MQA and Berkeley Alpha Reference 2

Mike

Mike

Audioshark
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The folks at Berkeley told me today the REF2 will have a field installable MQA software upgrade for the REF2 sometime around the end of Q1 2017. Berkeley supported MQA early on (2015) and got the process going day one. Kudos to them!

Berkeley believes their unique and proprietary implementation of full MQA will be the best compared to all the rest.

Everyone else is using a noisy off the shelf chip with the MQA code. Berkeley's will be proprietary chipset and dead quiet (lower noise floor) by numbers in excess of 20db over the competitors. Berkeley's EULA license with MQA is unique as well because of this unique proprietary hardware implementation.


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Mike said:
The folks at Berkeley told me today the REF2 will have a field installable MQA software upgrade for the REF2 sometime around the end of Q1 2017. Berkeley supported MQA early on (2015) and got the process going day one. Kudos to them!

Berkeley believes their unique and proprietary implementation of full MQA will be the best compared to all the rest.

Everyone else is using a noisy off the shelf chip with the MQA code. Berkeley's will be proprietary chipset and dead quiet (lower noise floor) by numbers in excess of 20db over the competitors. Berkeley's EULA license with MQA is unique as well because of this unique proprietary hardware implementation.
Click to expand...

Mike.......Am I missing something here? You said Berkeley told you the REF2 will have a field installable MQA software upgrade for the REF2. Your post goes on to say Berkeley's proprietary chipset is dead quiet (lower noise floor) by numbers in excess of 20db over the competitors. Berkeley's EULA license with MQA is unique as well because of this unique proprietary hardware implementation.

So, is this unique proprietary hardware implementation already built into the Berkeley REF2 DAC and just waiting for the filed installed MQA software to enable its function, or will the REF2 DAC need to be upgraded to include the MQA proprietary chipset? The statement above seems contradictory unless I am interpreting it incorrectly.
 
jdandy said:
Mike.......Am I missing something here? You said Berkeley told you the REF2 will have a field installable MQA software upgrade for the REF2. Your post goes on to say Berkeley's proprietary chipset is dead quiet (lower noise floor) by numbers in excess of 20db over the competitors. Berkeley's EULA license with MQA is unique as well because of this unique proprietary hardware implementation.

So, is this unique proprietary hardware implementation already built into the Berkeley REF2 DAC and just waiting for the filed installed MQA software to enable its function, or will the REF2 DAC need to be upgraded to include the MQA proprietary chipset? The statement above seems contradictory unless I am interpreting it incorrectly.
Click to expand...

It was part of the REF2 planning and thought and design process. Berkeley actually agreed with me when we discussed MQA 20 months ago (I first heard MQA at CES 2015 and then at Axpona 2015 - see my YouTube videos).


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Mike said:
It was part of the REF2 planning and thought and design process. Berkeley actually agreed with me when we discussed MQA 20 months ago (I first heard MQA at CES 2015 and then at Axpona 2015 - see my YouTube videos).
Click to expand...

Mike.......If I understand you correctly, by saying 'it was part of the REF2 planning and thought and design process', are you saying the necessary hardware has been upgraded in the REF2 to allow full implementation of MQA decoding once the field installed MQA software upgrade is complete?

How about a few links to your videos.
 
jdandy said:
Mike.......If I understand you correctly, by saying 'it was part of the REF2 planning and thought and design process', are you saying the necessary hardware has been upgraded in the REF2 to allow full implementation of MQA decoding once the field installed MQA software upgrade is complete?

How about a few links to your videos.
Click to expand...

Yes. That is my understanding.

https://youtu.be/1d27xoIyqng

https://youtu.be/jbVD8yBXVnM

https://youtu.be/7yVjIirIlyk




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Generally, a field installable software upgrade means changing an EPROM, or some similar type of chip in a socket. Or it means software needs to be installed via an external device by someone in the field. However, that should just be called a software upgrade.
 
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