We've found our self looking for new music which is available in this format, as the difference between them is night and day on a decent 2ch system. We recommend the Bluesound range of products to use as the source component, They come in 3 different models to suit what you need.īluesound POWERNODE 2i - Hi-Res Music Streamer AmplifierĪfter listening to Tidal MQA tracks through the Node2i it's very hard to go back to listening to the 'CD Quality' tracks on Tidal. Tidal is still the best source of MQA albums and you will require the more expensive HiFi subscription to unlock these. You will require a source component or DAC which is able to decode the MQA file and the tracks themselves. So what is needed to playback MQA in all it's glory?

MQA files are authenticated to assure you are listening to an exact digital copy of the original encoded file which has not been degraded in any way. It's also interesting to know that MQA is actually backward compatible, so if your equipment lacks an MQA decoder it will be able to playback in CD quality.

MQA files are generally in 96 kHz / 24 bit which is directly from the master source, offering you the experience just how the artist intended. It does this at a much-reduced bitrate for high-resolution which is closer to a regular CD. MQA is is a new digital audio format which promises to offer better than CD Quality and even high-res music which is encoded in traditional PCM format. So let's break this down into two parts, we have 'Master Quality' and 'Authenticated. MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated.

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