7/29/2023 0 Comments Zorloo ztella vs dragonfly cobaltNow, I may not have golden ears, but I care enough about audio to have a relatively sizable collection of hi-res audio files. This was also true for any songs I compared between. Listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a song I often use for reference, I couldn't notice a difference between the MQA version on Tidal and my own 24-bit/192 kHz FLAC version. No, this may not technically be lossless, but when it sounds this good, who cares? Instead, it aims only to preserve the parts of the signal we can actually hear. Some audiophiles refuse to refer to as MQA as hi-res because it isn't lossless. The real surprise came when I started listening to the same versions of these songs on Tidal. The soundstage was as detailed as expected, and the frequencies I've come to expect in certain songs where there when I expected them to be. A good DAC/amp combo gives you the signal as pure and powerful as possible unless you're getting into expensive tube amps. Writing about a DAC in terms of sound quality can be tricky because it's not supposed to impart any character. The HD650s aren't the easiest headphones to drive but seemed to have as much volume and detail as when connected to my standard DAC/amp setup. The first thing I noticed is how surprisingly powerful the amp in the Ztella is. MQA is just icing on the cake.įirst, to test the built-in amplification and conversion courtesy of the ESS Sabre 9281CPRO chip, I listened to a few hi-res files I'm well familiar with in Audirvana, one of our favorite hi-res players for the Mac. While I've made a big deal about MQA so far in this review, it's important to point out that the Ztella is that it supports hi-res PCM files up to 32-bit/384khz and DSD up to 5.6Mhz. For in-ears, I used a set of AudioFly AF140 IEMs, as well as a relatively cheap pair of MassDrop X NuForce EDC in-ears. In order to test the Ztella as thoroughly as I could, I not only used different devices for playback, but also listened on multiple headphones and speakers.įor headphones, I used my trusty Sennheiser HD650s, with whose sound I'm thoroughly acquainted. This still let me hear the difference between the amplifiers and how they affected the quality of the audio, which we'll touch on below. That said, I could still use the device like an amplifier. In my case, testing on Android was sort of a moot point, as the LG V20 already supports MQA. In each case it's a little different, so we'll look at those separately. The process is slightly different and at times more complex on mobile devices. I didn't test on a Windows PC, but Tidal supports MQA on Windows, so everything should work just as easily. Once you see this, you know you're ready to start listening. When the device is set to properly decode MQA, you'll see the light turn magenta in color. Then I simply found an album listed with Master Quality Audio, and hit play. Then I launched Tidal, went to settings and made sure Master Quality Audio was selected in the Quality section (this requires a Tidal Hi-Fi account). I simply plugged my headphones into the 3.5mm jack on one end, then plugged the USB-C connector on the other into the computer. In every case, I listened using the Tidal streaming service, as it's the easiest way (at least in the U.S.) to find a large quantity of MQA-ready music to listen to.
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