Aurender N100H or Auralic Aries?

Thanks lalitk. Indeed, I did post a ticket through their cool "Help" feature. It was somewhat late in the day and I didn't hear back. I am sure that I will tomorrow.

I felt confident that one of the super-members here like you would step up and verify that their unit did indeed pass the 24/96 signal from Tidal Masters.  Thanks for the input.

Dave

dlcockrum, lalitk's  Audiogon above post states he "streams Aurender Tidal MQA masters at 24/96" and my Ayre Codex DAC displays 24/48.  My Tidal settings are correct (I think but will verify this later today) so I emailed Aurender customer support for help. I am guessing his DAC handles MQA masters better than mine.  I will post their response when I get it.  

I did find that "Tidal announced they were finally streaming true high-resolution data in the form of  “Masters”24/48 MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) files". 

"Any MQA-certified DAC will unfold the 24bit/48kHz file back out to its full resolution – or up to the DAC’s maximum sample rate capabilities – prior to D/A conversion. MQA refer to this process of unfolding as ‘decoding‘.  lalitk's DAC must be doing some decoding in order to get 24/96".   I do not know.

I am waiting for Aurender Customer Support to reply.  This is very confusing (to me). 

Please see the answer below from Aurender Customer Support:

"MQA decoding is hardware dependent on the DAC being used and so while the file is encoded in MQA, it is in a standard PCM "wrapper" or container file. The file can be either 16 bit or 24 bit (depending on the provenance of the original master file) and is either a 44.1kHz or 48kHz sampling rate, dependent on the A/D conversion and mastering sampling rate of the the original file.
In order for an MQA file to be properly decoded, it needs to be used with appropriate DAC hardware that carries an MQA certification. Otherwise it will just play back as a standard PCM file (capable of supporting either of the specs mentioned above). A user with a non-MQA DAC will still receive some of the benefits of MQA encoding, namely reduction of temporal blur, but the MQA decoding process is tailored for the DAC architecture and is only supported by MQA certified DACs. Since your Ayre Codex does not have an MQA hardware decoder, it does NOT see the MQA encoder flags and therefore just plays back the file at whatever the native sampling rate is (44.1kHz or 48kHz).

Further, it is a common assumption that an MQA file with a base sample rate of 44.1kHz or 48kHz will always result in a higher sampling rate after MQA’s “unfolding”, or decoding process. However, a fully decoded, unfolded MQA file on an MQA certified DAC can and often is still at a max sampling rate of 44.1kHz/48kHz. The decoding process is actually (more importantly) correcting for how the DAC is converting the signal to analog, by correcting for errors in the time domain. The sampling rate is based on the provenance or source of the original file.

To illustrate this a bit, a source file from a recording using MQA encoding may have a master sampling rate of 352.8kHz (8x 44.1kHz), which would be contained in a 24-bit, 44.1kHz sampling rate “wrapper” so that it can be used with non-MQA DAC hardware. When the file is delivered to MQA DAC hardware, the DAC will detect the appropriate flags that the file is encoded in MQA, and “unfold” the file using MQA’s decoding process to the original maximum sampling rate of 352.8kHz. On the other hand, a recording that has a source provenance of 24-bit, 44.1kHz will still be contained in the same 24-bit, 44.1kHz “wrapper”, and when MQA DAC hardware detects the MQA encoder flags, will still decode the file to the original max sampling rate of 44.1kHz.

In short, MQA is less about the sampling rate of the file, and more about having provenance for the original recording, and removing errors in the time domain in the DAC hardware. Unfortunately, when Tidal introduced Masters (MQA encoded files), some of this information has been made a bit murky by some of MQA’s own marketing lingo about “Core” decoding (an initial software decoding required for an MQA Renderer, or a non-MQA DAC, currently only available in Tidal’s App, and Audirvana music player software), which everyone thinks must result in a 2x unfold before the DAC. In other words, people want to see a higher sampling rate. However, this is simply not the case in practice and even a Core decoded file may only have a sampling rate of 44.1kHz or 48kHz if that’s what the original master file’s maximum sampling rate is.
Actually you can find out more about Aurender and MQA playback at the link here: http://support.aurender.com/mqa-playback.html "

A special thanks to Aurender Customer Support for the above explanation answering our MQA related questions.   lalitk also told me "his 24/96 revolution is only available through PC Desktop application on a few select albums".   I am sorry this is off of the original Aurender N100H or Auralic Aries question but I felt it is important to explain how MQA albums are handled on Aurender music servers.   

@hgeifman,  Thank you for taking the time to post the feedback from Aurender support. The MQA playback link above is a great resource for demystifying any ambiguity surrounding MQA file playback. 

I would also like to extend my 'thank you' to Dave for sharing his feedback from Aurender support. 

Cheers! 

Hi hgiefman,

A very informative response to be sure.

I also received a similar (yet less detailed) response today from Aurender stating the same. One thing that was included in the response to me was that my laptop, using the original Tidal software (vs the Aurander app) was performing the "Core" decoding (the first unfolding of the MQA decoding process) of the Tidal software and that Aurender is unable to do that as of now, but they had approached Tidal about developing this process in their app yet any progress would be months away (if ever).

So, these two responses explain what I was describing in my first post. I definitely was seeing 24/96 to my DAC using my laptop when playing many Tidal Masters files and don’t see that using the Aurender. Going forward, I will only see whatever resolution that was used in the original PCM file as determined by the original mastering using the Aurender.

I too spoke with lalitk (what a great guy!), and he told the same as he told you and that further validates the explanation.

I now plan to just enjoy the music since I have no plans to buy an MQA capable DAC in the short term. The only thing that still gives me consternation is that the many reviews (several using the Aurender to stream Tidal) and forum posts I read prior to buying the Aurender never mentioned this limitation.

Dave