Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion MQA - Related technology, products and music State of the MQA market

Yesterday I used a tool from GitHub to scan my music collection for MQA-encoded content, and it turned up quite a bit (some I knew of, some I did not.) While I have an Explorer 2 headphone DAC, and I have confirmed the LED lights when playing direct to it, I would kind of like to try playing them one of my real systems, which are sadly all too old to decode MQA. I know there's some commercial software out there which will do the "first unfold" when playing directly to an output, but I'm a Linux household so the options are limited and mostly cost £lol just to try out, even assuming I could get the bits to my G68s.

I'm assuming since the Lensbrook purchase, MQA Ltd. has repositioned themselves as a production tooling company rather than something a consumer ever sees as it looks like they're selling the individual parts of the "white glove" process but no longer the actual MQA encoder. Does that mean no new MQA-encoded content? Does it mean my MQA-encoded owned content is now essentially unplayable unless I use hardware from a very specific window of time? Can somebody licence the decoder for personal use? Or is the whole thing dead now and we should move on? (In which case, I'll think about stripping the LSB byte from all the recordings and save myself a few GB!)

Roon can do the first unfold for you and has a trial period...

Ah, I've long since already used my Roon trial, and I don't have Windows or macOS for the clients any more - does it have a web interface these days? (It's been admittedly a long time since I've looked at Roon, I had a play and decided it nice but not worth the asking price for me.)

If you want a combined/budget MQA renderer and MQA decoder...

SMSL SU-1

ZEN DAC Signature V2

The problem is I can't pump that into my G68 and DSP5200s meaningfully... It's not a massive problem, I assume no new content is going to be released for purchase MQA-encoded, but it would have been nice to hear the handful of albums I do already have as they were meant to be on my reference system.

If you have the budget, a used Meridian 218 in your system would unfold MQA for you.

This is how I unfold MQA CDs played on my Meridian 506 at up to 96khz (my DSP5200SEs subsequently render the MQA signal up to 352khz).

For you, you would connect a 218 to your G68 via the 218's phono outputs.

The internal DAC on the 218s outputs at 192khz via its phono outputs.

Hi

I have not really “played” with MQA for some time now but l used to get a red light on my 210 on a good number of MQA albums on Roon/Tidal and when l had the 7200se they would often display same.
The 210 does not now display the red light having tried a good number of Tidal listed MQA albums.
l see you have a 218 and 210. Does your 210 still show red light?
Best
Colin
Relham

Hi again,

I have since found an MQA recording and the red light is now on. I expect the few l first tried were no longer MQA?
C

Both my 218 and 210 display either Green (MQA) or Blue (MQA Studio), depending on the original source, which is confirmed on my DSP5200SE's display.

Since your SE speakers handle MQA, you might consider what I do with mine: Instead of relying on only my non-MQA surround unit into the DSPs, I send the bits to a 218 that can connect directly to my speakers (preserving MQA) or to the older surround system, via two cheap mechanical RJ45 switches.