@support I am having a issue that just started today. If i don’t use the DSP Engine the MQA file will play at 48. If i turn on the DSP then it automatically upsamples to 96 even though i have upsampling turned off in roon dsp. any ideas? the issue seems to involve the device set up as well. if i turn off MQA capabilities in device set up it automatically upsamples to 96 regardless of DSP.
Hello @late_nighter23,
I moved your post into it’s own thread so I can give you some more focused attention. What is the model of DAC you are playing to? What do you have it’s “MQA Capabilities” set to in Device Setup? When you say “upsamples to 96”, are you referring to the “MQA Core Decoder” stage in signal path?
-John
I am using a Hugo 2… When I have mqa set to off the dac up samples to 96 on mqa tracks. When the dac is set to decode etc it will only up sample when I turn on the dsp engine.
Hello @late_nighter23,
What is happening with the MQA files is not “upsampling” in the same sense that you see when you go to Roon’s “DSP Engine” and turn on sample rate conversion.
MQA files are “unfolded” to re-capture the original quality recording after it has been compressed for streaming. If you are not using an MQA DAC, that means that the file will be unfolded to 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz quality. This isn’t “upsampling” because it isn’t adding samples that didn’t exist before the MQA process, it is actually recovering samples that are already embedded in the file.
With the Hugo 2, I would recommend leaving the “MQA capabilities” set to “No MQA Capabilities”. This will do the “unfolding” of MQA content, without adding any upsampling, as well as reverting to normal playback for non-MQA content.
-John
i am having a separate issue where unfolding an mqa track makes the hugo 2 extremely hot to the point of self restart. i don’t have this issue on non mqa songs.
That is a Chord issue so that should be taken up with them. There is mention of overheating in this thread:
http://www.just-hifi.com/Chord-Electronics-Hugo-2-The-Official-Thread_10178592-278.html
well it’s interesting because it never happened before and it only seems to happen when i am playing the mqa tracks in roon.
From your DAC’s point of view, there is nothing different about a 1st unfolded 24/96 MQA stream to a non MQA 24/96 stream (happy to be corrected if that is not the case), so an equivalent non mqa stream should also cause the overheating.
be that as it may i never have had the issue before and i am not having the issue when upsampling (which i know is not the same thing as unfolding). could it be possible i have discovered an issue?