roon > SB touch > 568.2mm.

Cheers

George