Will Lumin U1 pass MQA from Tidal to MQA compatible DAC and fully let the DAC decode the stream?

[joeinid]

Anyone with experience doing this?

Does my question make sense?

 

[audio.bill]

Joe - Your question is perfectly valid, basically asking whether the Lumin U1 has a Tidal MQA passthru mode for full MQA decoding to be done by a compatible DAC. Unfortunately I don't know the answer but Peter certainly will.

 

[joeinid]

Thank you for restating it very well. I don't have an MQA dac at the moment but I'm getting an itchy trigger finger and thinking about the Mytek Brooklyn for fun.

 

[wklie]

Yes, U1 should be able to passthrough MQA from native Tidal playback, if volume control is OFF and resampling for 44.1kHz and 48kHz are disabled for firmware 8.* and earlier. (This is from my understanding, although we don't have a MQA DAC to test with yet.)

A scenario that does not work would be using AirPlay: if you use Tidal native app then AirPlay to Lumin, MQA integrity is destroyed because AirPlay is 16/44.1 only, while Tidal MQA is delivered in 24/48 or 24/44.1.

 

[joeinid]

Thank you Peter.