What is the difference in the topping d90le and d90se? Is it only the mqa support for $100 more?
I think they are purporting to have even better DNR and SINAD than the D90se, which seems completely ridiculous at this point—we’re already way past audible differences and I’m perfectly happy with my D90se. The A90 refresh honestly seems more interesting.
It also does appear that they’re ditching MQA on this one—although I wonder whether they may have just left in the XMOS chip and have it inactive due to licensing costs. The cost of the chip is nominal, but the licensing costs are considerable.
I make up that this is their answer to the Gustard x18 in terms of price point. Who knows, maybe they’re planning on assessing demand for MQA before pursuing licensing, or maybe they left out the chip altogether. Since the Gustard has MQA and demand for it is still very high, I think it’s a curious move.
I know that it’s very fashionable on here to act blasé about MQA, and I’m not asking for any lengthy lectures on the evils of it—I’m already well-aware. It has nothing to do with the sound quality—in fact Meridian and Tidal have despicably bought exclusive rights to the highest quality (“provenance”) masters for a huge number of titles, so despite the myths that it’s inferior because it’s “lossy”, a considerable number of available albums in MQA format DO sound better than their non-MQA counterparts.
The actual evils are totally about the obsolescence of smaller file containers within a year or less after MQA was released, and how they used the ruse of smaller bandwidth demands to trick a huge segment of manufacturers in the industry to buy into their much bigger long-range masterplan—to sign themselves into contractual long-term captivity for the rights to have that MQA badge on their products, in order to meet consumer demand for access to those masters via Tidal. And now all of us are stuck footing the bill for these costs whether we use Tidal or not.
Major record companies and streaming services are in deep with these licensing covenants for the unseeable future for whole swaths of their catalogs, so those manufacturers who eschew MQA capability are doing so at the expense of denying their consumers access to these masters. And for that reason, I do continue to use Tidal, along with Qobuz, HighResAudio and a huge catalog of FLAC/DSD files, because in many cases the Tidal versions are just better. And if this new d90LE does ditch MQA I have no regrets keeping my D90SE.
Honestly, I can’t fathom any reason for existing owners of the D90SE to “upgrade” to the d90LE based on existing information. The d90SE is as resolving, accurate and quiet a DAC anyone with human ears could hope for. New buyers can opt for the LE to save $100 bucks, or they can opt for the Gustard, which has indistinguishable performance and still offers MQA.