A new DAC from SABRE with MQA rendering will be released.
Hopefully it will be implemented an a RPI DAC board in the future.
http://www.esstech.com/index.php/en/news/newsroom/sabre-dacs/
This is MQA’s wet dream! Deep hardware integration making the process of incorporation as easy as following their easy to read instructions. It will be interesting to see how they secure this though because this is where the hardware hackers can get in there and do the naughty stuff MQA don’t like. I suppose it will be the same as restrictions placed on SACD players or DVD Audio but those formats didn’t have to contend with a Chinese manufacturing base that can make things for their economy that MQA Ltd will have little power to influence.
I believe a hardware chip-based rendering solution is harder to hack. Assuming it simply requires setting a few bits in one of its registers, and the chip does the rest.
On reflection that does make sense. So how does this work revenue wise. You pay up front and get to display MQA on the front panel or it still needs to go through MQA’s verification process?
No idea. I wonder about those too.