Wow thanks Peter! Yes it helps me to understand the process a lot more now. It reminds me of certain aspects of digital image processing. If I need to do any adjustments in color, light or anything, it’s the best practice to do it when image is in very high resolution and color depth, even if your end product needs only to be a small image of 800 pixels in limited color depth.

Hi Peter!
I have been using 2.11 with great enjoyment. It is stable, robust and very discriminating of quality of original music files. I am having some very elementary question that I don't see where to fit in any topic area but thanks for your direction for me to post here.

My questions are:
To take advantages of the custom Arc Prediction filters, do I need to play a track using upsampling? For example, if I play a Red Book track I need to choose 4x, 8x or 16x upsampling and also choose filters accordingly to the extend that DAC supports?

And if a DAC is only capable of 44.1k, and when I play a Red Book track from 44.1k to 44.1k out, are these filters still working, or improving SQ? I heard something and hope it's not imaginary.

What are the filters in the group [NOS] for? ony for Phasure DAC?

Yes Premium is lower than HiFi.
You never know, we might be able to get rid of him!

Ok it looks like an issue of Tidal subscription. Once I upgraded to HIFI account, the above issues disappeared. Except for the third Brahms CD01, I prepared the rest successfully.

Hi Peter,
As always I got from you a full detailed response! What else I can say but a big THANKS! Here are some clarification and steps I’m going to do:

I’m residing in upstate New York.
First I’m going to try to upgrade to HIFI level.
If issues persist, I’ll delete that file and restart anew.
If still not working, I’ll email you the file and login credential.

I will report results here. Thanks again!

Hi Peter,
It's been a while. Recently I tried to prepare some new Tidal tracks again with no success. I had been preparing tracks from Tidan before with about 90% successful rate. But this time around I got all yellow bordered items, for both MQA and non-MQA tracks. My music PC has internet connection, and all track informations except "Streams" folder are downloaded. My tidal subscription is Premium, not HIFI. Could this be an issue?

The folders of all yellow bordered items have TidalAlbumErr.tst files.

Examples of my yellow bordered items:
121424706
35106004
34409408
11791263

Hi Peter,
This is just FYI and might be helpful to others who have similar issues. It turns out that after I adjusted the Q1 and xQ1 values, the problem was basically solved. My old settings were Q1=30, xQ1=10 which I presume to be too high for my meager PC. The new settings are Q1=11, xQ1=1. So far it seems to be working fine. No more choke at the end of a track especially when it is the last or only track in playlist.
Best,
Zheng

Thanks much Peter! Looking forward to the next iteration. ZH

Hi Peter,
Long time no see! I have always noticed that if I put a single track in playlist in unattended mode. It does not play to the very end and stops at a few seconds before the end of song. I am using 2.10c. This issue might have been covered somewhere but I just can't find it.
Happy New Year!
Zheng

Hi Peter,
FYI.
Here is a site that is addressing the server/client patching so RDC can function under "Mitigated". The servers in question are for us mostly mean Audio PC as I understand.


Here is link to the site:
https://www.mcbsys.com/blog/2018/03/updating-the-credssp-group-policy/

Hi Peter,
It would be ideal to find a solution that does NOT require to change group policy to "vulnerable". I think it will require some work on the host PC (mostly audio PC with specific older Win10 builds) so that the client PC will not have to fall back to a more vintage and vulnerable state.

Best,
Zheng

There is some CredSSP policy defaults change in May 8, 2018 Win10 update. This change may cause remote desktop login to fail. Of course only PCs that have been updated are affected.

Zheng

Peter,
Here is what I found out:

When I activate upsampling to 352 kHz, iFi DAD detects it as PCM, not MQA. But if I use Custom filter 352 Low, it sounds as good as, or as identical as native MQA stream!

So the following two scenarios are identical in SQ when playing Black Sheep in Merchant MQA album via MQA enabled iFi iDAC2:

1. Volume 0.0, ArcPrediction OFF, Custom OFF, No upsampling 88 -> 88
2. volume -1.5, ArcPrediction OFF, Custom 352k Low, upsamling to 352k

This is so interesting!

Best,
ZH

Peter,
I have to say that the distinctions I was talking about are very very subtle. I had to use a little stronger words in order to differentiate and describe what were in reality very tiny, fleeing differences. But nevertheless, the difference is there. For example, if you just play one track blindfolded, I may not be able to tell which is which. But if you play the two one immediately following the other, I probably would be able to tell.

Yes I will try your suggested settings tonight.

Best,
ZH

Peter,
This post is intended as a record of my latest observation of the SQ difference between MQA and redbook formats of same music tracks from Tidal using a MQA enabled DAC, in my case iFi iDAC2 (32/384) with firmware 5.3  Here is the setup:

Music tracks:
Black Sheep from Natalie Merchant / Natalie Merchant
https://tidal.com/album/28901976 (MQA)
https://tidal.com/album/68592840 (redbook)

MQA playback:
XXHE settings - volume 0.0, ArcPrediction OFF, Custom OFF, fx OFF, NO upsampling. DAC indicates MQA stream.

Redbook playback:
XXHE settings - volume 0.0, ArcPrediction ON, Custom OFF, fx ON, upsampling 384000 MHz. DAC indicates PCM 384000 MHz stream.

SQ observations:

MQA:
1. bass extended to lower register, softer, more natural and more articulate.
2. vocal has more character, sounds more human, more particular.
3. more natural timbre in high frequencies. You feel you can almost hear the spits when sax is blowing.

Redbook:
All the above 3 qualities become less distinctive. Bass is more boomy, singer's voice has less a sense of being generated by a particular vocal chord. The whole presentation seems more generalized.

Best,
Zheng