MQA coding for CD is now available on select labels www.mqa.co.uk/mqa-cd. Is the Rossini player able to properly decode such CDs to render full MQA resolution?
Our MQA implementation splits the two MQA stages (decode and render) into different hardware components. The first stage (MQA decode) is implemented in the network streaming component and the second stage is implemented in the DAC’s FPGA. As there is no data pathway from the player’s CD mechanism through the network processor there’s no way for the Rossini to perform he decode stage from an MQA CD.
There are very few players on the market which support direct playback of MQA CDs. The best solution is to rip the MQA CDs to FLAC files and play them back via the network.
Can this be done by ripping an MQA CD to a USB flash drive and playing that through Rossini?
Yes, loading the files onto a USB stick works well.
MQA requires some tags to be present in the files and those don’t get written when the CD is ripped. MQA has released a program that will read in the ripped CD files and write the appropriate tags. There’s more information here: