After those lovely folk at Tidal released a whole bunch of MQA-encoded goodness, I felt the need to rush out and replace the trusty Explorer1 with a new MQA-capable Explorer2 ... which opened up the opportunity to conduct an A/B test between the software decoder in the Tidal Mac client and the Meridian hardware decoder in the DAC. Here's what I found.

Firstly, the equipment ... there's a 2015-vintage MacBook Pro with the Tidal client installed, driving an Explorer2 over USB, which has its analogue output connected to a Stax SRM-007t tube amp via a Kimber cable, in turn driving Stax SR-007 Mk 1 electrostatic ear-speakers. So it's a pretty high-resolution system - and I like the neutrality of the Stax electrostatics because they're a good match to the innate "cleanness" of the Meridian DSPs in the living room.

In all cases, the Explorer was set to use Exclusive Mode and to Force Volume in the Tidal settings, so the client is just passing bits to the DAC, with analogue volume control on the Stax amp.

Then it was a matter of queueing up some music from Tidal and letting rip, whilst using the Tidal audio settings to toggle the Passthrough MQA switch. This changes the MQA unfolding from being done in software on the Mac through to being done in hardware on the Explorer2. I used a mix of albums I know really well, and which I have local Redbook and hi-res versions of for comparison purposes.

The short version: the hardware decode is materially better. You can hear the difference best on very complex music, or strident guitars or piano, particularly on albums that aren't that well recorded - the hardware decoding simply untangles everything better. There's more space around the instruments, the localisation and separation is better, and the mix sounds more natural. Badly recorded albums are less tiring to listen to; brushes on hit-hats no longer sound like white noise ... audience members on live albums sound like actual humans.

The difference is rather like transitioning from 16/44 to 24/96 ... definitely the same music, not a vastly transformational change, but very much worth having. And it became more apparent the longer I listened to the hardware decoding - switching back to software decoding added a subtle blur and sheen to things. So that was a few hundred dollars well spent, then.

And just to extrapolate a bit, in a completely unwarranted way ... in my view, software decoding of MQA (hopefully in the next version of the Roon client) is going to be a big step up in my legacy G68/DSP5200 system. It will give me perhaps 90% of the benefits of MQA at basically negligible cost, so it's an utter no-brainer to do this.

However, the Explorer2 (which, let's face it, is still a budget DAC) graphically underlines the fact that hardware decoding brings a bunch of extra goodness to the table. I'm assuming, therefore, that the improvements that would come from an 818v3 and a nice set of 5200SEs would be even more marked, and when the opportunity comes to do the requisite upgrades, I will definitely head in that direction without a moment's hesitation.

As always, your mileage may vary!

Cheers