NAD M50.2

Rick,

from the (only?) review out there, someone plugged their NAD M50.2 into a Mytek and played an MQA. The NAD decoded it, then the Mytek indicated it was receiving an MQA, but apparently no further processing was done. I think the NAD decodes the MQA/FLAC to high resolution PCM, and from there it’s up to your DAC to give you music.

I’m on the trial Tidal HiFi option now. Streamed some music last night. A couple notes:

1) streaming “masters” music over WiFi is not a viable solution. I had to switch to wired. 

2) The blue MQA light came on the M50.2 and my Emotiva was getting 24bit/96khz music (so, definitely getting the first bit of decoding) rather than the 16/44 I get from ripped CDs or even the default 24/44. But that brings me to...

What is really going on?  Tidal doesn’t tell me (anywhere I can see) what the music specs are...so if it was never encoded above 96, I’m not going to get above 96.  On What’s HiFi, a reviewer wrote (reviewing Tidal Masters):

The benefit of owning (currently limited) kit with built-in MQA decoders, such as the Audirvana Plus 3 computer software – announced at CES 2017 – or Meridian’s Explorer DAC 2, is that all decoding is done by the hardware (bypassing the app in this respect altogether), which can unpackage the entire MQA file for playback in its original resolution.

my M50.2 is indeed directly hooked up to Tidal. So, if the music was encoded at 192kb, I should be getting it...I assume. I will try to find some music that should be 24/192 and see if I get that tonight. That being said, I am at least getting 24/96 from Tidal without a newer MQA signed DAC. That’s a small bit of success. 

Ok, so final MQA update...I tried some songs from the masters collection which are supposedly able to stream at 24/192 (Velvet Underground’s Sweet Jane) but all I’ve seen is 24/96.  So, it looks like the decoding step on the M50.2 isn’t doing everything.  It’s a bit disappointing, but a) 24/96 sounds *just fine*, and b) I’m not paying 2k or so just to get a nice LED to light up somewhere. I’m a bit of a cheapskate that way. 

Also, while most masters songs stream just fine over WiFi, I find that every now and then I run into something that pauses, even at 24/96 (Stevie Wonder’s Living for the City). I’m not sure if it’s a network issue, but I plan to get an 8 port gigabit hub to eliminate that issue anyways. 

Thanks avlee-

i do think you need an MQA DAC to complete but I can’t do this right now either.

if you can believe I moved from the M50.2 from in box on floor to out of box on floor!! Progress.

i am redoing my HT set-up where this unit will be inserted and I’m not there yet.

I sure hope I can get it all under control by the end of this weekend. I am anxious to get the M50.2 rolling as well as the rest of the rig. It’s all torn apart.

Thanks for checking Tidal. It’s so difficult to tell what your getting these days in regards to Tidal.

Rick