NAD M50.2

I hope it's a nice unit. Mine has been unboxec and sitting on the floor since last Friday (-:   Like some others I will use this in a combined HT set-up.

I'm pulling out an Arcam AVR and moving to the Arcam pre-pro this weekend so I have hesitant to set-up until I pull the whole system this weekend. 

The M50.2 will run into the Arcam pre-pro. The way I understand it is the M50 will unfold to the last level of MQA but to get the final level you still need a MQA DAC.
This trying to decifer NADs beat around the bush response from an email I sent.

i still think/hope it will sound excellent. I guess I will find out. Although it is not MQA compliant I am seriously thinking of pushing the NAD Masters M12 in with the M50.2 and Arcam. It gets such nice reviews.

This may be about all I would want to spend with a combined HT and Stereo set-up. I think the NAD sometimes gets a wrap perhaps not worthy but the Masters seems to be pushing price and performance. Maybe a stereo only rig I'd do it differently but this better to be a nice combined HT set-up.

Maybe I'll post back early next week once I rip everything down and get it set up again. I have a 30 day return on both the NAD and Arcam. I'm more worried about the Arcam pre-pro to be honest. Let's see how they gel.

Speakers KEF Reference 1, KEF Reference 4C center, LS50 rears and KEF height modules. Amps Simaudio M400 mono amps. 

I hope it it all comes together. I have been missing a decent stereo rig. NAD was the choice after looking over features and hopefully decent sound etc.

More to come once I get the M50.2 off the floor and into running mode.

Rick

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.