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MQA DAC or Not?

I’m running a Mac Mini with Audirvana to a DAC and recently decided to upgrade my DAC to a Schiit Gungnir Multibit only to discover that Audirvana and the Schiit don’t work together.
Currently I can get the Schiit dac to work with iTunes but not with Audirvana, won’t run in direct mode or at all with the Gungnir.

Questions?Ideas on getting these to work together?Or should I return the Schiit dac which isn’t MQA friendly and find a MQA compatible dac?
cdc2
kalali's avatar
kalali
1,977 posts
 
I have the digital coax output of my Node2 going to a non-MQA DAC and to my preamp and connected the analog output of the same Node2 as another source to the same preamp. This allows me to switch between the two sources instantly and compare at a constant volume. I compared several different MQA and non-MQA contents from Tidal and in my system I cannot hear a difference whatsoever. FWIW.
dlcockrum's avatar
dlcockrum
2,190 posts
 
You do know that the Tidal Masters are remastered for MQA, kalali?

Dave
kdude66
1,200 posts
 
I can definitely concur about the song "what's new" by Linda Ronstadt,the vocals on the mqa version do have such a unpleasant glare but the music is ok.The regular non mqa version of this song is fine.

My direct stream does unfold mqa,but I'm a fairly new Tidal user and still discovering.

Kenny.
aberyclark
1,355 posts
 
The bluesound node2 internal Dac has a slight edge over my Peachtree Nova Pre. Listening to 16/44 Tidal or hi Rez Qobuz streams, the soundstage seems to open up just a faint with the BS. Could be me, but I'm willing to think that to improve the Node 2 , one would probably need to go a bit higher on the Totem pole beyond the mid $500 or so Dacs. 
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