MQA Now Available on NAD BluOS-enabled Systems

NAD Electronics announced that MQA music will be supported on select BluOS-enabled NAD components, including its recently expanded Master Series. The Latest BluOS firmware will power select high performance NAD models with MQA for studio quality music streams in the home. On the announcement, the company says: “NAD is proud to partner with MQA to introduce high-end audio consumers to this revolutionary end-to-end technology that captures and delivers master quality audio in a file that’s small enough to stream or download.”

“NAD and MQA are excited for consumers to experience the magic of original studio recordings in the home,” commented Greg Stidsen, NAD’s Director of Technology and Product Planning. “MQA’s first implementation within BluOS brought master quality audio to NAD’s sister company, Bluesound. We can now advise NAD users of BluOS that they will also have access to original studio recordings. It’s an exciting development and we are proud to be among the first high performance audio companies to deliver the MQA technology for music lovers.”

Bob Stuart, MQA’s creator, says “Being able to connect listeners with the artist’s original studio recording through premium audio components such as NAD is incredibly exciting for MQA.” 

BluOS is a proprietary operating system shared by NAD and Bluesound that allows for interoperability among BluOS players and connectivity of these players to streaming music in the cloud or from network sources. All users will be prompted to upgrade to the new BluOS firmware, version 2.2.5, to fully experience the latest feature enhancements and upgrades. Both the players and the music sources are controlled by the BluOS app, which is available free for download for iOS and Android devices. 
 
MQA can wirelessly be played on the NAD M12, M50, M32 and C 390DD. At release, the NAD M50 (BluOS-enabled), M12 (equipped with the DD BluOS MDC module), M32 (BluOS-ready and requires license key for activation), and C 390DD (equipped with the DD BluOS MDC module), include a powerful decoder and audio renderer for the Master Quality Authenticated system. This ensures that MQA-encoded audio files and streams sound exactly like the original source file.

With recent announcements from services like HighResAudio, 7Digital, and TIDAL to offer MQA-encoded high-quality streams, NAD users will be ready when MQA libraries become available for streaming. When listening to MQA on NAD’s growing line of BluOS-enabled components, the MQA logo is shown in the app to indicate that the Player is decoding and playing an MQA stream or file. 
www.mqa.co.uk | nadelectronics.com