Best settings for Gustard A22 (MQA) and Tidal

Connection with external Audio Devices USB DAC
1

I have a Gustard A22 DAC which has MQA with USB. I run Audirvana on a macbook pro into the Gustard. Which are my best settings please? Right now I have

Auto-detect MQA devices? On
DAC not detected as MQA, use as MQA renderer
Native DSD streaming method DSD over PCM 1.0

Looking at Audirvana on my Mac and the DAC playing a Tidal album and I see:
Audirvana on mac AAC 16/44.1 kHz stereo (in left hand corner by album/track details)
DAC PCM 768KHz

I am becoming confused… And thank you

2

You probably have upsampling enabled, disable it. Set the MQA to MQA decoder. You should be good to go.

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3

Audirvana 3.5 integrates the MQA Core Decoder that performs the first unfolding (up to 88.2 or 96kHz) to benefit from the high resolution of the MQA audio files even without an MQA audio device. By MQA decision, the second unfolding (to 176.4 or 192kHz) can be performed only in a MQA renderer/decoder DAC.

Non MQA capable audio devices can benefit from the high resolution (doubled sample rate compared to the encoded file one) thanks to the MQA decoder integrated in Audirvana 3.
In this case, Audirvana brings, in addition to the general Sound Quality improvement, the decoding of the MQA file that would be played only at little above CD quality otherwise, losing all its high resolution benefits. Note that decoding the signal beyond twice the sampling rate of the encoded file (for the few rare recordings actually made above 96kHz) can only be done in a DAC MQA.

You then need to leave “Not MQA decoder” for your DAC in the Audio Settings, so that Audirvana performs the MQA decoding.

If you have a DAC that is “MQA decoder” then, you can select MQA decoder. That means that no audio processing done in Audirvana, as the DAC is doing all of the MQA decoding.
If you have a DAC that is “MQA renderer” then, you can select MQA renderer. That means MQA first unfolding done in Audirvana, and no other audio processing as the DAC is doing the other unfolding

The Blue color means that the file is “Studio authenticated”.
The Green color is for other MQA audio file.

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