Critic's Corner: RE: Poll: how many folks bought a MQA enabled device just to have MQA? How many would not bother? by josh358 Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry.

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Posted by josh358 (P ) on April 21, 2018 at 04:33:18

In Reply to: Poll: how many folks bought a MQA enabled device just to have MQA? How many would not bother? posted by toothpaste on April 19, 2018 at 14:45:31:

I have a Dragonfly Red which received the MQA firmware update, a pleasant surprise as MQA wasn't on my radar when I bought it. My better DACs don't do it, though I'd welcome it if they would. In the meantime, I have to content myself with the partial unfold available in the Tidal app, which IIRC they said gives you 80% of the benefit.

I spent some time comparing MQA/MQA bypassed on the little Dragonfly and MQA was generally better. It may not be ideal but unlike some I'm not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth.

That said, I think the audible difference between DACs is more profound than the audible difference between MQA/no MQA (or a partial unfold of MQA in the Tidal app), and since I'd be going for the best sound quality within my budget, I think MQA would be a very secondary consideration. Currently, I'm considering ladder DACs -- I'm tired of that unnatural delta-sigma brightness, particularly on the overpeaked Sabre chips (my primary DAC is currently an Exasound e28, which uses the ES9018). Like listening through glass, as Michael Lavorgna put it. And as far as I know, none of the affordable R2R candidates (Soekris, Schiit, Audio Gd, Holo Spring) do MQA yet, though I may be wrong.

Another thing to consider is that there's still fairly little program material available in MQA. I gain a lot of quality by upsampling 44.1 in the computer rather than in the DAC, so while MQA would be nice it's more a novelty at this point than something that drives my daily listening.

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