I think these are valid questions to ask for your purpose. You may also check their manual before asking.
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While I am not a fan of MQA, I don’t believe this statement is true. Some “first gen” MQA devices have a bug where they forget to switch back to normal filter after playing an MQA track. (E.g., Mytek and the Project S2 Digital suffer from this.) But these devices, today, are in the minority when it comes to available MQA options.
On many DACs, it isn’t a bug, but a design choice. All I’m saying is anyone who’s interested should check if his DAC design has auto switching of the filters.
Well, I posed that set of questions to SMSL, and I will report back. The manual for the SU-9 seems to only discuss the opposite - there are a number of PCM filters which cannot be applied to MQA content; but I can’t find anything about the opposite.
(This setup is only valid for non-MQA PCM format. Products with a full MQA Decoder unfold the file to deliver the highest possible sound quality. At this level of playback you are hearing what the artists created in the studio – with precise file and platform-specific DAC compensation and management.)
I think there’s a SMSL representative over at ASR forum.
Are you saying that on, for instance a Manhattan II (Mytek), one would have to manually switch off the MQA filter after listening to an MQA track in order to engage any of the PCM filters? Otherwise the PCM track will be processed through the MQA filter?
Find the section starting from “To select these filters”: (Assuming this article remains valid)
Find “disable MQA”:
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AFAIK, that’s how it works, unless they’ve changed it: Once you’ve played MQA, it stays in MQA until you manually switch it.
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Whereas I received this prompt response from SMSL’s rep:
it automated that non-MQA content does not pass through MQA processing
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Good to know. I wouldn’t buy a DAC without knowing if it automatically switches filters for MQA and non MQA.
Yes, got it confirmed from their support.
Hello I have a su9 smsl, could you support me as you have it configured for the mqa and its other functions. Thank you
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If you don’t use Roons DSP set it’s MQA cababilites as Decoder and Renderer , turn off Roons MQA core decoder for it in advanced settings. The rest are up to you really. I use fixed volume, sound color is set at Crystal 3 but these are very subtle, PCM filter and DSD filters are at defaults as is PLL jitter.
I have an ifi Zen DAC with balanced headphone outputs as as a cheap MQA introduction. Bearing in mind I’ve just realised that the analogue input was going A>D>A out of my elderly reciever’s DAC, my original thoughts aren’t going to be of much use. Spent last night rewiring the sub so that it would use the high level inputs and not the .1/LFE
I have being reading about
Gustard A18 (cheaper then Topping D90)
Gustard A22 with dual AK4499 (supposedly a level above the Topping)
I see Cambridge has just come to the party in the last few days as well with dual ESS ES9028Q2M
Cheers
Paul
@David_Snyder. Hello. Question for you, I have lower end iFi DACs (Zen and Hip) and both when playing MQA can’t do gapless. I think I read on a forum it’s a known iFi issue. I recently got a SMSL M500 DAC and gapless MQA plays fine (both full decode and renderer only mode).
Does your NEO play gapless (live concert as best example) perfectly and seamlessly?
Well, I had assumed so, but apparently not if the DAC is rendering or decoding MQA. This is a good album for testing because there’s a sequence of ~20 second gapless tracks starting track number 4.
Not gapless if the NEO is doing full MQA Decoding:
Not gapless if the NEO is just doing MQA Rendering:
But gapless works fine if MQA Capabilities are set to “No MQA Support”:
That’s a bit disappointing, and honestly not something I’ve noticed before. I should probably re-test with Audirvana and the TIDAL Desktop app for completeness, but I assume the results will be the same.
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There was someone who recently said that Ropieee couldn’t play gapless into M500, but Moode could, both using the SMSL as decoder and renderer. I have not followed up to try it out myself. I personally have gotten to what I perceive as gapless with the M500, but still have the “format change dropout” at the beginning of songs / albums with different formats, regardless of what I set rsync to.
@David_Snyder Yeah. So SMSL DAC works perfectly for gapless in both render or decode/render mode. I searched and found a thread where a Roon developer said they replicated the issue and said it should be fixed in next version. This is odd because I would think it’s an iFi problem to fix (firmware) and not Roon software’s. I messaged that person to see if it’s in 1.8
I will probably get a new DAC (returning M500 and probably getting SU-9) but would be great if this iFi gapless issue was fixed.
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I can confirm a SMSL M500 plays gapless MQA (and non MQA) just fine in Ropieee. I haven’t experienced the format change pause yet but will test.
I have purchased 2 x SMSL SU9s ( replacing 2 x Schiit BIFROST Gen 5 / Multibit DACs ) and the improvement is extraordinary. Prob the best buy in my 40+ years of hifi in $/performance ratio.
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