How to play Tidal MQA

Hi I need some direction on how to best play Tidal MQA
I currently have a Roon Nucleus (base model) with a 2tb ssd inside. The Nucleus is connected by ethernet to my network. I then have a Cambridge Audio CXNv2 streamer that is connected to my PrimaLuna preamp. I also have a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic Plus that I’m not using as I was informed by Cambridge Audio support that they both have the same Dac’s in them. I’ve just figured out that the CXNv2 doesn’t appear to handle Tidal MQA files. So my question is do I need to buy extra hardware and if so should that be a DAC that will handle Tidal MQA. Also are there any other issues I need to consider if I’m buying another DAC

You need an MQA aware DAC to either fully unfold or Render MQA.
In the case of rendering, Roon would perform the first unfold. I don’t know your DAC

You only need an MQA DAC if you want the final MQA up sampling and filters. You can have Roon perform the first unfold stage to get to 88.2Khz or 96Khz by setting the MQA Core Deccoder to on (it’s normally on by default can be found in advanced sectikn of the device settings) and setting the MQA capabilities to None. I wouldn’t rush to upgrade anything without first comparing it .

Hello @Gary_Grien,

As far as I can tell, neither of these DACs support full MQA unfolding, so in this case you will be limited to having just Roon perform the first unfold.

If you wish to have full MQA unfolding capabilities, you will need a compatible DAC that supports Decoder + Renderer unfolding, otherwise you can enable MQA Core Decoder in your Device Setup tab and let Roon perform the first unfold, see Roon x MQA and Roon Audio Basics Setup for more information.

1 Like