Auralic Vega and MQA

I’m looking to buy another DAC to try, and I’m confused on whether or not the Vega supports MQA.

I thought the Auralic products did their own “de-compression” of MQA files; not, MQA’s official “un-fold”.

Auralic Vega DAC does not support MQA, only their streamers such as Aries series using their own proprietary decoding.

Use Roon MQA decoding to any DAC is the best solution.

Help me understand. If I let Roon “decode” MQA (from, say, Tidal), does it decode it fully? I’m looking for the best possible sound and experience. I’m finding more choices for non-MQA “certified” DACs.

MQA has two parts, decoding eg unpacking, to a typical max of 24/88 or 24/96 but it can be less depending on the original mastering, this is what Roon can do.
Rendering, this is the second step that can only be carried out by an MQA certified dac currently.

Chris, a very good solution is to let Roon do the first unfold and then upsample the result to the maximum your DAC can accept. This will give excellent results. Obviously I haven’t been able to make direct like for like comparisons but I think the results allow you the best of both worlds. A good DAC is what you should be aiming for. If you can find something to your taste that also does MQA you are lucky, if not Roon will allow you a big chunk of the MQA experience and your DAC will do what a good DAC does on top.

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Thank you. That is good advice.

So how does one set MQA Capabilities in the Audio settings in Roon? “None” for the DACs capabilities or something else? Want to have Roon do what it can

In device setup, toggle “Enable MQA Core Decoder” to let Roon perform the first unfold.

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