Withdrawal of MQA support

[ged_hickman1]

Auralic facebook post.
It is unfortunately that MQA has decided to pull back the integration on ARIES/ARIES LE during CES as they have decided to make it an ‘end to end’ technology which means it will always requests a MQA certificated DAC to work.

ARIES ARIES LE, will be able to playback or stream music contains MQA format but will not listed MQA certificated device, to benefit from MQA, you will need a MQA certificated DAC and this is the only way.
We are sorry about the decision made by MQA.

[andybob (Andrew Cox)]

This looks very much like Meridian making rules up as they go along. We users are yet to find out what it means for Tidal and Roon.

[ged_hickman1]

There are more statements on the facebook page but don’t want to flood here.

AURALiC

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

There is a lively conversation on this topic going on in this thread:

Auralic add MQA, RoonReady to Aries at CES

The Auralic facebook page is fascinating. I acknowledge its one side of the story but as someone who has previously excoriated Auralic for the way the mini was released im just having a hard time seeing Meridian’s defense. Q: How come that this was discovered this late in the process? Pretty awkward and unfortunate decision if you ask me. Something must have gone terribly wrong here… AURALiC: They never check the unit until CES setup then found the ARIES does not come with DAC inside Um …

I’m closing this one to avoid forking the conversation.