moodeaudio USBridge sign Tidal MQA

[MikeyFresh]

It's sad that moode can't handle Tidal MQA. Then I go back to the Volumio system.

It's sad that the audio trade press and MQA marketing BS have you thinking you are missing out on something when you are not. It's sad that you haven't looked into this more thoroughly before posting here.
There is no benefit at all to using MQA, in fact it's quite the opposite, all MQA source files are either 44.1 or 48kHz which are upsampled using leaky MP filters that cause aliasing. All other claims are marketing BS and have been completely rebuked by GoldenSound, Archimago, and others. No credible response to those technical rebukes have ever been provided by MQA at all, nothing.
Beyond the above, MQA is yet another closed source proprietary scheme complete with licensing fees, and partner NDAs, the whole 9 yards there with regard to both customer and partner unfriendliness that makes it's inclusion rather impossible for open source projects like Moode.
If you have access to Qobuz where you live you'll find it to be both technically superior, and also less expensive than TIDAL is.

[weather72]

I didn't say Tidal MQA is the best. I don't have qouboz in my country. Why do companies like Topping, Cambridge Audio, SMSL, Mytek, ifi and others support MQA? Just for the money?

[MikeyFresh]

I didn't say Tidal MQA is the best. I don't have qouboz in my country. Why do companies like Topping, Cambridge Audio, SMSL, Mytek, ifi and others support MQA? Just for the money?

Yes and Topping would be a good example, they charge $100 more for the MQA version of the DAC.

Those manufacturers are commercial entities who wish to sell you something, and they've jumped on board largely due to the perceived consumer demand as portrayed by the audio trade press.

For every Topping, Cambridge, SMSL, Mytek, or iFi, there are also Ayre, Benchmark, Linn, RME, Chord, Schiit, Bryston, CEntrance, etc who have made it publicly clear they see absolutely no benefit in offering MQA, except to the MQA stakeholders who gain licensing fee revenue.

In comparison to Tidal "Masters", there is also Deezer, Qobuz, Amazon, Apple, and Spotify who do not offer MQA.

If you have no other service choices besides Tidal in your region, then you can just pass along those lossy Master Quality Adulterated tracks using either mconnect or BubbleUPnP, and allow all of the BS "unfolding" (read: upsampling) to take place in the full MQA decoder present in your D90SE, you don't need any software decoding to take place at all with that DAC, no?

The above assumes you are passing the Tidal stream along in bit perfect fashion, meaning no software volume control (either in Moode or the Control Point app), no DSP, no SoX upsampling, no anything.

[weather72]

I use mconnect but I don't know how to make decoding in D90SE.

[MikeyFresh]

I use mconnect but I don't know how to make decoding in D90SE.

See my post above, you must pass along the stream bitperfect, all settings in both Moode and mconnect must be set to allow a passthrough of the file in bitperfect fashion, you cannot use any software volume control, or DSP, or software based upsampling, etc... all of that must be disabled in both the Moode settings, and the mconnect settings too.

If you don't have any preamp with analog volume control, then you would need to use the D90SE's hardware volume control, but you cannot use the Moode, or mconnect software volume controls.

[weather72]

Topping is connected to the Exposure amp so no problem. I'll do it tomorrow.

[weather72]

Everything turned off but nothing changed. There are audio dropouts at the end of the song.

[the_bertrum]

You've got a seriously expensive DAC there, you've got Tidal as your library. Since it's reasonable for those to be the primary components, I'd suggest that Mconnect and moOde as controller and player components are an unnecessary compromise. You'd be better off with a Tidal Connect compatible player, and the native Tidal app as a controller.

[weather72]

I will rent Ifi Zen Stream for a test.

[Nutul]

I was considering getting the same DAC for my birthday. Thou', since I'm sure (at least for the rest of my days) I'll never play Master Quality Adulterated music, I better look for the very same thing, without MGA support... should be a lot cheaper, uh? Anybody already know, just to save me the hassle to search on Amazon...? Thanks anybody.

ETA
Looks like the D90LE is a good alternative; the difference in price is a mere 100 EUR though...
The S.M.S.L. SU-9n is based on the same DAC chip comes in at 400 EUR... this looks promising at less than half the price...
They talk very well of the E50, and at 200 EUR this might be a real theft :-)