a.dent

Interesting he chose the second worst amplifier ever measured on ASR. He obviously likes to listen to distortion and noise. He could have chosen a Chinese chip amp like the Loxjie A30, saved himself $4360 and achieved a far better result.

I'd contact Mick. He's a great bloke to deal with and is extremely passionate. The $4k might be a stumbling block though.

I sympathise. I've wasted several hours myself trying to get the update to work on the 200 unit. I finally decided to download and put the image on a new micro SD card. Well the download stopped several times as well. I'm thinking maybe something is amiss at the SoTM server end. Finally got it downloaded but yet to load it on to the SD card.

My thoughts are Vitus RI-101 Gryphon Diablo Accuphase E-470 All will drive most speakers to serious (ear damaging) volumes. I have Magico S5s. DAC and phono stage can be installed in Accuphase. DAC only in the Danish integrateds. I recently sold my Vitus to upgrade to Accuphase separates but the E-470 integrated is close to (or better than) the Vitus.

I haven't heard an Explorer2 but I do have a Mytek Brooklyn. I must say I prefer the MQA versions of most albums when compared through the Mytek. I also have a Vitus DAC and I prefer the partially unfolded file played through the Vitus over the fully unfolded file played through the Mytek. Unfortunately I have to use a MacBook/Tidal app as source here rather than my SOtM sMS200 so I'm hoping that when Roon includes MQA software unfolding I will get another step up in SQ.

My guess is Audirvana is upsampling after the initial unfolding. Check your settings. No files are recorded at 32bit so that bit at least is incorrect because MQA will present the fully unfolded file at it's original resolution. I have a Mytek Brooklyn and I've never seen a 32 bit MQA file yet.

If you have your computer connected straight to your Mcintosh DAC you can get the first MQA unfold from the Tidal App or Audirvana. This gives you up to a 24/96 stream. To get the full MQA experience you need an MQA DAC, the cheapest of which ATM is the Meridian Explorer2. Personally I would think the McIntosh DAC playing a partially unfolded file should sound better than the cheap Explorer2 fully unfolding the MQA file. You would need to step up to something like the Mytek Brooklyn DAC to get the full unfold and compete with the McIntosh. As for the Bluesound, it is primarily a streaming option. If you connect your Mcintosh DAC to it you won't get the full unfold. If you are using it in a second system streaming from your computer then the internal DAC will (apparently) provide full unfolding. But as you say it is cheap DAC. Reports are though that it sounds pretty good. And lastly we could get into the argument about whether MQA really offers any improvement over PCM and whether it is a rort or not.

I had just pressed the upgrade button when I saw your post. It does seem to be taking a huge amount of time to load. It looks like it's stuck at 39% downloaded. That's been there for 30 minutes now. I'll have to reboot and try again.

Interesting. Can you describe the ways in which the MQA files sounded worse?

Straight from the jungle

All sorted. I know nothing about Linux so Agent Kith from Snakeoil OS guided me through the process. Snakeoil OS - Linux For The Audiophile The OS was IPv4 but I changed kernels to IPv6 compatible and all is good now.

Firewall is definitely off. I was using a really old NAA version because newer ones didn't work. I was using the previous latest HQPlayer. How do I check networkaudiod outputs? The developer of the Snakeoil OS Snakeoil OS - Linux For The Audiophile thought maybe as it was IPv4 there was a problem there? Thanks

Hi Miska, I am running HQPlayer on a Mac mini i7 and NAA on a Linux (Snakeoil OS) based atom machine. I just updated to the latest HQPlayer and NAA versions and can no longer see my DAC in the preferences window. I've tried a few commands in terminal after searching for similar problems via Google but still no luck. What can I do? Thanks.

I'd recommend this. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/linux-audiophile-snakeoil-os-28025/

The latest pre-release of Snakeoil OS is available. v0.1.5-pre-release-20160801 A few bugs are fixed and sound quality remains excellent.