OK, but how many backups do you have? I have twelve! 
but sadly true. Dispersed across three continents. But only one planet.
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Looks like you got me beat. You seem to have more than enough. I only have three, that including my brother who has all the files that I have. We share all the files.
My brother is such a flake. I envy you! That said I must forever be grateful that my brother was outnumbered by sisters and requested delivery of me from my parents in time for the Summer of Love!
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My brother and I both shares the love of this hobby and pursuits. He’s the one that just purchased the Esoteric N-01XD DAC/Streamer. Fabulous machine! Now he’s playing with a BAT Rex II Reference Preamp. He said he still prefer the sound of his Conrad Johnson Gat more though. That’s the magic of tubes. We grew up pursuing getting the best sound and equipment we can afford often visiting all the hi-end audio stores we can and upgrading all the time. So much fun!
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You are fortunate to have such a close, partner in “crime”.
Enjoy.
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Ask Bob. I could give a technical answer but I’m too exhausted after work and MQA exhausts me more. Bob is a better writer than I am anyway plus there is music to listen to.
No thanks, looks like this MQA thing is dying out, I don’t see that many people rushing out to buy these MQA recordings anymore, not that there’s that many machines that can do the full unfold anyway. I’ll stick with DSD256. It’s good enough for me.
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Actually my brother’s Esoteric N-01XD DAC/Streamer can do the full unfolding of MQA, so I asked him to do a comparison of the same recording he have in MQA, single rate DSD, and quad rate DSD and he will get back to me on the results later. We’ll see what this MQA can really do.
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BluOS (NAD, BlueSound, DALI) offers Radio Paradise, 4 channels in MQA. Sounds really good. As a matter of fact it makes me want more, so I start to chase MQA CD’s and contemplate about Tidal which is also integrated in BluOS.
DSD sounds better and I still need to compare MQA to Redbook CD.
Bu:
For effortless full DSD 256 BitPerfect decoding, which is the standard at Blue Coast Music now, the Stellar devices do not suffice. They do DSD 128 tops.
So, you need DS DAC (preferably MKII) and an Airlens.
Of course you need to be willing to spend that budget and then you need an Internet connection and in-home network that supports the required bandwidth for that.
Mind you: On top of the bandwidth that your family needs for Homeoffice / school VPN connections, video streaming and gaming.
You can’t hear your DSD music from the shouting if the DSD streaming cannibalises any of the bandwidth for above applications. Believe in such case it is not worth it.
So this is why MQA is still the best HD format for high end minded mainstream consumers.
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I have a Signature Rendu SE, I don’t think I need an AirLens. But, I will try one out to be certain.
We can’t possibly consume the available bandwidth in our house. Our house network backbone is fiber. All of my switches are interconnected with fiber. Our outbuildings have underground conduit with fiber to them. WAN1 Outbound Internet bandwidth is 1GB fiber. WAN2 is 5G for backup. Currently 68 wired and wireless network clients. Six meshed PoE AP’s. Seven Roon endpoints can play simultaneously.
I compared the same recordings MQA and non-MQA on a Mytek Manhattan II. The MQA sounded OK. I didn’t see the point.
I have no interest whatsoever in MQA. I switched from Tidal long ago. I switched from floppies long ago.
If it’s something you want, have at it. But to be clear, you aren’t going to convince me that it sounds better or that it’s necessary. I satisfied my curiosity.
I’d be interested in seeing reputable analysis of network bandwidth savings from streaming MQA vs equivalent lossless files.
In my opinion if you are going to stream audio and video you also need to commit to a network.
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If you are into DSD256, then you already have the files locally in the house. So even if there is no proper high-speed internet where you live, bandwidth should not be a problem. USB 2.0 handles DSD256 fine even with a Raspberry Pi4. Yeah, the files are a lot bigger than MP3 files. But they are nothing compared with 4K video.
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Absolute gold - and placing the hi fi habit in context 
There’s an audible groan in our household when the internet goes out.
When functioning as expected, do you have bandwidth issues?
Hi, previously yes, but reliability seemed to go up from the time of the covid lockdowns and has pretty much held at that higher level since then.
Before then, I had priority queues in place to avoid drop outs. MQA was particularly appreciated for not having the same draw on the system at that time.
We max out around 100 mbps - which comfortably does 4K HDR or 192kHz, but that’s maxxing out at a 1/10th of your service!
DSD256 is ~25 megabits /sec plus some overhead on the network. Your gigabit ethernet and almost gigabit wifi won’t have issues with this when using any modern equipment. Audio does not stress the network. MQA isn’t solving a bandwidth problem. They stopped with that marketing a long time ago.
That’s not exactly how networks work. I’ve tuned networks to run consistently at just a tad over 99% utilization with no errors, no packet loss, no increased latency. “The Internet” is immensely efficient all the way to the limit. In fact, you could run at 99.999999% and not have an issue. It’s when you crest the 100.1% mark that things start to domino and you’ll see issues. You paid for a gigabit… why use 1/10th of it? Go consume more bandwidth! Get al that you paid for.
I just found a large box of floppies I’m trying to figure out if I should use them for art or just toss them. If you’re missing the nostalgia let me know and I’ll bring some down 
I thought that only worked for BluOS devices? I’m not buying a BluOS device just to decode RP in MQA and I really do like RP. The FLAC feed is plenty nice for me and I’ll run it through my own upsampling filters.
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It’s too bad that I am done with Christmas shopping!
I have a question for folks in the know. I am currently beta testing the MKII, which is an amazing DAC. I am feeding it via USB from my Roon Nucleus. The sound so far is wonderful and I have no digital noise from the Nucleus. My question is what advantage/benefits might the AirLens give me besides an I2s output?
Does anyone here use a Lumin streamer?
That is a valid point since MK2 (seems to) make all inputs equally in SQ. So, an AirLens with i2s connection may not be a “have to own” endpoint for DS MK2 anymore. The only reason, in my view, is it improves the SQ more. That may not be an easy task with MK2 than MK1.
Besides the i2s supporting DSD256, the AirLens is in effect the UPnP Bridge III for the DS MKII DAC, enabling streaming via apps like Roon and JRiver. It also supports Tidal Connect… or so we understand so far.