Paul has announced on the PS Audio forum that PS Audio will be incorporating MQA - in their bridge only.
Here’s the quote:
“While I will not allow MQA in our DACs because it actually makes them sound worse, we have agreed the proper place for it is in the Bridge. We’re probably only a matter of a few weeks away from implementing it in the Bridge. We will make MQA available to our customers for free. We’ll cover the expense.”
And what does this mean for implementation?
I’m pretty sure it means that if you have a Bridge II, or a product with Bridge II in it, that a firmware update will be provided for download, so you can load it on an SC card, or USB thumb drive (depending on product), and reflash your product. No different than updating PS Audio DAC firmware.
Once done, if an MQA encoded file comes through the Bridge II, the first layer of decoding will be done. This is no different than the software decoding Roon Labs is currently working on for Roon. It will be what MQA refers to as “MQA Core”, but stops short of what they call “Full Decode”, as that requires hardware modifications that PS Audio has stated that they will not do. They believe this sounds better.