• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Tidal, MQA, D90 and sampling rates

DimitryZ

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
May 30, 2021
Messages
667
Likes
342
Location
Waltham, MA, USA
Keep in mind that MQA only captures sound up to near ultrasonics. Everything above say 40Khz is discarded - not a bad thing as there is no musically related information there, just recorded noise.

However, in a bit of a gimmick, MQA instructs to DAC to upsample the unfolded file back to the original sampling rate. This last step is largely symbolic.
 

bhobba

Member
Joined
Oct 29, 2021
Messages
20
Likes
6
Yep. Rob Watts designs hid DAC's with a 50khz filter, and I suspect many others do as well. It's all part of the marketing hype.
 
D

Deleted member 23982

Guest
I also have a D90 and use Tidal and think it sounds better than qobuz
i actually had exactly the opposite experience, but it was a while ago i tested it where tidal still had flac streaming instead of mqa by default i think (mqa will get used now even for non mqa players as far i know)
as i tested it qobuz just sounded like CD (i also tested this) while tidal had (specially obvious) bass lacking and more "grainy" highs (tho barely noticeable)
 
Top Bottom