Hello,
I have Audirvana 3.5.42 and an SMSL M500 (MQA Renderer DAC).
When I set the MQA parameter to MQA Renderer, the output of a Tidal MQA 44.1kHz (green) is a 44.1kHz stream. If I understand well, it means that the unfolded stream is a 44.1kHz one.
But when I I set the MQA parameter to Non-MQA, the unfolded stream is at 88.2kHz.
Is there an automatic upsampling or does that mean that the SMSL M500 does not do a correct unfolding?
Thanks for your answer.
Regards
Valerian
M500 is full MQA decoder, so you need to set it to MQA decoder (not renderer) in the setting.
Hello @bitracer
Thank you. It is done.
The difference is still the same with MQA Decoder option : output is 44.1kHz while with “Not-MQA”, it is 88.2kHz…
That’s not annoying, I just would like to understand why, as I plan to change my DAC to an Non-MQA one…
That’s normal. If the DAC is not MQA capable, Audirvana does the first “unfold” and passes it to the DAC. That’s why you see 88.2KHz from 44.1 and you would see 96KHz from 48KHz.
OK I understand. The first unfold done by Audirvana streams 88.2 or 96kHz, as it is written in the MQA website (https://www.mqa.co.uk/how-it-works)
But why, when I select MQA Decoder, it goes to 44.1kHz on the DAC? It is strange that the 2nd and 3rd unfold done by the DAC would “reduce” the encoding frequency no?
That’s because when your DAC is full decoder, the stream is passed to the DAC as is, and the DAC does all 3 steps.