I understand the interest in MQA. Meridian has a lot of money and can advertise and make more money. We want better software....and are always interested in better sound. What MQA promises is that new titles and old titles will come out and we purchase them or download them and use a player that has the MQA playback software and we will have better sound in those titles than ever before.....maybe so, maybe not.
But what if you could make all your current titles and every streaming title sound way better than you ever heard it. Ever hear of HQPlayer? Ever heard what using its sophisticated software to upsample ALL your files to high speed DSD sounds like? I have seen nothing but rave posts about HQplayer DSD upsampling. They say it sounds better than any other player including the players in $20,000 servers. It costs a whopping $150. You load it on a powerful PC or MAC and feed the upsampled info into a DAC that can do high speed DSD. From what I have read....this looks way, way more interesting than MQA. Why wait for MQA titles and DACs when you can make every thing you play (including DSD) sound way better right now using something you can buy in the next 10 minutes!!!!!!!!??????!!!!!!!!! You do need a powerful computer as HQPlayer is a serious user of juice. But, it does not cost much to make such a beast. I have a link off my Gustard mod page (tweakaudio.com) that shows you how to make your own dedicated computer PC for audio using both HQplayer and Roon. The person that wrote the article is getting better sound using this computer system into a level one modded Gustard ($1300 with mod) at DSD256 than his $20,000 turntable with a $5000 cartridge.
Folks, it looks like the revolution is already here. Does the Ayre have DSD256 or DSD512 capability? Hansen was a non supporter of DSD for quite a while but has started to change his tune lately.
Check out computer audiophile for their post on the Berlin Hifi show.
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/699-high-end-munich-2016-words/
They heard the $4000 T+A DAC playing 512 upsampled via HQplayer and were quite taken....read the follow up comments. Mr. Lampizator was there and told someone "I could live with this sound".....and this was through a digital switching amp based on Ncore 500 modules ($4000 the pair).
