I am asking for another member who streams from Qobuz to their dCS DAC to check a specific album that I believe is actually in MQA format. Here is the direct link to the album.
Background:
I purchased this album - TUVAYHUN — Beatitudes for a Wounded World off of Qobuz which is listed as 24/44.1Khz encoding. I downloaded the file and it played on computer but my default destination is an Aurender Music Transport connected to a dCS DAC. When the Aurender tried to play the file the dCS DAC tried to change sampling twice and ultimately the file was removed from the queue and would not play. Out of a hunch I used the dCS Mosaic application to stream from Qobuz to the DAC directly and to my surprise the DAC detected this was an MQA encoded file and turned on the DAC MQA filters and played the album.
To confirm I then used the MQATagRestorer application on the Qobuz download and indeed it recognized the files as MQA and restored all the appropriate tags and subsequently the Aurender/dCS stack played it correctly as MQA.
My net of reporting is I am sure the intent of 2L (publisher) providing the files was not to be MQA flac files as Qobuz doesn’t support it or even say they make them available. Without MQA playback environment you wouldn’t necessarily detect what I found.
Like to confirm someone else see this behavior. I am reporting it to both 2L and to Qobuz.
At the time the entire 2L catalogue was MQA encoded. AFAIK everything they supplied to Qobuz was MQA. Of course MQA only functions to provide a higher resolution experience for listeners with the decoding equipment. Otherwise the album will replay as a standard low sampling format e.g. 24/44.1. and listeners without the decoder would remain unaware.
Since that time 2L have abandoned MQA and have reissued their catalogue as hi-res DMX albums and I am not aware of these versions replacing the earlier ones on Qobuz (AFAIK - they would not be compatible with the 192 KS/s limitation of Aobuz in any case). However the earlier titles supplied to Qobuz remain on their servers, including those clearly labelled as MQA samplers.
Slightly off topic. If you would like to listen to TUVAYHUN in a binaural immersive version via headphones, connect an iPad with a USB-C to USB-B cable to the USB input of your favorite dCS DAC. Both Tidal and Apple Music serve a binaural headphone downmix of immersive atmos content through the USB-C port. Enjoy.
