And what about cold drinks?
Will it have both a red and a white wine spigot on the front?
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The cables needed for precise pours would be crazy expensive…
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I’d forgotten about MQA. Isn’t the adoption of that outside of Tidal all but dead?
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Does anyone know how Tidal is licensed?
It would be great to know how much the licensing of Tidal adds to a product. Perhaps it doesn’t cost anything and the revenue is part of the subscription. If a H/W vendor pays a fee, I personally don’t like the idea of paying for something I won’t use. Perhaps if a user wanted it there could be a fee that once paid, the Unit would be enabled for that function.
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I believe the manufacturer pays a royalty fee for the license to provide MQA support. That is why some products are MQA compatible and some are not. Of course, nothing is free, so we pay for it if it is included.
Tidal likely paid or even took an ownership position to offer MQA, so it would stand out among the other services. Is MQA exclusive to Tidal? Not sure any of the other streaming services offer MQA. I know Qobuz and Apple Music does not offer it.
I know Tidal is the lead service for MQA but I understand artists are using it too.
I’d actually like to be able to listen to the full range which is available - in DSD and MQA through artists like David Elias, which isn’t possible now through the Bridge II. Hence my interest in whether the AirLens will support higher resolution music than the Bridge II!
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His music is also available in DSD. The Bridge II supports DSD.
Bridge II “does” MQA. I am not sure why you think it is not now possible via the Bridge II.
Were you referring to a certain DSD resolution rather than MQA?
Cheers.
Hi, I very much like it that the Bridge II supports DSD and MQA but I feel there’s extra goodness on offer - that I’d love to hear, but the Bridge II can’t resolve, in the form of DSD128 (and up) and MQA352.8k.
I’ve really been interested in the discussion on how much the Directstream can do, through external streamers. I have my fingers crossed the AirLens will allow me to experience those higher res formats.
From what I can tell, it’s only Tidal and Nugs.net that utilizes MQA but there must be more.
I find the MQA or no MQA decisions at companies to be fascinating.
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Got it.
I had both Tidal and Qobuz for 18 months or so. I decided that was a waste of money so I looked at my library and the offerings of both services. I also looked at the DAC offerings at the time. I came to the conclusion that my library and music tastes leaned towards Qobuz and MQA was going to limit my choices of H/W.
So far so good.
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I’m seeing lots of speculation from forum members, but I haven’t actually seen (or at least found) a post from PS Audio indicating if the AirLens will support Qobuz. Paul said no octave software but it will support UPNP DLNA servers. So that would include JRiver, which I use, but JRiver doesn’t support Qobuz. Would there be some other free software that could be used? I currently have the Bridge and am happy with it, but Qobuz is just the pits with MConnect. When I play an album, it plays the first track fine, but then after that it goes to some other bookmarked streaming site I have on my computer. Spotify and Tidal work great, but I don’t want to use those services. The other option is a USB cable from my laptop but that is awkward. Surely there is a solution here. I’m going to be looking at streamers at AXPONA, but would be good to know a little more about the AirLens.
Qobuz, Tidal and similar services all have applications that play nice with streamers like the AirLens (as it purports to be). (No need to use mconnect to play Qobuz or Tidal wares.)
Roon will also allow for piggybacking of Qobuz and Tidal through its app/interface and there is no reason to believe this will not work with the AirLens as it does with Bridge II.
FWIW.
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Without any direct experience with streamers, only the Bridge, I’m not intimatetly familiar with how this works. I want to say you use the streamers app to do this, but will the AirLens have an app?
Think of AirLens as just another variation of the Bridge II.
IOW, the Bridge II Ethernet card is a “streamer”.
PS, no app. for AirLens per Paul.
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No. It was mentioned earlier in the thread that the AirLens will not have an app. In that sense, it is the same as Bridge II.
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No app for the Bridge? The Bridge does have an app, MConnect. Its made by the same company that makes the Bridge, Convers Digital. It’s pretty crappy as others have said previously. JRiver Media Center will work with the AirLens but won’t work for Qobuz. Perhaps I’m being a bit dense here, but is there an answer? I know Octave software has been dropped so maybe PS Audio will endorse, recommend, or suggest a third party app?
JRiver (with Media Network activated) can do Qobuz via controller apps such as BubbleUPnP. It appears as a renderer in Bubble (it will say your computer name and the icon will be JRiver’s icon).
I currently use Bubble to stream from Qobuz to JRiver on both my dedicated PC and Pi. The PC is connected to the DS through a Matrix, and the Pi is connected directly to the DS through the second i2s port.
Note - Bubble can also stream from Qobuz to the Bridge as well.
MConnect is just another controller app that is created by Convers and not Bridge specific, but because the Bridge has Convers’ circuitry, it can also do a few more things such as check firmware.
As long as the AL is UPnP/DLNA compliant (I can’t imagine it WON’T be), there are a lot of control point apps out there that will work for Qobuz as long as the control point app is Qobuz capable (like Bubble).
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Thanks tak1313! I’ve heard plenty of times about Bubble but have never tried to use it. The Bridge has worked fine for me until recently when I tried Qobuz. To be clear, both Spotify and Tidal when used in Mconnect would then go to the Spotify or Tidal app on my iPad. Worked great (I just didn’t care for the music selection and quality so much). Qobuz stays within Mconnect and the interface is awful, hence my questioning how the AirLens works. Obviously no one outside PS Audio knows, but I thought by now PS Audio would know a little more and would share.