Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Where to place 210 in the system now MQA is fading away

Hi all,

Currently I use my 210 placed between the G65 and front DSP5200.2 speakers. I’m streaming TIDAL through Roon via my intel nuc. I’ve done this as my understanding was that it keeps the sound to speaker route the shortest and although I don’t have SE speakers (at the moment) this would be the optimum way to run the system for MQA

My question is with MQA slowly disappearing from many tracks (as far as I’m aware) is there any benefit now? I’m planning a shuffle of kit soon to do the annual tidy up of cables and a rearrange of the kit on the rack as I’ve removed some bits recently so I have the chance to change things without to many issues.

Am I right in thinking the G65 passes 24/192 without issue? It might be nice to have the option of running MRC etc to help potentially tweak things up a bit?

Has anyone had experience of this? Before Tidal dropped the monthly price I was about to move over to Qobuz, in the UK it seems many users are preferring Quboz these days??

Any thoughts greatly appreciated

Kind regards
David

G65 will only output 24/96.

Although anything with a 24-bit or >44.1k original sample rate master appears to have been replaced on TIDAL, the ***overwhelming*** majority of MQA albums on TIDAL are from 16/44.1 CD masters (which have no corresponding higher res master). I honestly don't know if TIDAL will phase these out, but their stated goal is to leave the MQA versions in place if there is no "HiRes" FLAC which will best it in a numbers game.

I sense a lot of anti-MQA'ers moving to Qobuz "for the purity of its catalogue", but if you prefer MQA, TIDAL is your only choice and at £10.99/month is now competitive with all of the other services. It's scant consolation that the FLAC replacements of 96k and 192k original sample rate MQA are themselves 96k and 192k respectively, but it's better than nothing.

If you do want the full TIDAL MQA catalogue, then AFAIK a Bluesound Node is pretty much your only option (using its own rather than its TIDAL Connect implementation), but you'll have to forego Roon if you use it. I have no idea how long the Node will continue to work with TIDAL MQA, but I can't see it being changed from the Bluesound end.

Thanks Bruce! I was mistaken then 🤔

VK, does this basically mean that even though we get MQA via Tidal and Roon we should be accepting that it has been “trimmed” so to speak? Does this mean that keeping the 210 between the G65 and speakers remains the “best” option and that actually Qobuz might actually be the best option with the 210 in that place?

Kind regards
David

Yes

Well, if you want MQA rendering in your 5200.2's, you need to keep the G65 out of things.

I don't follow what you are getting at here.

Thanks VK

To clear up the last quote as I didn’t explain that well on paper

Does moving away from Tidal to Qobuz make for a possible improvement in sound? And if so does keeping the 210 between G65 and 5200.2 stay beneficial even without MQA as Qobuz doesn’t support it.

David

I would say that the sound quality is fundamentally the same, but that TIDAL has the 16/44 MQA (which I think is some of the best MQA out there in spite of what you might read on t'Internet).

I don't see how it would be beneficial. You still need a streamer of course.

I recently subscribed to Tidal and Qobuz: there is absolutely no perceived difference in audio quality between them - except for the advantage of MQA source material on Tidal.

Thanks all.

That puts my mind at rest for the moment.

VK I was thinking of swapping the location of the 210 removing it from between the G65 and dsp5200.2 so it went before into the G65 not after it but as confirmed here that would limit the audio to the 5200.2

I’ll be leaving it all as is. Sticking with Tidal for the time being and getting back to enjoying the music 😎

David

I guess Trifield also comes into it. Am I right in thinking you won't be able to use Trifield from your streamer if its front of the g65?

Cheers
Tom

Hi Tom

Yeah that’s right, at the moment I run master slave outputs in a star formation from the 210 to each speaker. The 210 has a single SL feed from the g65

A friend of mine has it wired slightly different where he runs master SL from 210 and daisy chains the front speakers then sends Slave SL from the 210 back to the g65 so he can run direct and also change to Trifield depending his choice of track.

Regards
David

That's clever. I had a lot of trouble setting my system up originally but was using a 218 not 210.