Ios and MQA

[Lasse]

As of march 10 , Ios now supports  Tidal Master/MQA. 

Lasse

[Sevenfeet]

I'm playing an MQA album though the Tidal app right now on my iPhone X + Oppo HA-2 portable DAC.  It sound nice but outside of seeing "MASTER" displayed during playback, it's unclear exactly what it getting to the DAC.  Roon at least gives you the detail of what the DAC is receiving.  I'm assuming I'm getting either a 88.1 or 96 Mhz unfold depending on the track but it would be nice to get some actual feedback.

[Lasse]

Hi Sevenfeet ,

No , no info on bitrate or sampling freq. in Tidals app. Though when I’m playing from

Iphone X through the Dragonfly Red to headphones , Dragred shows magenta color ( indicating 96000.0hz) for ’master files’ and green (44100.0hz for non masters. Strangely, never amber 88200.0hz thats freqently seen on Mac/OS 

Lasse

[Sevenfeet]

46 minutes ago, Lasse said:

Hi Sevenfeet ,

No , no info on bitrate or sampling freq. in Tidals app. Though when I’m playing from

Iphone X through the Dragonfly Red to headphones , Dragred shows magenta color ( indicating 96000.0hz) for ’master files’ and green (44100.0hz for non masters. Strangely, never amber 88200.0hz thats freqently seen on Mac/OS 

Lasse

 

Most MQA files on Tidal seems to be 96khz unfolded, but not all of them.  Some are 24/192 (like Miles Davis Quintet) or even 24/44.1 (Jose James' Lean on Me album).  I'd be curious as to what your DAC says about those recordings.  88.2khz is a more rare format (the same as 172.8).

[Lasse]

Hi again,

Jose James ”Lean on me” in Tidal Master comes up magenta in Dragred. from both Iphone and Macbook though its 24/44.1khz. So Audioquests claim that magenta means 96khz is not right. Not with the new Tidal upgrade ayway. I guess I must just see it as ; Magenta=MQA ,In any 24 bit sampling freq. 

Green=Not MQA ,16/44.1.

Miles’s 24/192 khz recordings shure enough comes up in magenta from Iphone , but green from Macbook! Which normaly would  indicate 44.1khz . Prob. because Dragred. doesnt handle 192khz .

In Macbook I run Tidal with Audirvana that shows bitrate and sampling freq. 

I’m also into jazz and music where soundquality really matters. 

Lasse. 

[Sevenfeet]

Make sure your Mac is setup for greater than 44.1khz.  You'll need to open the Audio Midi app located in Applications->Utilities.  When you select the DAC as far as your output choices, make sure that it is setup for 24/96  as opposed to 44.1 which is the default.  Your Mac won't pass audio over 44.1 over USB or HDMI unless you do this step first.

 

Looking at the FAQ on DragonFly's webpage, it seems that it is depending on the source to downrez the audio file for best performance if the file is over 96khz.  I guess the Red can do it's own downsampling but it seems it really wants the source to do it if possible.