Aurender A10 goes full blown MQA

[Mike]

We are pleased to announce that tomorrow, February 28, 2017, a major software update to Aurender Conductor and firmware update to the A10 fully certifing it to MQA Full Decode will see pubic release.

Please review the release notes here: http://support.aurender.com/partner-release-note-email-2-27-17.html

This has been a long time coming and we are sure you’ll enjoy the additional new features added to Aurender Conductor as well as the ability to hear MQA files and streaming they way they were meant to be on the Aurender A10.




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[jdandy]

Mike.......This is great news, especially for Aurender A10 owners. I am pleased to see Aurender continue to update and upgrade the Conductor App for all players.

Thanks for the link.

 

[JGlacken]

I am very disappointed with Aurender as they claim they were completely taken off guard by the Tidal announcement of MQA files being streamed. Ha. And the A10 was just a dream in my fathers eye!
Now it is time for them to put up or shut up and make some changes to the firmware of their other players/streamers to at least do the first unfold to 88 or 96. If not they are gone for good from my system.
I will keep my PS DS and install the bridge when it does the first unfold and go back to networked NAS.
Mr. Barnum was correct, but it's not me!

 

[Mike]

I am very disappointed with Aurender as they claim they were completely taken off guard by the Tidal announcement of MQA files being streamed. Ha. And the A10 was just a dream in my fathers eye!
Now it is time for them to put up or shut up and make some changes to the firmware of their other players/streamers to at least do the first unfold to 88 or 96. If not they are gone for good from my system.
I will keep my PS DS and install the bridge when it does the first unfold and go back to networked NAS.
Mr. Barnum was correct, but it's not me!

Aurender has been an MQA partner since the beginning. In fact, I announced my experiences with the Aurender A10 streaming MQA from a beta version of Tidal back in October 2016 when I got to play with it at RMAF.

As for 88/96, I will ask today and let everyone know.

The Bridge Paul is talking about will not give you full blown MQA IMO. The MQA EULA, at this stage, won't allow it.

Those who were asleep at the wheel and didn't get on board with MQA back in 2015 or early 2016 and those who for the past two years publicly poo-pooed MQA and now realize, "oh sh!t, we better get on board", are in for a rude awakening. The road to MQA certification is a long one. It will not happen overnight. Typically, 18-24 months.

 

[JGlacken]

Yes, Paul has said as much, but 88/96 will get me most of the way there.
If you read some of the Aurender responses to my MQA questions, you might not defend them so vigorously. They claim they were taken by surprise by the Tidal Masters announcement. Oh? But been working on certified DAC since the beginning. So which side of their mouth will they be speaking from today?
Do they really think their current customers will just drop everything and buy the A10 ?
As you are want to say on occasion, Meh!

Aurender has been an MQA partner since the beginning. In fact, I announced my experiences with the Aurender A10 streaming MQA from a beta version of Tidal back in October 2016 when I got to play with it at RMAF.

As for 88/96, I will ask today and let everyone know.

The Bridge Paul is talking about will not give you full blown MQA IMO. The MQA EULA, at this stage, won't allow it.

Those who were asleep at the wheel and didn't get on board with MQA back in 2015 or early 2016 and those who for the past two years publicly poo-pooed MQA and now realize, "oh sh!t, we better get on board", are in for a rude awakening. The road to MQA certification is a long one. It will not happen overnight. Typically, 18-24 months.

 

[Mike]

When I spoke to Bob Stuart at RMAF, he told me they were waiting on Tidal. Everyone was waiting on Tidal. No one knew when Tidal was going to throw the switch, but I will admit, a betting man in Vegas with CES around the corner would have had pretty good odds. But to blame Aurender for Tidal not telling them is not fair IMO. I think there were a lot of companies caught off guard. I think it's far more interesting to watch the companies who publicly poo-pooed MQA for 2 years to now do an about face.

As for getting "almost there", I would beg to differ. My experiences have suggested that the MQA 96 version played via desktop to a non-MQA DAC gets you no where near the real benefits of MQA (see my earlier post today). On the surface, some albums sound better, others I found the redbook version sounding better. But the final stage of MQA adds the spatial cues which IMO is the real magic of MQA.

What I'm wondering about is the upgrade today to both the Aurender system software and Conductor. I'm wondering if this upgrade will allow us to see and play 88/96 Tidal files (under MQA). When I find some time later, I will experiment with my N100H and some of the DAC's.

Mike

 

[russellbobby]

Hi Mike,
in the release notes it reads that the A10 will upsample. I have been unable to find that feature.

Also can you tell me what the Analog filters do?


Last night the Aurender was showing 176Khz for Blue Tofu, Nils Logren's Acoustic Live and Annie Lennox's Nostalgia. All of these are non-MQA. Today just showing HiFi.
Can you shed any light on any of this?
Russ

 

[Kuoppis]

What I'm wondering about is the upgrade today to both the Aurender system software and Conductor. I'm wondering if this upgrade will allow us to see and play 88/96 Tidal files (under MQA). When I find some time later, I will experiment with my N100H and some of the DAC's.

Mike

The update seems to have messed up the Aurender SW, as now some titles on Tidal play, others don't. The unfortunate part is that 470 albums in the Master folder do play, but the remaining 40 million tracks seem not to play. Minor quibble.

Guess there will be a new SW update rather soon.

Addition: after a restart the Aurender seems to play non-MQA Tidal tracks, but it keeps skipping tracks and has intermittent interruptions.


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