Old dac cant handle MQA

Answered

Adie moore

• November 14, 2020 16:03

Hi, so I brought a node 2i purely to stream tidal through to my existing hifi. Now my old dac cant handle MQA, is there a way to only out put CD? Cheers adie

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• Official comment

  

  Sam R.

  • November 16, 2020 15:41

  Hello Adie, 

  There are two ways you can set this up:

  1. Analog RCA out of the NODE to your external DAC. In this setup, the NODE will do the MQA unfold and digital decode, and then pass the stream onto your External DAC

  2. Optical/Coax out of the NODE to your external DAC with Settings > Player > Audio > MQA External DAC set to Off (which it is by default). This way, the NODE will do the MQA unfold and pass the bits on to your external DAC to do the A/D conversion. 

  Regards,
  Sam R.
• 

  Adie moore

  • November 17, 2020 20:01

  Hi sam, thanks for getting back to me. I use method 2 but the dac still wont play. I have the tidal stream set to hifi not master but still nothing. If I set it to high then it will play but that kind of defeats the object. Are there any other settings I can adjust?
  Cheers adie

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• 

  Adie moore

  • November 17, 2020 20:02

  The dac is old, marantz cda94, but i like how it sounds.

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• 

  Mark Everett

  • November 18, 2020 00:17
  • Edited

  Hi Adie, do you have any success using Tidal Connect instead of the Bluesound App?
  https://tidal.com/connect

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• 

  Adie moore

  • November 18, 2020 19:41

  Hi mark, unfortunately not.

  It's all a bit annoying, some albums will play, steve miller band fly like an eagle, for example is master/MQA but when set to HIFI will play but most wont. There must be some other differences that I cant see.

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• 

  Sam R.

  • November 18, 2020 19:59

  It could be that your DAC has a limit on what sample rate it can play (might be limited to 16/44.1, or even 16/88.1 for example). Not all MQA albums are 24/192 -- they are pretty much the same sample rate as the original studio recording, and for many artists that's 16/44.1.

  You might find you can play an MQA album of The Smiths but can't play the MQA 2012 Remaster of Ziggy Stardust by Bowie. 

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  Mark Everett

  • November 18, 2020 20:33
  • Edited

  Yes, Sam has hit the nail on the head there! It looks like Adie's vintage DAC can only handle a max resolution of 16/48 which explains the observations. I guess this is another case where some means of filtering the Tidal catalogue by stream quality would be beneficial.

  https://helpdesk.bluesound.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=4745&sid=a9db2e658473ad747cdd0ab2015278aa 

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  Adie moore

  • November 18, 2020 21:41

  Hi, thanks guys, I can confirm the dac can only sample 32, 44 and 48khz. Bollocks. Ah well.
  Thanks again, adie

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