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      12-19-2018, 06:46 PM   #1
mister2d
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Anyone enjoying streaming 24-bit MQA audio with their B&O?

The developer for UAPP has made MQA decoding possible on Android phones via in-app purchase.

I didn't hesitate to try it out. Long story short, it sounds great!

My setup is a TIDAL HiFi subscription, Samsung Galaxy S9+, Dragonfly Red, and the AUX port of my M5.

Just curious to see if anyone else has gotten on board yet.
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      12-24-2018, 01:44 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mister2d View Post
The developer for UAPP has made MQA decoding possible on Android phones via in-app purchase.

I didn't hesitate to try it out. Long story short, it sounds great!

My setup is a TIDAL HiFi subscription, Samsung Galaxy S9+, Dragonfly Red, and the AUX port of my M5.

Just curious to see if anyone else has gotten on board yet.
Wondering why you're not connecting the Galaxy via Bluetooth?
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      12-24-2018, 02:58 PM   #3
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I saw a thread about dragonfly red earlier this year, on this or maybe another F10 forum. I'm sure the combo your using sounds superior, but I do not go this route because losing the NBT factory integration is a deal-breaker for me, and probably is the main reason this isn't widely adopted. I don't like to plug/unplug my phone and do like the entertainment detailed side window display, HUD and steering wheel controls and my co-pilot can easily manipulate the NBT controls without having to get me to unlock my phone or anything like that.
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      12-25-2018, 09:36 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by pcohen15 View Post
Wondering why you're not connecting the Galaxy via Bluetooth?
I do this for phone functionality for sure. This question was really out there for folks who insist on listening to their uncompressed music through the B&O system while using an external DAC. I know the audience is small. Bluetooth audio is fine for convenience but not the choice if you really care about the quality of the audio coming out of your speakers.
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      12-26-2018, 02:43 PM   #5
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True, but I take the middle approach of playing 1000+ mp3s I ripped from CDs loaded onto the NBT hard drive. Not as good as external DAC but no plugging or adjusting the volume on the phone, and full integration and music search is there.
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      12-26-2018, 04:51 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TLK View Post
True, but I take the middle approach of playing 1000+ mp3s I ripped from CDs loaded onto the NBT hard drive. Not as good as external DAC but no plugging or adjusting the volume on the phone, and full integration and music search is there.
Indeed. I also do this, but I didn't load mp3s to the NBT hard drive. I used my FLAC collection instead. I figured I paid the extra money for B&O, why waste it solely on compressed music.
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      12-26-2018, 11:06 PM   #7
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Great. My collection won't fit using Flac on the 20 GB hard drive. I haven't tried flac on this HU off a thumb drive, it might be an option.
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      12-27-2018, 01:14 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mister2d View Post
I do this for phone functionality for sure. This question was really out there for folks who insist on listening to their uncompressed music through the B&O system while using an external DAC. I know the audience is small. Bluetooth audio is fine for convenience but not the choice if you really care about the quality of the audio coming out of your speakers.
Not being an audiophile, I appreciate your answer. Thanks.
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      12-27-2018, 11:43 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TLK View Post
Great. My collection won't fit using Flac on the 20 GB hard drive. I haven't tried flac on this HU off a thumb drive, it might be an option.
My guess is you could use a sata to usb 3.0 adapter w/ a SSD and use that for FLAC external storage if you want.

Music in general in regards to storage, playback, quality, scarcity, lack of variety, backing up libraries, and no real path to streamlining any of it have frustrated me the last 10 years. I envy people that can turn on satellite radio and just jam out to the muddy tunes and enjoy it. I just cringe when I listen... this is what people pay money for? this garbage sound quality?
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      12-28-2018, 10:05 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by somer View Post
My guess is you could use a sata to usb 3.0 adapter w/ a SSD and use that for FLAC external storage if you want.

Music in general in regards to storage, playback, quality, scarcity, lack of variety, backing up libraries, and no real path to streamlining any of it have frustrated me the last 10 years. I envy people that can turn on satellite radio and just jam out to the muddy tunes and enjoy it. I just cringe when I listen... this is what people pay money for? this garbage sound quality?
Muddy tunes. 😄😄😄

BTW, USB drives work just fine in the NBT system.
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      01-02-2019, 03:55 PM   #11
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I looked at using flac and I found that the NBT refuses to display embedded album art from within flac files, but instead looks up the art from its Gracenote database on the hard drive, given the artist and album tags. So I can change these tags to well known popular albums and the displayed picture changes along with it even though nothing else is changed. This makes for some comical combos.

For mp3 files I found that NBT indeed it does correctly display the embedded artwork, as I can change artwork and leave the other tags and data alone and the displayed artwork tracks my change.

I do not use album folders in my organization scheme so trying to use individual folder.jpg artwork with flac album folders might work but isn't an appealing approach for me.

I will be investigating more, but I'm putting wholesale recoding to flac on hold pending a better artwork solution for flac. I have a lot of albums that aren't going to be covered by the grace note database, and my present mp3 files are encoded at settings for very high quality and take 1/3 the space of highly compressed flac files so it is not like listening to muddy sat radio.
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      01-02-2019, 08:00 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TLK View Post
I looked at using flac and I found that the NBT refuses to display embedded album art from within flac files, but instead looks up the art from its Gracenote database on the hard drive, given the artist and album tags. So I can change these tags to well known popular albums and the displayed picture changes along with it even though nothing else is changed. This makes for some comical combos.
Haha.. I didn't think to try this with tags.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TLK View Post
I do not use album folders in my organization scheme so trying to use individual folder.jpg artwork with flac album folders might work but isn't an appealing approach for me.

I will be investigating more, but I'm putting wholesale recoding to flac on hold pending a better artwork solution for flac. I have a lot of albums that aren't going to be covered by the grace note database, and my present mp3 files are encoded at settings for very high quality and take 1/3 the space of highly compressed flac files so it is not like listening to muddy sat radio.
Yes I noticed I had to organize my FLAC collection into folders with associated artwork. At first it was a chore until I used foobar2000 (I believe) to retrieve artwork from the Internet and organize with a few clicks. There are still some outliers in 320kbps MP3/AAC format, but the bulk are in FLAC. To make matters worse, NBT also plays 24-bit FLAC but I don't think it sounds any better than the equivalent music file already there. It's probably due to NBT downsampling the files. If you want more space, then a low profile USB stick might be an option to take.

Now, once your ears get accustomed to the M5's DAC, try an experiment some day in the future with an external DAC plugged into your AUX port. The difference is very pronounced in my opinion. Instruments are clearer, the bass is a bit tighter and impactful, and overall the music is brighter.

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