Moon Streamer and MQA confusion

[wklie]

For those who like the sound of MQA, having hardware MQA rendering (or full decoding) is superior to only having MQA Core decoding (via hardware or software), regardless of the MQA sample rate of a track - even if it's 96kHz or lower. The reason is that MQA rendering is custom tuned for each DAC hardware to output the sound in a specific way - some find it more analog and less digital sounding.

[justubes]

Originally Posted by wklie

For those who like the sound of MQA, having hardware MQA rendering (or full decoding) is superior to only having MQA Core decoding (via hardware or software), regardless of the MQA sample rate of a track - even if it's 96kHz or lower. The reason is that MQA rendering is custom tuned for each DAC hardware to output the sound in a specific way - some find it more analog and less digital sounding.

Thanks Peter,

Besides Lumin, Mytek, Berkeley are full hardware MQA players.

Does mqa performed by addition of the mqa usb inputs which only perform mqa via usb and not capable vthrough rca and xlr like the Esoteric N01 or msb dacs considered hardward MQA devices?

Many have the mqa via usb or lan input and i presume that the filters are incorporated at the usb or ethernet input and not at the d/a section.


There are not may dacs that can handle mqa through rca or xlr inputs.

Thanks

[wklie]

Berkeley MQA models are MQA renderers, not MQA full decoders. So it needs one of the (hardware or software) MQA Core decoders mentioned earlier.

While different people may have different interpretation of what exactly a hardware MQA decoder is, I define it as a hardware product that contains MQA core decoding and/or rendering, unlike a software product such as Tidal desktop app, Roon and Audirvana. Under this definition, N-01 and MSB (with appropriate options) are hardware MQA products.

It is true that many MQA products support MQA decoding only via some inputs but not others. In N-01, NT-505 and DirectStream with Bridge II, the MQA decoding is done in the network board, so only network input (or USB storage for N-01 or NT-505) supports MQA but not USB or other inputs.

In Rossini its network input supports full MQA decoding, but USB or SPDIF inputs support MQA rendering only. In Vivaldi the Upsampler supports MQA Core decoding while the DAC supports MQA rendering.

[TOGA]

For Moon Mind2 stand alone streamer, it is no use for Moon’s DAC.
Only 780D can decode MQA from coax and AESEBU. Any other Moon DACs cannot. But there is Mind2 built in 780D, so Mind2 Streamer is not for 780D owner as well.

And FYi Moon 780D with MiND2 upgrade kit, is still not an equal of 780D V2. Further upgrades are required to really make it a V2.

Toga