I’ve been playing some MQA Studio files lately with my Dragonfly Cobalt and noticed in my Signal Path that at the step named “MQA Renderer” is displayed an “ORFS” of 192kHz. I’m not an expert on this matter (more of a newbie) but I know that the Dragonfly Cobalt can only manage tracks up to 96kHz at maximum. Does this mean that the file will come through another step before delivering audio in my ears that consists of downgrading the frequency to 96kHz?
Another question: like I said, I’m mainly using Roon with Tidal. Each time I’m “liking” a track (a single track from an artist, not an full album), this track is displayed in my library in the form of an album with a single and only track. This pollutes my library a lot as I can’t tell the difference between albums and actual single tracks before I open the “album”. Is there a setting somewhere that I can’t find to solve this issue?
That’s the limit of its USB interface, not the DAC chip inside.
After the MQA music goes through Roon (or Tidal app) MQA Core decoding, it’s sent as 88.2/96kHz to your DAC. Then your DAC does MQA rendering for MQA sample rate (ORFS) 192kHz.
Thanks a lot for the very fast answers !
So if I am not mistaken, what I am actually hearing is a 192kHz frequency but it’s the actual DAC chip which converts it to this range.
Right. So now I’m wondering : I’ve been using Audirvana too and when you play a track with it, you can actually see the bitrange and the frequency played under the volume bar. Most of the time, the maximum I see is 24/44.1. Could you ELI5 what does this mean? As Roon apparently shows me a 192kHz frequency, I’m quite confused. Are the two different frequencies belonging to different steps or …?
No. Your DAC is reporting that it sees an authenticated MQA stream, the 192 part, if you read the piece I sent you will see that that doesn’t equate to specific end frequency.
It’s how MQA works and nothing you can do about it.
If audirvana isn’t reporting that then it’s not doing the job properly.
As you can see, the values are quite different. The track that is playing is an MQA Studio one. The fact that I can’t see any 192kHz to make the comparison is kinda bugging me but maybe I’m not understanding the values correctly, you tell me.
Anything you “like” will show up just like an album. Perhaps you can make a Tag called “partial albums” or whatever. I have Tags for all kinds of stuff. Just a possible work around.
