05-17-2023, 10:19 AM
(05-17-2023, 06:56 AM)the_bertrum Wrote: I couldn't watch all of the third, did people pay to attend that? Suffice to say MQA is divisive even among people who agree.
To bring this back to the topic, with respect to choosing a DAC, and assuming you don't have a desire to use MQA, it's presence will not necessarily be a bad thing unless it has inflated the price too much. In the case of the SMSL DAC we were discussing, it's still a very good device with a good price. If you fancy a Tidal account and want that little light to shine, then it gives you that too. Win all round.
Totally agree here. It's interesting to me how these (relatively) old DAC chips are being understood and implemented today; achieving astonishing results that can compete with what demands (or was demanding) far higher prices in the very near past. Especially SMSL and Topping have amazingly interesting products in the 200-dollar-range that really bring Hi-Fi to everyone.
As I probably already said, have tried few MQA tracks, but couldn't find anything that brought my heart to a stop; I would need the very same tracks in regular FLAC for comparison. There is a lot of discussion about psycho-acoustics related to MQA, a field in which I cannot say a word, although believing in it. In the end, if it sounds better to you, that's all that counts.
So far, the thing that I find makes the biggest (really, no joke) difference in sound stage and instrument separation has been the mixing and mastering of the CD (I 99% listen to ripped, ordinary 16/44.1). Some albums are capable of rendering such a spatial sound with regular 2-speaker that I find it almost unbelievable...
